BBC One has announced the commission of Making It with Sara Davies, produced by North East-based Twenty Six 03.
The series will air on BBC One in 2024 and has been commissioned for 15×30 episodes.
Each programme will feature ordinary people who think they’ve come up with a brilliant or innovative idea for a new product, but just don’t know where to start to see if it could ever become a reality.
Enter Davies and her crack team of highly-skilled experts. They’ll meet all of the aspiring inventors to help develop their initial ideas with the aim of turning them into fully-functioning, and potentially even money-making products.
Davies has been a successful business woman since the age of 21, when she spotted a gap in the craft market and invented an envelope-making tool for card makers. With the help of her engineer dad, she tested and refined her product before she made a prototype and started to sell it. Since then, her life has changed, and her personal success has seen her become a major investor in some of the UK’s most successful businesses through her role on Dragons’ Den.
She said: “There are thousands of people across the UK who have brilliant and big ideas, but are stuck on how to get started, so I am delighted that I am going to be able to help these wonderfully innovative people develop and make their inventing dreams a reality. I can’t wait to see what ideas are out there and get them into our workshop of dreams!”
Helen Munson, commissioning editor for BBC Daytime added: “Where better to make a programme about inventing than the North East? This is where Joseph Swann invented the lightbulb, and George Stephenson became the ‘Father of the Railways’. We are in good company. And with the brilliant Sara Davies at the helm we know we are going to unearth brand new inventions for the 21st Century. Gateshead based Twenty Six 03 will be working with a host of local off screen talent to bring this exciting new series to BBC One.”
Making It with Sara Davies will be on screens in 2024, it was commissioned for BBC One and iPlayer by head of BBC daytime and early peak commissioning Rob Unsworth. The commissioning editor for BBC Daytime is Helen Munson. The programme is produced by Twenty Six 03’s Duncan Gray and Antonia Hurford-Jones with funding from North East Screen.
