YLE chooses Magnify for Mental

In Finland - country with a population of five million-, the show was watched 2.8 million times,. The broadcaster employed a multiplatform strategy to reach the broadly non-linear 15- to 24-year-old demographic with the objective of de-stigmatising mental illness.

YLE approached Magnify after monitoring the latter’s success with an unscripted format that tackles the issue of mental health: Anti TV’s True Selfie for NRK1 in Norway, which the Finnish pubcaster will also be piloting in 2017. The rights to True Selfie have been optioned in the US and the UK (Half Yard Productions), Canada (Bristow Global Media), Germany (ProSieben), the Netherlands (Simpel Media) and Denmark (Nordisk). 

True Selfie looks at a world driven by social media, in which young people present a carefully curated version of their perfect lives and their perfect selfies. However, many young people have never felt more lonely or disconnected from real relationships. This powerful format follows the therapy process of eight young people with mental-health issues from two perspectives: their self-filmed video diaries and their group therapy sessions. 

Andrea Jackson, managing director of Magnify Media: ‘Taking the step into scripted formats had to be with the right property, and this is a magnificent piece of multiplatform IP, with a clear public-service remit and positive social impact. As with True Selfie, Mental requires sensitivity, vision and empathy to make it work well. But as was the case in Finland, if you get that right, you’ve then got a huge hit on your hands’.
 
Along with Magnify Media’s push into scripted, the distributor is taking a new slate of non-scripted formats to MIPTV next month. Highlights include Plimsoll Productions’ Teach My Pet to Do That (8x'30), the ITV primetime show that celebrates the untapped intelligence of the nation’s pets, slated to air this summer. 

Another primetime format, NRK’s Five Days Inside, sees the host spend five days and nights in an institution - a drug rehab centre, an eating-disorder clinic, an elderly people’s home, a prison. Through their eyes, we come to understand what it is like to live and work behind these closed doors