BBC Studios wins new commissions from BBC Arts for Culture in Quarantine
BBC Studios has won eight new commissions from BBC Arts which will form part of the extended Culture in Quarantine programming due to be broadcast this Autumn.
"We called the series Crip Tales, as the word ‘Crip’ has been taken by the disabled community as a self-empowering title since the late 80’s, and these are authentic stories and tales from people who identify as Deaf and Disabled people and who are embedded in disabled community.”
The series will feature Liz Carr (Silent Witness) and Ruth Madeley (Years And Years) and award-winning writers including Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials; National Treasure), as well as emerging talent, including Genevive Barr and performance poet Jackie Hagan, making her TV acting debut.
The monologues are fiction but they will be based on factual research and lived experience and they will span the last 50 years of British History.
But the team behind Britain’s most beloved annual exhibition persevere undaunted, led by exhibition coordinators and Turner Prize-nominated artists Jane and Louise Wilson, and their team of fellow RA artists including Sonia Boyce, Isaac Julien and Richard Deacon. Their politically charged work will bring audiences face to face with how society has changed beyond recognition in this most unforgettable of years.
The film will capture both the effect of the crisis on the Royal Academy, showing the London building in lockdown and on the first day they were able to reopen their doors to visitors; and the necessary changes needed to succeed in bringing the Summer Exhibition to the public this year, as the committee discuss - via video conference - creative solutions to opening in a socially distanced way.
Presented by Kirsty Wark and Brenda Emmanus, we see the behind-the-scenes preparation that goes into putting the show together ahead of its October opening, meeting artists like Cornelia Parker and Brian Eno - who will be installing his ambient sound piece for the Academy’s vestibule. We’ll learn more about the work of coordinators Jane and Louise Wilson and their vision for this year’s exhibition. We will also spend time with artist Rebecca Salter, the first female President of the RA.
Along the way, we chart the journeys of three members of the public who have submitted art for consideration in this year’s show: which ones will see their work share space on the walls with the likes of Grayson Perry, Tracey Emin and David Hockney?
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is a BBC Studios Production. It was commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Two by Lamia Dabboussy. The Executive Producer is Tanya Hudson. Gabriella Meade is the Producer and the Producer Director is John O’Rourke.
Munch’s work has long inspired Emin, from her early video piece Homage To Edvard Munch And All My Dead Children to her monumental new nine-metre high bronze sculpture, The Mother, set to be installed outside Oslo’s new Munch Museum in spring 2021. Today, the majority of her time is spent painting.
This half-hour documentary for BBC Two charts the affinities between Munch’s art and Emin’s, exploring the many unexpected ways that this godfather of expressionism resonates with one of Britain’s pre-eminent artists.
Alongside Emin’s voice, which will run like a thread throughout the documentary, we hear from Munch experts in Norway, showing the innovations in printmaking and sculpture which he pioneered in his lifetime, alongside his more well-known painting work.
We see inside the studios where he created his work, still perfectly preserved today. We also find out more about Munch’s photographic and film work, media not normally associated with the artist, but again ones in which there are clear correspondences with Emin’s own work. These scenes will be complemented by actuality footage of one of Emin’s new monumental bronze works being forged in a foundry in Stoke-on-Trent and the works of Emin and Munch shown together at the Royal Academy.
Tracey Emin On Edvard Munch is a BBC Studios Production. It was commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Two by Lamia Dabboussy. The Executive Producer is Tanya Hudson. The Producer Director is John O’Rourke.
Through a series of encounters with Alan Yentob in New York, London, Munich and her native Belgrade, Marina will reveal her current work, including her new venture into the world of opera with Seven Deaths, based on the life of Maria Callas, and will revisit milestone moments in her career.
imagine… will follow Marina’s trajectory through the then barely known form of Performance Art, in which she became both the subject of and the vehicle for a unique, often shocking, utterly fearless, philosophical, confrontational approach and art that is highly personal, physically demanding and universally accessible.
imagine… is a BBC Studios and Lone Star Production. The Series Editor is Alan Yentob. imagine… is commissioned by Mark Bell for BBC Arts and BBC One. The Producer is Martin Rosenbaum and the director is Adam Low.
