E4 takes Dreamworks' teen comedy-drama

In the UK, Channel 4's pay-TV entertainment spin-off E4 has picked up Dreamworks Productions' comedy-drama Freaks & Geeks, for this autumn season.

Freaks & Geeks takes a wistful look at 1980s teen life from the PoV of a bunch of college outsiders and swots. The 18×60' show, airing stateside on NBC, will tx on E4 weekdays in a 19:00 slot, with previously-acquired The Drew Carey Show filling the slot after September 24.

The channel has also taken rights to the Warner Bros comedy Nikki, from the producers of The Drew Carey Show, which will go out weekdays at 17:30, as well as The Corner, the Emmy-winning miniseries about one family living on a crime infested Baltimore street corner. The Corner goes out Sundays at 23:00.

New E4 commissions for the autumn include Bar Wars, a holiday reality show in which two teams (boys vs girls) run rival bars in a Mediterranean resort. Each week the losing team must sack a team member and recruit another from the UK. The team with the most bar revenues after eight weeks gets to keep the profits.

The show, produced by Endemol-owned Initial, is a joint Channel/E4 commission with a 60' show airing on C4 Friday nights, and four half-hours airing through the week on E4 at 22:30.

E4 has also greenlit Rock, a docu-soap about an eponymous Cornish holiday town and the public school teenagers who flock there. The 10×30' show is made by Ricochet Films and airs Monday-Thursday at 20:00.

Other new E4 commissions include: Objective Productions' Hypnosex (6×30'), where couples discuss their sex lives under hypnosis.