ORF makes crime drama, doc sales

MIPTV: Austrian pubcaster ORF’s sales arm ORF Enterprise has chalked up multiple sales for its flagship crime series and blue-chip Universum documentaries.

France’s AB Group and German pubcaster ARD both took the first 24 episodes of ORF crime drama Fast Forward, while Danish pubcaster DR has signed up for a third season.

The first two seasons of Fast Forward became DR’s highest-rated non-Anglo-Saxon foreign drama of last year.

Season three is currently airing on ORF, with a few remaining episodes still in production. At total of 40×45′ episodes will be available by this autumn.

Meanwhile, pubcaster Czech Television has acquired 125 episodes of ORF and ZDF’s coproduced long-running crime series Soko Kitzbuehel (aka K-Files). The Czech pubcaster has also picked up a number of TV movies and a documentary package.

ORF’s blue-chip doc strand Universum, which is showcased annually at Mip TV, launched 15 new titles this year.

ORF Enterprise’s chief operating officer and head of content sales Beatrice Riesenfelder told C21 that sales for Universum are up this year compared with last, partly because it has more new documentary titles on its books.

Sales have so far been inked with France Télévisions, Franco-German pubcaster Arte, TVP in Poland, SVT in Sweden, NRK in Norway and Oasis HD in Canada, with more being finalised, said Riesenfelder.

New flagship titles include two-part HD natural history doc Zambeze – The Thundering River, a coproduction between Science Vision, ORF, NDR Naturfilm, WDR, Arte, National Geographic Channels International and National Geographic Channel; and the even newer Chernobyl’s Radioactive Wolves, a coproduction between ORF, the BBC, WNET, NDR and Epo Film, also in HD.

Elsewhere, UKTV has acquired three-part doc series Hitler’s Useful Idols, Al Jazeera has picked up a 50-hour documentary package, and Mexican educational channel TV Unam bought 40 hours of music and documentaries.