Meet the Delegates: Series Producer Programme

Series Producer Programme is a training programme for ambitious Producers based in the Nations and Regions.

Ally’s career began seventeen years ago, in feature films and drama, working her way up from floor runner to third assistant director, before she made the move to factual television fourteen years ago. Since then, she has focused on directing, shooting and edit producing and has worked on a wide variety of shows, from The Voice Australia to hour long BBC arts documentaries. Last year she invested in her own Sony Fx6 camera kit and self-shot and series produced BBC Scotland’s new format series ‘Secret Body’ and more recently has worked as a shooting director on BBC Studio’s new series ‘Ultimate Wedding Planner’ and series 5 of ‘Amazing Hotels’.

Ally started her career in Glasgow in post-production at STV before moving to the States to work for National Geographic in both Washington DC and New York. She did a further stint in London before returning home to join BBCNI as a Senior Producer, based in Belfast. She pressed pause on broadcasting in 2007 when she had her first of three children and went on to freelance as a journalist while lecturing at the NI Film & Television School, where she has been championing new entrants and mature career changers since 2015. This year sees Ally making a return to broadcasting. She’s delighted to have been chosen for WFTV’s 2023 Mentoring Scheme and thrilled to be part of TRC’s Series Producer Programme. Ally sees the Programme as an opportunity to refresh her skills while developing new ones, widening her industry network across the Nations & Regions and hopefully overcoming the challenges and obstacles that a ‘returner’ can find themselves facing.

Catrin began as a runner in a Cardiff post-production house in the early noughties, going on to work
in drama production, before finally landing in factual entertainment in 2007. Stints with various
production companies across a variety of genres built up her CV and industry experience before
starting with Boom Cymru TV as an assistant producer in 2011. A run of setting up a variety of new
series’ followed, becoming regular repeat commissions on S4C. She has since completed her first
series producer production with one of S4C’s popular primetime entertainment formats, and is
currently in pre-production for a new arts series. She is passionate about the strength of current
regional programme-making in Wales.

Channing is a freelance Producer Director specialising in fact ents, docs and obs docs. She started
her career within production management, but quickly moved across to editorial where she has
remained since, working in producer director roles at all stages of production, from development to
edit. Channing has worked across a variety of genres and enjoys learning different skills from them
all. Lately she has been focused on crime programmes, but always loves going back to reality, obs
doc and day time shows when the right programme comes along. She has worked for most of the uk’s
major broadcasters and has experience on programmes including A New Life in the Sun, The One Show,
Cops Who Kill, Morning Live, The Yorkshire Vet and Teen Mom. Channing is also working towards her
doctorate, in partnership with the Economic and Social Research Council, researching how it may be
possible to build a more inclusive industry.

Claire has over 20 years of experience working in factual television, and is proud to make
intelligent and engaging programmes that always aim to make the world kinder – or occasionally
fatter. Alongside years working as a director for ITVs Long Lost Family, where she is entrusted with
the most sensitive stories and vulnerable contributors, she has worked at Wall to Wall making Who Do
You Think You Ares; as well as Fake or Fortune for BBC studios. Previous credits include the
Grierson winning Our Gay Wedding: The Musical, which the chairman of Channel 4 credited for putting
the heart back into the channel; and the first series of the Great British Bake Off.

Emma has been in the TV industry for over 20 years, working in Factual Entertainment and Specialist
Factual. She started her career at Central Television in Nottingham, then worked in London, then
Bristol, then London again. She now lives near Cambridge and tries to work remotely as much as
possible. For the last 5 years, she has worked as an Edit Producer/Series Edit Producer, mainly at
Shine, but also at Dragonfly, Voltage and Maverick, on shows like Hunted, The Island, Surgeons at
the Edge of Life and Rick Stein’s Cornwall. Before that she had a career break, and before that
spent 9 years as a PD. She’s just starting her first Series Producer role.

Holly is a multi award winning documentary filmmaker with a passion for telling marginalised people’s
stories. Holly has won awards for radio documentaries, been nominated for a children’s BAFTA and is
currently a Director at Hey Sonny in Sheffield, a disabled led indie. She has produced many popular
shows such as 24 Hours in A&E, Operation Ouch! and Channel 4’s ‘Disability and Abortion: The
Hardest Choice.’ Holly also worked as a Shooting PD for years making lots of documentary content for
CBBC and BBC3.

After several years working on ITV’s breakfast shows in London, Holly returned to the Midlands in
2019. There, she joined Full Fat Television as a Producer on a new medical series, The Bad Skin
Clinic. Over the past four years, Holly has been integral in shaping and growing the series to
become one of Quest Red’s highest-rated shows and has recently been promoted to Series Producer.
Holly champions regional talent and is keen to build the talent base in Birmingham.

