Ex-Princess pair start Hitchhiker journey

Anna Blue and Will Spokes

Former Princess Productions execs Anna Blue and Will Spokes have launched a new talent-focused production label under All3Media’s Objective Media Group.

Hitchhiker Television will draw on Blue and Spokes’ experience of producing some of the UK’s biggest hits across entertainment, comedy entertainment and popular factual television.

The pair were most recently joint head of programmes at Princess, with Spokes joining Blue in the role in 2014. Endemol Shine Group announced it was closing the prodco earlier this year and rolling its existing shows out around the group.

In their time at Princess, Spokes and Blue were behind social experiment Life Stripped Bare for Channel 4 and Taxi of Mum and Dad for the same channel. More recently, they were commissioned to make satirical comedy show The Mash Report for BBC2.

Their new label will develop ideas with on-screen talent, providing them with a collaborative partner from development through to production. The focus will be on returning formats with international potential for the main UK broadcasters and the US market.

As a series producer, Blue worked on shows as diverse as Big Brother and The Games before helping to set up Gallowgate, the production shingle belonging to ITV presenting duo Ant and Dec. She exec produced three seasons of their Saturday Night Takeaway show before joining Princess as head of entertainment in 2010.

Spokes, meanwhile, developed and produced shows for MTV, Tiger Aspect, ITV Studios and Gallowgate among others before moving to Shine in 2008 where he co-created and produced The Magicians for BBC1 and Got to Dance for Sky1.

In 2012 he executive produced The Love Machine at Princess. He left the company to set up Tuesday’s Child with Karen Smith, before returning in 2014.