Select agenda

Long-standing readers may remember Cassian Harrison, eased out as Channel Editor, BBC4  during 2020. 

He's back on the commissioning bandwagon, as SVP of Content Creation and Acquisition, BBC Studios. And his first offering is for the documentary streamer BBC Select, available only to audiences in the U.S. and Canada via Amazon Prime Video Channels, the Apple TV app and The Roku Channel. 

BBC Select's first wholly-owned 'original' content ploughs over a fairly deep and familiar furrow. A Very Royal Crisis: Countdown to Abdication is a three-part documentary, narrated by Hugh Bonneville (the trailer helps our American friends with 'Downton Abbey' under his credit.) 

In 1961 Andrew Cruickshank narrated The Uncrowned King for BBC tv. Ludovic Kennedy used the same title for his run round the course in 1971. In 1976, James Cameron wrote and narrated 'Abdication' for BBC1. Denys Blakeway produced Abdication: A Very British Coup in 2006 for BBC4 (just before Cassian arrived).  In 2016 Carolyn Quinn made a half-hour documentary on the abdication for the BBC Parliament channel. In 2020 came a lecture by Kate Williams for BBC Parliament.   I've left out a vast range of longer series, in which the abdication formed the bulk of an episode.