Jemma is a Midlands-based Senior Producer specialising in comedy travelogues. She has produced twelve
series of Channel 4’s award-winning hit Travel Man, as well as streaming favourites Travels with my
Father for Netflix and The Reluctant Traveller for Apple TV+. Jemma’s fifteen-year TV career started
at MTV and she has since worked across a broad spectrum of shows in addition to working as a Fixer
and guest lecturer on international filming at universities and industry events. In 2020, Jemma was
mentored by a BBC Commissioner as part of the prestigious WFTV mentoring course and has ambitions to
one day run her own regional production company.

Katie always wanted to work in television. At the age of 22 she was the youngest Shooting Producer
working on the 2012 Olympic Games, kick starting Katie’s career in sport. She now works across
numerous multi-sport events, last year directing and vision mixing at both the indoor and outdoor
World Athletics Championships. When not found at a major international sporting event, Katie is an
incredibly talented Producer and Director, with the ability to turn her hand to any subject to
produce engaging and inventive content. From Idris Elba, to HRH The Queen, Katie has interviewed and
filmed many interesting people over her career. One of Katie’s career highlights is writing,
producing and directing the 2021 BBC Promo for the Ladies Final at Wimbledon, voiced by Miriam
Margolies. Challenging the way women’s sport is seen, the promo went viral, and kickstarted a debate
in the Wimbledon women’s dress code, leading to permanent changes being made from the 2023
tournament onwards.

Laura is a highly experienced senior producer working across documentaries, factual, factual
entertainment, and development. Starting her career 15 years ago as a runner on ‘Gladiators’ in
London where she worked for 11 years before returning to Glasgow in 2019. As a Producer she has
worked on a variety of popular series such as ‘24 Hrs in A&E’ (Channel 4), ‘24Hrs in Police
Custody’ (Channel 4) , ‘The MET Policing London’ (BBC) and ‘Married At First Sight’ (Channel 4).
Laura is currently senior producer on ‘Rescue Extreme Medics’ (Channel 4) which she has been doing
for the past two series, as well as edit producing two of the four episodes.

Kirsten has been working as a Shooting Producer/Director for the past 5 years in Glasgow, developing
her skills in observation documentaries in many different subject matters from the lives of the
keepers and animals at Edinburgh Zoo to filming plastic/cosmetic procedures in Glasgow. Kirsten
loves story telling and describes what we all do in TV is such a privilege, ‘When contributors give
you access into their lives, I feel so privileged that I get to experience a world I wouldn’t have
been given the opportunity to experience if I wasn’t filming, and that being filming in Barlinnie
Prison to a GP surgery in Elgin. It’s a very trusting and rewarding experience being able to do what
we do”. Kirsten is currently working at Two Rivers Media as the Series Producer/Self Shooting
Director on her first four films for BBC Scotland called ‘Facelift’.

Lindsay has worked in factual television for over 10 years, focusing on observational documentary,
specialist factual and factual entertainment. She currently works as both Shooting Producer /
Director and Edit Producer and has worked for all the major broadcasters on both series and singles,
at home and abroad. She works through her own company and in a freelance capacity for indies
including BBC Studios, Tern TV, Lion Television, Mighty Productions and Hello Halo, amongst others.
Lindsay aims to continue making entertaining and engaging television from her base in Glasgow and
hopes to nurture up and coming TV talent in Scotland.

Irish television producer Lorna moved to the UK 10 years ago, having started her career working on
food, travel and renovation formats. Working as a development producer in London, she brought
several ideas from page to screen, including Murder, Mystery & My Family which won a Broadcast
award and was nominated for several others. Development highlights also included writing endless
sample questions for what went on to become Channel 4’s One Question and designing and implementing
an Olympics for cats in 2016! Since moving to Manchester in 2019 Lorna has been working as an edit
producer, producer/director and series producer.

Maura has been working in television for almost two decades, starting out her career as a Broadcast
Journalist, before moving into television production. Working her way up from researcher to
producer, she specialises in factual and factual entertainment and has worked for the BBC, UTV, ITV
and various indies in Northern Ireland. In 2011, she was selected by Ch4 for a new talent showcase
and in 2018 she was shortlisted for a screenwriting award as part of the Edinburgh TV Festival. In
recent years she has been working in development, as well as writing for an international
publication. She is a member of the Irish Writers Centre.

