ScreenTalk

The NZ broadcasters got focussed on Sex starved parrots, 45 Stone Virgins and a Half Ton Son at MIPCOM.  Be fascinating to know what the license fee is for these gems.

Stephen Fry’s new series Last Chance To See, in which he and Mark Carwardine track down animals on the edge of extinction has been sold to ABC (Australia), Sky Network (New Zealand) and Madman Entertainment (Australia for DVD).

Well over a million people have now watched the YouTube video of Sirocco the rare Kakapo parrot try to shag zoologist Mark Carwardine’s head as Stephen Fry looks on (which makes a bit of a variation on sheep-shagging jokes.

TLC’s highest rated documentary of 2009, 45 Stone Virgin has been sold to Network Ten (Australia) and TVNZ (New Zealand). The documentary follows thirty-one year old David Smith from Arizona who has gone from a morbidly obese loner to a healthy, happy fitness instructor, losing over 28 stone in weight without gastric bypass surgery.

In other girth-challenged programming, UK's Channel 4 has sold Half Ton Son to Nine and TVNZ. Billy Robbins, the world’s heaviest teenager, makes the decision to turn his life around, undergoing several operations and learning to be completely independent from his mother. Pass the donuts.