How to Make a Hit TV Show: inside stories

Every week, top creators, showrunners, and TV execs share the inside stories behind today’s biggest shows.

Creating a hit looks close to impossible. Keeping a show a hit is harder still. In the coming weeks we’re going to talk to some of the world’s top showrunners, network and studio executives about how they do it.

Including: how Dancing with the Stars is reaching a whole new generation, and the secrets of its casting, with executive producers Conrad Green and Deena Katz. Alex Horne, star and creator of Taskmaster, on turning very British silliness into global success. And the story behind SNL UK from Sky’s Phil Edgar-Jones, as they begin their second season.

Here’s just the start of what we find out:

• • Love Island: 130,000 people apply for a single series. Richard Cowles on the three questions that get that down to a cast, and how and why the show delivers.

• • SNL UK took five years to get to air. Sky’s Phil Edgar-Jones on that journey and how the unique 7-day production turnaround works: 30 sketches at Wednesday’s table read, seven live on Saturday night.

• • Dancing with the Stars: Deena Katz has cast every episode – she never tests whether anyone can dance. “Never ever.” She tells us what she tests instead.

• • Taskmaster: the first ever task was “deposit some money in my bank account. Most money wins.” Alex Horne on how an email to 20 comedians became, as he puts it, “an accidental TV show” and how his attention to detail makes the format work.

• • Farmer Wants a Wife has produced 600 babies and 300 marriages. Fremantle’s Vasha Wallace on why this show delivers in real life and former development producer Torie Chilcott on how reading an article in the bath started the whole thing.

• • Big Brother: “This will never work in India.” Deepak Dhar, founder of Banijay Asia, heard this in every meeting, before the tea arrived. Big Brother – Bigg Boss in India – now runs 800 days a year in seven languages, to 450 million viewers. How did that happen?

• • The Voice: in Spain it’s the regret button. In America, the replay button. Encarna Pardo, showrunner of The Voice Spain, and Huub van Ballegooy, senior VP of creative network at ITV Studios, on the same twist in two cultures, and why the chairs are still turning 16 years on.

• • Race Across the World: the casting test – €5, 45 minutes, get as far away as you can. Production consultant Lucy Heaven on how they select the contestants, how they cope with the unpredictability of the format – and the editing challenge of the 150 hours of footage behind every hour you see.

• • “You’re knee-deep in sharks.” Andrea Jackson, creative director at Plimsoll, on the risks behind filming celebrities in the Bahamas for Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters, and why the sharks turned out to be the one thing she could rely on.

Watch Love Island: inside the global megahit, free now.