Factual Entertainment

Introduction

Factual Entertainment aims to explore both us and our world in a vivid, entertaining way.

Our primetime shows have scale, and aim to grab viewers with their ambition, whilst engaging them with compelling narratives.

Our department is home to a vast range of programming, including some of the biggest titles in the portfolio such as The Great British Bake Off, Married At First Sight, Gogglebox, and Celebrity Hunted. Our incredibly varied output ranges from highly constructed formats to social experiments to observational documentary.

What unites pretty much everything we make, is character-driven story-telling, and a desire to reach a broad audience.

If you have a new idea that you think might work for us, we would love to hear from you. You can email any of the team below, direct - and we will reply promptly. We will happily look at anything from a fully-worked up treatment, to a one-line email.

Our Factual Entertainment favourites

Gogglebox

What do Britain's sharpest armchair critics think of our biggest and best TV programmes?

Married at First Sight UK

The bold social experiment where single people, matched by experts, marry total strangers.

The Great British Bake Off

Britain's best amateur bakers compete in the iconic white tent.

Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat

With food prices soaring, Gregg Wallace investigates a controversial new lab-grown meat product.

What are we looking for?

Our current main priorities are as follows:

STRIPPED REALITY

As the channel pivots to the digital future, stripped reality has become increasingly important. Married At First Sight has become one of the most streamed show on the Portfolio, and across all terrestrial channels – rivalling Strictly Come Dancing for streaming views.

We seek other blockbuster titles, with the potential to yield 10+ episodes. This year, we launched Rise And Fall. We want more ‘big ideas’ – and have ring-fenced development money for proofs of concept for them.

Drama is key: formats that will guarantee dramatic twists and turns in every episode. As is distinctiveness: we want ideas that will generate stories we haven’t seen before.

RETURNABLE FORMATS

Budgets are idea-dependent, with no fixed upper limit. The kinds of returnable we are looking for include:

INCREDIBLE CONSTRUCTS

We want ideas for epic, audacious new constructs. Think Married At First Sight, Hunted, The Island or The British Tribe Next Door. Ideas should be simple to describe, but open up fresh new worlds of dramatic possibility.

DISTINCTIVE WORLDS

We welcome ideas for fresh worlds or casts that we might follow. Previous successes in this vein include Child Genius and The Undateables. Other brilliant examples from other channels are Ru Paul’s Drag Race, and Dragon’s Den. We welcome both arced and self-contained episode ideas.

SPECTACLE & EVENT

We seek dramatic event pieces, with enough scale to grab attention and cut through the schedules.

What else could rival Guy Martin’s Wall Of Death for drama and bravery? Or Harry’s Heroes for pathos and humour. Or Race Around The World as a setting to explore relationships.

Finally, we are also looking for one-off event pieces that have the power to cut through and potentially make the news pages, as well as the TV review pages ….

REVEALING STUNTS & DARING SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS

We want stunts that have a revealing purpose, and say something important about our times.

Recently, we aired Greg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat, which was hailed as a brilliant reinvention of Swift’s satire on the treatment of the poor. Smuggled asked ten ordinary Brits to smuggle themselves into the country from abroad without their passports, with shocking results. The School That Tried To End Racism sparked debate in Parliament about what should and shouldn’t be taught in schools. And Joe Lycett Vs The Oil Giant was a full-frontal critique of Shell’s misleading advertising. Whilst our deep fake homage to Her Majesty, The Alternative Christmas Message, elicited outrage and delight in roughly equal measure.

We’re looking for more thought-provoking, mischievous and challenging proposals that explore important issues in ways that will grab attention ….