After four seasons of producing the Ultimate Braai Master, Cooked in Africa Films has been able to boast impressive new viewership benchmarks. The series is currently premiering on etv and the fourth season, titled Ultimate Braai Master – Game On, is attracting an average weekly TV audience of 1.7-million viewers (4.4 AR) in its 16:00 premier slot on Sundays, followed by a repeat on Saturdays at 13:00, which delivers an audience of a further 500 000 viewers.

Cooked in Africa Films executive producer and managing partner, Peter Gird, is thrilled with the results. “Historically, Ultimate Braai Master has performed well above the premier broadcast average of other leading local cooking formats, averaging approximately 600 000 prime-time viewers in its consecutive first two seasons on SABC3, and last year on e.tv where the third season enjoyed a small increase in average viewership. This year, our strategy to move the series to a weekend off-shoulder slot has paid off for the series and the channel, with the latter enjoying higher than average Audience Ratings (ARs) for a local lifestyle TV series in this timeslot,” he says.

But the series is not only enjoying local popularity. Gird is upbeat about the Ultimate Braai Master’s success amongst international audiences too. TVF, a leading UK-based distribution agency recently sold the first two seasons broadcast rights in Latin America, which is expected to start airing in 2016. Even bigger than that is the news that the format rights for Ultimate Braai Master is being managed by global format rights giant, all3Media, which has secured options for the replication of the franchise in America, Canada, Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Poland and Brazil.

“This makes the Ultimate Braai Master South Africa’s first home-grown television series to be produced internationally and is potentially history in the making,” says Gird.

Cooked in Africa Films creative director and partner, Justin Bonello, believes that the series has highlighted a growing global television trend that is seeing a revival of featured open-air and traditional cooking methods.

After taking time out from Cooked to grow the Ultimate Braai Master franchise, Bonello is eager to revisit his original passion in two very different shows next year. In the first show, and about 10 years after shooting the pilot for Cooked, Bonello returns a little older and somewhat wiser. The destination? A Cooked reunion on the island of Reunion. This 10-part series, Cooked: The Reunion, is the seventh season of Cooked and will see Bonello reunite with his friends on an all new nostalgic road trip, revisiting some of their favourite places and setting off on new adventures.

The second show, Fire, takes Bonello’s love for cooking on the open fire to an entirely new level. After driving on almost every dirt road in South Africa, Bonello is taking his love for that umami taste across the world – from the Argentinean spits to the Barbeque culture of the USA, across the Mediterranean through Asia and all the way down under to Australia. He will travel the globe to seek out the hidden cultures and recipes of the fire. Both new series are currently in the early stages of pre-production.

Cooked In Africa Films’ non-scripted culinary and craft beer tour, Beer Country, is South Africa’s first ever TV show dedicated to beer, food, fire and the open road. The thirsty pair, hosts Greg Gilowey and Karl Tessendorf (brothers-in-law), set off on a road trip in search of the best craft beers in the country while creating new pairing combinations with their combined love of the braai. Represented by TVF, Beer Country has been sold in some surprising international territories, including India and Burma, with more big news coming soon.

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