Whisper has shifted production of next year’s Paralympics to Wales, expanding its facilities offering in Cardiff and establishing a production talent pipeline in the nation.
The indie will scale up its current 25-strong workforce in Wales to around 200 for the duration of the games, which will be remotely produced with C4’s on-screen team in Paris.
Whisper produced C4’s coverage of the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics from its London base and C4 chief content officer Ian Katz declared the relocation as “the biggest sports production that has ever come to Wales”.
Whisper is establishing the Whisper Academy, which will train the next generation of production staff, with an emphasis on finding more disabled and diverse talent.
The indie’s hub will include new production galleries and edit suites.
Announcing the plans at the Wales Screen Summit, Katz said it represented “a brilliant step forward in deepening our relationship with the Welsh sector”.
He also announced My Week in the Whitest Place on Earth, a new documentary from C4 Accelerator-backed Cardiff Productions in which Paralympics presenter Ade Adepitan lives in a whites-only community in South Africa.
'Deeply-rooted' N&R productions
Katz highlighted recent Welsh productions such as drama The Light in the Hall, Chwarel’s daytime hit The Great House Giveaway and recently-recommissioned South Shore series Aldi’s Next Big Thing and Worst House on the Street.
Last year, two-thirds of C4’s originated hours were produced in the nations and regions, but Katz said such commissions are just “half the challenge” for C4’s ambition to represent the UK nations and regions authentically.
“The next stage in our mission to be truly representative of the country is to make more shows that feel genuinely rooted in different parts of the country - that taste and sound, and perhaps even smell, of the places they come from, that do for different parts of the country what Derry Girls did for Derry,” he said.
Highlighting the essential ‘Brumminess’ of recent Friday night show Late Night Lycett, Katz said that C4 will also continue to make shows with “incidental representation” that could in theory be made anywhere, such as 24 Hours in A&E, which is filmed in Nottingham but could shift to other hospitals.
But he admitted that C4, alongside other broadcasters, has “often been guilty of defaulting to ‘picture postcard’ representation”.
He said: “We’d like more shows as deeply rooted in place as Late Night Lycett, and we’d really love one in Wales … shows for which place is at their heart.”
Katz cited shows such as Steph’s Packed Lunch (Leeds), Geordie Hospital (Newcastle), Rescue, Extreme Medics (the Scottish Highlands) and Valley Cops (Merthyr Tydfil).
