´óÏó´«Ã½ Three Winter/Spring 2007
Introduction – Julian Bellamy unveils Winter/Spring 2007 season on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three
After the most successful Autumn in the channel's history, Julian Bellamy, Controller, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three, unveils the Winter/Spring 2007 season which is jam-packed with bold and contemporary programmes, all with ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three values at their core – maverick, innovative, thought-provoking and bursting with new and emerging talent.
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Julian Bellamy says: "´óÏó´«Ã½ Three is firing on all cylinders this Winter/Spring with a huge range of home-grown programmes - not seen anywhere else in the digital world - and giving our younger audience an incredibly rich and diverse mix."
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´óÏó´«Ã½ Three's reputation for breaking new comedy remains unchallenged as six brand new series are launched.
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And for the first time, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three commissions a broadband-only comedy - The Cowards - a four-man, hyper-real comedy act, verging on the absurd, who literally take over the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three website and build their own comedy world which includes exclusive sketches.
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Written by Ruth Jones (Little Britain, Nighty Night, Fat Friends) and James Corden (The History Boys, Fat Friends) Gavin And Stacey is a brand new comedy series about young love across two nations, featuring a stellar cast including Ruth Jones, Mathew Horne (Catherine Tate, Teachers), Alison Steadman, Rob Brydon and James Corden.
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Thieves Like Us, written by Danny King and based on his acclaimed novel The Burglar Diaries, is a glimpse into a comedy underworld where dishonesty is the best policy and petty crime pays – but only if you need enough to cover the rent and buy a pint.
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Smalltime, starring John Henshaw (Early Doors), Steve Edge (Phoenix Nights) and Naomi Radcliffe (Coronation Street), opens the door of a low-security prison visiting room for a comedic peek into the lives of a group of petty crooks and the family, friends and fiends who visit them weekly.
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Touch Me, I'm Karen Taylor is a new seriesÌýin whichÌýBafta award-winning comedienne Karen Taylor invites us into her saucyÌýworld of sketches, stand-upÌýand comic characters.
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Rush Hour is a brand new comedy sketch show focussing on the daily scrum that is morning rush hour, and Comedy Shuffle With Rob Rouse is a talent showcase, compered by comedian Rob Rouse, featuring a host of comic performers, writers, animators and mischief-makers.
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And three critically-acclaimed series make a welcome return to the channel this season - Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive, Ideal starring Johnny Vegas as the hapless Moz and Ash Atalla's sketch show Man Stroke Woman.
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Factual continues to play a huge part on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three and this season sees the launch of several new innovative series.
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Last Man Standing is an eight-part series where six athletic Western adventurers go on a journey of self-discovery travelling to the most remote areas of the globe to live with indigenous peoples and take part in their rites, rituals and sporting festivals but only one man can win – the last man standing.
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Food is a big theme for this Winter/Spring season on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three.
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Meat, presented by Richard Johnson, the award-winning journalist and presenter of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two's Full On Food, is a thought-provoking factual event which explores and demystifies the process of how food ends up on our plates.
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It brings together the two moments that the public often separate – the death of an animal and the consumption of its meat.
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In Road Kill Café professional forager and road-kill chef Fergus Drennan tries to persuade the public that eating road-kill and foraged food is a far better way to exist than on a diet of TV dinners, fatty, processed foods and E numbers.
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Sex, romance and relationships can often lead to conflict between parents and teenagers.
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In Sex Talk With Mum And Dad eminent Dutch sexologist and family therapist Maria Schopman has a radical solution which starts with teenagers and their parents having frank and open discussions about sex and their sex-lives as a first step to rebuilding their relationships.
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A brand new factual entertainment series called Panic Room sees people confronting their very worst fears and phobias – from spiders and bats to heights and dentists.
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In a specially-designed 3D virtual reality room, and with trained help on hand, candidates aim to eradicate fear from their lives.
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Tough-talking businessman Alasdair Jeffrey is The Bulls**t Detective and, using stunts, pranks and toe-curling confrontations, is on a quest to expose the psychological techniques and tricks people use to get the public to part with their money.
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And there's a most welcome return to ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three's award-winning documentary strand Mischief.
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Julian Bellamy says: "This Winter/Spring has an incredibly rich factual flavour from intelligent and absorbing series like Meat and Sex Talk With Mum And Dad to compelling factual entertainment series like Panic Room."
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Entertainment sees the return after a seven year absence of Castaway, this time coming from New Zealand.
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Whilst ´óÏó´«Ã½ One gives a weekly update, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three will be feature daily programmes where viewers can catch up on what happened on Castaway island the previous day.
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The Verdict is an exciting multi-media event for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Two in which 12 high-profile celebrities including Jeffrey Archer, Michael Portillo, Patsy Palmer, Jennifer Ellison, Ingrid Tarrant and Stan Collymore sit in judgement on a trial complete with a real judge and real barristers.
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And to celebrate Red Nose Day, Comic Relief Does Fame Academy is back with additional footage of the shenanigans, tears and tantrums of the singing celebrities in the house.
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This Autumn's critically-acclaimed Body Image Season gave the channel its highest-ever weekly reach.
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This Winter/Spring sees a return to the season with a series of new, one-off documentaries, stripped over two weeks, examining people's obsession with their bodies and the way they look.
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Included in this season is Lucy: Teenage And Transsexual, a compelling film about one of Britain's youngest transsexuals and her quest to become wholly female.
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British women have the biggest breasts in Europe. My Big Breasts And I is a poignant programme which unearths the true and often traumatic lives of pain and misery that some young women endure due to their large breasts.
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Baby-Faced Body Builders is an engaging film that looks at teenagers who are obsessed with body-building, what motivates them, what inspires them and what their friends and families think of their idea of perfection.
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In The 34 Stone Teenager Revisited ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three returns to Bethany Walton's story to see if, six months after an operation to remove two-thirds of her stomach, the surgery has been the answer to her prayers and whether she is shedding the pounds and restoring her body image.
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Other films include: How Young Can I Get, Me And My Man Breasts and F**k Off I'm A Hairy Woman.
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The Coming Of Age Season of programmes explores the pressures on teenagers in modern Britain today.
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Programmes include The Baby Borrowers, a major, two-week, stripped, factual event on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Three in which five teenage couples take a fast-track through parenthood.
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As well as getting a house and other responsibilities, these teenage couples are given babies, then toddlers, then teenagers to look after.
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Through tears and tantrums they mimic the clichés of adult life, particularly the impact a new baby has on a couple and their relationship.
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I'm A Child Anorexic is a raw and compelling documentary about the lives of children - some as young as 12 – as they battle their obsessions with food and anorexia in a North London residential clinic.
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Britain has seen a shocking rise in sexually transmitted infections amongst teens and twenty-somethings.
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Sex, Lice And Videotape follows a group of high-risk kids as they go through the agonising process of getting checked out, waiting for results and, in some cases, discovering they're infected.
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Other programmes in the season include: Sweet Sixteen, Fat Boy To Slim and Teens Addicted To Porn.
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Julian Bellamy says: "Autumn's Body Image Season performed brilliantly, giving us our highest-ever weekly reach, so I'm delighted to be bringing not one but two seasons to the channel for Winter/Spring, both of which are filled with contemporary issues that touch the lives of our audience."
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TM2/KT
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