Sky Bolsters Documentaries & Factual Team

Sky has brought in Hayley Reynolds as commissioning editor and Janine Thomas as assistant commissioning editor for the newly formed documentaries and factual commissioning team.

Reynolds’ film and TV career spans over 13 years, starting in production before moving into commissioning. She spent five years at Minnow Films and for the last three years has been at the BBC’s flagship feature documentary strand, Storyville.

Thomas joins Sky from Channel 4, where she was documentaries assistant editor. There, she championed Black History Month programming, such as gal-dem presents: Black British History, comedian Mo Gilligan’s Black British & Funny and film series Take Your Knee Off My Neck, a response to the killing of George Floyd.

In their new roles, Reynolds and Thomas will support Poppy Dixon, director of documentaries and factual commissioning, in bringing premium, original features and multi-part series to Sky Documentaries, a limited number of landmark original natural-history programs for Sky Nature and true-crime original series for Sky Crime.

Dixon commented: “Hayley and Janine are coming on board at a particularly exciting time at Sky, as we work to build a world-class slate of must-see documentaries across our factual channels. Both excelled in their previous roles and will bring a creative and fresh perspective to our factual lineup.”