Bonneville, Wallace front Smithsonian duo

Wildlife special New Forest: The Crown’s Hunting Ground

Smithsonian Channel in the UK has greenlit factual shows fronted by MasterChef host Gregg Wallace and Downtown Abbey star Hugh Bonneville.

Voltage TV Productions’ Food Factories: How They Work (4×50’) airs on December 14 and is presented by Wallace (MasterChef, Inside the Factory). He shows viewers his favourite factory machines, from the laser-guided robots that move up to four million chocolate bars a day, to the egg splitter that separates the yolks of 1,700 eggs per minute.

Voltage TV previously produced Inside the Factory for BBC2 and Ant & Dec’s DNA Journey for ITV. The series is exec produced for Smithsonian Channel by Joy Galane and for Voltage by Lucy Carter.

The second commission is the 1×60’ wildlife special New Forest: The Crown’s Hunting Ground, produced by Big Wave Productions for Smithsonian and Austria’s Terra Mater Factual Studios and presented by Bonneville.

The special will depict a year in the UK’s New Forest national park and will air next summer, exec produced by Tria Thalman for Smithsonian, Sabine Holzer for Terra Mater Factual Studios and Sarah Cunliffe for Big Wave.