BBC Worldwide announces digital deals with Hungama and Vuclip

BBC Worldwide recently announced two new licensing deals with India's digital services providers Hungama and Vuclip. With these Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) deals, Indian viewers will have access to a host of award-winning and popular BBC drama series never before seen in India.

Viewers of Hungama will be able to watch BBC programmes premiering in India for the first time from April-end onwards. These include crime drama Prey (Series 1), in which John Simm (Life on Mars, State of Play) stars as a man on the run, desperate to clear his name for the sake of his family, and Not Safe For Work - a comedy drama which follows Katherine (played by Zawe Ashton) who is reluctantly relocated from London to Northampton as part of public spending cuts where she meets a disparate yet similarly disillusioned group of workmates. Also included in the list are sci-fi, comedy and horror shows, as well as Save Our Skins, in which protagonists Ben and Stephen wake up one morning to realise that the human race has disappeared and they are the only two humans left on Earth. Besides these, other shows will also be available on demand for viewers to watch at their own convenience.

Subscribers of Vuclip's Over-The-Top (OTT) service Viu, can now catch block-busting BBC dramas including the modern re-working of Tolstoy's epic masterpiece War and Peace, starring Paul Dano, Lily James and James Norton, and the BAFTA-nominated Doctor Foster in which Doctor Gemma Foster, a loving wife and trusted doctor's seemingly perfect world is shattered when she suspects her husband of having an affair.

"Over the last few months, we have seen an upward trend in BBC dramas being increasingly snapped up by Indian clients for their linear TV and digital TV platforms. A study commissioned by BBC Worldwide last year showed that both Indian and international audiences love original British drama," says Myleeta Aga, senior vice-president and general manager of BBC Worldwide (India) in a press release.

Adding further, Aga says, "With more and more Indians going online to watch their favourite dramas, we are excited to work with Hungama and Viu to satisfy viewers' demands by bringing critically acclaimed and highly-rated BBC programmes to their subscribers."

Hungama is the largest aggregator, developer, publisher and distributor of Bollywood and South-Asian entertainment content in the world with over four million pieces of content across genres and languages distributed through Hungama Play, Hungama Music, and Hungama.com.

Vuclip, a PCCW Media Company, is a video-on-demand service for emerging markets with nine million subscribers per quarter. The company's OTT service Viu is currently enjoyed by consumers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and India.