Factual

Abacus Media Rights (AMR), an Amcomri Entertainment company, has picked up distribution rights for factual entertainment series, Ross Kemp: Shipwreck Treasure Hunter (4 x 60’), for Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, the US, Canada, France and Iberia.

Produced by Honey Bee in association with Freshwater Films, a co-production with Motion Content Group, the series has been commissioned and executive produced by Dan Korn, VP of Programming at A+E Networks UK, with Diana Carter, Commissioning Editor and Head of Talent at A+E Networks UK, for broadcast on Sky HISTORY in Spring 2022 – the first UK commission from Honey Bee and Freshwater Films for Sky HISTORY.

Ross Kemp, who completed an advanced HSE scuba diving course in the two months leading up to filming, will be joined by expert diver Emily Turton and maritime archaeologist and expert diver Mallory Haas on expeditions to the most spectacular shipwrecks in the UK, uncovering hidden treasures and history from Britain’s past.

Jonathan Ford, Managing Director at AMR comments, “This is an absorbing series which takes us on an incredible journey of discovery. Ross Kemp is a consummate presenter who brings these fascinating stories to life, displaying his natural and engaging enthusiasm for the subject.”

Ross Kemp: Shipwreck Treasure Hunter is a very personal quest for Ross. His grandfather, 'Pop' Chalmers, was in the Merchant Marines during World War II and was shipwrecked and survived three times. Pop's two cousins both served and died aboard HMS Hood when it went into battle against the mighty Bismarck. The young brothers were stationed at Scapa Flow and departed on the HMS Hood to intercept the Bismarck before being sunk. His dives to these wrecks are long-held ambitions to reach back into his own familial past, as much as it is a captivating and perilous adventure in its own right.

The team travel across the UK to undertake perilous dives in extremely hazardous environments to discover the secrets that lie beneath the sea. Ross will dive on WWI and WWII wrecks like the warship SMS Karlsruhe and SS Tabarka; a British submarine and the Iona II and an American Civil War ‘gun runner’ lost in mysterious circumstances in the Bristol Channel. Mallory will show Ross a recently uncovered wreck, its identity, if proven, will put Ross at the centre of an archaeological discovery that would shed new light on one of the most sinister and suppressed chapters in British history.