Channel 4 links with Crackit, Two Rivers & Uppercut for unscripted projects

Jean Johansson

UK broadcaster Channel 4 has commissioned two new unscripted projects; property show Key To A Fortune and wartime crime feature doc Marine A (working title).

Crackit Productions is making the 6 x 60-minute Key To A Fortune, which is hosted by TV presenter Jean Johansson and sees families reunited with homes – and relatives –they didn’t know they had.

Each year in the UK, millions of pounds worth of vacant homes sit unclaimed. These hidden treasures belong to ordinary people, unknowing inheritors to treasured estates that were once owned by a distant relative who left no will. The series follows Johansson on a mission to find these inheritors, reunite them and help them decide what to do with their windfall.

Executive producers are Elaine Hackett and Rebecca Bayatti with Charlotte Taylor as series producer.

Marine A (working title), meanwhile, is a 1 x 90-minute feature documentary about the first British solider to be convicted of murder on a foreign battlefield since World War Two.

On 15 September 2011, an unarmed and wounded Taliban insurgent was shot in the chest by a British Royal Marine, who went on to tell his men that he “just broke the Geneva Convention”. With an exclusive interview with Alexander Blackman, known to most as Marine A, it reveals the story of that one day in Helmand.

The documentary, which is a co-production between Two Rivers Media and Uppercut Films,  includes never seen before, recently recovered, combat footage, and many who have never spoken on camera before, taking audiences into the heart of those minutes in battle and the ensuing four-year legal campaign that his wife waged to set him free.