THE LONDON WEEK (II): London Tv Screenings
Two AI formats and a dating "on stage"
After talking about MIPLondon in the last issue, it's time to talk about the London Screenings.
THE LONDON SCREENINGS 2025: Fresh Formats and Proven IP
Sarah Coursey, SVP International Content, Happy Accidents, reports:
“The London Screenings 2025, which ran from February 24 to February 28, once again solidified its place as a must-attend event for global buyers. Taking place across multiple venues in London, the annual TV market brought together top distributors, producers, and commissioners, all eager to showcase the latest in scripted and unscripted entertainment.
With broadcasters and streamers hungry for the next breakout reality hit or game show, the screenings offered an exciting mix of fresh IPs and proven international formats.
Several formats stood out during the week, drawing attention from global buyers. Fremantle has supersized the iconic word game for its show Scrabble. With known IP at its heart, the world's biggest toy and game brand Hasbro Mattel, it has built-in marketing and will be reassuring to viewers of all generations who grew up playing the game. It is also quite cost-effective and can benefit from shooting multiple episodes in one day. The show premiered on The CW in the U.S. in 2024 to promising ratings.
Fremantle’s House of Secrets, a survival-meets-mental endurance game show, was one of the most talked-about new titles in the physical-meets-social experiment space. In an isolated cottage, 15 secrets are revealed with 10 contestants, and lying is the only way to survive - that and body-taxing challenges. The twist is that the hosts are actos, and they lead the audience through a clever, twisting narrative, which is quite an update on the genre.
A stand-out format, aided by the AI gold rush, was AI Love You, a tech-driven factual format that purports to celebrate love’s resilience against life’s impermanence [see description below].
Building on the success of high-stakes quiz formats, ITV Studios introduced Moneyball Extreme, a fast-paced game show where contestants must balance strategy, physical skill, and sheer nerve to keep their prize money from literally rolling away. With major networks from Europe and Asia expressing interest, this format could become a global primetime hit.
In an era of more TikTok than TV for younger viewers, Banijay Rights unveiled Stranded & Streaming, a next-gen survival format designed for both traditional broadcasters and digital platforms. Contestants are left in remote locations with only their phones, where they must complete challenges and gain real-time audience support via live-streamed interactions. The format’s social-first approach was widely praised for catering to Gen Z and millennial audiences.
BBC Studios leaned into the true crime craze with The Big Heist, a reality competition where teams plan and execute elaborate heist simulations, testing their intelligence, teamwork, and nerve. Set in Hollywood-style recreations of famous robberies, the show merges crime docuseries aesthetics with reality TV stakes. Multiple U.S. and European buyers showed interest in adapting it.
Reality dating formats remain strong, and All3Media International presented one of the most talked-about new shows, Switch Up. In this unique experiment, couples sign up for a relationship retreat, only to be unexpectedly paired with someone else’s partner for the first half of the experience. The emotional drama and unexpected twists had buyers drawing comparisons to hits like Married at First Sight and The Ultimatum.
This year’s London Screenings reinforced the continued dominance of unscripted formats in the global TV landscape. Buyers were particularly drawn to scalable game shows, with formats like Moneyball Extreme and Scrabble that work across different regions and budgets. Premium concept reality, with high production values such as The Big Heist, designed for both linear TV and streaming. Lastly, the popularity of social experiments, whether the theme be lying or dating, with psychological and endurance-based formats, define the success of House of Secrets and Switch Up.”
BANIJAY’s LINEUP
From the many line-ups at the London TV Screenings, we've selected a couple of Banijay Entertainment formats, presented at their exclusive Banijay @ BAFTA 195 Piccadilly event.
The first, and also the most 'shocking', is AI Love You, which allows couples to preserve their love beyond death. The show follows couples facing an early end to their lives who decide to use AI to preserve their love. Guided by a psychologist and a technology expert, they spend their final months creating a digital avatar of their loved one. The journey begins with a gathering where family and friends contribute memories, letters, videos and anecdotes to shape the AI, capturing the person's quirks and essence.
Once completed, the avatar is stored until it is needed after the death of the loved one. The surviving loved one, with the help of a psychologist, then chooses whether to engage with the avatar or leave it untouched.
Created and produced by Banijay's Nordic label, Nordisk Film TV, Denmark, and commissioned by TV 2, the format incorporates cutting-edge AI technology and is available to international buyers as part of the international package.
