Broadcasters across Europe have acquired format rights to a pair of BBC3 factual series from distributor DRG.
Don’t Tell the Bride and Mad About the House both come from Warner Bros-owned UK prodco Renegade Pictures, and launched in the UK in 2007 and 2009 respectively.
Digicast-owned Italian pay-TV net Lei and digital terrestrial net La 7 are coproducing a 12x60' version of Bride, which will launch in early September.
In French-speaking Belgium, RTL has ordered a 6x60' series, to be produced by Everlasting Productions. Irish channel RTÉ has also ordered another season of its own version.
The deals add to the new Australian adaptation that was announced in April, as part of a plan to creatively renew terrestrial broadcaster Network Ten’s programming output. Endemol Southern Star is attached to produce a 6x60' series.
Each episode of the format documents the efforts of a groom-to-be to plan his wedding entirely without the help of the bride, who is kept in the dark about the preparations and sees the results only on the big day. A locally produced US series went out on cablenet OWN last October.
Mad About the House, meanwhile, will be remade in Poland for Discovery-owned TLC as a 10x60' series by UK-based Rival Media, and for TV3 in Norway as a 12x60' series. Strix Television is attached to the Scandinavian show.
The format follows a similar pattern to Bride, in that a man takes control of a makeover of his home while his partner moves out. She then creates her dream home using a replica of her house, and he ideas are relayed to the man a day before he is due to unveil his work.
DRG’s MD of acquisitions and formats Andrea Jackson highlighted the “long-lasting” nature of both formats, and said the Belgian deal proved Bride was working in both major and smaller European markets. “We think Latin America could open up next,” she added.
The news comes after French prodco Reservoir Prod tapped DRG to option For Better or For Worse, from Sweden’s Titan Television. A “major” unnamed French prodco has optioned another Titan format, Countryside Dreams, in which four urban families take over country businesses to realise their pastoral dreams.
C21, Jesse Whittock 26-07-2012
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