Sky expands Documentaries and Factual team with two hires

Sky has hired Hayley Reynolds in the role of Commissioning Editor and Janine Thomas as Assistant Commissioning Editor in the newly formed Documentaries and Factual commissioning team. They will both start in their positions in the next month.

In their new roles, Reynolds and Thomas will support Poppy Dixon, Director of Documentaries and Factual Commissioning, in bringing 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.

Poppy Dixon, Director of Documentaries and Factual commented: “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”

Reynolds’ film and TV career spans over 13 years, starting in production before moving into commissioning. As a producer she worked on critically acclaimed and award-winning documentaries such as BBC Three’s double BAFTA winning Our War. She spent five years at Minnow Films where she produced across their development and production portfolio. This included feature documentary Williams for BBC Films and Netflix, which was nominated for Best Documentary and Best Editing at the 2017 British Independent Film Awards.

For the last three years, Reynolds has been at the BBC’s flagship feature documentary strand, Storyville, where her recent executive producer credits include The Mole: Infiltrating North Korea, The Mystery of DB Cooper and Misha and 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 into digital Factual strand True Stories and E4.

Whilst 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.

Reynolds and Janine’s appointment follows Sky’s commitment to bring audiences 50% more original TV and film than last year. The team will spearhead and add to the biggest ever line-up of Sky Original documentaries available for all Sky and NOW TV customers at no extra cost. The line-up of high-quality documentaries coming in 2021 include Hawking, Liverpool Narcos, Murder at the Cottage and Shark with Steve Backshall.

For further information, please contact: hephzibah.kwakyesaka@sky.uk / jessica.gray@sky.uk.

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