Crime drama The Vanishing Triangle and unscripted series Lucy Investigates and How to Buy a Home are among the shows forming part of Virgin Media Television’s new season of programming.
The broadcaster is also set to be boosted in the months to come by the addition of a winter run of Love Island, the reality series it imports from ITV Studios, and Shamrock Rovers’ presence in the Europa Conference League.
“It’s been a standout year so far,” said VMTV director of content Bill Malone, citing a tally of 31 million on-demand streams of Virgin programmes in the year to date, including record streaming levels in the second quarter.
VMTV — which now operates the channels Virgin Media One, Two, Three, Four and More, after the addition of Four last month — is seeing “phenomenal results” from its positioning of Virgin Media Two as a youth-targeting channel, he said.
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The importance of Love Island, “far and away the most streamed content in Ireland”, was underlined by the presence of Irish finalist Dami Hope at Virgin’s launch event.
“People talk about streamers and broadcasters. We are a streamer. We are it,” Mr Malone said.
The Vanishing Triangle, starring Irish actors India Mullen and Allen Leech, is a six-part mystery thriller commissioned by Virgin and Sundance Now, a channel owned by American company AMC Networks, with Park Films the Irish production company involved. Mr Malone described the drama as “another significant milestone” for its drama ambitions.
It is set in the part of Ireland that became known by that term in the 1990s after a number of women went missing. Virgin said the series features fictionalised characters and does not depict any of the missing women.
‘Teaser tape’
Virgin also shared more details about comedy-drama Faithless, which was written by and stars Baz Ashmawy in his first acting role. The culture-clash comedy follows an Irish-Egyptian father as he raises his three young daughters alone until “help” arrives in the form of an irresponsible younger brother.
At a virtual presentation hosted by Ireland AM presenter Karen Koster, Virgin showed a “teaser tape” from the series, which is still in production and won’t air until at least 2023.
Virgin, which is owned by Liberty Global’s Virgin Media Ireland, also unveiled a clip from a factual series about subcultures, Lucy Investigates, in which presenter Lucy Kennedy was shown sheepishly whipping a male volunteer in an exploration of kink culture. It also showed an excerpt from the second run of Animo TV’s format Eating with the Enemy, one episode of which will feature George Hook dining with comedian and podcaster Martin “Beanz” Warde.
Other new shows include How to Buy a Home, fronted by “buyer’s agent” Liz O’Kane, which “follows the emotional ups and downs” of would-be homebuyers, and Second Chance Bootcamp with Rebecca de Havilland, in which the trans woman presenter helps “people who have been dealt a blow in life” overcome adversity.
In Dylan McGrath’s Secret Service, the celebrity chef will put culinary novices through their paces, while four-part series The Clinic for Well People “looks at the true health of the nation, not by examining the sick, but the well”. Virgin said these two programmes together with Second Chance Bootcamp form a trio of shows about reinvention and the chance to start over.
Returning shows include Gogglebox Ireland, documentary series The Guards and celebrity reality staple The Restaurant, while The Group Chat, a filmed podcast featuring news correspondents Zara King, Gavan Reilly and Richard Chambers, will air weekly on Virgin Media Two.
NFL games
As part of a strong roster of sports rights, the broadcaster will show a weekly NFL highlights show and live coverage of two NFL games held in London plus next February’s Super Bowl for the first time.
Before that, the Champions League and other European football fixtures will be coming thick and fast as sporting calendars are disrupted to make way for the winter Fifa World Cup, while I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! will be broadcast a fortnight earlier than normal for the same reason.
“Our schedule is going to be absolutely bursting with gems in September, October and November, which are the months when we make the vast majority of our revenue. It means we will have higher ratings and a higher return,” Mr Malone said.
December, when the World Cup will reach its latter stages on RTÉ, is not quite as important commercially, he added.
Meanwhile, Virgin’s co-production with ITV, Holding, comes to Virgin Media One and the Virgin Media Player this month, having debuted on Virgin Media More, a channel available only to Virgin’s pay-TV customers, in the spring. Mr Malone indicated that its strategy of running content first on More would continue.
