Channel 4 reveals Autumn 2019 Highlights for Factual and Current Affairs
Category: Press Pack ArticleAutumn 2019
Factual and Current Affairs Forward Planning
Crime and Punishment
Production Company: 72 Films
Press Contact: Lucy Zilberkweit LZilberkweit@Channel4.co.uk
Picture Publicist: Jamie Fry JFry@Channel4.co.uk
TX: September 8 x 60’
Channel 4 have commissioned 72 Films, (in association with Roger Graef Productions), to make a landmark documentary series within the Criminal Justice System. The access was originally brokered by Executive Producer Roger Graef, who worked with the Ministry of Justice and won the support of Hampshire Constabulary and the Hampshire Criminal Justice Board. The series focuses on the crucial dilemmas and challenges that exist within the System.
The project has a unique scale, obtaining multi-agency access to Hampshire Constabulary, the CPS, HMP Winchester, the Parole Board, the Courts and Tribunals Service and Probation Services, amongst many other agencies and organisations. 72 Films have been filming for a year within a system once the envy of the world, and now under great pressure and scrutiny.
Alisa Pomeroy, Commissioning Editor, Documentaries said; “Many years in the making and with unprecedented access, this series is a TV documentary first. Never before have we told the story of the Criminal Justice System so comprehensively, giving us a uniquely privileged and broad viewpoint to explore how it grapples with crime and seeks to deliver justice to victim, violator and society.”
For Sama
Prod: Channel 4 News & ITN Productions for Channel 4 and PBS FRONTLINE
Press Contact: Steve Rosier SRosier@Channel4.co.uk
Picture Publicist: Jamie Fry JFry@Channel4.co.uk
TX: October 1 x 95’
Winner of the Golden Eye Documentary Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Grand Jury prize for Best Documentary and the Audience Award at SXSW, the film has been a huge hit on the festival circuit. Directed by Emmy award winning filmmakers Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts, FOR SAMA is their first feature documentary and both an intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war.
A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her.
Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice – whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
The Unremembered (w/t): 1 x 60’
Production Company: Uplands Television
Press Contact: Harpreet Gill HGill@Channel4.co.uk/ Gerard Corvin GCorvin@Channel4.co.uk
Picture Publicist: Nathalie Mohoboob NMohoboob@Channel4.co.uk
TX: Autumn 1 x 60’
To mark Remembrance Day 2019, David Lammy MP explores the decisions taken to deny individual memorials for thousands of Black Africans who died in their own continent fighting for the British in World War I. The war graves commission is widely respected for its inclusive approach to the graves of soldiers, who died fighting in Europe. All were given the same gravestone regardless of rank, background or creed. But this programme reveals how a conscious decision was taken not to grant the same dignity to untold numbers of black African soldiers and porters who were categorised as not needing to be individually memorialised. David Lammy travels to Africa and sees the sites of mass burials and considers what ought to be done for those who gave their life for Britain's First World War effort and who are now still unremembered.
My Grandparents’ War (w/t)
Production Company: Wild Pictures
Press Contact: Harpreet Gill HGill@Channel4.co.uk/ Gerard Corvin GCorvin@Channel4.co.uk
Picture Publicist: Nathalie Mohoboob NMohoboob@Channel4.co.uk
TX: Autumn 4x60’
To mark the 80th anniversary of the start of World War 2, some of country’s most high-profile actors will re-trace their grandparents’ footsteps. At historic locations from the beaches of Dunkirk to the PoW camps in Asia, each will learn about the life and death decisions their grandparents faced. The actors all have unanswered questions about the scars war left on their grandparents and will explore how six years changed their family’s lives and Britain forever. At the heart of this series will be extraordinary human stories of ordinary people caught up in one of the greatest man-made catastrophes of all time. Filming has been completed with Kristin Scott Thomas and Mark Rylance, and episodes featuring two other award-winning actors is scheduled to film next month.
The Cure (w/t)
Production Company: Story Films
Press Contact: Harpreet Gill HGill@Channel4.co.uk/ Gerard Corvin GCorvin@Channel4.co.uk
Picture Publicist: Nathalie Mohoboob NMohoboob@Channel4.co.uk
TX: Autumn 1x90’
Channel 4 has commissioned a factual drama telling the story of the UK’s worst hospital care scandal of recent times, told through the eyes of the woman who blew the whistle on it.
The Cure (w/t) charts the scandal at Stafford Hospital which came to national attention in 2008. Conditions of horrendous neglect saw patients left for hours in soiled sheets, with no pain relief, desperately dehydrated, in filthy wards and routinely ignored by staff.
