The group will present six formats, 12 dramas, and 34 non-scripted titles.
ITV Studios unveiled its full London TV Screenings slate, featuring six groundbreaking formats, 12 star-studded dramas (on top of 21 returners), and 34 compelling non-scripted titles.
Groundbreaking Formats
The formats slate is filled with new genre-defining reality shows including The Neighbourhood (produced by Lifted Entertainment and The Garden for ITV), a groundbreaking entertainment format, hosted by the brilliant BAFTA- award- winning broadcaster Graham Norton, which sees families and households compete in a street-sized reality game, battling it out for the chance to take home a life-changing cash prize.
Only the last household standing will win the prize money. With Graham guiding the action, the power shifts episode by episode as the neighbours work out who to keep on side and whose property to put up for sale. It’s reality living with game play at its heart – and drama behind every front door.
The Heat (produced by Twofour) which launches on February 24th on ITV2, is a new reality format packed with drama and clashing chefs in sun-soaked Barcelona.
Hosted by Olivia Attwood, this format turns up the pressure on a group of driven young chefs living, working, and competing in Jean-Christophe Novelli’s kitchen. It’s a fierce culinary contest by day, but the drama spills over at night as romances, rivalries, and ego-clashes fuel the tension. When the professional becomes personal, there is no escaping The Heat.
Lastly, an ambitious bold social experiment is here with Apocalypse (The Garden for Channel 4 and ITV Studios Australia for Foxtel Binge).
16 ordinary people are abandoned in a real-world location ravaged by an apocalyptic event. With no running water, heating, or electricity for 28 days, they must scavenge and survive. In the face of scarce resources, will this group of strangers band together or fall apart?
Star-studded Drama
The scripted slate is led by the forthcoming hot new drama, from the acclaimed, award-winning producers of I May Destroy You, Two Weeks in August (8×60, produced by Various Artists Limited for BBC, in association with ITV Studios).
Two Weeks in August is a riveting story of a woman who goes on holiday with her family and friends to rediscover joy in her life, only to find that an illicit kiss quickly turns the dream vacation into a nightmare. With a stellar cast including Jessica Raine, Nicholas Pinnock, Antonia Thomas, Damien Molony, Leila Farzad and Hugh Skinner, this holiday in paradise becomes a reckoning for a group of adults who refuse to grow up. When they discover they are trapped on the island, and become faced with real life-or-death situations, the group soon turn on each other to find out who is to blame.
The scripted slate also includes the powerful thriller The Rapture (5×60 or 6×60, from Mammoth Screen for BBC).
Adapted from Liz Jensen’s bestselling novel, The Rapture is a high-stakes thriller which crackles with danger. Set in a heatwave, with protestors on the streets, forensic psychologist Gabs Fox starts a new job at a high-security psychiatric hospital where she meets 17-year-old Bethany Krall. Bethany was convicted of murdering her mother but claims she is innocent. She is estranged from her father Leonard, who is the charismatic leader of an influential religious movement.
Bethany tells Gabs that she has psychic powers and can predict the future – but what will it take for Gabs to believe her? And if Bethany didn’t kill her mother, then who did? Featuring an all-star cast including Ruth Madeley, India Amarteifio, Sam Hazeldine, Jack Farthing, Iwan Rheon and Ruth Jones.
Also new to the slate is the action packed drama series Invisible (8×50, from Scene 23 for M-Net), adapted by Amy Jephta from Deon Meyer’s acclaimed novel Blood Safari, starring Abbie Cornish, Dougray Scott and Tim Theron.
In South Africa’s Kruger National Park, a mysterious killer begins executing local poachers. As the body count rises, Inspector Jack Phatudi is drawn into a dangerous manhunt to unmask the vigilante. At the same time, Dekker – a former bodyguard with a haunted past – is hired to protect Emma, a South African expat who returns home to search for her brother who she believes is still alive, despite his disappearance 30 years ago. When Phatudi’s investigation collides with Emma and Dekker’s quest, they uncover a buried conspiracy reaching back to the political assassination of a pivotal African leader. As powerful forces close in, all three are forced to confront an explosive truth – one that could rewrite history, and that others will kill to keep hidden.
