Comedy Central International Greenlights Six Digital Originals

Comedy Central International is expanding its digital programming offerings with six new short-form originals for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and the web.

The Viacom unit developed a comedy-heavy slate based on its work over the past year developing digital original content for millennial audiences.

“What works for us is content that speaks to that 18 to 34 audience,” said Claire McArdle, vice president of comedy for Comedy Central International. “One of the areas that works for our audience, and resonates in multiple territories, is sketch.”

The new programs will mine the humor in comedians’ sex lives, politics and contemporary obsessions, such as “clean eating.”

South African YouTube personality Josh Pieters returns for a second season of Josh Investigates, where he’ll explore such topics as feminism, artificial intelligence and whether anyone really cares about politics.

The team behind the online sketch comedy series Comic Relief Originals — BAFTA-winning executive producer Jon Aird and writer/director/producers Daniel Audritt and Kat Butterfield — will produce Modern Horror Stories, a mixture of spoofs, satire and parody sketches skewering contemporary problems.

The London-based stand-up comedian Sofie Hagen will host Sofie’s Sex Stories, where she sits in her bedroom with her funny friends to talk about their sexual escapades, with the stories humorously retold through various mediums — including a puppet show and animation.

UK Comedian and Huffington Post writer Sophie Ducker stars in What I Wish I’d Said, in which comedians get to re-live an embarrassing moment, but this time find the perfect response.

Standup comedian Fin Taylor anchors a political game show Fin Taylor Plays Bullshit Bingo, where he deflates the overheated rhetoric around issues of the day — from Brexit to clean eating. He’ll travel to locations and interview individuals who don’t realize they’re contestants, and call them out on their performance.

Made Up News is described as an antidote to the news industry’s credibility gap. It features trustworthy news anchors, correspondents and guests discussing the day’s biggest headlines, with experts and fake-news experts going head to head in an attempt to get to the heart of the story.