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Tiger Aspect signs Phil Bowker to first-look, grows comedy development team

L-R: Hannah Rose, Jason Charles, Sarah Fraser and Saima Ferdows

The comedy arm of Banijay UK-owned Tiger Aspect has signed an exclusive first-look deal with Phil Bowker, creator of Channel 4 comedy PhoneShop, and made new appointments to its development team.

The Man Like Mobeen, Bad Education, Mr Bean and Murder in Successville producer will work with Bowker on his own slate of projects both as a producer and writer, creating new scripted projects of his and developing new projects from other writers and talent.

Bowker started performing stand-up as a teenager in his native Liverpool before training as a comedy producer in the BBC Radio Light Ent Department in the early 1990s.

Moving into TV, Bowker has worked across comedies including BBC Two’s Comedy Nation, Sean Lock’s 15 Storeys High and two seasons of Sharon Horgan and Dennis Kelly’s Pulling.

Bowker, a former head of comedy at Talkback Thames, also created, wrote, produced and directed three seasons of PhoneShop for Channel 4.

Meanwhile, head of Tiger Aspect Comedy David Simpson has appointed comedy producer Sarah Fraser as an executive producer, Hannah Rose as development producer and Jason Charles as development assistant.

Fraser most recently series-produced Sky Max’s six-part comedy drama Rosie Molloy Gives Up Everything, starring Sheridan Smith. She also produced the Gavin & Stacey Christmas Special and The Cleaner pilot with Greg Davies for BBC One.

During her three years as UKTV’s commissioning editor for comedy, Fraser commissioned both the first original scripted series on the Dave and Gold channels before going on to be head of comedy at King Bert Productions.

Rose joins Tiger Aspect from the BBC where she was assistant commissioner for scripted comedy, working across shortform, BBC New Comedy Awards and training and development schemes for writers from under-represented backgrounds.

Charles previously worked for Douglas Road Productions and Blacklight. During this time, he worked on projects including Lenny Henry’s Caribbean Britain for BBC Two and Channel 4’s On the Edge anthology series.

They join Saima Ferdows, who arrived at Tiger Aspect in September last year as a development producer and has recently worked as associate producer on the lastest season of Bad Education and its 10th anniversary special.

Prior to joining Tiger Aspect, Ferdows worked as a writer’s assistant on Oscar-nominated Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and as a producer on Netflix’s Sex Unzipped, plus Bilal Zafar’s The Damned PES United.

Tiger Aspect is currently in production on the fourth season of Guz Khan and Andy Milligan’s Man Like Mobeen for the BBC, with the Man Like Mobeen trainee programme returning once again with six paid trainees from the West Midlands signed up to work on the comedy.

Set to launch in 2023 are Deep Fake Neighbour Wars for ITVX, which uses the latest AI technology to make the UK’s best new impressionists become the world’s most famous celebrities, as well as the fourth season of Bad Education for BBC Three and BBC short Mobility from comedian Jack Carroll.

Simpson said: “Together, we have a team with a variety of different tastes and perspectives that speak to everything Tiger comedy should be: inventive, original, thought-provoking and properly funny.”

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