The Party (5×60, from World Productions for ITV) is a smart, suspenseful thriller based on the bestselling novel by author Elizabeth Day, and starring Luke Evans as Martin Gilmour, a journalist shaped by his lifelong friendship with wealthy and charismatic politician Ben Fitzmaurice, played by Tom Cullen.
Raised alone by his working-class mum, Sylvia, portrayed by BAFTA award-winning Joanna Scanlan, Martin wins a scholarship to an elite boarding school, where he first meets Ben. They forge an unbreakable bond, as Ben and the Fitzmaurice family give Martin the sense of belonging he always craved. In turn, Martin remains unflinchingly loyal to Ben and his family through even the greatest crises.
Three decades on, Martin is invited to Ben’s lavish birthday party as news of the leader of his political party’s resignation threatens to accelerate Ben’s intention to stand and run for Prime Minister. But Martin fears the publicity that Ben’s bid would bring, dredging up the secrets of their past with tragic consequences.
This striking and enthralling drama, written by and co-starring Sarah Solemani, and with an all-star ensemble cast also including Lydia Leonard, Douglas Hodge and Lindsay Duncan, moves between the shocking events of the party itself, and the police investigation that follows, with flashbacks to Martin and Ben’s past life at school, university and beyond.
What unfolds is a gripping exploration of identity, privilege and devotion, combined with a tender ode to anyone who has fought to live authentically.
From Ben Stephenson’s Poison Pen Studios, two new titles are coming to screen. Adultery (6×60, for ITV), is penned by acclaimed screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst. This sizzling, captivating drama introduces audiences to Tom and Beth, whose teenage kids – Tom’s daughter Jess and Beth’s son Ollie – are love’s young dream in an all-consuming teenage romance. But when Tom and Beth meet for the first time, and sparks fly, the two families’ lives are turned upside down forever. Will Tom and Beth be able to control their desires, unlike their lovestruck teenagers?
Starring Dominic Cooper, Romola Garai, Shelley Conn, and Matthew McNulty, the series raises questions about class, grief, romance, relationships and the effects of social media, as it embarks on a rollercoaster story of passion, parenthood and peril, with Tom and Beth’s intense and powerful love affair threatening to uproot their whole lives and destroy everything they have built and care about.
Also new is atmospheric crime thriller The Dark (6×60, for ITV), based on G.R. Halliday’s globally successful series of Detective Inspector Monica Kennedy novels, starring Laura Donnelly, Mark Rowley, Emun Elliott and Helen Baxendale. When the body of a young man is found eerily staged in the idyllic Scottish wilderness, Detective Inspector Kennedy, played by Laura Donnelly, fears this is just the beginning of a terrifying campaign that will strike the heart of a rural community. As paranoia rises, suspicions and secrets are forced into the light, and the locals start to realise that there is a serial killer hidden amongst them.
With her experience of dealing with the darkest of humanity, Monica quickly becomes entangled in a heightened game of cat and mouse with a cunning killer. Only she can stop this monster before he claims more victims. But when her past creeps up on her, she begins to lose trust in her own judgement. Will her own history and actions become the biggest risk to herself, her family and her community?
Also new to the scripted slate is The Killings At Parrish Station (6×60, from Helium Pictures for STAN), a series which sees cold case crime and thriller collide, with an all-star cast including Mia Wasikowska, Heather Mitchell, Xavier Samuel, Robert Taylor, and Alan Dale.
In The Killings At Parrish Station a cosmic mystery intertwines with a crime investigation across two time periods, as a gruesome massacre at a remote research station amidst the searing heat and red rocks of the Gibson’s desert plunges a detective into an inexplicable, decades-long riddle. It’s 1987, and Detective Georgia Cooke is called in to investigate the massacre of four scientists who have been brutally murdered in inexplicable ways, with a lone survivor the obvious suspect. But as Georgia digs deeper, unravelling a complex case entangled in mania and conspiracy amidst the soundwaves picked up by the research station, her obsessive quest for the truth spirals into a reckoning that will put her family, career, and sanity on the line.
Thirty-seven years later, a chilling new spate of murders, eerily similar to the original 1987 case, will pull Georgia back into the nightmare as she confronts the terrifying possibility that the horrors at Parrish Station were never fully buried and the past may be destined to repeat itself.
