Netflix has bought the rights to show the hit BBC drama Bodyguard outside the UK. The Keeley Hawes and Richard Madden thriller is due to be available around the world next month in a boost for the British television industry.
The six-part series about a home secretary and her protection officer will conclude with a 75-minute episode on BBC One this Sunday before appearing on the streaming service in all countries other than the UK, Ireland and China from 24 October.
Bodyguard has attracted audiences of more than eight million viewers for the BBC – with millions more watching on catchup. It was made by the independent production company World Productions, owned by ITV. The commercial broadcaster has sold the rights around the world and will benefit from the deal.
ITV’s chief executive, Carolyn McCall, announced the deal at the Royal Television Society’s conference in London and said her company had made “quite a lot of money” out of Bodyguard. She insisted she was toasting its success, despite the show thrashing ITV’s Sunday night drama Vanity Fair in the head-to-head ratings battle.
British television channels have been increasingly doing deals with video-streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon. They share the cost of big-budget dramas, with the UK broadcaster usually having the first right to show it domestically and the streaming service making it available elsewhere in the world at a later date. Netflix picked up the rights to Bodyguard before it was filmed but its involvement was only announced on Tuesday.
McCall said Bodyguard had also reminded advertisers that TV was one of the only ways to reach a truly mass audience. She also said Vanity Fair, a co-production with Amazon, was “doing OK” with consolidated ratings of around 4 million viewers an episode, but the decision to remake William Makepeace Thackeray’s classic Victorian novel as a “modern take on a period drama” meant it was not necessarily what all audiences would expect.
ITV has invested heavily in production companies that provide content to other broadcasters and streaming services. McCall did not deny speculation that the company was looking to buy Endemol Shine, the business behind shows such as Big Brother, which was recently cancelled by Channel 5.
The ITV chief also said the broadcaster accepted its Hub catchup service needed improvement as the “user experience is not as good as we’d like it to be”, and work was underway to fix this. However, she said that 250,000 people now subscribed to the £3.99 a month ITV Hub+ service which enables viewers to skip adverts and watch programmes across Europe.
