Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters: What risks are worth taking to make a hit?

Andrea Jackson, Plimsoll’s creative director, entertainment, on crossing natural history with celebrity reality, and how Skyscraper Live came to be.

The people behind today’s biggest shows – in conversation with C21’s Mark Rowland

What kind of risks is it acceptable to take in pursuit of a hit? And which genre boundaries can you cross, or combine, to make a good show?

Plimsoll, the ITV Studios company, has been experimenting right at the edge of natural history, entertainment and live TV. First with Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters, winner of Best Reality Format at the International Format Awards, and then with Skyscraper Live for Netflix: Alex Honnold’s extraordinary, literally death-defying free-solo climb of Taipei 101.

I caught up with Andrea Jackson, Plimsoll’s creative director, entertainment, to talk through how those decisions were made.

Here’s just some of what we talk about:

Plimsoll calls Shark! a “Trojan Horse format” – a celebrity show with a conservation message inside it. Andrea also explains why the title was meant to sound like “a bit of an obnoxious reality series.”

There were sharks everywhere. Andrea nearly rugby-tackled Rachel Riley to stop her seeing what was swimming on the other side of the building where they were filming.

Skyscraper Live went out on a 10-second delay. Why it was essential the climb was Alex Honnold’s own lifelong plan, with Plimsoll there to follow it.

Next Thursday, reality TV guru Mike Darnell – on more than 30 years of spotting and producing hits including Alien Autopsy, Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? and American Idol.