ITVX aiming to rival Netflix’s true crime monopoly with explosive Boris Becker and Rolf Harris documentaries-Pierra Willix-Entertainment – Metro

Rolf Harris will be the focus of a new ITVX documentary (Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images)

The Director of Television at ITV has said the network is ready to rival Netflix as it launches a slate of new factual programs for its new streaming service, ITVX.

When it comes to factual series, Netflix has had the marketed cornered for years.

If you think of stranger than fiction series that have had people hooked, dominated social media chatter or sparked water cooler conversation, it’s Making A Murderer, Tiger King and Dahmer that stand out.

But now Kevin Lygo says there’s a new player in the game and that ITVX is ready to start stealing some of the audience’s attention.

Speaking at the launch of the platform last month, Lygo said there was a ‘great opportunity’ for the company to commission ‘different sort of factual’ content.

‘If I’m honest and a bit critical about mainstream factual over the past few years, it’s all become a bit the same and quite familiar,’ he said.

What could possibly rival Tiger King? (Picture: Netflix)

‘They are very good watches if you want to see it and if you are tied to a chair you will enjoy it, but I think the amount of choice available to us all now every evening means it is hard and we’ve got  to up our game in factual.’

As he said it was a fine balance between making it ‘grabby’, but not a ‘sell-out’.

‘[We need to] learn from what the streamers, Netflix primarily, have done with documentaries and younger audiences really love watching factual, especially true crime,’ he continued.

‘The effects you can have when you get something right…remember what happened after something like Cowspiracy, it was an enormous effect.’

He also said the service would be a chance to attract new people in.

‘Part of the purpose of ITVX is to connect with audiences who maybe don’t watch a lot of ITV,’ he explained.

‘We have our loyal, regular fabulous people who watch soaps and daytime and the rest of it but what we have to do with factual is find a new way of telling stories and finding stories.’

Boris Becker’s fall from grace will be another docu-series subject (Picture: SWNS.com)

Part of this process will be the release of the documentaries The Rise and Fall of Boris Becker and Rolf Harris: Hiding in Plain Sight.

‘Everyone has been looking for a way to do biography that feels fresh and modern and not like anything we’ve seen before,’ he said.

‘[With these two] we feel like their stories haven’t really been told.’

Other factual documentaries and series’ will include A Year On Planet Earth, Monster in My Family, The Case Against Cosby and a series presented by Laura Whitmore which explores phenomena like incels and cyberstalking.

‘Not every night of your life do you want to watch a great big luscious drama and that is the challenge for us, but we want people to talk about these and feel like they have their finger on the pulse so we will be trying loads of things to start and will see what really connects with people,’ he said.

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‘There seems to be an unbelievable stream of stories to tell.

‘The test for ITVX is that we don’t have to appeal to five million people on a Wednesday night on ITV, so we can loosen up and tell more complex stories in a different way.’

ITVX launches on December 8.

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