Channel 4 investigates Billionaires in factual drama, commissions Alex Horne gameshow

Alex Horne will host Your Time Starts Now

UK pubcaster Channel 4 has commissioned a factual drama series that tells the stories of the creators, victims and billionaire beneficiaries of disinformation on social media platforms.

Billionaires (3×60′, working title) is produced by Halcyons Heart Films, the makers of factual dramas Dirty Business and Partygate, and comes shortly after Meta reached a settlement worth up to $18bn to resolve a US court case related to child safety on Facebook and Instagram.

According to its makers, the series explores how Big Tech and the disinformation amplified on their platforms is severing people from the truth and undermining democracies, and also what happens to those who try to expose the platforms that carry the lies. Aysha Rafaele exec produces.

Writer and director Joe Bullman said: “The algorithmic corporations are corroding the mental health of our young people and taking a wrecking ball to our democracies, and there is evidence that the Tech Bros who control them have designed them to do these things.

“Like tobacco company execs before them, they claim that their products are not addictive and do no harm. Will Billionaires help deliver the Tech Bros their Big Tobacco moment?”

Meanwhile, C4 has commissioned play-at-home gameshow Your Time Starts Now (working title) as an 8×60’ series, following a successful pilot earlier this summer.

Devised and developed by Taskmaster creator and host Alex Horne and Andy Devonshire, the show sees UK households compete against one another while tackling a host of tasks without leaving their homes.

Each task has a cash reward and the household with the most money at the end of the episode has a choice to leave with their winnings or play for double that amount the following week

Set in the Taskmaster universe, the show builds on the at-home ingenuity of earlier format The Button, which Horne devised and narrated for the BBC in 2018, and HomeTasking, which Horne created to entertain a world stuck in lockdown in 2020.

Horne’s prodco Avalon is producing the series. Horne and Devonshire exec produce with Richard Allen-Turner, Jon Thoday and James Taylor.