Hot Properties August 2020
The summer months usually mean fewer hours spent watching TV, but things might be rather different this year. Also, with acquisitions still a high priority for production-starved broadcasters worldwide, summer remains a busy period for buyers looking to finesse their next season.
With this in mind, we selected a wide variety of titles for August’s Hot Properties playlist on C21 Digital Screenings, which unearths new programmes from the world’s leading distributors that can refresh schedules and platforms worldwide.
For broadcasters targeting children who are still off school, we have a number of new toons to take a look at. From Canada’s 9 Story Entertainment comes the second season of Luo Bao Bei, continuing the adventures of a spirited seven-year-old girl with a vivid imagination, while Cake has new series Space Chickens in Space on offer. The 2D animated surreal sci-fi comedy is about a trio of chicken siblings who enroll in an elite intergalactic academy.
Oddbods, meanwhile, is an award-winning non-dialogue series from Singapore’s One Animation that’s worth checking out, as is Pixie Fix and the Lost Dewdrops from Happy Family Entertainment, about a cute forest creature who is the guardian of the Evergreen Forest. Also for kids is factual DisRupted, a series of three short films about children living with disabilities, distributed by the Australian Children’s Television Foundation.
More factual programming on this month’s Hot Properties playlist, this time for grown-ups, comes in the form of Banijay’s Pacific island series Survivor Australia, for broadcasters looking for a reality TV fix, while another slice of real life is offered by Cineflix series Coast Guard: Mission Critical, showcasing the bravery and service of the US Coast Guard.
For buyers seeking more unscripted action, there’s also Favela Lockdown: Brazil’s Gangs Fighting Covid-19 from Ruptly, looking at how the pandemic has impacted life in the favelas of Brazil. Murder on the Fringe, meanwhile, investigates some of the most notorious homicides of the past three decades and comes from CBC in Canada.
For some lighter factual fare, check out science series Great Inventions from ZDF Enterprises in Germany, ITV royal biopic Princess Anne at 70 from the UK’s Drive and Channel 5 lifestyle ob doc QE2: The World’s Most Luxurious Hotel from Tinopolis-owned Passion Distribution.
On the scripted side, classic comedies seem to be popular at the moment, as broadcasters and streamers alike turn to tried and test content for their Covid-weary audiences. Carsey-Werner Television, longstanding purveyor of independent comedy for decades, has NBC hit 3rd Rock from the Sun in this month’s playlist.
More recent laffs are available in Woke from Sony Pictures Television, a Hulu series following a mainstream cartoonist who becomes politically awakened by an unexpected encounter with the police.
Dramatic series on C21’s Digital Screenings that we’re highlighting this month include Cold Call from NENT Studios UK, a Channel 5 series about a woman who fights back after losing all her money in a phone scam; Australian drama Between Two Worlds from Entertainment One and Seven Network, described as “an intense, high-concept melodrama about two very different worlds”; and Turbulent Skies, an eight-part adventure drama from Global Screen and Dutch broadcaster AvroTros that is set in the early days of Dutch aviation.
For buyers looking for drama chiming in with current political stories from real life, there’s Anthony from ITV Studios, a BBC1 telefilm from Bafta-winning screenwriter Jimmy McGovern that imagines the life that black teenager Anthony Walker might have enjoyed had he not been murdered by racists in 2005.
More drama based on real life comes with Patria, a Spanish-language coproduction between HBO Europe and HBO Latin America, based on the novel of the same name by Fernando Aramburu and set in the Basque Country at the time when terrorist organisation ETA was active.
Rounding out the drama titles on this month’s Hot Properties playlist are a brace of series from French Canada. Amber Alert is a TVA series from Montreal-based Pixcom about the kidnapping of a 12-year-old autistic boy that is being distributed by Global Screen, while Encore TV’s For Sarah is another TVA commission, this time about two childhood friends who are found at dawn close to death after a car crash.
Enjoy the Hot Properties playlist for August 2020!
Contact Hayley Salt to feature in next month’s Hot Properties Playlist.
