Slew of Commissions for BBC Three

LONDON: Zai Bennett, the controller of BBC Three, has announced a raft of new commissions for the channel, including Siblings, a comedy from the company that made The Inbetweeners.

Also in the way of comedy/entertainment programming is the one-hour Seann Walsh’s Late Night Comedy Spectacular, featuring rising superstar Seann Walsh. The new chat show Staying in with Greg & Russell features celebrity guests coming to stay over with Greg James and Russell Kane. Jack Whitehall’s Backchat is hosted by Jack and also his father, Michael.

There’s also new factual entertainment in the mix, with Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents: Thailand, a series in which parents secretly kept tabs on their children’s holidays. Snow, Sex and Suspicious Parents puts a twist on the show by spying on kids during their skiing holiday.

In factual programming, there is Old Before My Time, which looks at the health implications, diseases and conditions associated with excessive partying, eating and drinking. Sex, Money, Beauty: The Secrets of South America sees Billie J.D. Porter exploring life in South America through three films that look at Argentina’s attitude toward sex, Brazil’s wealthy elite and struggling poor, and Venezuela’s obsession with beauty and body image. In Prostitution: What’s the Harm?, BBC Three examines the attitudes and experiences of young Britons toward prostitution.

BBC Three has also slated a season of programs exploring crime and punishment. Among them are Life and Death Row, which goes inside prison walls to meet America’s youngest death row inmates; Stacey Dooley on Teen Domestic Violence, which looks at the prevalence of domestic abuse among young Britons; and Dead Behind Bars, tackling the issue of suicides in prisons. The network has also slated the hour-long My Man (working title), following on from its successful My Murder program in 2012.

Bennett said: “Since I was up in Edinburgh a year ago we’ve had so many cut through shows on BBC Three, and, judging by the caliber of the new commissions I’m announcing today, next year will be no different. We’ve won two BAFTAs (Our War and The Revolution Will Be Televised), two Broadcast Awards (My Murder and The Revolution Will Be Televised [digital]), a Freesat Award (Our War), a British Comedy Award (Jack Whitehall) and had over 40 shows which pulled in audiences of well over 1 million (first tx consolidated).

"We’ve unleashed Nev on the world, tackled really serious issues such as mental health, body image, the horse-meat scandal, the Cleveland kidnappings, the treatment of women in India, brought women’s football to the nation and humor and satire to audiences through Russell Howard’s Good News, The Revolution Will Be Televised, Cuckoo, Bluestone 42, Bad Education, Some Girls and Pramface to name but a few.”