ITV picks up Gervais show Flanimals

Ricky Gervais

LONDON - The Office co-creator Ricky Gervais' book series Flanimals is being made into a primetime stop-motion animation show for ITV, the network's director of entertainment and comedy, Paul Jackson, said yesterday.

The humorous fantasy creatures that go by the names of Clunge Ambler, Grundit, Puddloflaj and Munty Flumple have proved to be best-sellers on both sides of the Atlantic.

They will star in six 30-minute episodes, written and narrated by the co-creator and star of The Office and Extras, that are expected to be ready to air by the end of 2007. The characters will be animated by ex-Aardman Animations pioneers Charles Mills and Terry Brain.

"This will go into the primetime schedule; it's not just a children's show," Jackson said at a lunch hosted by the Broadcast Press Guild.

"This is Ricky's first major project since Extras," he said, adding that he hopes the relationship will extend to further projects with Gervais.

In his first major interview since being handed the comedy and entertainment portfolio at the leading commercial broadcaster, former Granada America chief executive Jackson said his priorities were to increase the amount of comedy on ITV and to look to the US production model to improve ITV's biggest entertainment shows.

"One of the things they do differently in America is that network executives get much more involved, they go to edits, they are in all the script meetings. I want that model here," he said.

Jackson is working with ex-ABC executive Duncan Gray to revamp all of ITV's entertainment output.

"With even our biggest shows we'll be looking at how we can make each series bigger and better with new elements so you can't just think, 'I've seen that show, I know what it is,'" Jackson said.

Jackson said he also was in talks with stateside producers about shows for the network.

"At the moment, I'm being pitched by US companies as much as by British ones, and we are looking at reviving some comedies that I pitched to Fox last year but were not picked up by the network," he said.

ITV's share price remains in the doldrums, hovering around the 1-pound mark after chief executive Charles Allen turned down a bid that valued the venture 30 per cent more earlier this year, leading to a dramatic cost-cutting program under which ITV has exited some of its factual genres and shuttered its production of kids' fare.

- REUTERS/Hollywood Reporter