RTS Programme Awards 2020 in partnership with Audio Network

Just five years ago Jane Featherstone left the security of being Chief Executive of Kudos and Chair of Shine UK, where she’d enjoyed a great run of success. Jane had joined Kudos in 2000 as Head of Drama and risen to the top job, along the way bringing to the screen hit shows like Broadchurch, Life On Mars, Ashes To Ashes, The Tunnel and Spooks.

On leaving Kudos she struck out on her own and founded Sister Pictures – now just branded Sister, in a partnership with Elizabeth Murdoch and Stacey Snider. In her new company Jane quickly hit her stride with a deep development slate of bold, eye-catching drama. By 2019, just four years after starting up, she had FIVE series running in the same year in peak-time on British television – all radically different pieces in content and tone, but all highly distinctive and with their own very specific voice:

Cleaning Up on ITV starred Sheridan Smith as a working class Londoner who decides to play life by the rules usually reserved for the people she cleans for; The Split on BBC One was a multi-layered story of privilege and betrayal in a family-owned law firm; Don’t Forget The Driver, produced for BBC Two, was an acutely-observed comedy starring Toby Jones as a coach driver in one of Britain’s forgotten seaside towns; Giri/Haji on BBC Two was soulful thriller set in Tokyo and London which succeeded in being both dark and witty in equal measure; and of course, Chernobyl was one of the big, globally-acclaimed and talked-about events of the year – a searing dramatization of the story the Soviet Union tried to supress when the world held its breath following the worst nuclear accident in history.

It is, by any measure, an exceptional slate of extraordinary work, all in a single year. Drama of the very highest quality, produced with passion and flair by one of the stand-out stars of British television production.