Wise Owl Films: The TV production company working with Yorkshire Shepherdess Amanda Owen and her farming family

Knight is the creative director of Wise Owl Films, the Leeds-based production company behind shows including Amanda Owen's Farming Lives and Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive And Kids. The latter, he says, is a tricky programme to make. "It’s not for everyone,” he reflects. “TV production is tricky at the best of times but when you’re in sub zero temperatures in horizontal rain and the story is up on the moors and you’ve got to walk there, it’s not always that much fun.”

“The crew have had to become really embedded into life there,” he continues. “You have to go with the flow of it all. You need your winter weather gear on all the time - as at least six months of the year it could absolutely pour down or snow on you. There are regular floods, snowstorms, there’s usually an animal the family are trying to find or rescue.

“We have a plan and know roughly what we’re going to film but we have to be open minded because often something else will have happened. I think that's what gives the programme its charm because you just don’t know what you’re going to get…

"Amanda films a lot herself too and her videos are big part of it because we can’t always get there. Some of the best storylines have come from things that have happened when we aren’t even present.”

The More4 programme follows mother-of-nine Owen and her family as they work to transform a centuries-old derelict farmhouse known as Anty John’s into a modern home for the future. Last year Wise Owl shared how the show had more than four times the number of viewers than average for its timeslot on the channel and said it had become More4’s highest-rated series since the start of 2024.

Knight speculates on its popularity: “I think there’s a nostalgia to the way the children are being brought up and I think viewers think ‘oh imagine if I had a life like that where I didn’t need an iPad or a phone and I was outside with my siblings working hard on a family farm’. That (lifestyle) hasn’t really changed there for 200 years...I think viewers like the escapism - in their heads it’s a very difficult and rugged and challenging but quite idyllic lifestyle.

“I think people also admire Amanda and Clive’s ability to wrangle the family whilst also having gone through a difficult time themselves (they announced their separation in 2022 and now have a co-parent relationship). I think it’s all a resilience that people resonate with. The children genuinely don’t hanker after screen time and complain about the weather, they just get on with it. The Owen’s world is very real and I think viewers really warm to the authenticity.”

Owen rose to fame for starring in the Channel 5 documentary series Our Yorkshire Farm, and before that appeared regularly in ITV show The Dales. Wise Owl founder Mark Robinson worked on the latter programme years before he set up the production company in Leeds in 2018.

“Mark felt a strong passion and regional identity with where he’s from,” Knight says. “We maintain that to this day and a lot of our content has a fierce loyalty to the region. Virtually every show we make has a link somehow to this area.”

Knight joined in 2019, his career already having spanned across documentary, current affairs and science programming, and was promoted to creative director earlier this year. Robinson continues to executive produce for Wise Owl, which these days is Lime Pictures’ Leeds-based label.

The company produces across different genres of factual and factual entertainment television. Its recent commissions include The Brontes by Anita Rani: Sisters of Disruption for Sky Arts, BBC Two series Yorkshire Firefighters - filmed during the pandemic, and the BBC Two archive documentary collection ‘When…Came to Britain’, which has focused on the likes of Bob Marley, Tina Turner, Abba and Bruce Springsteen.

“We try to make those about the area and the people too,” says Knight. “We will always look for an angle that puts Yorkshire on the map - even when we’re doing a global superstar story, there’s usually a way we can find a tie into the area...(At Wise Owl), we always try to look for local talent, who the people of this area really respect and enjoy seeing and then try to find ways to work with them.”

The company’s regionality, and its Yorkshire home at Kirkstall Road, helps it stand out, Knight believes, helping to place Wise Owl at “the front of the queue” for local people and stories. The industry, he claims is “still fundamentally a South East-based landscape”, but more broadcasters are diversifying their production bases and where they commission, underlined by Channel 4’s move to Leeds.

Each year, Knight says Wise Owl contributes to the development of younger producers, researchers, camera editors and operators by offering industry placements to people new to television. “So many have gone on to work for Channel 4 or other indies in the area so we feel we’re part of that production line,” he says.

“There’s also a very strong freelance base of skillful and talented people in the region. You don’t have to look far. But the difficulty for them is that th e freelance world isn't perhaps as bountiful as it once was - the good projects are fewer and far between so the hard thing is retaining talent... I think one of the biggest challenges the industry faces is losing really experienced people.”

As in many creative industries, those working in television are vying for people’s attention in an era where content is constantly available on mobile devices. “To get people to sit down and watch an hour of television in front of a screen with their family takes quite a lot,” Knight says. “They have to be really invested in the idea.

“Broadcasters have less money because there’s less advertising revenue coming in, some of them have fewer slots and there’s a lot of companies out there trying to make really engaging content. There’s still an appetite for great programmes...and the high quality content is still out there. But what would have been a traditional evening audience sat in front of their TVs, four or five million people, that isn’t how the world works anymore.”

The skills as programme-makers haven’t changed, he claims, but there’s a need to be more agile on how you fund programmes, win commissioning business and promote shows once they’re made.

“We have to be quite creative in the way we develop new ideas and the way we form relationships with people - like the Owen family or record labels for the music documentaries. It’s about building relationships and trust, the authenticity and heart and honesty we put into the films we make, and then convincing viewers to come and watch.”

- Visit wiseowlfilms.com