Knickerbockerglory is a multi-award winning independent production company launched in 2011 by Jonathan Stadlen with the aim of making programmes we love, sharing our profits and giving to charity.  In 2017 we were proud to be voted the best place to work in TV by Broadcast Magazine, and have remained in the top five every year since. 

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Our founding producers were the production team behind the BAFTA nominated and RTS award winning Pineapple Dance Studios. Since then we have produced an eclectic range of programmes that reflect the diverse interests of our staff.  These range from feature docs like the Bafta-nominatewd and Focal Award-winning American Murder: The  Family Next Door (Netflix) to the award-winning Life is Wonderful: Mandela's Unsung Heroes (International), documentary series like GPs: Behind Closed Doors (280 x 60' Channel 5) to Dance Around The World (3x60' C4), factual entertainment series like  The Great Model Railway Challenge (14x60' C5) to the award-winning Great British Gardens: Season by Season (12x60' C5), specialist factual series like Celebrities in Therapy (12x60' C5) to the award-winning Me and My... (6x60' C5) or The Hospice (13x60 TOGETHER), access docs like MH370: Inside the Situation Room (1x 60 International) to Escape from The Secret Sect (1x 90' Sky) or Snatch and Grab: Moped Gangs on The Rampage (1x60' C5),   structured reality series like Lookalikes (9x30' C4), Stage School (60x30 E4),  or Boom Town (6x30' BBC3) or  popular factual series like Gypsy Kids: Our Secret World (10 x 60' C5) to Mind the Age Gap (5x60' C5).  

 

Knickerbockerglory was set up as a profit-sharing company, meaning earnings from shows we produce are shared between staff and also equally between freelancers based on length of service that year (whether they are a runner or a director), and every year we donate a percentage of our profits to a different charity chosen by our production teams.  This year we donated to Petals - who supported our choir master in the months after losing his son, Help The Animals, Key 4 Life - who get ex prisoners into work (including at Knickerbockerglory), as well as Mind , Lupus Research Alliance and Sense - who look after deaf-blind children.

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We have been nominated for a BAFTA and won a FOCAL and BULLDOG award for American Murder: The Family Next Door, won Best Documentary at the Mind Media Awards for Me and My Mental Illness, Best Broadcast prize at the Garden Media Guild awards for Great British Gardens: Season by Season with Carol Klein and the Audience Choice Award at the Durbin International Film Festival for Life is Wonderful: Mandela's Unsung Heroes.

 

We are not owned by a large media corporation, distributor or super-indie. We are creatively autonomous and able to choose our projects first and foremost because we love them. Yet we make more documentary hours than any other TV company in the UK.  We are set up to work as a second home – so children are welcome to visit, we support people who require flexible working hours or job shares, we have a weekly choir, free lunch on a Wednesday, we work with Key4Life to help employ former prisoners from marginalised backgrounds and we have a gold office mannequin called Graham who watches over us.

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We have produced a West End Musical - The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole - and in 2023 started producing our own stand up comedy Night - Live Next To The Apollo.

 

We love the programmes we make and we love the people we make them with. 

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