Two New James May Series Find Worldwide Pickups

LONDON: Two factual entertainment series featuring James May of Top Gear have been picked up by broadcasters around the world, from Hat Trick International (HTI).

The 6×1-hour series James May’s Toy Stories, which features May taking on engineering feats using toys such as Airfix and Lego, has been snapped up by 124 countries in a variety of mainly free-to-air deals with broadcasters. Deals have been signed with SBS in Australia, Kanal 5 in Sweden, Nippon TV in Japan and CBC in Canada.

Meanwhile, 138 countries have picked up the 3×1-hour series James May’s Man Lab, which shows May laying out challenges to both celebrities and ordinary people to see if men are as resourceful as men of history. Broadcasters include Channel 9 in Australia, BBC America and Discovery in Europe.

Plum Pictures is currently producing new seasons of both series, which will launch later this year on BBC Two in the U.K.

Will Daws, the managing director at Plum Pictures, commented: “HTI has done a fantastic job selling first Toy Stories and then Man Lab into new territories for us and James—they very quickly established the right channels for the shows and placed them with strong international broadcasters in a competitive market place.”

Sarah Tong, the director of sales at HTI, added: “We are delighted to be working with Plum Pictures and offering these engaging factual entertainment series to our clients around the world. We are seeing a growing demand for intelligent series that have broad appeal. As the rights arm of a production company we have a natural affinity to work with like-minded creatives and we are continuing to attract further independent producers’ programming to add to our own growing portfolio.”