Carnival Films is a British television production company based in London, UK, founded in 1978. It has produced television series for all the major UK networks including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky, as well as international broadcasters including PBS, A&E, HBO and NBC. Productions include single dramas, long-running television dramas, feature films, and stage productions.
History
Carnival Films was founded in 1978 by feature film producerBrian Eastman. As of 2014 Carnival has produced over 500 hours of drama and comedy for television, cinema and stage. This included 70 hours of Agatha Christie's Poirot starring David Suchet and 24 hours of Rosemary & Thyme, starring Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris. In the action/adventure genre it produced BUGS, Oktober and The Grid, in comedy drama it produced Jeeves and Wooster starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, teenage drama-comedy As If, as well as the adaptations of Tom Sharpe's novels Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue. In 2004 the BBC's former Head of Drama Commissioning Gareth Neame joined Carnival as managing director. In 2007 former Creative Director of BBC Drama Sally Woodward Gentle joined the company as Creative Director. The two had previously worked together on Spooks, Tipping the Velvet and Cambridge Spies. In 2008 Carnival was acquired by NBCUniversal as part of its plan to increase its presence in content creation outside the US. Following several more acquisitions Carnival is now part of NBCUniversal International Television Production alongside newer additions Monkey Kingdom, Working Title Television, Chocolate Media and Lucky Giant in the UK, Lark in Canada and Matchbox Pictures in Australia. Under the direction of Gareth Neame, Carnival has produced series such as; The Philanthropist for NBC; hit BBC series Hotel Babylon; the critically acclaimed television films Enid starring Helena Bonham Carter and Matthew Macfadyen; Page Eight starring Bill Nighy, Rachel Weisz, Michael Gambon and Ralph Fiennes; landmark four-part drama Any Human Heart starring Jim Broadbent, Matthew MacFadyen, Hayley Atwell and Kim Cattrall; The Hollow Crown, a BBC adaptation of Shakespeare's history plays starring Tom Hiddleston, Ben Whishaw and Jeremy Irons; The Last Weekend, a three-part adaptation of Blake Morrison's novel; and Whitechapel for ITV. Carnival's biggest hit, both critically and commercially, is Downton Abbey, written and co-produced by Julian Fellowes. Its final episode aired on 25 December 2015.
