Factual entertainment and non-scripted indie, Phoenix Television, has announced the launch of two long-form true-crime formats developed from its short-form shows Cut to the Crime and Ex-Con Carpenters.
Both new formats are original ideas evolved from digital commissions from A+E Networks EMEA.
In the 10-part short-form series Cut to the Crime, hairdresser James Busby turns his stylist’s chair into a confessional, skilfully guiding his contributor-clients through their first-hand experience of crime as he washes, cuts and styles their hair. Each episode “tells a powerful story of survival, strength and resilience as the contributors talk with searing honesty about the impact of their ordeal on themselves, their friends, their family and the wider public.”
Justice: Restore and Rebuild is a half-hour format pilot that brings former convicts and victims of crime together in a restorative justice environment designed to positively impact victims’ lives. It’s developed from Crime + Investigation’s original 5 x 8 mins series Ex-Con Carpenters, which rolled out in April. Ex-Con Carpenters centres on father-and-son woodworking team Raphael and Taury Meade, who help former prisoners to design and create a meaningful piece of carpentry for someone who has been hurt by their crimes. Taury Meade lost four friends to stabbings and nearly went to jail himself. He credits his father and their carpentry work for saving him from a life behind bars.
Miles Jarvis, founding partner of Phoenix, said: “As an independent production company that launched two years before the Covid pandemic, we’ve had to be highly creative to survive and grow through difficult times. Cut to the Crime and Justice: Restore and Rebuild are the result of that innovative thinking. We’re hugely thankful to the A&E Networks EMEA team who bravely commissioned these progressive series. Both formats are rooted in true crime — an enduringly popular genre with audiences worldwide — but are delivered with a fresh new feel and, more importantly, with a fresh new purpose: restorative justice. We’re proud to be pushing the true-crime genre onwards and upwards, creating new ways to positively contribute to the lives of those affected by crime.”
Phoenix Television’s Sky HISTORY series Royal Autopsy (4 x 60 mins), fronted by anatomist and biological anthropologist Professor Alice Roberts, was recommissioned for an extended second season in November 2023 and aired earlier this year. The show investigates the deaths of UK monarchs using state-of-the-art autopsy simulations, contemporaneous medical records and eyewitness accounts to present the best evidence-based analysis of cause of death.
Phoenix Television is a member of the Association of True Crime Producers (ATCP), whose 20-plus members adhere to a set of guidelines to protect parties associated with true crime production that supersede those laid out by UK media regulator Ofcom.
Four of Phoenix’s true-crime shows — Cut To The Crime, Netflix hit When Missing Turns to Murder and True Crime’s Murder: Fight For The Truth — have been nominated for Royal Television Society and True Crime awards. BBC History’s Murder In Soho: Who Killed Freddie Mills? won a Royal Television Society award for Best Documentary.
Jon Creamer
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