Whether you live in the U.S. or the U.K., you may have seen Big Cats 24/7, Fight The Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World with Public Enemy‘s Chuck D, Solar System, or historian Lucy Worsley’s Holmes vs. Doyle. If not, chances are that you have heard about these popular TV programs. They may not be the latest Netflix obsession, the hot new HBO drama, or the Disney+ series your friends are buzzing about, but they have drawn a crowd on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. Making them all possible is a long-running relationship between two big public TV organizations, namely PBS in the U.S. and the BBC’s commercial arm BBC Studios in the U.K.
Executives involved in it say the co-production partnership that celebrates its 10-year anniversary this year has only become stronger and more ambitious. And no matter what challenges traditional TV and the rise and struggles of big streamers may bring, they vow to bring global audiences more premium content that would face huge obstacles to get commissioned in the more commercial world. Next up in 2025: the return of Walking With Dinosaurs (two exclusive photos of which are included here) 25 years after the original series first aired.
“The importance of future visioning is key to the longevity of this partnership,” Sylvia Bugg, PBS chief programming executive and general manager, general audience programming, a role in which she leads the multiplatform content strategy for adult audiences, PBS Digital Studios, and PBS Learning Media, tells THR. “We spend a lot of time thinking about our vision for the future. And our hope is to continue to grow this partnership.”
BBC executives echo that. “As broadcasters, our values are really aligned. We both pride ourselves on being places that give program makers the freedom to do their best work,” explains Jack Bootle, head of specialist factual commissioning at the BBC. “And we’re both very patient. We are happy to wait for a long time for programs to come to fruition.” Some of the nature documentary series take four-plus years, for example.
Kate Ward, managing director, factual at BBC Studios, lauds the “values-driven alignment” of both partners. This allows them to focus on several things that other industry players tend not to do.
“One is an absolute and deep commitment to specialism and the craft of specialist factual program making, including the incredible power of science programming made by the BBC Science Unit, the unparalleled reputation and quality of the Natural History Unit, and the depth and rigor that it takes to produce incredible history and arts programming,” she explains. “This is not a commitment that’s zigging and zagging, depending on the needs of the day. This is a long-term commitment to specialism.”
Together the BBC and PBS also “have the opportunity to produce ideas at enormous scale,” Ward notes. “Just look at Walking With Dinosaurs coming back after 25 years. And that scale, that ambition, that quality is greater than the sum of our parts, both creatively and in terms of how those shows come to market.”
The third thing she highlights is that “because this is a longstanding relationship with such great trust, we feel that we have a space to innovate and take risks,” says Ward. “It’s so thrilling for our teams to be in a culture where next year the boundary is always higher.”
That includes such elements as digital and short-form content extensions that complement the linear show output. And there is chance for educational offerings. For example, Bugg and her team look at where local PBS member stations can get value from educational and learning materials. “The majority of the learning medium materials that PBS creates for educators and students are born out of that national content, and much of that comes from the partnership with the BBC,” she explains. “For example, for Fight the Power with Chuck D, we had screenings around the country. It was great to see how we at PBS think about the power of public media and creating content that’s reflective of the audiences we serve.”
Even new media formats are part of the discussion. “That is always a part of the conversation,” shares Bugg. “How do we think about immersive experiences, for instance, beyond a one-way experience? There’s great content, but especially as we’re looking at more digital and multiplatform opportunities, great storytellers always have great ideas for formats and expanding their craft.”
Executives who have come into the long-term co-production partnership realized its importance right away. “I immediately immersed myself in this partnership to understand it, the history and the programming,” Ward who joined BBC Studios in late 2022 tells THR. “From BBC Studios’ perspective, what I have observed is that it is a framework and a partnership that we as producers see as a platform to do extraordinary work that we just can’t do anywhere else. It’s that mutual commitment to incredible programming and broadcasters with a very clear sense of purpose.”
Adds Bootle: “I’ve been working for the BBC for six years now, and what has changed over the course of my involvement is that I think it’s gone from being a relationship where we made good work to a relationship where we make some of the very best work on the BBC. We’ve become more confident, we’ve become more collaborative, and as a result, I think we’ve become more creatively ambitious.”
Ward shares that the focus of the partnership is on “the best ideas that deliver for both the ambition and the values of the partnership. And we also seek alignment of our digital strategies and marketing strategies. We think collectively about how to build and support audiences, how to build brands and how to build real engagement. So we’re very, very intentional throughout the process.”
It comes as no surprise then that several PBS and BBC people describe their partnership like a marriage that is based on trust and open communication. “The transparency in conversations is key because so much of this is really built on mutual trust when we bring a slate of programs together,” notes Bugg. “If it’s not something that the BBC feels really super passionate about or is having second thoughts, I’ll always say let’s talk about it, and vice versa. We give that honest feedback.”
And both sides are committed to keep actively working at it, she adds. “We had 10 years to build the perfect recipe. Can we make it even better? Absolutely,” Bugg tells THR. “We can add a little bit of this and add a little bit of that, similar to our parents’ and grandparents’ recipes that are family traditions.”
One thing everyone agrees on is that intelligence and entertainment can both be part of the programming that PBS and BBC Studios jointly develop and produce. “We both really love shows that are unafraid to be intelligent, but that don’t patronize you but treat audiences with respect,” explains Bootle. “Of course, we both want our programs to entertain but we also really want them to enlighten and to expand minds at the same time. And we’re completely committed to truth, accuracy, scientific regard, proper journalism, and those are things that I don’t think you can take for granted when you look across the media landscape.”
