BBC Comedy has appointed I May Destroy You producer Tanya Qureshi as Commissioning Editor. Qureshi will be responsible for a slate of programmes as well as developing her own portfolio of new shows.
Tanya started her career in commissioning at UKTV, primarily focused on scripted comedy across Dave and Gold. She acted as executive producer on sitcoms Undercover, The Rebel, Henry IX and all series of the critically acclaimed Crackanory. She went on to join Channel 4 as Commissioning Executive working across a varied development slate and was the Commissioner on both the second series of The Windsors and Flowers. Most recently she served as Associate Producer on Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and produced series two of Dead Pixels. She is currently Head of Comedy at the Bafta award-winning production company Various Artists.
Tanya Qureshi says: “I’m thrilled to be joining the BBC Comedy department at this exciting time. The opportunity to work across such a breadth of funny programming, with incredible talent, was impossible to resist.”
Shane Allen, Director, BBC Comedy Commissioning says: “Tanya joins on a producing high from having nurtured and delivered one of the most seminal shows of recent years. Her immaculate taste, insight, connections, wisdom and passion for comedy is matched by a funny bones personality.”
Tanya will take up her role on 22 March.
BBC Comedy is the UK’s largest generator of original British comedy, our programming delivers the highest audiences and wins the most awards across the board for pioneering and distinctive shows such as The Young Offenders, Back To Life, Motherland, The Mind of Herbert Clunkerdunk, This Time with Alan Partridge, Man Like Mobeen, There She Goes, Inside No. 9, This Country, Two Doors Down, Famalam, Jerk, Ladhood and Fleabag.
We uniquely support mainstream family favourites including the return of Gavin & Stacey, Ghosts, The Goes Wrong Show, The Other One and King Gary. BBC Comedy has also won the scripted comedy award at the National Television Awards back to back every year since 2012 including the most recent win for Mrs Brown’s Boys in 2020.
We’re the only UK broadcaster committed to sketch comedy with recent hits such as Famalam, Lazy Susan and Ellie & Natasia; and the only broadcaster still flying the flag for the studio sitcom with Upstart Crow, Not Going Out, Mrs Brown’s Boys and The Goes Wrong Show.
The key pilot initiatives for each channel include Comedy Playhouses for BBC One which led to the series commission of King Gary and the recent Christmas one-off Pandemonium. There have been a number of successes for BBC Two’s New On Two strand including The Other One, Motherland and Famalam. Whilst Comedy Slices on BBC Three continue to be a vital place to develop the next generation of on and off-screen comedy talent; many have gone on to achieve great things including Jerk, Ladhood, Josh, People Just Do Nothing, Ellie & Natasia, In My Skin and Enterprice.
Our iPlayer comedy shorts have been uniquely positioned in offering generation defining comedy talent the space to experiment with ideas, concepts and formats many of which have gone onto series such as Sara Pascoe’s Out Of Her Mind, Spencer Jones’s The Mind of Herbert Clunkerdunk, 2020 Bafta award-winning Brain In Gear from Gbemisola Ikumelo, and Lazy Susan from comedy duo Freya Parker and Celeste Dring.