Melanie has worked in the industry for the past 22 years having worked her way up from researcher to
Producer. Her background is in News & Current Affairs but she has experience of working across
many genres – from reality to true crime to factual entertainment. The first 17 years of her career
were spent as staff at the BBC, but since going freelance she has worked for many independent
production companies including True North, Purple Productions and ITN Productions. She is passionate
about flexible working, diversity and encouraging women to retain and grow their careers post
parenthood.

Since joining the TV industry in 2011, Sunny has worked continually throughout, either making TV
programmes or developing them. Accumulating over 60 broadcast credits with vast experience pitching
and obtaining commissions, with difficult and privileged access. Sunny has worked on several
sensitive and challenging observational documentaries, current affairs programmes, fact-ent docs and
docu-dramas across various countries around the world.

Sally Ogden is a Bradford filmmaker, producing and directing for all the main television channels
over the past 14 years. Sally specialises in difficult access based observational documentaries. She
began her career as a runner working on the Dragons Den spin off shows at the BBC and went on to
work for ITV as an Assistant Producer working on the popular retuning series Weight Loss Ward. Sally
has produced a number of difficult films for Channel 4 dispatches with renowned filmmaker Anna Hall
at Candour Productions including Forced Marriage Cops, The Truth about Muslim Marriage as well as
BAFTA and Grierson nominated ,The Family Secret. She is a BAFTA nominated producer. Over the past
few years she has produced and directed Fighting Shame for the Guardian, The Truth about Long Covid
for Dispatches, Industry Voices for social media, Yorkshire Midwives on Call, Episode 4 for BBC 2
and 33 Families One Big Build for BBC 1. Looking After the Grandkids: The True cost with Jennie
Bond. And most recently, When can I see my GP? Presented by Dr Amir Khan for ITV 1 Tonight series.
She has just completed a short film called Losing My Mind funded by Channel 4 and Bradford council.
Last year she was invited to become a voting Bafta member. A proud moment for a working class girl
from Bradford!

Sarah worked for over a decade as a research scientist before changing careers to follow her passion
in the natural world in the hope of engaging others to drive positive change.
She has spent the
last 14 years producing and directing natural history and science documentaries all over the world,
most recently focusing on the ocean and poles. She recently produced and directed the ocean episode
of the Emmy award winning series for Netflix hosted by Barack Obama, Our Great National Parks. She
also directed across BBC’s Blue Planet II and Frozen Planet II with Sir David Attenborough. She is
now a Senior Producer Director on Blue Planet III in BBCs Natural History Unit, Bristol. In the past
Sarah has worked out of London, Glasgow and Bristol, as a freelancer and as staff at BBC. She has
worked across many factual formats from self-shooting on front line obs docs and extreme science
expeditions on icebergs, to BBC4 series on physical science and Horizons. She hopes to support the
industry towards having a more inclusive and healthy working environment.

Stephanie has been working as a TV freelancer for 13 years and specialises in major prime time
documentaries. Originally from Lancashire, Stephanie spent the first 11 years of her time in the
industry based in London. She returned to the North West in 2021, moving to Manchester to further
grow her career. She has a number of high profile series credits at PD/Producer level such as SAS:
Who Dares Wins (C4), Ambulance (BBC1), The Savoy (ITV1) and 24 Hours in A&E (C4). She also has
worked on a number of documentary singles as well as first series such as; Hair Power: Me and My
Afro (C4), Freeze: Skating on the Edge (BBC3) and First Ladies of Hip Hop (BBC2) and has been
employed by indies across the UK including Blast! Films, The Garden, Dragonfly, Pulse Films and
Label 1. Stephanie is passionate about diversity, in all its forms, across the industry and is a
2022 Breakthrough Leader with the TV Collective.

Tom is Content Editor at BBC Three, leading the digital-first Edit Hub team at BBC Birmingham, with a
remit to produce high impact promo content across Three’s social platforms. Prior to working at
Three, Tom has had a successful career as a Producer/Director and Edit Producer across a range of
factual, fact-ent and digital content for all the major UK broadcasters – and is proud to have built
a career primarily in his adopted home of Birmingham

Valerie Mellon is a Specialist Factual, Shooting Producer Director and Edit Producer. After 20 years
experience in television, 3 Scottish BAFTA’s and a Scottish RTS award, she’s especially proud of her
ability to bring complex factual information to life. Always challenging herself, she’s filmed in an
enviable range of locations, China, Egypt, UAE, Caribbean, America and the Canadian Yukon. Starting
her career at the BBC, she’s now freelance and works across the UK on projects ranging from cutting
edge science and technology to ancient history.