It's not the first time a show has tackled a subject as sensitive and delicate as death. Indeed, AI Love You can be seen as a 'technologically updated version' of A&E's Voices From The Grave (2018), which is based on the same concept, except that terminally ill people create holograms (rather than AI-driven avatars) that will ‘talk’ to their loved ones after they pass away . And even more shocking was the Korean 'documentary' Meeting You in 2020 (which was thankfully quickly taken down), which looked like a disturbing episode of Black Mirror.
One can, of course, argue at length about the wisdom and 'morality' of this kind of operation. Personally, apart from ethical judgements - which I don't feel qualified to make - it doesn't seem to me the best way to showcase a new technology, which is undoubtedly destined to change the entire audiovisual industry, but which has yet to be 'assimilated' by the general public, by associating it with such a controversial subject.
More traditional (but with an interesting twist) and ‘reassuring’ is Date on Stage, created and produced by Banijay Benelux label TwentyTwo Productions, and set to be on air on NPO Start and NPO3 in the Netherlands.
In this dating show singles search for romance without appearances. Blindfolded, a single person goes on a date with two potential matches, guided only by conversation, chemistry and instinct. But there's a twist: imagine a first date live on a theatre stage, with a real audience watching every awkward moment and flirtatious attempt. Fortunately, the singleton isn't all alone. Two hilarious comedic Cupids are on hand to stir up the action, and they're not afraid to share their honest and entertaining opinions, ensuring that the journey to love is anything but predictable.
A simple format (almost 'minimalist'), fairly inexpensive, but potentially interesting and curious.
CREATOR MEETS AI
Two of the most important drivers of change in the global media system - the 'creatorsphere' and artificial intelligence - are found together in HeartWired, a YouTube format created by StudioB, the digital-first prodco founded in 2022 by British social media content creator Brandon Baum (aka Brandon B, with over 15 million subscribers to his YouTube channel @heyBrandonB).
Launched on 3 March on the HeartWired YouTube channel (see below) and produced in association with Connect Management, the format is described as a blind dating show with an AI twist.
It sees contestants tasked with spotting 'the hot from the bot' as they navigate flirtation, deception and digital chemistry to discover who's the human and who's the three chatbots behind the four doors.
The format as such is perhaps not the most original (something very similar had already been presented on the market), but the combination of creative economy + AI is destined to produce the most innovative content in the media landscape of the near future.
NEWS IN A NUTSHELL
ITV Studios continues to extend its global reach with the South African commissions of Side Hustlers and Double the Money, set to debut through Primedia. Both these formats, presented at London TV Screenings, celebrate entrepreneurship which strongly resonate with South African audiences, reflecting the country's thriving business culture and appetite for innovative entertainment.
ITV has also announced a brand new afternoon game show, Time is Money, to be hosted by businesswoman and entrepreneur Sara Davies. The contestants will start the show with their prize money on the line and will have to race against the clock to keep it.
BBC2 is to broadcast talent show/competition Chess Masters: The Endgame, inspired by The Queen's Gambit, its producer has revealed. All3Media International took the format to London TV Screenings last week.
Banijay Entertainment has announced that Endemol Shine Poland will produce a new season of the reality talent format, Must Be the Music, for Polsat.
Fremantle has secured the international production and tape distribution rights to the Scrabble game show on The CW. Fremantle will produce international versions of the format, developed and produced by Hasbro Entertainment, Mattel Television Studios and Lionsgate Alternative for The CW.
From Seven.One Studios International's catalogue of formats, TTV Poland has commissioned the seventh series of the transformational format Real Men and developed it into a brand new spin-off, Real Gen Z. The series follows five overweight young people on an inspiring journey to improve their physical and mental wellbeing.
TGC Global Entertainment (TGC GE) has inked format acquisition deals with Swedish public broadcaster SVT and Nigeria’s Bafot Studios. The deal with SVT includes three of the Swedish pubcasters latest formats: The Lost Games, Immigrants for Swedes and Smash the Wall, while the pact with Lagos-based production company Bafot Studios covers The Big Family Dream.
BBC Studios has also signed three new format deals in Sweden, including the first adaptation of Norwegian game show Nation's Dumbest, which will be made by BBC Studios Nordic Production for TV4 alongside the paranormal format Uncanny. SVT also picked up a local version of Curve Media's Our Dementia Choir, which will go into production in August.
US broadcast network Fox has renewed its Gordon Ramsay cooking competition series Next Level Chef for a fifth and sixth season, in addition to ordering a baking-themed holiday spin-off.
