UKTV

As its Chief Creative Officer and Global Director of Acquisitions, BBC Studios and UKTV, he is also responsible, alongside his commissioning remit, for acquiring shows for the broadcaster and BBC Studios’ global channels. Current hits commissioned by Watsham’s team include The Marlow Murder Club for U&Drama and Will & Ralf Should Know Better for U&Dave.

What do you do?

The show follows Luella Shakespeare (Jo Joyner, Ackley Bridge) and Frank Hathaway (Mark Benton, Anna and the Apocalypse) after a case brings them together and leads to them joining forces.

Joyner and Benton will reprise their roles in the new series, alongside Patrick Walshe McBride (Dracula), who plays aspiring actor and perpetual understudy Sebastian Brudenell.

U is intended to bring UKTV’s terrestrial channels and streaming services together under one banner. The streaming platform UKTV Play will be rebranded as U, while UKTV’s terrestrial channels will now be known as U&Drama, U&Dave, U&Yesterday and U&W.

Streaming platform U will have almost 8,500 hours of content, an increase of nearly 1,500 hours from the start of 2024.

This time round, the top cop faces a high-stakes investigation that threatens to shake him to his core. With his family and career on the line, can he confront his demons in time?

Where the original show, which ran on BBC1 from 1981-91, used a ‘case of the week’ format, the new series will follow just one murder mystery across its six episodes.

Filming is to begin this summer on the show, a BlackLight TV production, itself part of Banijay. It is written by Toby Whithouse (Being Human), with Brian Fillis, Catherine Tregenna and Polly Buckle.

The family drama follows the Wright family, who are thrown into disarray after learning of their family patriarch and business tycoon Jack Wright’s (Trevor Eve, Waking the Dead) untimely suicide. When his last will and testament is revealed, Nikki Amuka-Bird enters the narrative as Jack’s third-wife Sally, alongside his two sons Gray (Simm) and John (Rigby). All three of them have been largely cut-out of the will and won’t be receiving much of Jack’s enormous fortune.

The show follows the professional and social lives of the junior midwives in Basildon University Hospital. Thanks to its exclusive access, the programme reveals what it takes to survive in one of the most demanding jobs in the country.

Midwives can qualify after three years, putting them amongst Britain’s youngest medical professionals. The Real Midwives of Essex sheds light on those who have recently qualified, as well as the student midwives, and the people teaching them.

Together, they deal with 12-hour shifts, early starts and nights out.

Nefarious goings-on in the genteel Buckinghamshire town of Marlow begin when a much-loved gallery owner is shot dead at his riverside home. So far, so standard for a murder mystery. Things then take an unusual twist when the unlikeliest of trios takes matters into its own hands.

In his 20-plus years at the broadcaster, he has led the rebrand of UKTV’s comedy channel to Dave, brought the huge hit Taskmaster to our screens and revived a childhood favourite, Red Dwarf. He also manages the combined BBC Studios and UKTV global compliance team.

What does the job involve?

Setting the editorial direction of the business so we can create distinctive, original, creative, enjoyable channels at UKTV that viewers want to watch.

Do you use gut instinct or data?

Across four parts, Follow The Leader with Jamali Maddix will see the comedian meet and observe leaders of fringe communities on the rise, aiming to find out what drives them, and why they attract so many devout followers.

Maddix said: "I've always been fascinated by cults and sub-cultures - people that choose to live as 'other'. Comedians are typically outsiders and I've made a career from observing people's behaviour and nuances from this perspective.