Brand New Look For BBC Lifestyle Unveiled At BBC Studio's Summer Upfront, The Number 1 International Lifestyle Channel On DStv Given A Chic Make Over

BBC Studios in Africa revealed today the vibrant and playful new look branding for BBC Lifestyle, channel 174, at its bi-annual Upfront event held in Johannesburg. The number one international lifestyle channel on DStv has a chic and contemporary new on-air look featuring a fresh set of palates, designs and objects around the channel’s aspirational and entertaining lifestyle content. The brand makeover will launch from 20th November with new series Give It A Year, fronted by the UK’s ‘First Lady of Football’ Baroness Karren Brady which illustrates the channel’s ambition to always entertain, inspire and empower viewers. Using her prowess as one of the UK’s leading business women, Karren works with people wanting to create change and start their own businesses by visiting them at the start and end of their first year, to help guide and coach on what it takes to make it big and thrive in the business world.

The event also showcased the BBC’s stellar summer season of programming across BBC Lifestyle, BBC Earth, BBC First, BBC Brit and CBeebies. Exclusive to DStv, viewers in South Africa can look forward to a vast array of world class shows over the next six months, featuring stars such as Sir David Attenborough, Richard Gere, Idris Elba, Mary Berry, Lily Collins and Benedict Cumberbatch to name a few.

To revel in the excitement of what’s to come and express their enjoyment for the BBC and its shows, popular celebrity faces, Anele Mdoda, Chef Nti and Gareth Cliff were all in attendance at the event championing hits such as Strictly Come Dancing (currently airing on BBC Brit, channel 120), Come Dine With Me South Africa (BBC BRIT) and many more.

Joel Churcher, Vice President and General Manager, BBC Studios for Africa said, “2018 got off to a fantastic start with some record ratings coming through for several incredible TV moments, including Blue Planet 2, the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and the return of Come Dine With Me South Africa (s4).  In this ever competitive world of TV, our BBC Channels continue to deliver strong audience growth as our programming line up showcases the very best creativity the UK has to offer, alongside hugely successful local formats and international stars.   

“We are not taking our foot off the pedal this summer and are excited to be bringing, new and exclusively to South Africa, shows including the TV adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Miserables, the latest adventures of Jamie Oliver through to the absolutely fabulous Joanna Lumley’s excursions in Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventures.”

Full details of the programming can be found here www.bbcsouthafrica.com  

Highlights include:

BBC BRIT:
Coming in 2019, new and exclusively from the US is the hilarious Child Support a brand new, laugh out loud gameshow, starring Fred Savage (The Wonder Years) who plays hosts to adult contestants, the award winning comedian Ricky Gervais (The Office) and a group of five children between the ages of 6 and 9. The contestants are asked to answer 10 questions to earn the prize. If they cannot correctly answer a question, they have the chance to be saved by the kids who have been asked the same question by Gervais. It’s tense, it’s funny and a totally fresh take on a gameshow.
Formidable British documentary maker Louis Theroux is back in 2019 with his latest instalment of three hard hitting, provocative investigations into monogamous v. polyamorous relationships, the rise of private adoption in the US and also a look at the debate surrounding the right to decide when you die. All three will raise questions and shed light on controversial subjects occurring today in the United States of America.

BBC Lifestyle:
Dating can be a challenge at the best of times. This December, BBC Lifestyle brings South African audiences the Australian version of one of the world’s most popular dating shows. Farmer Wants a Wife Australia sheds light on how it can be even harder for farmers living in the ‘Aussie outback’ miles away from anyone. In this heart-warming series, which has had global success in orchestrating eight marriages so far, Farmer Wants A Wife Australia  will have audiences charmed with the hopeful rural guys, all looking to find love.
One of BBC Lifestyle’s favourite property gurus is back in the New Year for a fifteenth instalment of the hit series Grand Designs. Presenter Kevin McCloud once again puts on his hard hat to follow some of Britain's most ambitious self-building projects, as more intrepid individuals attempt to design and construct the home of their dreams. Expect ambition, extravagance and elite designs to infiltrate the series and have you all trawling through Instagram and Pinterest for new interior inspirations to bring some grand designs to your own homes.

