Channel 4 to axe Big Fat Gypsy Wedding in 2013
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding is being axed by Channel 4, it has been revealed. The documentary show about travellers - which drew record audiences when it launched in 2011 - will end with six stand-alone specials next year, Channel 4 boss Jay Hunt revealed at the Edinburgh TV Festival, according to The Daily Mirror. He said: "We have quite naturally got to a point where we are thinking differently about the franchise. "There will be more Gypsy Weddings next year, we are doing some specials, but not another series. "Entirely for creative reasons, it's important to know when to draw the line and I think we're close to drawing it. "There comes a point where you have to move on." The first My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding show attracted almost nine million viewers, making it the channel's most-watched show since Big Brother. The second series, which launched in February this year, was still popular with audience figures of over six million. The show, which launched the TV career of gypsy Paddy Doherty, gave an inside view into traveller life, wowing viewers with their extravagant and elaborate wedding ceremonies. Some were also shocked by the girls leaving school at such a young age to get married and traditions such as 'grabbing', which is allegedly where a man grabs a girl and kisses her and she is then obliged to marry him.
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.