BBC Studios’ Katie Benbow

Katie Benbow, the director of sales planning at BBC Studios, shares with World Screen how she’s been working with her teams to meet broadcasters, streamers and audiences’ insatiable appetites for new content.

As challenging as the past 15 months have been, distributors with production capabilities and wide-ranging catalogs have seen innumerable opportunities. As Katie Benbow, the director of sales planning at BBC Studios, explains, she has been working with her teams to meet broadcasters, streamers and audiences’ insatiable appetites for new content. BBC Studios has been well-positioned to satisfy demand given the breadth of programs.

WS: BBC Studios has such a wide range of product. What has been selling well?
BENBOW: In these times, audiences have wanted just to escape. Death in Paradise has been doing incredible numbers. We also have a huge amount of interest in The Watch, a BBC America commissioned sci-fi drama based on Terry Pratchett’s novels. It was their biggest drama launch since Killing Eve and has sold into Australia, China and Russia, amongst other places. A Suitable Boy, which allows viewers to immerse themselves in a culture you don’t see on TV often enough, has sold incredibly well.

It’s not just escapism. Entertainment programs have been very well received, such as The Great British Sewing Bee and The Great British Bake Off. So has Small Axe, the Steve McQueen series. We did some research that showed that comedy is ranking number one amongst audiences not only in the U.K. and the U.S. but also in Australia, Germany, France and China. We’ve seen that with newer shows like Stath Lets Flats and Ghosts, but also with some of our classic comedy. And as always, our landmark factual has allowed some escapism too. A Perfect Planet has sold extensively.

WS: BBC Studios has a treasure trove of factual and current affairs titles. Are you seeing more of a desire for entertainment and escapism than the need for analysis and current affairs?
BENBOW: It’s a bit of both. The brilliant thing about the BBC is that we’ve got such a rich history in factual and news programming. Impartiality is incredibly important to our brands. We are quite a trusted source for news and current affairs programming. And our factual slate is so strong that people have kept coming back. But certainly, there’s a demand for entertainment. Without the opportunity to bring the studio audiences together, our archive entertainment shows have seen a rise to fill those Saturday night family viewing schedules and on-demand slates.

However, we’re definitely seeing a high demand for unscripted. We’ve got such a rich history, particularly in natural history. At the BBC Showcase, we talked about Earthshot from Silverback Productions. It’s a series to accompany Prince Williams’ global environment prize [The Earthshot Prize]. Green Planet is the next in the One Planet series of a five-year plan of natural-history landmarks. We’ve also got The Forgotten Empire, which is David Olusoga’s new series, where he embarks on a journey to eye-opening accounts of Britain’s place in the world, which I think, in the current environment, is particularly relevant and interesting. We are continuing to work with Steve McQueen. We’ve got two new documentaries he has created around the Black Power movement and how it came to exist and a rare archive of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and their activities in the U.K.

WS: And what are some of your new scripted titles?
BENBOW: Superhoe is a six-part musical drama based on Nicôle Lecky’s one-woman show that she performed at the Royal Court. This Is Going to Hurt is based on Adam Kay’s novel. The experience of a junior doctor feels more relevant than ever right now. That stars Ben Whishaw. The Offenders is a comedy series from Stephen Merchant and Elgin James. It will be starring Christopher Walken.

WS: How are you working with SVOD platforms?
BENBOW: We’ve agreed to a quite big drama package with Lionsgate Play in India for titles like Les Misérables, Class, Pure and SS-GB, quite an eclectic mix of drama. They seem to be responding to that audience’s need. They want to mine the archives, but they service new content, too, so series like Louis Theroux: Life On the Edge that we brought out last year is a brilliant way for us to create content out of the archive. Revisiting previous stories presents us another opportunity to service those original titles for audiences, too.

WS: Buyers tend to want exclusive rights. In the past year, have you seen a bit more of a willingness to do co-exclusive deals or sharing rights in some way?
BENBOW: I think it’s more nuanced than we’d like to believe. Every deal and every customer are different, but also every show is different. Our job in sales is about working closely with that piece of IP and the producer to understand the right way to get it to the best audience. For A Suitable Boy, we did an exclusive deal with Netflix for most of the world. We worked with Acorn in the U.S. and Canada. Whereas with our natural-history programming, we premiere in some regions on our own branded channels. We have co-productions in places like Germany, France and China. And then we have the SVOD premiere with discovery+. So I would say exclusivity is always a benefit to a buyer, but we are seeing a great willingness for people to work collaboratively and trying to find the right audience for that piece of IP.

WS: BBC Studios launched the Assistant Producer Accelerator Programme to increase diversity in front of and behind the camera. Are clients also requesting broader representation, whether it be the subject matter, actors or producers in the shows you sell?
BENBOW: We’re always looking for fresh and new and exciting stories, both across scripted and unscripted. The only way you can do that is by hearing from different people with different life experiences. It’s always something that we’re trying to look for by production for our catalog, and it’s definitely something that our customers have responded to. I mentioned Small Axe earlier, having sold so extensively. That’s a beautiful series created by one of the world’s greatest artists, with diverse representation on screen and telling authentic stories of life in Britain from a particular perspective. [Clients] have responded positively, and what we’re hearing is an expression of what the audience now expects, which is greater representation and different stories told in unique ways.