BBC FIRST:
This December, comes the breakout hit from the UK – The Cry starring Jenna Coleman (Victoria, Doctor Who). This cryptic series packed full with curiosity and intrigue follows a young couple whose baby is abducted during a trip to Melbourne, Australia. All is not as it appears on the surface and audiences will be kept glued to their sofas trying to solve what really happened to baby Noah.
Sherlock fans will be pleased to hear that Benedict Cumberbatch is returning to BBC First in the New Year, as the lead in Brexit, from Olivier Award-winning writer James Graham. The political thriller explores the campaign behind one of the most contested, controversial government referendums in modern history and unpacks the tactics employed to swing one of the most surprising political votes in living memory as well as the powerful and divisive figures driving Brexit from the shadows.

BBC Earth:
Dynasties is the latest offering from the BBC’s multi-award winning and critically acclaimed Natural History Unit and once again features the iconic voiceover of Sir David Attenborough. Enter a world of dynastic power struggles and family treachery that’s more dramatic than any work of fiction. This intimate, landmark series pulls viewers into the lives of some of our most iconic animals- chimps, emperor penguins, lions, painted wolves and tigers, showing their incredible determination to dominate their landscape and do whatever it takes to see off vicious challenges to their leadership and dynastic line – often from close family members.
From the man behind hit music acts such as the Spice Girls, Kelly Clarkson and iconic TV formats Pop and American Idols – Simon Fuller, comes a new venture for families to enjoy called Serengeti. The landmark series offers a ground-breaking approach to natural history storytelling, allowing the animals to share the unpredictable narratives, intertwining relationships and emotional moments they face – all from their own perspective. Step inside the world of a real-life animal drama set right in the heart of Africa.

BBC Worldwide To Stop Commissioning Original Content For BBC Earth And BBC Brit

BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, is reportedly ending the commissioning of original content for its set of international BBC channels like BBC Earth and BBC Brit seen on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform in South Africa and Africa.

Deadline on Tuesday first reported about BBC Worldwide's overhauled channel strategy for its BBC channels that includes a cutback on the commissioning on original content for channels like BBC Earth (DStv 184) and BBC Brit (DStv 120).

While in 2017 BBC Brit and BBC Earth for instance broadcast over 50 hours of originally commissioned content, that is now going to be completely eliminated.

BBC Worldwide's channels will now be filled with existing programming that's already being distributed by BBC Worldwide, like Planet Earth II for instance.

A BBC Worldwide spokesperson said in a statement that "our global network of
branded services has grown and evolved since 2014 - with their commissioning strategies also adapting to best fit their content needs."
"As a result, much of the resource put into delivering global factual entertainment has been redirected towards meeting a growing demand for formats and factual entertainment that can be localized".

BBC Earth is available in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Canada and India.

BBC Brit is available in Africa, Eastern Europe and the Nordic territories.

Release The Hound Coming To BBC Brit In July 2016 And More Along The Way

Release the Hounds
PREMIERE
Series 1 (7 episodes)
Starts Sunday 3 July at 21:00
In this horror game show, hosted by Reggie Yates, three candidates have to enter a forest at dusk in a quest to unlock chests full of prize money.

In order to win the jackpot, they must escape the forest, but the cash is protected by a pack of angry dogs. Can they outrun the howling hounds and bag the cash?

The last episode of the series is a special edition, in which members of the UK dance group 'Diversity' enter the forest in a quest for prize money. Can they get hold of the cash prize for their chosen charity and avoid the cantankerous canines?

Frontline Fighting: Battling ISIS
PREMIERE
Friday 8 July at 20:00
 
This documentary tells the inside story of three untrained British volunteers with no family connections to the Middle East who heeded the call to take up arms with Kurdish fighters to reclaim Rojava from the ‘Islamic State’ group.

The self-proclaimed ‘Islamic State’ brutally besieged Rojava - the Kurdish region fresh from fighting for Syrian independence. The Kurdish YPG militia used social media to recruit foreign volunteers. Their call on Facebook was to ‘defend the civilised world against barbarism’ - and thousands responded. 
Unprecedented access to these ordinary British fighters intimately explores their motivations and visceral experiences on the frontlines. They engage the enemy in intense sniper battles, close-range mortar strikes and face counter-attacks from ISIS. But the men are unprepared for the raw atrocities of combat, the fierceness of battle and the death of their Kurdish co-fighters. Together they have a single-minded mission: fight to free the ‘Islamic State’ strong hold of the Abdulaziz Mountains.