And finally, from the multi-award-winning screenwriter and producer Russell T Davies, and the team behind hit series It’s A Sin, Tip Toe (5×60, from Quay Street Productions for Channel 4), is a powerfully resonant new original drama which follows Leo and Clive who live next door to each other in Manchester, starring Alan Cumming and David Morrissey.
Leo runs a bar on Canal Street, Clive’s an electrician, with two teenage sons. But just as life should be settling down, the world around them is growing more tense. Words become weapons, opinions become radicalised, and gradually, two neighbours become deadly enemies in a tense, suburban thriller which challenges everything we consider to be safe. The series, populated with a cast of vibrant characters and underscored with Davies’ trademark wit and deft humour, is an urgent yet gripping tale that brings a spotlight to bear on the re-emergence of an incipient threat.
Compelling Non-Scripted
The non-scripted slate offers an exploration of the world around us with two landmark natural history series.
Force of Nature (6×60, from Plimsoll Productions for ITV and ARD Group Germany), formerly entitled Extreme Earth, is a groundbreaking series filmed over three years, revealing how nature is fighting back against today’s extreme weather. Witness the scale and ferocity of nature’s most powerful forces – from hurricanes and flash floods to droughts and bushfires – and discover the ingenious ways nature endures, adapts and prevails against these new extremes. Through the eyes of heroic animal characters, this heartfelt, dramatic and inspiring series shows how the natural world is rising to the challenge. There has never been a more pressing and relevant natural history series.
Also on the slate is Ages of Ice (3×60, produced by Northern Pictures for PBS and ABC Australia), which follows the brave scientists pushing the boundaries of exploration and human endeavour in Earth’s coldest corners to understand the changes of ice and what this means for our planet’s future. In the unforgiving grip of our planet’s polar regions, the series will follow these modern-day explorers as they try to understand how the fate of every place and every creature on our planet is tied to these frozen extremes.
New to the slate is the insightful show AI Confidential (3×60, from Curious Films for BBC) about the untold stories of AI and its potential impact on the modern world.
As the show’s presenter, broadcaster and mathematician Prof Hannah Fry will meet the people whose lives have been impacted by this technology in huge ways – from falling in love with an AI chatbot, to life and death decisions made by robots, to the people whose lives have been upended by Silicon Valley corporations.
Taking a deep-dive into some of the most extraordinary human stories emerging from the world of AI, meeting key individuals whose lives have been transformed by this new technology for better or for worse, and investigating everything from ‘grief tech’ to driverless cars, this hugely entertaining and deeply enlightening new series will see Hannah grapple with some of the most important questions of our time, through some of the most thrilling untold stories of recent years.
The slate also offers a new criminal history series, Murder Map (5×60, produced by Two Rivers and Soho Studios).
Star of Line of Duty and Trigger Point Vicky McClure and husband Jonny Owen, a film maker and historian, travel the UK exploring historic, culturally significant crimes that have changed the face of modern Britain.
From unsolved murders, to miscarriages of justice or milestone cases that have changed the law; each episode features Vicky and Jonny doing a deep dive into each case speaking to victims families, experts, historians and Police officers to investigate the lasting impact each murder has left on the community.
Also on the non-scripted slate is Unbreakable: The Jelena Dokic Story (1×90, from Roadshow Productions for Nine Network).
Unbreakable is not just a tennis story. It’s the story of Jelena Dokic’s survival, of her overcoming extraordinary odds, and of her ultimate triumph in the face of poverty, bullying and extreme brutality. It’s about how she survived as a refugee, twice. How she survived on the tennis court as she ascended to become world No.4. But most importantly, how she survived the unimaginable abuse by Damir Dokic, her violent father and coach. It’s a story of growing up – never being alone, but always lonely. Ultimately, it’s the story of how the tennis world and a nation of fans chose to look away when Jelena needed them most. The question is…why?
And finally, hosted by the BAFTA award-winning television presenter Claudia Winkleman, is her new chat show The Claudia Winkleman Show (7×50, from So Television for BBC).
From the production company behind the hugely successful and multi award-winning The Graham Norton Show, each episode will see Claudia, who is best known for co-presenting Strictly Come Dancing and hosting The Traitors, welcome the biggest names from the worlds of film, television, music and beyond to her sofa for lively conversation with the help of a studio audience.
