EXCLUSIVE: Jimmy Akingbola-hosted Sorry, I Didn’t Know, the UK’s first quiz show centered on Black history, has been recommissioned and shifted away from ITV’s Black History Month schedule.
TriForce Productions’ panel show has run for three seasons during the October commemorative month in the UK but ITV is showing its commitment to the four-parter by moving it later in the Autumn.
The fourth outing of the RTS-nominated entertainment format will likely air in November and this time will be series produced by BET Awards producer Jonte Richardson.
In Sorry, I Didn’t Know, which is hosted by Peacock’s Bel-Air star Akingbola and filmed in front of a live audience, team captains Chizzy Akudolu and Eddie Kadi lead guests who answer questions about Black history. The show started life as an ITV 2 pilot in 2016 before being commissioned four years later as the UK TV industry experienced a reckoning amidst the Black Lives Matter protests. It attracts a few hundred thousand viewers per episode and has been greeted warmly by critics.
The creators have previously praised ITV for taking a chance on the series when other networks turned it down and the recommission comes at a tricky time more generally for UK panel shows in the wake of Mock the Week and Late Night Mash (formerly The Mash Report) being culled.
TriForce founder Fraser Ayres (In the Long Run) returns for Season 4 to lead a writing team featuring Viv May (Have I Got News For You) and Mark Boutros (8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown), while Aida Abdul-Raheem joins as trainee.
“We’re very proud to be working with ITV to not only deliver authentically Black, yet commercial programming outside of Black History Month, but also to be creating unprecedented pathways for talent that directly address the lack of diversity in senior roles,” said Fraser Ayres, who is EP alongside Minnie Ayres and Akingbola.
TriForce also made ITV’s critically-acclaimed documentary Handle with Care, which explored Akingbola’s experiences growing up in the British care system, with another in the strand currently being worked up.