Channel 4 Brings Big Brother To The UK

Channel 4 unveiled its schedule for spring and summer this week, with highlights including an English version of Dutch TV phenomenon Big Brother and two new dramas from very different eras – Anna Karenina and Lock, Stock….

Last year Big Brother launched in Holland as a fully interactive TV experience. Ten strangers are cut off from any contact with the outside world and their activities filmed and broadcast live on the internet 24 hours a day. A TV version will encourage viewers to nominate characters to be evicted from the house each week until just one person remains. The series will this month begin to recruit volunteers to take part in a British version for transmission later this year.

A four-part adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic Anna Karenina is planned for broadcast in May. Filmed entirely on location in Poland, the series is directed by The Lakes director David Blair.

Lock, Stock… is a seven-part series inspired by the hit British film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The spirit of the original film will be enhanced by new characters and stories.

On the comedy front Ali G will finally be given his own series on the channel this month after his success on The 11 O’Clock Show. Smack The Pony is back for a second series and a new sitcom Black Books, written by and starring Dylan Moran, will follow the antics of eccentric bookshop owner Bernard Black.

Gail Porter will co-host a new comedy entertainment show about web culture with young comic Chris Addison.

Cutting Edge documentary, A Wedding In The Family, reflecting “the state of the Great British Marriage” begins the channel’s factual highlights for the season. The summer months also promise a major campaigning season looking at teenage attitudes to sex. Generation Sex will include Borrow A Baby in which teenagers find out about life as a parent when they loan a child for a weekend.

Channel 4: 020 7396 4444