Brothers with No Game, Season 1 & 2 has been acquired by UK TV channel London Live (owned by the London Evening Standard), launching in Spring 2013.
Brothers With No Game | Season 2 Ep 7: Finale
The Brothers With No Game is a blog written anonymously by four twenty-something friends from London. It follows four men as they traverse London life, relationships and jobs. Their web series debuted on 11 June. For them, writing the show as a web series was an obvious choice. "We started with the blog in October 2010 and have had an amazing response; more than half a million hits. We began thinking it would work well as a series and decided on an online sitcom. With an online medium, we can do things our own way," says Justin Credible (one of the creators' nicknames).
The "Brothers" are in their mid-20s (25 to 27) and are all of British African descent. They all came from non-TV backgrounds: how much of a challenge was that? "From a writing perspective, it wasn't anything too new, although it's a scripted format. One of us is hoping to become a scriptwriter, so this is kind of their niche," he says. "We've been fortunate enough to have a producer who had produced a couple of online things, and he gave us the benefit of his experience. But we don't have a huge production company behind us." Funding the show has also proved challenging: "We have to fund everything ourselves – we've had to be creative with what we have in order to make it work. But people have seen what we're trying to do and have asked to join in." They've read the blog and enjoyed it and they want to be a part of it." BWNG are planning a Crowdfunder campaign (the UK equivalent of Kickstarter) in the future, from which they will pay the actors and production costs.
A casting call brought in 80 actors, something Credible describes as "an amazing response. It was obviously something that they thought would do well, and it shows how people want to get into meatier roles that are a bit different." On the subject of blackness on television, Credible says: "I don't think we're given a chance to really showcase what we're all about in terms of the black British population. I mean, Top Boy and My Murder are brilliant TV and really engaging viewers but I think there's also space for dramas and sitcoms and thrillers." He continues: "Variety is the key message here. There's a narrow representation of what it means to be black; there need to be different stories told." The rise in web series by black creators is a direct response, he says. "It's why we're taking things into our own hands. If it's not going to be on TV, at least we'll be online - it'll be interesting to see how it impacts television."
Via The Guardian, Monday 2 July 2012
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