TCB sells 60 hours of factual to French, German broadcasters
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Editor
| 21 June 2019

As it eyes up the opportunities at Sunny Side of The Doc, France’s marketplace for the funding and distribution of non-fiction content, TCB Media Rights has reported strong sales and pre-sales to French and German broadcasters.

The London-based rights-ownership and distribution company revealed that RMC Découverte has pre-bought The Crusaders (3 x 60’), produced by Argonon-owned Like A Shot Entertainment, which tells the true stories of the medieval knights who dedicated their lives to fighting for their version of God. TCB and RMC’s recent co-investment in Egypt’s Unexplained Files (10 x 60’), produced by UK indie Rare TV, has been a success for the French broadcaster, ranking in this season’s top five mid-week primetime shows.

Canal+’s Planete+ has pre-bought World’s Greatest Palaces (10 x 60’), originally produced for UKTV factual channel, Yesterday. The Woodcut Media series investigates the remarkable history, incredible feats of engineering and inspiring visions behind some of the world’s biggest and most ambitious palaces.

Windfall’s Mythical Beasts (10 x 60’), which has been picked up by TF1’s Histoire channel as part of a 25-hour history package. The series blends location filming, cinematic CGI and expert insight to uncover the truth behind such legendary creatures as dragons, minotaurs, cyclopes, giants, vampires and sea monsters. The volume deal also includes Wag TV’s Secrets of the Magna Carta (2 x 60’), the third season of Like A Shot’s Medieval Dead (7 x 60’) and Symettrica’s Wartime Crime (6 x 60’). The last series, produced for UKTV and Discovery US, looks at the gang members, looters, deserters, sexual predators and serial killers whose criminal instincts have been facilitated by conflict.

German broadcaster ZDF has also bought two 10 x 60’ series — Mythical Beasts and Underground Worlds. The latter, a pre-sale produced by Phoenix Television for UKTV, digs down into weird and wonderful underground structures, both man-made and natural. Underground Worlds, which is due to deliver this summer, investigates who built what, where and why.

ProSieben has taken another Windfall show — Train Truckers — originally produced for UKTV. The 10 x 60’ series follows a family-run crew of heavy-haulage specialists as they race to transport the heaviest, longest and most precious locomotives around the world by road, rail and sea.

“The growing importance of key European broadcasters in forming collaborative commissioning networks makes attendance at Sunny Side of the Doc a key TCB priority,” said Simona Argenti, senior sales manager at TCB commenting on the deal.

“Sunny Side is a hidden gem of a market and an unmissable event in TCB’s calendar. It’s an interesting market from both a creative and commercial perspective, and the best way I know to find out what’s getting made outside the bubble of UK production. It also gives us quality time with Europe’s key commissioners, which is essential, given that a growing percentage of our deals now involve editorial input from broadcasters. Then, of course, there’s the allure of La Rochelle in late June. That puts everyone in a good mood — and that’s never bad for business either.”