In the build up to the announcement of this year’s winner, we meet the six authors creating some of the most exciting fiction from across the world, and discover the novels in contention for the prize that are flying off the shelves all over the country.
With the 2020 longlist already offering a surprising mixture of debut novelists amongst major literary names, this year’s field looks to encompass a diverse range of global stories. Hotly tipped for the number one spot is literary giant Hilary Mantel, who would make history as the first writer to achieve the Booker hat-trick if chosen for the finale of her Cromwell trilogy.
Kit - a vocal campaigner for inclusivity in publishing - will also be examining the wider landscape of the publishing industry in the wake of the unprecedented global events of 2020.
She meets Bernardine Evaristo (pictured above), joint-winner of last year’s award and the first black woman to win the prize since its inception in 1969, as well as members of this year’s judging panel, to explore not only the life-changing effect of winning the Booker, but also the issue of diversity in publishing highlighted by this year’s Black Lives Matter movement. And with the UK’s publishing houses rocked as much as any other business by Covid-19, she explores how the pandemic has affected both the industry, and the books that we’re reading.
The Booker Prize is a BBC Studios Production. Commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Two by Lamia Dabboussy. The Executive Producer is Tanya Hudson. The Producer Director is Gabriella Meade.
Becoming Bridget (w/t) (1 x 60’) BBC Two
The commissions include topical Arts series Inside Culture with Mary Beard and Crip Tales, a series of monologues written, performed and directed by disabled people, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act. The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, documents the challenges the institution faces staging the 2020 event. Celebrated artist Tracey Emin examines the work of her hero Edvard Munch in Tracey Emin On Edvard Munch (w/t) and imagine… meets Marina Abramović, profiles the performance artist ahead of her solo exhibition. Reading and literature will be celebrated in a programme about the short-listed authors for the prestigious literary award The Booker Prize; a portrait of the work of the much-loved children’s author in The Magical World of Julia Donaldson and Becoming Bridget (w/t), which commemorates 25 years since the first Bridget Jones newspaper columns.
Further Details about the new commissions:
Crip Tales (6 x 15’) BBC Four
Disabled writer and actor Mat Fraser curates a series of ambitious and exciting monologues, all written, directed and performed by disabled people. Each 15-minute monologue will capture a pivotal moment or event that forever changes the central character, that is in some way connected to disability, and pushes the character to act for a vital change that improves their position.
Mat says: “I’m thrilled to be curating this exciting, surprising and revealing series of monologues around the disabled experience for the BBC. Disabled voices have been shut out of mainstream TV drama for too long and this is a chance to showcase some of the wonderful, inventive, funny, dramatic, sexy and sobering potential available.
"We called the series Crip Tales, as the word ‘Crip’ has been taken by the disabled community as a self-empowering title since the late 80’s, and these are authentic stories and tales from people who identify as Deaf and Disabled people and who are embedded in disabled community.”
The series will feature Liz Carr (Silent Witness) and Ruth Madeley (Years And Years) and award-winning writers including Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials; National Treasure), as well as emerging talent, including Genevive Barr and performance poet Jackie Hagan, making her TV acting debut.
The monologues are fiction but they will be based on factual research and lived experience and they will span the last 50 years of British History.
Crip Tales is a BBC Studios Production. It was commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Four by Lamia Dabboussy. Executive Producer is Debbie Christie.
Inside Culture With Mary Beard (5 x 30’) BBC Two and BBC World News
With a new title, and a new regular slot, Mary Beard’s topical arts series returns (formerly Lockdown Culture). This time she’s venturing from her study to meet leading creative voices, using her usual wit and journalistic rigour to find out how they’re shaping Britain’s post-lockdown culture.
As well as discussing the challenges that lie ahead for our cultural organisations, Mary will be visiting the places she has sorely missed, like the British Museum, where she gets to work taking the Lewis Chessmen out of their lockdown storage, and surprising visitors as the doors swing open once again.
Inside Culture With Mary Beard is a BBC Studios Production. It was commissioned by BBC Arts and BBC Two by Jonty Claypole. The Series Producer is Sandy Raffan. Executive Producer is Tanya Hudson.
