Commissioned
by CBBC controller Anne Gilchrist, the raft
of new drama, factual and entertainment series
from the regions will help boost the BBC's
commitment to out of London Network programme
spend by 50 per cent by 2016.
Gilchrist
says, "These new commissions underline CBBC's continuing commitment to original
British content. Both
shows have children at their heart and are guaranteed to be hugely entertaining."
The
new commissions come on the heels of the announcements
of Tracy Beaker, written by children's
author Jacqueline Wilson and produced by the
CBBC drama team in Newcastle, and Ingenious,
a one-off drama written for CBBC by Jeanette
Winterson and produced in Liverpool.
Jinx
is based on the Lulu Baker trilogy by Fiona Dunbar. The comedy-drama series
charts the adventures of a truly modern-day Cinderella.
Lulu
may be a typical teen but she has a very cool secret she's the proud owner
of a magic cookbook. She can bake her own gingerbread boyfriend for the school
dance, rustle up an extra-terrestrial to win a class debate on the existence of
aliens and give her annoying stepbrother donkey ears by feeding him a magic cookie.
The
possibilities are endless and life would be perfect except that the guardian of
the book, Cookie, is a mischievous imp and her recipes never quite turn out as
Lulu planned. But, with big power comes big responsibility and Lulu always tries
really hard to fix the unforeseen side-effects. Jinx is currently in pre-production
and begins shooting this month.
This
Kid Could Change The World is a nine half-hour
episode factual series where children from
across the UK will have their passionate and
innovative world-changing ideas put to the
test.
A
series of heats will gather the best ideas from across the country and the hopefuls
will arrive at the HQ to put their ideas into action. Through a series of set
tasks two expert innovators and a mysterious benefactor, The Big Cheese, will
determine which ideas have the potential to succeed and which will fail out in
the real world.
For
the series finale, an invited studio audience
of kids will get to decide which idea gets
set in motion by The Big Cheese. The series
is due to air next year.