Commissioning scenarios

City Confidential

An Augmented Reality Drama which users can participate in online and in cities across the UK*

City Confidential is a thriller set in the world of the scandal-mag-come-style-sheet of the title. Editor Hughie Shepherd has hit on a rich seam of stories in the world of local celebrity, politics, urban redevelopment, arts and culture and the network of back-scratching and corruption that binds them together.

Online and on public screens across the city his face is everywhere - asking for your contributions to "tell it like it is". You become engaged in Hughie's world, explore the video features, subscribe to the Citybitch Vodcast and receive text messages alerts as you enter the city's shops, bars, galleries and concert venues. Out shopping on a Saturday you're invited to meet the journalists working for CC. You contribute your own stories... and you begin to realize that Hughie has made himself a marked man. Accused of taking bungs from local developers Hughie disappears from view. Can you find him, clear his name and expose the real story?

Part conspiracy drama part urban reality show, City Confidential invites you to participate in an ongoing drama and contribute your own content. Online, on mobile, on TV and in the real world CC explores the paranoia and excitement of the city.

Piloted in Newcastle/Gateshead in 2009 with the support of the PSP and Screen North East. CC is written by Tom Wrong and produced by multimedia production company Media69 in collaboration with Slam Dunk Theatre Company and digital studio Waste Concept.

The first 'series' of City Confidential will be rolled out in 2010 in Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, Belfast, Cardiff and London with support from their respective regional Development Agencies. Each city will generate its own users and its own edition. Everyone can join the national experience at www.cityconfidential.net.

City Confidential is also available as a simultaneous short run TV series drawn from the ARD and broadcast by one of the PSP's broadcasting partners.

How would TV treat this? - As a terrific conspiracy thriller. Viewers could watch but not contribute. They couldn't find their own way through the story. But more importantly it wouldn't encourage them to contribute their own content about their city and the challenges it faces. This factual and contemporary content not only surrounds the ARD it becomes part of it. How could TV do that?

* with apologies to Colin Bateman