BBC orders four natural history programmes and a comedy thriller series

The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior

UK pubcaster the BBC has commissioned a comedy thriller series and four natural history programmes.

For BBC One and streaming platform BBC iPlayer, the as-yet-unnamed comedy thriller is created and written by Daisy May Cooper (This Country) and Selin Hizli (Deadwater Fell), who also star.

The 6×30’ character-driven layered show is about two mums, marital angst, maternal paranoia and a dead cat. It will be filmed in Bristol and around the West Country this autumn.

Coproduced by Boffola Pictures and Lookout Point, the series is exec produced by Jack Thorne, Shane Allen, Jonny Campbell, Kate Daughton, Cooper and Hizli. Campbell also directs, while Lookout Point’s creative director of comedy Pippa Brown produces.

The natural history programmes, meanwhile, comprise a 7×60’ series and three single documentaries.

The series, Asia (w/t), is produced by the BBC Studios Natural History Unit and coproduced by BBC America for BBC One and iPlayer. It tells the story of the biggest continent on Earth through its epic landscapes and spectacular wildlife.

From the vast Arabian desert to the unexplored jungles of Sulawesi, and from the polar wilderness of Siberia to the tropical coral seas of the Indian Ocean, the series will showcase a variety of Asia’s wildest places, while revealing the animals that thrive at the heart of the continent’s cities.

The BBC Natural History Unit’s head Jonny Keeling exec produces, with Matthew Wright acting as series producer.

The first single doc, Attenborough & the Mammoth Graveyard (w/t), sees Sir David Attenborough join an archaeological dig uncovering the UK’s biggest mammoth discovery in almost 20 years.

The 1×60’ doc is produced by Windfall Films for BBC One and iPlayer, and exec produced by David Duggan.

The second single doc, Operation Satanic: The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior (w/t), is produced by ITV Studios label Oxford Scientific Films for BBC Two and iPlayer, and tells the story of the fatal bombing of Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior by a team of French secret service agents in New Zealand in 1985.

The bombing was ordered to prevent the environmental campaigners from protesting against France’s nuclear testing on the South Pacific islands. Chloe Campbell directs the 1×90’ doc, with Oxford Scientific Films’ head Caroline Hawkins exec producing.

The final single doc is 1×90’ film The Pride, coproduced by BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit and PBS for BBC Two and iPlayer. Documented by the BBC and other broadcasters around the world for the last 30 years, the doc follows the Marsh Pride in Kenya, the most filmed pride of lions on Earth.

The Pride is directed by Pamela Gordon and exec produced by the BBC Natural History Unit’s Jo Shinner.