Sky hires Storyville, C4 factual buyers

European pay TV broadcaster Sky has hired a pair of commissioning executives to expand its documentaries and factual team.

Hayley Reynolds

Hayley Reynolds has joined as commissioning editor and Janine Thomas as assistant commissioning editor. They will both take up their new positions next month.

In their new roles, Reynolds and Thomas will assist Poppy Dixon, who was appointed director of documentaries and factual commissioning last year.

The team is in the market for premium, original features and multi-part series to Sky Documentaries, a limited number of landmark original natural history programmes for Sky Nature and true crime original series for Sky Crime.

Reynolds’ film and TV career spans over 13 years, having started in production before moving into commissioning. As a producer she worked on documentaries such as BBC3’s double-Bafta-winning Our War.

She spent five years at Minnow Films where she produced across its development and production portfolio, including feature documentary Williams for BBC Films and Netflix.

Janine Thomas

For the past three years, Reynolds has worked on the BBC’s feature documentary strand Storyville, where her recent executive producer credits include The Mole: Infiltrating North Korea, The Mystery of DB Cooper and Misha & the Wolves, which premiered recently at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Thomas joins Sky from Channel 4 where she was documentaries assistant editor working across a diverse slate including Damilola: The Boy Next Door, Secret Life of the Zoo and 24 Hours in A&E. She has also commissioned for digital factual strand True Stories and for the E4 network.

At Channel 4, Thomas championed Black History Month programming, such as Gal-Dem Presents: Black British History, comedian Mo Gilligan’s Black British & Funny and film series Take Your Knee Off My Neck, a response to the killing of George Floyd.

Dixon said: “Hayley and Janine are coming on board at a particularly exciting time at Sky, as we work to build a world-class slate of must-see documentaries across our factual channels. Both excelled in their previous roles and will bring a creative and fresh perspective to our factual line-up.”