Show of the Week: Captured in Cleveland

Passion Distribution’s sales manager, Benelux and CEE, Agnes Mbye explains the rationale for pushing this standalone fast-turnaround doc about the three American women held hostage in a home owned by Cleveland resident Ariel Castro is past form. “Looking at our past deals for similar programmes, we place these docs with terrestrial and public broadcasters and women channels [from the CEE],” she says.

Madeleine Was Here, 18 Years: The Jaycee Lee Dugard Story and, more recently, Oscar Pistorius: What Really Happened? have all been acquired by local channels for their dedicated 1x60mins doc strands.

The doc features a mix of exclusive interviews with people close to the story and unique access, undercover reportage and never-seen-before footage. It looks at the accused Castro brothers, the events surrounding the abductions of three women and alleged police failings.

Passion is launching the dox as part of the distributor’s expanded programming catalogue as now it sells the Mentorn content that would have previously gone out through Mentorn International. Passion took on the Mentorn catalogue after the latter’s parent Tinopolis Group acquired the former last year.

The show: Captured in Cleveland

The producer: Mentorn Media

The distributor: Passion Distribution

The broadcaster: BBC3

The concept: Documentary on the recent kidnapping case that made global headlines, in which three women were freed after a decade in captivity in a Cleveland home