The film was commissioned by Alisa Pomeroy and will be made by Story Films, the producers of Channel 4’s verbatim drama The Interrogation of Tony Martin. It is told from the perspective of Julie Bailey, a local woman who witnessed the appalling conditions first hand when her elderly mother was admitted for a routine hernia procedure. The drama follows Julie’s story, the unforeseen divisions in the local community that resulted from her campaign and the official investigation into the hospital.
Julie, who went on to be awarded a CBE, formed a campaign group with other locals who had also lost loved ones called Cure the NHS. Together they exposed the dangers at the hospital in order to hold those responsible to account and ultimately force a public inquiry.
Guy in Japan (w/t)
Production Company: North One TV
Press Contact: Harpreet Gill HGill@Channel4.co.uk/ Gerard Corvin GCorvin@Channel4.co.uk
Picture Publicist: Nathalie Mohoboob NMohoboob@Channel4.co.uk
TX: Autumn 1x90’
Guy Martin has been fascinated by Japan ever since he visited 12 years ago to test racing motorbikes. Now he's going on a 2,500 mile journey around Japan to find out how it really works. He explores the country's relationship with technology at the care home where robots conduct aerobics lessons, and finds out how Japan deals with 1500 earthquakes a year on the intense simulators at Tokyo's Disaster Training School. Always attracted to the edgy and dangerous, Guy samples Japan's deadliest dish, the poisonous fugu fish, then goes deep into the Tokyo underground to get a traditional "tebori" tattoo. It wouldn’t be a Guy Martin travelogue without an automotive spectacle- but can he hold his own in the Auto Race arena, the unique form of Japanese speedway.
Home Free (w/t)
Production Company: Primal Media
Press contact: Faye McCormick FMccormick@Channel4.co.uk
Picture Publicist: Nathalie Mohoboob NMohoboob@Channel4.co.uk
TX: Autumn 2 x 60’
Home Free (w/t) will follow a group of young people with learning disabilities who are leaving home for the first time and moving into supported living apartments that offer up the chance of independent living. This coming of age moment, a big step in the lives of most young people, is a huge leap for this unique group.
The families have given extraordinary access to this incredibly significant moment in their young lives. The 2 x 60 min observational documentary will feature laughter, new found friendships, blossoming relationships and at times heartache and tears.
What Makes a Murderer? (w/t)
Production Company:
Press Contact: Harpreet Gill HGill@Channel4.co.uk/ Gerard Corvin GCorvin@Channel4.co.uk
Picture Publicist: Nathalie Mohoboob NMohoboob@Channel4.co.uk
TX: Autumn 3 x 60’
In this three-part series pioneering neuro-criminologist Professor Adrian Raine teams up with leading forensic psychologist Dr. Vicky Thakordas-Desai, to take three convicted murderers on a documentary journey of self-discovery. Made by Dragonfly and Underworld, a production company that brings together programme makers and convicted ex-criminals, the series will see each perpetrator explore their life and crimes in unprecedented detail, while experts will help them to uncover the previously hidden sociological, biological and psychological factors that may have influenced their behavioural traits, their actions and ultimately, their path to criminality.
Black Pharaohs (w/t)
Production Company: Alleycats Films
Press Contact: Harpreet Gill HGill@Channel4.co.uk/ Gerard Corvin GCorvin@Channel4.co.uk
Picture Publicist: Nathalie Mohoboob NMohoboob@Channel4.co.uk
TX: Autumn 1 x 60’
For nearly one hundred years, Ancient Egypt was ruled by a dynasty known as the Black Pharaohs. They came from the Kingdom of Kush to the south of Egypt, in what is now Sudan.
According to the Egyptians, Kush was an inferior backwater – but if that were true, then how did the Black Pharaohs come to rule Egypt?
Unravelling the mysteries of Kush has never been easy, as civil war and political turmoil have kept outsiders away. But now, more than 30 international teams of archaeologists are working with Sudan’s Department of Antiquities to excavate magnificent sites – from pyramids to temples – along the Sudanese Nile Valley.
Featuring the world’s first investigation of the submerged burial chambers of a pyramid, the discovery of what appears to be a major Black Pharaoh power base near the great temple of Jebel Barkal, and using drones to show the full extent of the Black Pharaoh’s Kingdom for the first time – the experts featured in this film challenge the view that Egypt is Africa’s only ‘great’ civilisation, providing evidence that the Black Pharaohs’ Kingdom of Kush was a major ancient African superpower, that until now, has been overlooked by history.