IWC to Produce Music Doc Series for BBC Four

IWC, a Banijay Group company, is set to produce I Can Go For That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock, a two-part documentary series for BBC Four that is slated to air this summer.

The series will see Katie Puckrik explore the sounds of the ’70s and ’80s, when Los Angeles studio-based artists like The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan and Hall & Oates produced smooth R&B and married it to adult themes about longing, aspiration and melancholy, creating a genre of music today known as Yacht Rock. The first hour-long part of the series will focus on the ’70s and the second, the ’80s.

The series will feature contributions from John Oats (Hall & Oates); producer Mark Ronson; the writer who popularized the term Yacht Rock, JD Ryznar; musician Jay Gradon, who played on tracks by Steely Dan and Hall & Oates; and members from the band Toto. I Can Go For That: The Smooth World of Yacht Rock will be distributed globally by Banijay Rights.

Puckrik said: “When I was growing up in the Virginia suburbs in the ’70s and ’80s, Yacht Rock was the music that sailed out of my girlfriends’ cassette players, the older boys’ muscle cars and the grown-ups’ cocktail parties. I’ve never stopped loving Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, Michael McDonald and the rest of those smooth movers because they twang my bittersweet spot of escapism and melancholy. The magic of Yacht Rock is that just listening to it makes us feel sexy, happy and rich. I think of it as ‘millionaire’s make-out music’—the sound of endless summers.”

Franny Moyle, the series’ executive producer, added: “Katie Puckrik is perfectly placed to guide us through this underappreciated musical genre, and her knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject has helped us create this fantastic series. This music was written in a sun-drenched past, but it feels timeless.”