This factual series from Love Productions — which looks at residents of a street in Britain where virtually everyone is on welfare — was both a massive hit (6.5 million viewers) and just as massive a controversy when it aired on Channel 4 in the U.K. FremantleMedia is taking the squalor global with rights for both the original series and format.
Sales: FremantleMedia International
The concept of this Ukrainian comedy format is simple: Ordinary people compete to make professional comedians bust a gut. The format, from Ukraine's Studio Kvartal 95, has already been successfully remade in multiple territories, including Russia and China. Electus has acquired U.S. remake rights, with producer Barry Poznick (Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader) attached to develop the format for the U.S. market.
Sales: Eccho Rights
In this adventure reality format, originally out of Sweden, local sports stars are air dropped from a helicopter in some of the most remote and unforgiving environments on earth to face a series of survival challenges. Sweden's TV4 ordered a second season of Dropped after the first scored a 33 percent audience share.
Sales: Zodiak Rights
The latest twist on the still-sizzling cooking competition genre comes from The Lab, the joint venture between Israel's Reshet and ITV Studios. The show pits three top chefs in a race to find their country's top amateur culinary master.
Sales: ITV Studios Global Entertainment
This factual entertainment format, now in its second season on Britain's Channel 4, takes interactive TV to its next logical step by turning the camera on the audience. In the show, viewers watch viewers watch television. The result is a meta conversation on TV that was a local ratings hit, won the best entertainment prize at last year's MIPCOM and has already been commissioned by Bravo Media for a test run in the U.S.
Sales: All3Media
A fish-out-of-water series originally developed by Endemol for German network ProSieben, Host in the Box transports its star moderator in a crate to a different exotic location every week. After opening the crate, the host has to adapt to the new surroundings, culture and lifestyle.
Sales: Endemol
This Danish "sciencetainment " show from producer Nordisk Film TV takes a trio of willing lab rats who agree to undergo a series of weird, disgusting and hilarious tests designed to solve such great mysteries of science as: Is there a true hangover cure?
Sales: Banijay
It's an Irish quiz show designed to put contestants' Blarney detectors through its paces. People have to pick the lie among an increasingly longer list of statements. A massive hit on Ireland's TV3, the show has already been ordered for a second season in Ireland and just launched its first adaptation, on Scottish network STV.
Sales: Red Arrow International
Commissioned by Britain's ITV, Ejector Seat takes contestant rejection to the limit with a series of mobile chairs that move backward with each wrong answer until, finally, the losers are jettisoned out of the studio. It makes The Weakest Link look downright polite by comparison.
Sales: Endemol
From Big Brother creator John de Mol, Utopia takes the voyeuristic tendencies inherent in reality TV to the extreme. The concept has participants spending a full year cut off from society but under 24/7 surveillance as they struggle to create their own civilization. Fox picked up the show after its successful bow in the Netherlands and Talpa is planning a rapid global rollout.
Sales: Talpa
The Spanish format in which celebrities portray iconic singers in a competition to win cash for charity has sold to multiple international territories. Endemol is already franchising out, launching companion series Your Face Sounds Familiar Kids & Co. in which kids and grown up perform as duos.
Sales: Endemol
MIP will see a head-to-head battle of the Israeli interactive investment formats when Keshet's Elevator Pitch goes up against Reshet's Fundastic. Both are Shark Tank-style entrepreneur reality shows involving a panel of business gurus and live voting via an interactive app. In Elevator Pitch, the entrepreneur (optimistically called a tycoon) pitches from a slow-rising elevator with votes from investors and viewers determining if he makes it to the top and gets the backing for his idea. Fundtastic has the business gurus pick the best idea while viewers vote on how much money to give the investor.
Sales: Elevator Pitch — Keshet International
Sales: Fundastic — Endemol