Drive investigates Rome, debuts Annie

UK-based Drive Media Rights heads into its first MIPTV with a doc series studying the Roman Empire and another about a young women trying to understand her birth family’s troubled life.

8 Days that Made Rome is an 8x60mins series from October Films that focuses on key moments that defined Ancient Rome.

Historian Bettany Hughes presents the show, which includes episodes on Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Emperor Nero and the Colosseum.

Programme financier Krempelwood coproduced the show, which is for Channel 5 in the UK.

Also on the slate is Annie: Out of the Ashes (pictured), a 1x60mins BBC Three documentary, again from October, about Annie Price, the daughter of a white Irish traveller mother and black British father, who was found in a caravan aged four weeks with horrific burns.

The doc follows Price as a 30-year-old woman trying to understand what led to her family shunning her and how their turbulent life led to her injuries.

Volatile Earth is a 3x60mins PBS and More4 science-themed coproduction from Blink Films, while 1947: The People’s Wedding is a 1x60mins is billed as a landmark doc looking at the marriage of then-Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

It is for ITV and from Oxford Film and TV, which is also behind Channel 4 doc Marilyn: The Auction of a Lifetime, also on the Drive slate.

Elsewhere, the sales arm of coproduction finance specialist Drive is selling Channel’s Little Gem-produced How to Build a Human, in which Humans star Gemma Chan explores the cutting-edge frontiers of artificial intelligence.