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Â鶹Éç Worldwide's production studios in France and India have secured commissions to produce local versions of The Week the Women Went, a Â鶹Éç Productions format licensed internationally by Â鶹Éç Worldwide.

Â鶹Éç Worldwide Productions France's version, Une semaine sans les femmes, will be produced for French public broadcaster France Televisions, and is set to launch in spring 2011 as a primetime two-hour special on France2. Â鶹Éç Worldwide Productions India's version, Wife Bina Life, is being produced in partnership with Hindi-language entertainment channel Star Plus, and will broadcast from 29th January 2011.

Matt Paice, Executive Vice President, International Production at Â鶹Éç Worldwide welcomed the deals: "The Week the Women Went has proved extremely popular with audiences around the world. These mark the ninth and tenth deals we've made on this format, and we expect to announce more deals in the future." He added, "This format is extremely versatile: in France it's airing as a single piece of event TV – and it marks France2's first foray into reality television. In India it will be a long-running series with eliminations. Either way, these shows are certain to hit the headlines with a subject matter that continues to command attention."

The Week the Women Went is an ambitious, observational series that tracks a social experiment in which women volunteer to leave their community for a week, to see how the men cope with looking after the kids, cooking, cleaning and supporting the community without them. In Wife Bina Life the participants from the general public will be joined by Bollywood and Indian television stars making special guest appearances in some episodes, including Arshad Warsi, Archana Puran Singh, Parmeet Sethi and Raveena Tandon.

Â鶹Éç Worldwide has previously licensed the format in Germany (RTL2), Sweden (SVT), Belgium (VRT), Canada (CBC), Denmark (TV2), Norway (TV2), Finland (YLE) and Holland (SBS).

NOTES TO EDITORS
The image above is from the UK version of The Week the Women Went, which first aired in 2005 (© Â鶹Éç).

Ben Nolan