Remy Blumenfeld’s indie Thinking Violets has teamed with French producer Herve Hubert to develop an adaptation of French entertainment formats Shopping Queens and Shopping Kings for the UK market, TVWise has learned.
The sister formats, which air on M6 in France, are hosted by Cristina Cordula and follow five women or five men as they go shopping for an outfit for various special occasions. Each episode showcases one contestant, who has just three hours to spend their budget before they walk down the catwalk to be judged by their four rivals.
Shopping Kings and Shopping Queens air daily on M6 on alternate weeks and have both been ratings hits for the French network. Shopping Queens frequently wins the 5:30pm time-slot against competition from TF1’s Four In a Bed, Four Weddings and Big Brother; and just last week the show hit a new ratings high for the broadcaster with 1.5 million viewers and a 12% share. To date more than 500 episodes of the shopping formats have been produced.
Rather than developing a straight adaptation, Thinking Violets founder & former ITV Studios exec Remy Blumenfeld and veteran producer Herve Hubert plan to create a mixed gender version for the UK market. At this early development stage, there is no UK broadcaster attached to the project.
“Five women giving their opinions about each other’s style is very funny to watch and you learn things about fashion that will help you”, Hubert said in a statement. “I think Shopping Queens is a universal format and I am very glad to team up with Remy Blumenfeld to try to make it a success in the UK.”
While Thinking Violets’ Founder and Chief Creative Officer Remy Blumenfeld added: “This format is so successful because it taps into how we all judge each other’s appearance in a wonderfully entertaining way, where you actually come away with great ideas and style advice about what not to wear.”
