Hat Trick International Takes Plum Pictures' Factual Entertainment Series Global

Hat Trick International (HTI) has sold two factual entertainment series presented by James May (Top Gear) and produced by Plum Pictures, to a raft of broadcasters around the world, Sarah Tong, Director of Sales, has announced.
James May's Toy Stories has been picked up by 124 countries through a wide range of mainly free to air deals with broadcasters such as SBS Australia, Kanal 5 Sweden, Nippon TV Japan and CBC Canada.
To date, the first series of James May's Man Lab has been acquired by broadcasters in more than 138 countries, including Channel 9 Australia, BBC America and Discovery Europe.
Brand new seasons of both series are currently being produced by Plum Pictures and will launch later on this year on BBC2 in the UK.
Will Daws, Managing Director at Plum Pictures, commented: "HTI has done a fantastic job selling first Toy Stories and then Man Lab into new territories for us and James - they very quickly established the right channels for the shows and placed them with strong international broadcasters in a competitive market place."
Sarah Tong, Director of Sales at HTI, added: "We are delighted to be working with Plum Pictures and offering these engaging factual entertainment series to our clients around the world. We are seeing a growing demand for intelligent series that have broad appeal. As the rights arm of a production company, we have a natural affinity to work with like-minded creatives and we are continuing to attract further independent producers' programming to add to our own growing portfolio."
Nominated for a 2010 BAFTA and hailed as the second highest rating series on BBC2 in 2009, James May's Toy Stories sees May take on extraordinary feats of engineering using some of the world's best loved toys such as Airfix, Lego, Mecanno and Scalextric to name a few.
James May's Man Lab throws down a series of challenges to both celebrities and ordinary folk to see if men are as resourceful and practical as those of yesteryear. Among the many tasks are how to diffuse a WWI bomb, navigating across the English Channel without sat nav and constructing flat pack furniture in less than an hour.
Plum Pictures was launched in 2007 by two of the BBC's top factual producers, Stuart Cabb and Will Daws. Plum Pictures makes factual and factual entertainment series with a focus on talent-led programming and authored films, plus current affairs, science, daytime and sport films. Since its inception, the company has made more than 42 hours of high quality programming.
(KMcA/GK)