International deals for Peep Show, Detectorists, Plebs and more

Peep Show, Detectorists and Plebs are to be seen around the world under a raft of new TV deals.

Rights company DRG has announced several international contracts for British comedy programmes, also including Tracey Ullman’s Show, Green Wing and Father Ted.

Under the new arrangements:

• All nine season of Peep Show are to be shown in a primetime slot on ČT1, the main channel of the Czech state broadcaster. 
• The first two seasons of Mackenzie Crook’s Detectorists are to be broadcast in the Middle East and North Africa on the BBC First channel, and on YLE in Finland.
• HBO in the US has acquired season three of Tracey Ullman’s Show, which will air from September 28. Its European arm has also bought the show, which features impersonations of Angela Merkel, Theresa May and Dame Judi Dench, among others. In Asia, cable and satellite channel ITV Choice has taken the programme.
• Belgian’s national Flemish language broadcaster VRT has bought both seasons of surreal hospital comedy Green Wing, starring Tamsin Greig, Michelle Gomez and Stephen Mangan,
• Season four of Plebs has been acquired by both Comedy Central in New Zealand and ABC in Australia. Both broadcasters have already aired the first three seasons.
• Knowledge Networks in Canada has acquired all four seasons of comedy-drama Teachers – which originally ran on Channel 4 from 2001 to 2004. It stars Andrew Lincoln as teacher having a midlife crisis , despite the fact he’s only in his mid-20s.
• Sky in New Zealand has taken all three seasons of  Father Ted.

Scott Kirkpatrick, from DRG said:  ‘For decades, British comedies have been making their mark on the world stage and DRG is proud to be placing some of the best modern classics, such as Detectorists and Peep Show with broadcasters today. 

‘We also have a number of subscription video-on-demand deals for these and similar titles in the pipeline and are pleased that these platforms are seeing the value in offering full box sets of our great British classics to their subscribers.’

Kirkpatrick has previously licensed Peep Show, Spaced, Black Books and Shameless to Hulu in the US.

Published: 6 Sep 2018