Latest news with #SecretGenius
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
BBC Studios Acquires Unscripted Production Company Mothership TV
BBC Studios Productions, a unit of BBC Studios, has boosted its investment in Mothership TV, the unscripted production firm founded by former Channel 4 deputy director of programs Kelly Webb-Lamb, to take full ownership of the company. In late 2022, BBC Studios Productions had taken a 25 percent stake in the company. More from The Hollywood Reporter Andrew Tate and Brother Tristan Charged With 21 U.K. Crimes, Including Rape and Human Trafficking Susie Wolff Is Putting the F(emale) in F1 Guillermo del Toro to Host Canadian Horror Film Festival (Exclusive) The transaction unveiled on Thursday marks the second deal for an unscripted indie by the unit of the commercial arm of the BBC following its acquisition of Voltage TV (Amanda and Alan, Tempting Fortune) in 2022. Mothership will be part of BBC Studios' newly announced Unscripted Productions, led by Kate Ward, managing director, Unscripted Productions. Financial details weren't disclosed. Under the terms of the deal. BBC Studios will have first-look global distribution and format rights to Mothership's output. Mothership launched in 2022 to make 'entertaining, warm and witty unscripted formats of scale.' Currently in production by it is Secret Genius, a new competition format for Channel 4 in which 'Alan Carr and Susie Dent will test Britain's brainpower like never before to uncover the country's most gifted and unsung minds.' Mothership has also produced Around The World in 80 Weighs and Sandi's Great British Woodland Restoration for Channel 4, with 'a raft of new programs in development.' Said Webb-Lamb: 'What matters most to me is being able to make great telly with great people and I've really enjoyed and valued Mothership's relationship with BBC Studios over the past three years. I'm looking forward to deepening this relationship going forward.' Added Ward: 'As demand for unscripted formats continues to grow both in the U.K. and around the world, we are thrilled to be strengthening our successful partnership with Kelly and Mothership and look forward to a very exciting future.' BBC Studios Productions also houses six scripted labels, namely Lookout Point (Gentleman Jack, Happy Valley 3), Baby Cow Productions (Brian and Margaret, Changing Ends), House Productions (Conclave, Sherwood), Clerkenwell Films (Baby Reindeer, The End of the F**king World) Sid Gentle Films (Killing Eve, Rain Dog) and Firebird (Wild Cherry, Outrageous). It also holds minority investments in a five others, namely Various Artists Limited, Expectation Entertainment, Turbine and Boffola Pictures. Best of The Hollywood Reporter How the Warner Brothers Got Their Film Business Started Meet the World Builders: Hollywood's Top Physical Production Executives of 2023 Men in Blazers, Hollywood's Favorite Soccer Podcast, Aims for a Global Empire
Telegraph
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Secret Genius of Modern Life, review: Hannah Fry jumps on the air fryer hype-wagon
Three series in, this was the episode of The Secret Genius of Modern Life (BBC Two) I'd been waiting for. Because let's face it, a good 97 per cent of all of my conversations in the last five years have been about air fryers. Do they, in fact, reduce the cooking time on an average chicken fillet by up to 38 seconds? Can I really make delicious chips at home slightly faster, if I ever did make delicious chips at home, which I didn't? Was I as resistant to viral marketing twaddle as I thought I was? So it was consolatory to find that Hannah Fry had also been in two minds about doing one of her excellent tech-splanations of air fryers, and for the same reasons – would it just be jumping on the hype train? Luckily, Fry decided to give the world what it wants – air fryers are now in one in three of our kitchens; the market has spoken, and her history of the device was perfectly done. It followed the usual Secret Genius blueprint, taking us into the research labs where they destruction-test broccoli, before leaving you with the usual conclusions – this stuff is really clever, and thank God we have really clever people working on it. Otherwise my chicken fillet might take 38 seconds longer to cook. I was mostly heartened to learn that air fryers don't actually fry, and that they're also just smaller, more efficient fan ovens. The heat comes from the same metal element that's in your toaster. The fan is the same type of fan that's in your… fan. So in the main it really is just a few twists and some clever marketing. But the story of how each of these components came about was full of happy accidents and obsessive inventors, just as you'd hope. It is good to see that even as recently as 2010, when the air fryer was invented, it was one man in a garage rather than a research team at some patent-bagging multi-national. The story probably didn't require its allotted hour, but no matter: I used that time to go and incinerate some chicken wings in my new air fryer. Have you heard how great they are?
