ITV, Hardcash line up Covid feature doc

UK commercial broadcaster ITV has commissioned a feature documentary from the producers of Undercover: Inside China’s Digital Gulag telling the story of the Covid-19 pandemic.

London-based Hardcash Productions is working on Outbreak: The Truth About Coronavirus (working title).

The 90-minute doc is filmed across four continents and tells the story of how the pandemic swept across the world, focusing on how it broke out and how it spread, exploring the science, the politics and the stories of the victims.

Following the trail of the virus from China to Italy, the UK, US and Brazil, it explores how the pandemic was and remains potentially within our control, and how the decisions that the World Health Organisation, governments and public health officials take shape its course.

The announcement follows news that Hardcash’s ITV Exposure film Undercover: Inside China’s Digital Gulag, investigating the plight of Uyghurs and other Muslims in China, has won the 2020 Grierson Award for Best Current Affairs Documentary.

Hardcash’s reporting team went inside the secretive Xinjiang province in China to provide a vivid insight into how its government is holding an estimated million or more Muslims in detention camps without trial.

The programme, made by Robin Barnwell, Gesbeen Mohammed, Guy Creasey, Simon Russell and David Henshaw for Hardcash Productions, has also won awards including the International Emmy for Best Current Affairs Programme, the Bafta for Best Current Affairs, Best Documentary at the Prix Italia and the Venice TV Award for Best Documentary.

Both programmes were commissioned by ITV’s controller of current affairs, Tom Giles.