The pairing of double BAFTA winner editor Mark Towns and five-time BAFTA winner, executive producer Dan Reed, turns kinetic, unique combat footage into unforgettable scenes with a cinematic feel and skilfully draws the characters of the foreign volunteers from the UK, Germany and USA, as they venture deeper into the heart of the ground war against ‘Islamic State’.

Welcome to the Mosque
PREMIERE
Friday 15 July at 20:00
With unprecedented access, documentary filmmaker Robb Leech enters Europe's biggest Muslim community, in the heart of London's East End.

Leech first came to the East London Mosque with his stepbrother, who had converted to an extreme brand of Islam, and in 2013 was convicted of preparing terrorist acts and jailed for six years.

Now the mosque has invited Robb back, to find out what life is really like inside for some of the two million people who attend every year. 'After years of trying to make sense of extremism, I want to understand the lives of ordinary Muslims, to go behind the walls and dispel the mystery and suspicion felt by non-Muslims on the outside', says Leech.

Robb finds a diverse group of individuals hidden from public view behind the Mosque's brick walls. He captures key moments, from the rituals of washing before Friday prayers to preparing Muslim couples for marriage at the centre's match-making service. Robb discusses British values with young Muslims at the Mosque's school. Older community members tell him about the racism they experienced growing up in the East End. He witnesses segregation, attempts to understand its cultural value and meets younger community members fearful of the dangers of free-mixing with the opposite sex.

During filming, the story breaks about the London schoolgirls who fled Britain to join Isis jihadists in Syria. Robb explores the Mosque's response to events that shocked the community. Whether capturing the frantic first phone call to the Mosque's media manager from a distraught sister of one of the girls or travelling to Istanbul with the girls' families to try and track them down, Robb's hand-held camera gives an intimate feel to the events.

Gadget Man
PREMIERE
Continues from Monday 18 July at 21:00
Director, author and  BAFTA-winning actor Richard Ayoade returns as 'Gadget  Man'. Richard has always used gadgets to shield him from the stresses and strains of everyday life, but in this series he's going to be using them to help make other people's lives better, too, as he tackles four of the most pressing problems of the 21st century. 

Aided and abetted by celebrity companions, Richard will be tackling the myriad challenges involved in staying safe, surviving the endless grind of work and the even worse grind of the weekend, as well as helping people find love in the digital age. He'll be using a gobsmacking array of gadgets to do it: from research robots, to prototypes, to the latest ready to buy gadgets from all over the world.

The Super-Rich and Us
PREMIERE
2 episodes
From Thursday 28 July at 20:00
We were always told the superrich would make us richer, so why hasn't that happened, and what does the arrival of their astronomical wealth really mean for the rest of us?

In this two-part series, Jacques Peretti looks at how the super-rich first exploited an obscure legal loophole to make Britain the most attractive tax haven on earth. This was no accident. Wooing the super-rich was a deliberate strategy by government to reconfigure the British economy, under the belief their wealth would 'trickle down' to the rest of us. But it didn't.

The OECD now say the British economy would have been 20 per cent bigger had we not pursued the super-rich. So who sold us the fallacy of trickle down and why? Jacques meets the super-rich themselves - from those buying premiership football clubs to the billionaires who are breaking ranks to criticise the decisions that made them richer - and society more unequal.

Jacques challenges the architects of these policies, as well as tracking down the foreign multi-millionaires who are buying up Britain and turning us from a nation of property owners to a nation of renters. He uncovers new research that shows growing inequality has been driven by the key factor of unaffordable property, and the far-reaching effect this will have on every aspect of our lives. Inequality is reshaping Britain into two simple classes: the 99 per cent and the one per cent.

This is the story of how it happened and what it means for all of us.

More Entertainment For Dstv Compact On 1 September

BBC Brit is a male skewing channel which is the home of Top Gear and is loved by young adults and women other programming Life Is Toff, Live at the Apollo, Bad Robots and The Classic Car Show

Cbeebies is a preschool channel which was only accessible to dstv premium is now available on dstv compact and will air programs like: The Furchester Hotel, In The Night Garden, Teletubbies and Nina And The Neurons