Walter Presents picks Israeli comedy

Comedy drama Milk & Honey centres on a male escort service

MIPTV: UK broadcaster Channel 4’s new on-demand foreign-language drama service Walter Presents has licensed two Israeli comedies from Keshet International.

The Baker & The Beauty and Milk & Honey will both launch in their original Hebrew on the UK AVoD service later this year.

Walter Presents launched this January as a partnership between Global Series Network and C4, accessible via C4’s digital hub All 4.

Referring to the two comedies as “absolute gems,” Jason Thorp, CEO of Global Series Network, said the service was looking for comedies that “we feel our audience can relate to.”

Keren Shahar, Keshet International’s MD of distribution, said the existence of an accessible platform like Walter Presents demonstrated “the increasing demand for foreign-language series in the UK.”

Romantic comedy The Baker & the Beauty, created by Assi Azar and produced by Endemol Israel, became the highest rated premiere season of a scripted series in Israel when it aired on Keshet. It has also been adapted in Greece and the Netherlands and soon in Russia.

Dramedy Milk & Honey, a story of four childhood friends who open an escort service exclusively for women, was created and written by Tom Shoval and Dani Rosenberg and produced by July August Productions for satellite broadcaster YES. It aired last fall, becoming the most downloaded series on the satellite service during its run.

In related news, Walter Presents has also picked up Spanish-language drama Vis a Vis (aka Locked Up).

Produced by Globomedia for Antena 3 in Spain, the series is distributed by Imagina International Sales and is set in a women’s prison.