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After our first big hit with the outspoken columnist, it was time to step out of our comfort zones, says Sarah Thornton
The brief: Celebrity Juice meets Question Time. The talent: Katie Hopkins. It wasn't just the producers who were surprised that I was issuing it...
In January, Crackit Productions' two-part documentary Katie Hopkins: My Fat Story was a huge success for TLC. It reached 1.8 million cumulative viewers as Katie audaciously attempted to gain and lose half her body weight, helping herself to 8500 calories a day and the channel to its biggest week since launch.
Very soon the discussions of 'what next?' echoed around the corridors of our Chiswick Park HQ. We weren't the only broadcaster, and far from the only production company, courting Katie at the time. It quickly became clear that a tranche of copycat docs was exactly what we didn't want to do. There was another big question to address first: 'Why?'
My Fat Story worked because Katie was genuinely immersed in the topic and invested in proving her point that losing weight is easy. Another immersive documentary series was an obvious direction, but anything we discussed felt uncomfortably derivative and would have been a ratings-chasing reaction.
A suggestion by our intern, Tom Price, to do a studio show was a penny-drop moment. It may feel obvious in hindsight, but it was a departure for TLC. That said, it felt fresh, developed Katie as talent and further stretched our growing slate of programming into the entertainment genre.
Rather than wondering whether it was a risk we should take, it started to feel like a risk we couldn't afford NOT to take.
Even before we greenlit, the idea alone made headlines - some supportive, others definitely not - but Clare Laycock, Head of TLC and ID, and Susanna Dinnage, MD of the UK...