rts yorkshire

Libby, Are You Home Yet?: The ethics behind true crime

What Lisa [Squire] wanted was for us to get this message across: you should always report non-contact sexual offences. Because it does make a difference.” Candour Productions’ Anna Hall was speaking at an RTS Yorkshire event on 31 January – five years to the day that Squire’s daughter Libby was abducted, raped and murdered in Hull.

Just how this reporting makes a difference becomes clear during Humberside Police’s hunt for Libby’s killer, in Candour’s powerful Bafta-winning, three-part series Libby, Are You Home Yet?.

Grace Ofori-Attah on her Yorkshire set medical drama Malpractice

Malpractice won favour with both critics – “intricately plotted and beautifully, leanly written”, said The Guardian – and audiences: it was ITV1’s most watched drama launch episode of 2023 when it aired last spring. Ahead of filming starting on series two, the RTS talked to some of the talent behind the show, including its creator, former NHS doctor Grace Ofori-Attah.

She pitched an idea for a hospital-set thriller about medical malpractice to Simon Heath, CEO of World Productions, whose award-winning dramas include Line of Duty and Save Me.

Leeds hosts student supper for students and production companies

Through their links with universities, the RTS Yorkshire Committee understood that the post-Covid generation of students may struggle with traditional networking events that often require students to approach industry professionals, one on one, in a noisy, high-pressure environment.

Not everybody has that confidence, and some students feel excluded due to their age or because they are neurodivergent. The student supper was a low-pressure event, at a community-run space in Headingley, Leeds, to start conversations and build confidence.

Yorkshire indie producers go yomping

A group of soliders in camouflage dress and war paint sit and stand in a forest

Paul Wells, series director of BBC One doc Soldier, and Mark Tattersall, executive producer of Channel 4’s Top Guns: Inside the RAF, discussed making the docs at an online RTS Yorkshire event last month.

For Top Guns, Leeds-based True North Productions took cameras inside Scotland’s Lossiemouth airbase and the planes policing Nato airspace. Tattersall, an experienced hand at making military docs – he worked on Channel 5’s Warship: Life at Sea – said the RAF wanted to “showcase what it did [and was offering] access to nearly all areas”.

Happy Valley goes nap at the RTS Yorkshire Awards

The third and final series, made by Lookout Point TV and shot in the Calder Valley, also nabbed awards for Professional Excellence: Post-production and Professional Excellence: Drama and Comedy Production.

A deeply moving programme about former Leeds Rhinos rugby league player Rob Burrow, who has motor neurone disease, was a double winner on the night. He was the subject of BBC Breakfast’s Rob Burrow: Living with MND, which won the News or Current Affairs Story and Single Documentary awards.

From Happy Valley to Better: TV's love affair with Yorkshire

Eighteen months ago, like James Herriot dolloping piccalilli on to Farmer Horner’s swiftly replenished plates of fat bacon, television decided that you can have too much of a good thing.

At the 2021 Edinburgh TV Festival, Channel 5 commissioning editor Daniel Pearl declared that he wouldn’t make “another programme about Yorkshire”. Ben Frow, the broadcaster’s content supremo, has recently followed that by announcing a reality-heavy slate, replete with a Tim Peake-fronted show exploring space.

RTS Yorkshire Talks - James Knight, Yorkshire Firefighters

With Wise Owl film crews embedded within the fire service watches, Yorkshire Firefighters offers an in depth exploration of the critical work of this service. But it’s more than that – this is about the people behind the visors, the diverse range of characters in each watch who are like a family to each other as they fight fires, support other emergency services, and provide vital community support.

All filmed during covid, Series Producer, James Knight explains the practicalities involved in the making of this enthralling series.

RTS Yorkshire Student Television Awards 2021

ITV Yorkshire presenters Christine Talbot and Duncan Wood hosted the online ceremony from the ITV News Calendar studio.

Scripted winner Future For Our Children, made by a team of Sheffield Hallam University students, is set in a refugee camp for Syrian children. The judges praised the film for its “extraordinary naturalism”, which was backed up by “technical excellence and incredible performances”.

RTS Yorkshire examines the unlikely comeback of a comedy classic

“In conversation” with RTS Yorkshire Chair Fiona Thompson in February, ITV Content Delivery’s James Macmillan recalled: “We were totally blown away… It’s been a very tough year for everyone, but I can’t think of a better way of ending 2020 than by winning the award.”

The Leeds-based business development manager explained how the Carry On movie was restored to its original condition.