C4 doubles drama output

The UK’s Channel 4 will commission more than double the amount of original drama this year compared with 2010.

The channel’s head of drama Camilla Campbell confirmed to The Guardian newspaper that 31 hours of original drama would be broadcast in 2011, compared with 14 in 2010.

The £20m (US$32.2m) freed up by Big Brother’s move to Channel 5 went into the C4 drama budget, which now stands at £80m.

Campbell said: “If you are doing your job properly you feel pressure to have ratings, but I don’t commission for ratings.”

She added that C4 commissions would need to have “impact and scale” but new ideas for the channel’s diginet E4 must be funny and entertaining.

C4 hopes to commission its first long-running returning drama series since Shameless, which first appeared in 2004.

It is also on the look-out for comedy dramas in the mould of Sirens, which premiered last week and has already been picked up for a US adaptation, and series for older children.