Lime Pictures: История британской телекомпании

British television production company

Lime Pictures, formerly known as Mersey Television, is a British television production company, founded by producer and writer Phil Redmond in the early 1980s. It produces drama and entertainment shows for the international market, including Hollyoaks, The Only Way is Essex, Geordie Shore and Free Rein.

Mersey Television's first major production was the soap opera Brookside for Channel 4, which ran from the channel's foundation in 1982 until 2003, when it was taken off air due to declining ratings. A three part spin off ('soap bubble') of Brookside was produced in November 1987, titled Damon and Debbie. In 1995, the company began producing a second soap opera for Channel 4, Hollyoaks, which still runs. Both Brookside and Hollyoaks were created by Redmond himself, and in 2003 the company took over production of another series he had created, the children's drama Grange Hill, which had first been broadcast on BBC1 in 1978 and had been made in house by the BBC until Mersey Television took over. The company moved production of the series to its Liverpool base, with the fictional school no longer being established as in London but instead at an unspecified UK location.

In 1991 Mersey Television under the name of North West Television made an audacious bid during the ITV network franchise auction to win the Channel 3 licence in the North West England from holders Granada Television. Granada had held the North West franchise ever since the inception of independent television in the 1950s, and Granada was one of the biggest and the most established of the ITV companies. Granada was also a popular production company and it came second only to the BBC to find the most respected British television company amongst the British public. The bid was supported financially by Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees Television and the bid had aimed to provide a more balanced television service for the North West, in particular featuring more content from Liverpool as opposed to Manchester. However, although North West Television bid more money for the franchise totalling £35 million as opposed to Granada's £9 million, the licence stayed with Granada because the Independent Television Commission declared that the Mersey Television bid did not meet the required quality threshold. Furthermore, Granada was aware of Mersey Television's attempts to gain the North West franchise, and built defences to avoid the loss of the licence it had owned for decades. Would be franchise holders that had no experience of owning an ITV franchise (Mersey Television was one such example) would have to a pass a "quality hurdle" that Granada executives actually helped the ITC to adopt. Since 2010, Lime Pictures has produced the award winning reality series The Only Way Is Essex for ITV2. Through 2011 to 2013, Lime Pictures, along with Nickelodeon Productions and Studio 100, produced House of Anubis, which aired on Nickelodeon. From 2011 to 2022, Lime Pictures produced Geordie Shore for MTV in the UK and Ireland. From 2011 to 2014, Lime Pictures produced Rocket's Island for CBBC. From 2014 to 2016, The Evermoor Chronicles were produced for Disney Channel. Since 2016, Lime Pictures has produced Celebs Go Dating for E4. In 2017, it began producing Free Rein for Netflix. In 2021, they produced Hollyoaks IRL for Channel 4. The series has been nominated for a BAFTA TV award, in the Short form Programme category.

Year Award Category Nominee(s) Result Ref. 2018 NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Children's Program Free Rein 2018 Daytime Emmy Awards Outstanding Children’s or Family Viewing Series Free Rein 2022BAFTA TV AwardsShort Form ProgrammeHollyoaks IRLNominated2022Broadcast AwardsBest Digital Support for a Programme Hollyoaks Won2022British Soap AwardsBest British SoapHollyoaksNominated2022Royal Television Society Awards (North West)Best Digital Creativity Hollyoaks IRL Won