NHK picks up Universum titles

NHK has snapped up new programming from Austrian pubcaster ORF, including documentaries about the Zambezi and Danube rivers and crime series Four Women & a Funeral.

The Japanese pubcaster has picked up three of the latest projects from ORF’s natural history unit Universum, led by Andrew Solomon. Mystery of the Fairy Circles, a 50-minute doc about a strange landscape phenomenon that stretches up the coast between South Africa and Angola, is one of the titles.

Zambezi – The Thundering River, coproduced with National Geographic, and Secrets of the Flooded Forest, about the Danube National Park in Germany, are the other two. The Danube doc will air on ORF in Austria this June.

Armin Luttenberger, sales director at ORF, told C21: “NHK has been buying not only the productions but also the additional footage packages so the programmes fit their longer time slots.” ORF’s entire natural history catalogue has sold out in East Asia, with CCTV in China picking up several titles, Luttenberger added.

Elsewhere, Globosat in Brazil has bought Termites – The Inner Sanctum, a 52-minute doc dissecting a termite mound to see what goes on inside. Crime series Four Women & a Funeral has sold to RTL Digital, MTV in Hungary and Fox Crime in Italy, which has also picked up long-running fictional series Fast Forward.

Universum celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and a raft of new titles, including 3D project Little Monsters- Hide and Cheat, have been commissioned for broadcast. The Universum strand runs for 75 primetime hours a year on ORF on Tuesdays and Thursdays.