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (w/t) (1 x 60’) BBC Two and BBC World News
The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 2020 faces challenges like no other in its 252-year history. For the first time since Sir Joshua Reynolds opened this august institution in 1768, the show has been pushed into the winter months and forced to contend with the realities of social distancing and the challenges of mounting such a huge undertaking in the face of so many uncertainties.
But the team behind Britain’s most beloved annual exhibition persevere undaunted, led by exhibition coordinators and Turner Prize-nominated artists Jane and Louise Wilson, and their team of fellow RA artists including Sonia Boyce, Isaac Julien and Richard Deacon. Their politically charged work will bring audiences face to face with how society has changed beyond recognition in this most unforgettable of years.
The film will capture both the effect of the crisis on the Royal Academy, showing the London building in lockdown and on the first day they were able to reopen their doors to visitors; and the necessary changes needed to succeed in bringing the Summer Exhibition to the public this year, as the committee discuss - via video conference - creative solutions to opening in a socially distanced way.
Presented by Kirsty Wark and Brenda Emmanus, we see the behind-the-scenes preparation that goes into putting the show together ahead of its October opening, meeting artists like Cornelia Parker and Brian Eno - who will be installing his ambient sound piece for the Academy’s vestibule. We’ll learn more about the work of coordinators Jane and Louise Wilson and their vision for this year’s exhibition. We will also spend time with artist Rebecca Salter, the first female President of the RA.
Along the way, we chart the journeys of three members of the public who have submitted art for consideration in this year’s show: which ones will see their work share space on the walls with the likes of Grayson Perry, Tracey Emin and David Hockney?
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is a BBC Studios Production. It was commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Two by Lamia Dabboussy. The Executive Producer is Tanya Hudson. Gabriella Meade is the Producer and the Producer Director is John O’Rourke.
Tracey Emin On Edvard Munch (w/t) (1 x 30’) BBC Two and BBC World News
November 2020 sees the opening of The Loneliness Of The Soul, a ground-breaking new exhibition at London’s Royal Academy, showcasing the work of Tracey Emin, alongside paintings by her great hero Edvard Munch.
Munch’s work has long inspired Emin, from her early video piece Homage To Edvard Munch And All My Dead Children to her monumental new nine-metre high bronze sculpture, The Mother, set to be installed outside Oslo’s new Munch Museum in spring 2021. Today, the majority of her time is spent painting.
This half-hour documentary for BBC Two charts the affinities between Munch’s art and Emin’s, exploring the many unexpected ways that this godfather of expressionism resonates with one of Britain’s pre-eminent artists.
Alongside Emin’s voice, which will run like a thread throughout the documentary, we hear from Munch experts in Norway, showing the innovations in printmaking and sculpture which he pioneered in his lifetime, alongside his more well-known painting work.
We see inside the studios where he created his work, still perfectly preserved today. We also find out more about Munch’s photographic and film work, media not normally associated with the artist, but again ones in which there are clear correspondences with Emin’s own work. These scenes will be complemented by actuality footage of one of Emin’s new monumental bronze works being forged in a foundry in Stoke-on-Trent and the works of Emin and Munch shown together at the Royal Academy.
Tracey Emin On Edvard Munch is a BBC Studios Production. It was commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Two by Lamia Dabboussy. The Executive Producer is Tanya Hudson. The Producer Director is John O’Rourke.
imagine… meets Marina Abramović 1 x 60 BBC One
In anticipation of her landmark solo exhibition After Life at the Royal Academy of Arts in London - the first by a woman in the RA’s 250-year history - imagine… meets Marina Abramović, the world’s greatest living performance artist.
Through a series of encounters with Alan Yentob in New York, London, Munich and her native Belgrade, Marina will reveal her current work, including her new venture into the world of opera with Seven Deaths, based on the life of Maria Callas, and will revisit milestone moments in her career.
imagine… will follow Marina’s trajectory through the then barely known form of Performance Art, in which she became both the subject of and the vehicle for a unique, often shocking, utterly fearless, philosophical, confrontational approach and art that is highly personal, physically demanding and universally accessible.
imagine… is a BBC Studios and Lone Star Production. The Series Editor is Alan Yentob. imagine… is commissioned by Mark Bell for BBC Arts and BBC One. The Producer is Martin Rosenbaum and the director is Adam Low.
