Two announcements regarding the Fresh Prince of Bel Air today, one from the BBC and one from Sky!
Purely in alphabetical order, we’ll start with the BBC announcement.
“The BBC has acquired iconic titles The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Pretty Little Liars and the spin-off Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists from Warner Bros. International Television.”
It will be the first time since 2004 that the hit nineties comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air will be back on the BBC. The classic series, which launched 30 years ago and originally aired on BBC Two in the UK, will drop on BBC iPlayer on New Year’s Day with all 148 episodes from six seasons available to watch. It launched the screen career of Will Smith who plays a fictionalised version of himself that famously moves to live in Bel-Air, California with his Auntie and Uncle (starring Janet Hubert/Daphne Maxwell Reid and the late James Avery, alongside Alfonso Ribeiro, Karyn Parsons, and Tatyana M. Ali, as Smith’s cousins and Joseph Marcell as the butler Geoffrey).
Pretty Little Liars ran for seven series from 2010 and has become a cult classic. Set in the fictional town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, the series follows the lives of four girls whose friendship falls apart following the disappearance of the group’s leader Alison DiLaurentis (played by Sasha Pieterse). Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists is a single season spin-off and a UK premiere which features the return of Alison DiLaurentis (again played by Sasha Pieterse). This time the story is centred around a murder in the college town of Beacon Heights where on the surface everything seems perfect – from their top-tier college to their overachieving residents. But nothing in Beacon Heights is as it appears to be. The stress of needing to be perfect leads to the town’s first murder. Behind every Perfectionist is a secret, a lie and a needed alibi.
All series of Pretty Little Liars will also arrive on BBC iPlayer on New Years Day. Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists will be available at a later date.
Meanwhile on Sky
Will Smith’s acclaimed sitcom series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is heading to Sky Comedy and NOW TV, it was announced today by Sky. With over 148 episodes across 6 seasons, the full series from Warner Bros. Television will be available on demand from 1 January 2021. [Obviously they also had a lot of similar background to the BBC]
Whatever your choice, if you’re a Will Smith or Fresh Prince fan, you’ve a lot of rewatching to do!