STORY: For me,  story is everything.  Without it,  there's no drama,  no tension,  no comedy,  no tragedy,  no highs, no lows,.  It doesn't matter how good your images are,  how big your budget is,  how great your talent is,  if story gets neglected you've got nothing.  

Story is my passion - making sure that there's a strong narrative arc through every show I'm involved in is part of my MO.

IDEAS: Since 2007,  over 260 hours of television exist because of my ideas.  Finding stories that engage with audiences,  and working out spectacular ways to implement those stories is something that I thrive on.  

For my most recent series, Life on Our Planet (coming 2023), I structured and wrote the entire series to make sure that it was a serialized story-driven drama, a reinvention of the natural history genre.

For the last 15 years,   I've specialised in show-running difficult, challenging, game-changing TV series.  Despite the widespread use of that term in the US,  many Brits still confuse the role with that of a series producer.  When asked  what a showrunner actually does, my response is EVERYTHING:

• All creative content

• All staffing issues

• All decision making through pre, production and post

• Merchandising

• Budgeting

• Scheduling

• Talent relations

• Safety

• Legal & Compliance

• Sales

• Network liaison

• Press & Marketing

• Promotion

• Audience Research

• Development

To do all of this I've had to be organised,  decisive,  calm, resilient, driven and trustful. 

Quite simply,  I don't do things by halves.  I follow the mantra "if it's worth doing,  it's worth overdoing".  What that means is that once you've committed to doing a sequence, you go all in - making sure it's the best it can possibly be.  Make sure everything is always better than anything similar anyone else has shot,  and always stay ahead of the competition.  Never settle for second best!  

Partly this is in terms of supersizing a sequence in a 'go big or go home' kind of way but it's also about turning up the image quality to the max:  At the BBC's Natural History Unit,  the goal was to take the image quality bar and raise it to a level that was second to none,  and that ethos has stuck with me ever since.  Making sure that shows look as good as they possibly can within the constraints of time and budget is a real focus of mine.  The addition of Phantom high-speeds,  DJI drones,  Osmos, Black Magics,  &  VR rigs are all things I champion. 

Likewise, the use of VFX is something that I have many years of experience in - always using them to make the most visual feast possible for the audience. Recently, my time at the helm of Life on Our Planet, took my VFX experience to a new level.

TV is changing and we need to keep up.   With both on demand services and video-sharing websites,  there's more content for consumers to enjoy than ever before.  For this reason, it's no longer enough to simply make a TV series,   there must be a whole package of extras to go along with it.  

I call this field the Value Add or the 360 Degree Experience,  and it's something I consider myself to be a brand leader in.  From Aftershows and Live events to viewer interaction and VR.   I will being this Value Add experience to all projects I'm part of.

I've had two nicknames at work;  the first is "The Robot".  Not brilliant I must confess but it refers to the fact that I work hard and I work fast.   In the fast-changing world of TV,  this is definitely an asset and while it can lead to unfortunate nicknames that may sound off-putting,  I'll cope!

The second is “The Plusser”. This also sounds kind of sinister but it’s not! They say that when  Pixar were making Toy Story, they used a management technique called "Plussing."  Apparently, when the team reviewed the dailies they would agree that the animation was absolutely first class - better than they had all hoped -  they'd then turn to the animators and ask them to make it better!

Plussing (also known as "kaizen") is the every day art of improving just about everything all of the time,  and it's the way I operate.  I want to challenge my teams to make today's product better than yesterday's which was better than the day before.   This is a way to ensure that projects never get stale,  that people are always motivated to go that extra mile. I’m “The Plusser” to help make sure that happens! 

Since 2018, I’ve worked on a Netflix project (Life on Our Planet). Produced by Silverback Films in collaboration with Amblin Television, it’s added to my US experience. For the 10 years before that, I worked alongside Discovery Channel, Science Channel and National Geographic. As a result,  I have a great knowledge of how these networks operate from the commissioning process to budgeting; from scheduling to marketing; from ad-sales to S&P; from writing for commercials to talent relations.  It's a different set up from the UK (where I worked for the preceding decade) and has given me a rare skill-set for a Brit.