The Booker Prize (w/t) (1 x 30’) BBC Two and BBC World News
Novelist and activist Kit de Waal follows the most prestigious literary award in the English speaking world: the Booker Prize.
In the build up to the announcement of this year’s winner, we meet the six authors creating some of the most exciting fiction from across the world, and discover the novels in contention for the prize that are flying off the shelves all over the country.
With the 2020 longlist already offering a surprising mixture of debut novelists amongst major literary names, this year’s field looks to encompass a diverse range of global stories. Hotly tipped for the number one spot is literary giant Hilary Mantel, who would make history as the first writer to achieve the Booker hat-trick if chosen for the finale of her Cromwell trilogy.
Kit - a vocal campaigner for inclusivity in publishing - will also be examining the wider landscape of the publishing industry in the wake of the unprecedented global events of 2020.
She meets Bernardine Evaristo (pictured above), joint-winner of last year’s award and the first black woman to win the prize since its inception in 1969, as well as members of this year’s judging panel, to explore not only the life-changing effect of winning the Booker, but also the issue of diversity in publishing highlighted by this year’s Black Lives Matter movement. And with the UK’s publishing houses rocked as much as any other business by Covid-19, she explores how the pandemic has affected both the industry, and the books that we’re reading.
The Booker Prize is a BBC Studios Production. Commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Two by Lamia Dabboussy. The Executive Producer is Tanya Hudson. The Producer Director is Gabriella Meade.
The Magical World Of Julia Donaldson (w/t) (1 X 60’) BBC Two
This warmly personal portrait will celebrate the life and work of one of Britain's best-selling children's authors, with unique access to Julia Donaldson, her family, and her rich catalogue of archive and home-movies.
Specially commissioned animated illustrations from her long-term illustrator Axel Scheffler will bring Julia's biography to life. With contributions from well-known admirers and collaborators, the programme will pay tribute to the woman who has created the characters and stories that have become a fixture of children’s bedtime routines all around the world, and spawned multi-award winning adaptations for stage and screen.
In 2020, it will be 25 years since Bridget Jones made her first appearance in a newspaper column detailing her rocky relationships with men, booze, fags... and knicker elastic. One of the defining figures of the 1990s, Helen Fielding’s comic creation was an instant cultural phenomenon.
Now, a quarter of a century later, BBC Two celebrates Bridget Jones and the legacy of Helen Fielding’s character. In the age of Fleabag and #MeToo, the film explores how Bridget’s story reflects changing attitudes to women - and the way their stories are told. Being Bridget will feature interviews with Helen Fielding and the friends who inspired the original characters, along with rarely seen archive and celebrity fans playing tribute.
Being Bridget is a BBC Studios Production. It was commissioned for BBC Arts and BBC Two by Mark Bell. The Executive Producer is Tanya Hudson. The Producer Director is Alex Harding.
Further information: Loretta de Souza, BBC Studios, loretta.desouza@bbc.com
NOTES TO EDITORS
About BBC Studios
BBC Studios, a global content company with British creativity at its heart, is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC Group. Formed in April 2018 by the merger of BBC Worldwide and BBC Studios, it spans content financing, development, production, sales, branded services and ancillaries. BBC Studios’ award-winning British programmes are internationally recognised across a broad range of genres and specialisms. It has offices in 22 markets globally, including six production bases in the UK and production bases and partnerships in a further nine countries around the world. The company, which makes 2500 hours of content a year, is a champion for British creativity around the world and a committed partner for the UK’s independent sector. BBC Studios has revenue of £1.4bn, and returns around £200m to the BBC Group annually, complementing the BBC’s licence fee and enhancing programmes for UK audiences.
BBC Studios, a global content company with British creativity at its heart, is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC Group. Formed in April 2018 by the merger of BBC Worldwide and BBC Studios, it spans content financing, development, production, sales, branded services and ancillaries. BBC Studios’ award-winning British programmes are internationally recognised across a broad range of genres and specialisms. It has offices in 22 markets globally, including six production bases in the UK and production bases and partnerships in a further nine countries around the world. The company, which makes 2500 hours of content a year, is a champion for British creativity around the world and a committed partner for the UK’s independent sector. BBC Studios has revenue of £1.4bn, and returns around £200m to the BBC Group annually, complementing the BBC’s licence fee and enhancing programmes for UK audiences.