Mammoth Screen’s Karen Thrussell named head of TV at Blueprint Television

Blueprint Television, the sister company to Graham Broadbent and Pete Czernin’s Blueprint Pictures, has hired former Mammoth Screen exec Karen Thrussell as head of television.

Karen Thrussell

Thrussell will lead development and production of all series at the London-based production outfit, which has produced projects including A Very English Scandal and A Very British Scandal.

During her time at ITV Studios-owned Mammoth Screen, Thrussell was an executive producer on BBC One series Poldark, which ran for five seasons, and three-part ITV drama The Tower.  She was also an exec producer on Sarah Phelps’ Agatha Christie adaptations And Then There Were None, Ordeal by Innocence and Witness for the Prosecution for BBC One.

The hire comes on the heels of the premiere of Blueprint’s three-part drama A Very British Scandal, which aired on BBC One in late December. The debut episode attracted more than seven million viewers in total, according to Blueprint.

A Very British Scandal stars Claire Foy and Paul Bettany and explores the relationship and divorce of Duke and Duchess of Argyll. The programme will be released on Amazon Prime in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in 2022. Sony Pictures Television, which owns a minority stake in Blueprint Television, is the international distributor on the series.

“Karen is a hugely talented executive producer and we feel very lucky to be working with her. No one could be more suited to leading the next phase of Blueprint’s expansion into series,” said Broadbent, Czernin and Blueprint managing director Diarmuid McKeown in a joint statement.

Dominic Treadwell Collins was previously the head of television at Blueprint from 2016 until October 2019. The position had not been filled until Thrussell’s appointment.