Tiger Aspect expands its comedy department
- Sarah Fraser is joining Tiger Aspect Productions as an executive producer
- David Simpson has also hired Saima Ferdows, Hannah Rose and Jason Charles to his development team
- The production company has also signed a first-look deal with Phil Bowker
Head of Tiger Aspect Comedy, David Simpson, has appointed four new members to his development team, with comedy producer Sarah Fraser joining the production company as an executive producer, Saima Ferdows and former BBC Assistant Commissioner Hannah Rose taking on development producer roles and Douglas Road's Jason Charles coming on board as development assistant.
Additionally, Tiger Aspect has signed-up multi award winning BAFTA nominated creator, writer, producer and director Phil Bowker on an exclusive first-look deal. The PhoneShop creator will work with Tiger Aspect on his own slate of projects both as a producer and writer, creating new scripted projects of his own and developing new projects from other writers and talent.
Tiger Aspect, which is part of Banijay UK, is behind hits including Mr Bean and Murder In Successville. Its forthcoming slate includes ITVX series Deep Fake Neighbour Wars, the return of Bad Education, Series 4 of Man Like Mobeen and Jack Carroll's BBC Three pilot Mobility.
Sarah Fraser started her career in BBC Radio light entertainment before moving into TV comedy. Most recently she series produced Sky's Rosie Molloy Gives Up Everything, starring Sheridan Smith. Fraser also produced the BAFTA winning Gavin & Stacey Christmas special and The Cleaner pilot with Greg Davies, for BBC One. During her 3 years as UKTV's Commissioning Editor of Comedy, Sarah commissioned both the first original scripted series on Dave and on Gold channels before going on to be Head of Comedy at King Bert Productions.
Hannah Rose joins Tiger from the BBC where she was assistant commissioner for scripted comedy, working across short form, BBC New Comedy Awards and training and development schemes for writers from under-represented backgrounds. As commissioning producer for comedy and entertainment podcasts at BBC Sounds she was the commissioning lead on multiple award-winning series including Jacob Hawley: On Drugs, Bad People, Wheel Of Misfortune and James Acaster's Perfect Sounds.
Saima Ferdows joined Tiger Aspect in September 2021 as a development producer in the comedy department and has recently worked as associate producer on the Bad Education special and new series. Shortly before joining Tiger, she worked as a writer's assistant on Oscar nominated film Borat 2 and as a producer on Netflix's Sex Unzipped as well as on Bilal Zafar's film The Damned PES United.
Jason Charles joins the company having worked previously 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.
David Simpson says: "With 12 productions from Comedy in less than two years, it's been a busy time at Tiger and I'm delighted to be growing the team. Sarah is a hugely experienced and well loved producer who has worked with some of the biggest names and on some of the biggest shows in Comedy and I'm thrilled she has joined us. In Hannah, Saima and Jason we have three excellent comic brains with enormous passion for the genre and impeccable taste. 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".
Phil Bowker started performing stand-up as a teenager in his native Liverpool before training as a comedy producer in the fabled BBC Radio Light Ent Department in the early 90's alongside the likes of Armando Iannucci, Caroline Leddy and Phil Clarke. Moving into TV, Bowker has worked across some of the UK's most innovative comedies and with some of the genres most influential names of recent times including BBC Two's Comedy Nation, Sean Lock's seminal 15 Storeys High and two series of Sharon Horgan and Dennis Kelly's critically acclaimed Pulling. Bowker has also created, written, produced and directed three series of cult favourite PhoneShop for Channel 4 - which he went on to sell to FX in the US - and The Javone Prince Show for BBC Two and has co-created, written and directed the modern urban sitcom Sliced with Samson Kayo.
Bowker says: "As we all know 'excited' is possibly the most overused word in telly. Everybody is always excited about something or other. Mainly things that don't warrant excitement. But this absolutely does. This excites the bejeebers out of me and to get to work with David and the gang at Tiger makes it doubly, no, TRIPLY exciting."
Simpson added: "We are absolutely delighted to welcome Phil into the Tiger family. He is such a talent and I have been a huge fan of his work for many years. I must thank Banijay who continue to back scripted comedy and help us to make deals like these happen. I am absolutely thrilled and cant wait to get started with Phil. Excited!"
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