Three new shows from BBC-Discovery renewal

MIPDOC NEWS – After renewing their copro pact for another ten years, Discovery and the BBC are lining up a trio of new cgi-laden docs about cavemen, pyramids and North America's prehistoric past.

First is the sequel to Walking with Dinosuars and Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, entitled Walking with Cavemen. As with the previous instalments, the two-hour Caveman special will use the latest cgi and sfx to shed new light on how our ancestors lived.

The same team behind Dinosaurs and Beasts will use sfx pioneered in Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes movie to recreate caveman life. The show, which is due to air stateside in the second quarter 2003, will also use 'deep time-lapse' techniques to condense lengthy climatic changes spanning millions of years into a few moments.

The two giants of factual TV will also coproduce The Great Pyramid, drawing on the cgi techniques used in another Hollywood movie, this time Gladiator, to tell how the Giza pyramid was built, through the eyes of a fictitious labourer. It also airs on Discovery US in Q2 2003.

With the BBC Natural History Unit, Discovery will coproduce All American Animals (wt), a six-part series about the prehistoric beasts that roamed the plains of North America.

Two years in the making, the location show travels back 14,000 years to take a look at sabre-tooth cats, mastodons and mammoths. Five episodes look at distinct regions – Alaska, Pacific Northwest, the Great Plains, the Canyons and the Wetlands. All American Animals is due to arrive on US air in Q3 2003.