“Drag queens and TV are like peanut butter and jelly – the perfect combination,” added the show’s creator Fenton Bailey.
McCoy and Bailey – executive producers of RuPaul’s Drag Race, both here and in the US – were talking at a lively RTS Futures event in November that looked at how the show was brought to the UK.
The new streaming service offers content from ITV, the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5.
BritBox, created by ITV and the BBC, marks the UK’s entry into the paid streaming market alongside international giants such as Netflix and Amazon.
Priced at £5.99 per month, BritBox will offer the biggest collection of British boxsets such as Broadchurch, Doctor Who, Gavin and Stacey, Wolf Hall and Downton Abbey.
Nesbitt plays a Northern Irish police detective, Tom Brannick, who is dragged into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse when a car containing a suicide note is pulled out of Strangford Lough.
Brannick connects the note to an infamous cold case that is deeply personal and puts him on the hunt for a legendary assassin.
Nesbitt commented: “It’s great to be back making a drama in and about Northern Ireland, which now has a film and television industry as good as any in the world.
(Credit: BBC/Element/Enda Bowe)
Daisy Edgar-Jones (Cold Feet) and newcomer Paul Mescal star as two young lovers from a small town in the west of Ireland who share a complicated romance spanning across their teenage years to college.
Television is experiencing a technical revolution in broadcast facilities. This new technology – video and audio over IP – uses computer networks to replace traditional broadcast infrastructures to deliver more flexibility and scalability for programme-makers.
Sports producers have already started to benefit from IP. Multiple cameras and microphones at events can be directly streamed into a centralised broadcast facility to increase the number of events covered. Scalable IP studios provide pay-as-you-go resources to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
The series explores the world of the Criminal Justice System through idealistic pupil barrister Will, played by Will Sharp (Giri/Haji), who is brought back to reality by his cynical mentor Caroline, played by Katherine Parkinson (The IT Crowd).
As Will becomes increasingly disillusioned by the underfunded and confusing system, he learns to manipulate the law to suit his moral ideals and serve his idea of justice.
The UK is facing “a total loss of cultural sovereignty”, which risks leaving the country culturally impoverished unless action is taken to stop US giants such as Netflix from dominating the media landscape.
This was the frank message from Mark Thompson, the former Director-General of the BBC who, for seven years since 2012, has been engaged in a wholesale transformation of The New York Times from a print company into a digital-based global news operation with 5 million subscribers.
Earlier, the RTS convention had been told that, as a brand, Netflix today enjoyed the same high levels of public trust as the BBC. As for the TikTok-using, mobile-addicted members of Generation Z, the BBC looked to be completely under the radar.
Now it was the time for Tony Hall, the BBC’s Director-General, to respond. He did so in a wide-ranging, troop-rallying speech, and argued that, in today’s age of uncertainty, characterised by propaganda and disinformation, the BBC and public service broadcasting were more important than ever.
The BBC has responded to the rise of subscription video-on-demand services by extending the iPlayer catch-up window from 30 days to one year.
BBC iPlayer chief Dan McGolpin defended the decision: “TV works in seasons… it means that things which are on a yearly cycle, such as The Apprentice, will be there.” He claimed that audiences, months after transmission, can now be “substantial” – some 40% of Killing Eve’s audience came to the thriller after the original catch-up window.
Documenting the planet with the BBC, differentiating Discovery from Netflix and the other streamers – and taking Amazon on at its own retail game – were the three big themes expounded by Discovery’s President and CEO, David Zaslav.
