Itv 1 The Circus Paulos Circus 2012

ITV1's The Circus 2.5 million/12% (151,000 +1)

ITV Studios daytime team has won its first primetime ITV1 commission with a documentary about a family-run circus.

The team, headed by Fiona Keenaghan, will produce 60-minute film The Circus (working title) about the Darnell family, who operate Paulos Circus and have a 200-year history working in the business.

It will follow the proprietors and their acts, including acrobats and clowns, as they travel the country over the summer.

The film is set to TX in November and inevitable comparisons have been drawn with Channel 4's Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. Like the gypsy series - which started as a single Cutting Edge documentary - ITV1 is open to doing an extended run of the circus documentary, if it proves popular.

The film was ordered by ITV's factual commissioning editor Diana Howie and will be executive produced by Miles Jarvis.

Keenaghan, ITVS's creative director of daytime and lifestyle, said: "Peak-time programming is part of the plan. I'm delighted that we are making what promises to be a fascinating doc for 9pm. The first of many I'm sure."


Lucy Mangan
The Guardian, Saturday 30 June 2012


This is a proper show: a ring full of sawdust, sparkle, plate-spinning clowns, horses and ponies trotting with dogs on their backs -- and then, in case such earthbound glories aren't enough, high, high above, sequinned trapeze artists wink and glitter, and high-wire acts lace the air.

We go behind the scenes. "Lotta shit for a Shetland," grins Amanda Sandow, glittering artist by night and horse trainer by day, now tracksuit-clad and shovelling away gamely to clear the boxes of equine effluvia. The big top takes eight hours of hard labour to put up, and the generators go off at midnight to save fuel.

The Circus, ITV1's new documentary series, is a gentle and gently melancholy look at Paulo's Circus, one of the few remaining traditional setups left in the country -- if not, it appears, for terribly much longer. Kenny Darnell is the paterfamilias. His family have owned Paulo's for around 200 years. He has three sons. Kenny Jr is married to trapeze artist Teodora (Teddy) and does the wheel of death act. "He was always a climber," explains his mother, who hasn't been able to watch his act since he fell 30ft and smashed his leg to bits aged 14. Patrick, AKA Patchy the clown, is 18 and delighted with the way life has worked out. "I get paid to be me! What could be better?" They had to let him sleep in his clown clothes when he was little, says Mum. And Leigh is the ringmaster, but always had his nose in books as a child. Now he is engaged to a veterinary nurse and dreams -- literally -- of being a security guard.

But audiences and takings are down every year. Kenny Jr and Leigh are beginning to pull away; by the end of the episode, Leigh has found the courage to tell his father that he will probably only give it another year before he starts a settled life with his fiancee. "I'm not going to stop you from doing whatever you want," says Kenny Sr. It's the best he can do as the wink and glitter of the future slowly fades.