Actually, PBS and BBC representatives go as far as arguing that some big swings, such as Walking With Dinosaurs or Solar System, they have developed together wouldn’t have made their way to screens otherwise. Or The Green Planet, narrated by David Attenborough.
“Innovation is really crucial because we know that when we get it right, we can bring big numbers to a show and we can also push forward a genre,” says Bootle. “The Green Planet which went out on the BBC in 2022 was a major natural history series all about plants and fungi. It doesn’t feature lions, it doesn’t feature tigers, it doesn’t feature sharks. It’s all about trees and bushes and grass. And in the series, we ask the viewer to take those things as seriously as lions and dogs and sharks and to be excited by them in the same way. Everybody told us it would be exceptionally boring television and nobody believed we could bring in a big audience,” he recalls.
“But PBS did and always believed in it because it felt different. When we made it, it took four years and cost a vast amount of money. It involved some amazing new time-lapse and other technology,” Bootle continues. “It ended up being one of the highest-rated factual shows on the BBC that year and also won a slew of major awards. That series only came to the screen because of the relationship between the BBC and PBS. I don’t think anyone else would have backed that project right at the start. And I actually think you are seeing the impact of that series elsewhere with more and more shows about the plant world.”
Ward echoes the importance of ambition. “We’re delivering this fusion of incredible entertainment with information and education, which ensures really values- and purpose-driven television,” she says. “Big Cats 24/7 is a great example of just pushing the boundaries and never staying still for too long.”
Season 2 is currently filming because the partners said they just loved the concept and approach so much. The series follows a team of wildlife filmmakers in Botswana trying to film families of big cats 24 hours a day for six months.
The goal was “to create the most complete picture of big cat behavior ever captured on film in an extremely beautiful but extremely hostile environment,” says Bootle. “It uses new technology like night vision tech that has taken a quantum leap forward over the last few years. And so the team followed the cats in the dark at night when they are most active. So we’re seeing and capturing behavior that I have never seen before, and I’ve been commissioning such content for six years. The series is a new flavor of natural history, and I don’t think another broadcaster would have co-commissioned it with us. Only PBS could have seen the potential in it and backed it in the way that they did.”
The BBC-PBS partnership has also allowed some newer faces to emerge as on-air stars beyond such well-known names as Attenborough and Chuck D. The guides in Big Cats 24/7 are one example. An English historian is another. “I love a good Lucy Worsley special,” Bugg tells THR. “Audiences love Lucy, and so do I. As all organizations do, PBS and the BBC are thinking about the brand and the brand value and extension and what resonates with audiences. My goal with talent has always been for them to guide audiences through a journey. They don’t have to necessarily become a part of the story as much as they are helping to guide the audience. So we want audiences to be on a journey with us through talent like Lucy or David Attenborough.”
Finding content that matches a host or guide’s voice and personality is key. In some cases, PBS and the BBC take different approaches. For example, the recently launched Solar System is in the U.K. presented by Professor Brian Cox, a well-known English physicist. In the U.S. on PBS, the show is a host-less version. “We quite often have slightly different versions for both markets. It’s quite flexible in that way,” says Bootle. “It only launched last week on BBC Two and it’s too early for exact data but it’s gearing up to be one of the highest-rated shows of the year on that channel in any genre.”
Worsley, meanwhile, is featured on both sides of the Atlantic. “For someone like Lucy, we’ve been able to find the right content approach – entertaining, educational, informative – where she really fits that bill,” says Bugg. “These days, audiences have many places to go for their content and programming consumption. That’s why we think very holistically about who is representing the content and not just on camera and on screen, but also who’s behind the scenes – who are members of the filming crew and the writers. By really thinking about this in a 360-degree way, we’ve been able to succeed with talents for public media in the U.S.”
That talent focus is another way for PBS and the BBC to break through in a busy media market. “Dramas are so easy to make noise about because often they involve big, sexy actors and they have huge budgets,” explains Bootle. “You don’t always look at the next best-performing thing, and that is often specialist factual. Often it is specialisms that can really break through and reach big, big audiences. It’s something that I think people might instinctively think is a niche subject. But when you get it right, you can really sweep along a big crowd.”
That is expected to be the case when dinos roam PBS and BBC screens again next year. “We have big hopes for Walking With Dinosaurs,” explains Bootle. “That is a science show through and through, but one that’s aimed very directly at a big family audience.”
“Walking With Dinosaurs that’s coming soon is very exciting for me,” echoes Bugg. As always, the long-time partners have been biding their time to get that show right since everything they do gets the amount of time needed. “It’s not a rush process,” says Bugg. “Our partnership is a well-oiled machine, but it takes an incredible amount of work behind the scenes. We are not just popping out programs but planning and thinking for the long term.”
The PBS-BBC marriage is full of commitment and trust, but that doesn’t mean that cultural differences don’t pop up every now and then and cause a laugh. Bootle recalls a BBC team visit to Washington, DC where the PBS colleagues took his crew to a hockey game. “Nobody in the U.K. has ever really seen ice hockey, so we were completely bemused by it,” he recalls with a chuckle. “However, they did have a fridge of beer, and we may have had more beer than they had expected.”
English (US) ·