Wildflame lands Off The Fence’s creative chief to ignite international expansion

Allison Bean

Brink Of Disaster producer Wildflame Productions has named Off The Fence’s former chief creative officer as its new creative director.

Allison Bean starts in January and will oversee Wildflame’s international push, reporting to Wildflame’s CEO, Paul Islwyn Thomas.

She had been with Off The Fence for 16 years, most recently expanding its production capability as well as leading the Amsterdam-based distributor’s roll-out of OTF Productions in Bristol.

Bean also worked across the recent launching of its digital offering, OTF Fast, and commercial arm OTF Studios, and had credits on shows ranging from My Octopus Teacher for Netflix, to Stan Lee’s Superhumans for History and Monkey Thieves for National Geographic.

Thomas said: “We have a wonderful, talented team that has seen our standing in factual television grow both at home and internationally and under Allison’s creative leadership we’ll now super-charge our ambitious strategy for growth and continue that trajectory.”

Bean added: “Wildflame is a company with a fantastic reputation domestically and a growing reputation internationally, especially off the back of recent commissions for Discovery and Smithsonian. I look forward to becoming a member of the team to help further establish its reputation and continue to build a company that is truly world-class.”

Bean’s appointment follows the additions of Connie Fisher, who was appointed as head of development in October, and executive producer Catrin Mair Jones, who will lead on all Welsh language programming for S4C.

Wildflame’s shows range from aforementioned Brink Of Disaster for Discovery+, to BBC factual entertainment format Dare To Dance and The 1900 Island for the BBC.