Including new shows for Tom Allen and Anna Richardson.
Speaking during today's Edinburgh TV Festival, Controller Session, Channel 4’s Director of Programmes Ian Katz announced Tom Allen: Ad Man, Sex Tips in Isolation. Ramadan in Lockdown, Coronavirus Heroes: Keeping Britain Going and Snoop Dogs.
Filmed from the comfort of Tom Allen’s own home, Tom Allen: Ad Man (working title) will feature playful spoofs and lots of laughs, alongside thought-provoking observations. It will be filmed with a self-shooting kit while Tom is self-isolating in the home he shares with his parents.
Tom will explore 65 years of TV adverts celebrating some of the nation’s best-loved and most outrageous TV adverts, charting the changing values and attitudes of the UK along the way.
During a romp through six decades of the TV ads that made us gasp, laugh, cry and buy, Tom reveals what some of Britain’s most iconic ad campaigns really say about us, taking a smart look at the infamous and the long-forgotten, unearthing ads that could be baulked at or banned today, as well as revisiting the nostalgic, the heart-warming and the uplifting.
Tom will make viewers think as well as laugh, as he delves into the issues of gender, race, class and Britishness, and explores how our evolving attitudes to these issues have been reflected in the ads beamed into the nation’s living rooms.
Speaking about the new series, Tom Allen said “I’m delighted to be analysing the world of advertising which, in our consumer age, has really dictated how we see ourselves. I don’t even know who I am unless I’m buying something!"
"If I buy Ski Yoghurt, does that make me a health freak? If I choose Diet Coke, does that mean I should take my top off? Would drinking Cinzano make me Joan Collins??! Anyway, fingers crossed it’s just as glamorous as the programme Mad Men, but here’s hoping I don’t start smoking, drinking Scotch during the day and having an affair with my secretary.”
Anna Richardson will present a new one-off show called Sex Tips in Isolation (working title) in which she'll look at the sex habits of Brits during lockdown, offering advice, insight and tips to keep us all in the mood during this unique crisis.
Whether you’re a cohabitating couple stuck in a lockdown rut, a fledgling pair still in the honeymoon period or a singleton looking to have the perfect phone sex, this one off programme will provide a cheeky glimpse of what’s going on behind closed doors and offer a range of how-to guides.
Anna will also share the results of a specially commissioned poll showing how habits have changed and how some relationships may have changed during the nation’s enforced time at home. Plenty of Brits are also turning to self-pleasure with the sale of sex toys also booming. Ann Summers reported a 27% increase in the sale of sex toys compared to this time last year, Swedish luxury sex toy retailer Lelo have seen sales soar by 40% and the Brits are not alone in feeling frisky either with international relations also on the rise.
She'll also scour the best of social media for additional inspiration and speak to members of the public, celebrities and experts all willing to overshare their sexual adventures in isolation.
Ramadan in Lockdown (working title) will take a unique look at British Muslim life through five short 5-minute films, culminating in an Eid special, to air next month.
For the first time ever, Britain’s 2.6 million Muslims will observe the month of Ramadan, up to thirty days of fasting from sunrise to sunset, in lockdown, under strict conditions imposed in response to Covid-19.
Channel 4 will talk to a range of British Muslims from across the country and follow them throughout Ramadan showing how the Muslim community copes with this unique and poignant moment in history, whilst observing their holiest month.
Contributors will include final year medics deployed on the frontline fighting covid-19 and GP's who have become the cornerstone of care in the community; multi-generational families fasting together in lockdown; shopkeepers and teachers; and Imams who have adapted worship from empty Mosques for virtual congregations.
Ramadan is a month whereMuslims around the world will not eat, drink, smoke or engage in sexual relations between sunrise and sunset in an attempt to focus on what is important, think about those who have less than themselves and be more appreciative of all that they have.
As with everyone, life for the UK’s Muslim communities is on pause. Mosques have closed doors to congregations and extended families have been split. This year they will undertake this important pillar of their faith under lockdown, with many on the frontline as key workers battling to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Coronavirus Heroes: Keeping Britain Going (working title) is an hour-long documentary which will focus on the army of people who are working hard to keep the country functioning in these extraordinary times.
It'll celebrate the numerous people from teachers to delivery drivers, supermarket staff to food industry workers, cleaners to carers and refuse collectors to bus drivers, to name just a few, who are keeping the nation functioning.
It will follow a small group of frontline workers who will share their remarkable and inspiring stories. They will film themselves, their family and friends to provide a moving and realistic portrait of their days and the impact it has, some of them living in extraordinarily challenging circumstances themselves.
And finally, a new four-part celebrity property show like no other called Snoop Dogs, where cameras will go inside the locked-down houses of well-known faces around the country. But there’s no ordinary film crew on this show. The filming is done by the celebrity homeowners’ dogs.
Each episode peeks inside the homes of two much-loved celebrities during lockdown, with Go-Pro cameras attached to their pooches who guide us around their lavish homes.
The four-legged friends will turn pup-arazzi on their owners and show us upstairs and downstairs, under the beds and behind the sofas of our favourite celebs – and anywhere else the canines fancy sniffing out.
The identities of the celebrities are kept under wraps until the end of each episode as viewers play along to guess who the paw-sible doggy-loving homeowner could be.