How to Make a Hit TV Show

December 31, 2025·43 min·2 clips

Channel 4 gets tens of thousands of pitches a year, funds about a thousand, and commissions only 100 to 150.

Entertainment TV gets treated seriously here. Katie Razzell and Roz Atkins look at how popular formats are imagined, developed and kept alive, without turning the episode into a victory lap for familiar titles. The question is plain enough. Why do some shows land at once while others disappear quietly, or need time before viewers know what to do with them? The programme starts with scale. Hunted, The Celebrity Traitors and Pointless come up as shows people watch, pick apart and talk about. Then it gets more interesting. The guests explain how ideas make it through development, pitching, commissioning pressure and changing audience habits. Squid Game shifts the conversation. One guest talks about The Challenge as a case of using pre-existing IP, with Netflix already owning a drama that had travelled globally. That leads to a useful bit of resistance. The guest pushes back on the idea that producers should calculate every national joke, tone shift or sensitivity before making something. Their test is much simpler: do I enjoy this, would I watch it, and would someone I know watch it? The episode then turns to pitching. Roz asks whether the commissioning moment feels like Dragon's Den, with a clean yes or no at the end. The answer is messier than that. Tamara Gilder starts with the strange discomfort of pitching television, where even a good meeting can feel hard to enjoy because everyone is already thinking about what has to happen next. Art Sadiou brings in the commissioning side as Channel 4's Head of Commissioning Development. That keeps the discussion grounded in the gap between a maker's excitement and a broadcaster's need to choose formats that might actually work. The structure is very Radio 4: recognisable shows first, then the machinery underneath, then the judgement calls people make in rooms. There is not much celebrity gloss. The fun is in taste, nerve, timing and the odd industry habit of turning instinct into a format. Streamers, content creators, global franchises and new technology all hover around the edges, but the basic question stays human. Is this watchable?

As heard by us

A sharp industry-room look at how unscripted TV ideas become pitches, commissions and global formats.

The Media Show takes entertainment TV seriously as an industry, not just a guilty pleasure. Katie Razzell and Roz Atkins bring in producers and commissioners behind Hunted, The Celebrity Traitors, Building the Band, Virgin Island and other big unscripted formats to ask how a TV…

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Why you'd press play

When you want the anatomy of how entertainment TV gets made, this one keeps the focus tight.

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