Nordic World Sells 'Dirty Old Towns' to Germany, France, Italy

COLOGNE, Germany – The Scandinavian sales alliance Nordic World has inked multiple deals for Dirty Old Towns, will producers in Germany, Italy, France, Denmark and Norway optioning the Irish factual entertainment format in which locals compete to fix up their run-down community.

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Dirty Old Towns has just finished a second season on Irish public broadcaster RTE, where it has been a ratings hit. Each season of the show focuses on a single run-down town in need of public rejuvenation. Over the course of the series, the locals are spurned on to clean up and rebuild their community through a number of race-against-the-clock challenges.

The Dirty Old Towns sale follows Nordic Worlds' success with another Irish TV format, Farm Factor, an agricultural competition show done in Pop Idol-style.

“Both are highly original concepts from a small but incredibly creative territory,” said Jan Salling, Nordic World’s chief operating officer and director of sales. “All Nordic World needed to do was reposition and repackage Dirty Old Towns for the international market ― the brilliance of Seamus (Cassidy's) format did the rest.”

Nordic World is an international sales body controlled by a coalition of Northern European broadcasters and production companies, including Norway's TV2 and NRK, TV4 in Sweden, Denmark's TV2, YLE in Finland and K2 in Estonia.