BBC America acquires new shows

from mediaweek

BBC America Aggressively Expanding Its Reach
Anthony Crupi

As it circles the 50 million subscriber mark, BBC America on Monday
said it will double its programming budget, introducing two new drama
series and a number of acquisitions.

Coming to BBC America next year are Goldplated, a send-up of the
nouveau riche and The Innocence Project, a drama about a group of law
students who work pro-bono on cases that no one else will touch. The
network has ordered eight one-hour episodes of both series.

Acquisitions include three new dramas: Eleventh Hour, starring Patrick
Stewart as a physics professor-cum-scientific attaché to the English
government; the psychic thriller Afterlife and Northern Lights, a

jayembee...

Odd that they acquire it *after* it's been released on DVD here in the
States.

Ken from Chicago...

Oh, if only they'd invented something like a network of linked
computers, each containing massive amounts of data, and then added some
sort of "search engine" so you could locate relevant data, like this:

Bart Van Hemelen...

jayembee...

Warning to Fred: it's about a medium named Alison. :-)

(Seriously, it is.)

Bart Van Hemelen...

Unfortunately, it's rubbish. Adlittedly, I've only watched one ep, but
that was enough. For those interested: this show also includes Ashley
Jensen -- Maggie from Extras -- as the token female co-lead who gets a
bit nekkid in the first ep.

Bart Van Hemelen...

Rubbish too. Saw two eps, and IIRC by ep 2 they'd seem to make a
different show from ep 1.

Ian Galbraith...

I think its OK, IMHO its better than Medium.

spin-off of the 2005 film Christmas Lights.

SoHillsGuy...

I liked the friendship in "Christmas/Northern Lights." Is there a
second series planned for 2006/07?

jayembee...

Yes, there is. For some reason unknown to any rational person,
however, they're changing the title to something I can't recall
at the moment.

SoHillsGuy...

Ah. After a light research, I see that the new series is to be called
"City Lights." I guess they figured they went from "Christmas Lights"
to "Northern Lights" and their audience still found them, so try it
again! Maybe there's a theme to the plot, such as the couples moving
into the city.

Thanks for the heads up.

Patty Winter (patty1...

Oooh, oooh...the original cast is back for "Northern Lights"! I was
afraid maybe they'd gotten other people for the spinoff. It's fun to
see Robson Green do comedy once in a while. (New eps of "Wire in the
Blood" start on BBCA tonight, btw.)

SoHillsGuy...

Well, one of the wives is played by a different actress, but Green and
Benton return.

And as soon as I saw a mention of "Christmas Lights," I remembered
where I'd seen Mark Benton before. He was in the Inspector Lynley
mystery that aired on PBS last night, and I hadn't gotten around
to looking up his name yet this morning. He co-starred with Robson
Green in "Christmas Lights."

BBC America which now reaches 49.7 million U.S. households, according
to the latest figures from Nielsen Media Research. As it grows its
reach, the net has also upped its ratings; in the third quarter of
2006, BBC America grew its average prime time audience 13 percent
year-over-year and boosted its 18-49 numbers by 25 percent. The
channel also raised its ptrofile among the 25-54 demo by 33 percent in
the quarter.

The network expects to be in 65 million households by April 2007.

Pumpkin Escobar...

BBCA won't do as well as they could if they continues to edit the
programming to fit in commercials instead of extending the shows like
A&E does.