Kids’ Special & Dark Comedy Among New Channel 4 Commissions

LONDON: The U.K.’s Channel 4 has given the go-ahead to a trio of new commissions, including an animated special based on the children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and a comedy starring Broadchurch’s Olivia Colman.

Scheduled to air next year, the half-hour adaptation of Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt will be produced by Lupus Films, the team behind The Snowman and the Snowdog. It will follow the adventures of a group of children who decide to go on a bear hunt after they’re left home alone one day before Christmas.

“I am absolutely delighted that Channel 4 has commissioned this animation,” Rosen said. “Lupus have a great record in this field and I am very excited to be part of the project. Helen Oxenbury’s wonderful artwork provides a powerful family saga, full of imagined or real trials and these pictures will give a basis for a moving Christmas drama.”

The network also greenlit the six-part dark comedy Flowers, produced by Kudos in association with NBCUniversal’s new comedy-focused SVOD platform. That series stars Colman as the matriarch of an eccentric family struggling to hold themselves together. It’s slated to debut next year.

Nerys Evans, Channel 4’s deputy head of comedy, said, “Flowers is the kind of deliciously dark comedy we love at Channel 4. The word dysfunctional doesn’t even come close to describing quite how brilliantly peculiar the Flowers family are. [Writer] Will Sharpe’s genius coupled with an amazing cast has led us to an unbelievably original piece and we are delighted to have it on the channel.”

Additionally, Channel 4 has partnered once more with explorer Levison Wood on Walking the Himalayas, a factual title co-produced by October Films and GroupM Entertainment for a 2016 launch. The series will see Levison push himself to his physical limits as he is forced through remote, punishing terrain and altitudes above 5,000 meters where he suffers from a debilitating lack of oxygen. Levison last worked with Channel 4 on the 2013 series Walking the Nile.

“I thought Lev’s Nile expedition would be hard to top, but having seen the first rushes from this I’m bowled over," said John Hay, commissioning editor for Channel 4. “He’s already walked through parts of Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan I’d never even heard of before this project began, but which are both utterly spectacular and seriously tough. In our connected age, anyone with money can travel, but to commit to walking every single step through this part of the world takes extraordinary guts and resilience—and there’s no one I’d rather go on that journey with than Lev.”