Beyond Rights Lines Up Five New Indie Partners

Beyond Rights, created through the merger of Beyond Distribution and TCB Media Rights, has signed acquisition deals with five new producer partners, totaling 35 hours of factual content.

A deal with Wonderhood is already generating sales for Trump in Tweets, originally produced for BBC Three. The one-hour doc looks at the U.S. president’s love affair with social media and how he weaponizes it to shape his policies. It has been picked up by BBC Nordics, with other offers pending.

Marking an enhanced focus on non-English-language content, Beyond Rights acquired two seasons of Undercut: Wooden Treasure, from GiUMa Produzioni in Italy. The series, originally produced for D-Max, follows the heroic work of Italian loggers in the aftermath of storm Vaia in 2018, when gusts of 120 mph uprooted around 14 million trees in the forests of northern Italy.

Through CIC Media, Beyond Rights acquired Race To Victory, which has already been sold to A+E Networks in the U.S. and Spain, as well as Viasat. The archive-driven history series was originally commissioned by A&E Networks UK for its recently rebranded Sky History channel. Race To Victory is a chronological account of the unlikely alliance between the U.K., U.S. and the Soviet Union in the war against Nazi Germany.

Also headed for A+E Networks in Spain is Filthy House SOS, acquired from Gobstopper. Produced for the U.K. free-to-air channel 5Star, the series follows super-cleaners Jon and Brennan as they take on some of Britain’s filthiest homes. In just three days, the dirt-busting duo not only transform houses, but also the lives of the people who live in them.

Beyond Rights also acquired The Unremembered, a one-off doc from David Olusoga and Mike Smith’s Uplands Television. Commissioned by Channel 4 in the U.K., the film tells the story of the 100,000-plus African soldiers who died on their own continent serving Britain during the First World War but who were denied proper graves. The Unremembered is hosted by British activist and MP David Lammy, who journeys across Kenya and Tanzania to tell the story of Africa’s forgotten soldiers.

Claire Runham at Beyond Rights commented: “Successful partnerships with a wide range of independent producers will be at the core of the Beyond Rights business going forward, so we are delighted to announce these new relationships now as well as the fascinating factual content they bring to our slate.

“The TV world has opened up in terms of language, driven by the popularity of non-English-speaking drama. Factual buyers want access to the best stories—and many of those stories, of course, are not told in English. We hope that Undercut will be the first in a new raft of brilliant factual series from around the world. In addition, with these new deals, we can bring some of the most important stories of our time—from Trump’s use of social media to Africa’s unremembered heroes—to international audiences.”