Hot Shots 2025: Hugo Pettitt

Not many producers can claim to have penetrated hard-to-reach communities, been sought out by a Bafta-winning comic actor and writer, and ushered in a step change in the relationship between the police and the public.

But that has all been part of the eight-year trajectory of Hugo Pettitt since his breakthrough with BBC doc Drugsland, which won him an RTS West Emerging Talent award for his tenacity in filming dawn raids of Class-A drug-dealers. He was subsequently picked by Stephen Merchant to become script and production consultant on his BBC/Amazon comedy-drama The Outlaws.

But Pettitt’s entry here recognises his crowning achievement in developing and series producing Channel 4’s Bafta-nominated and Broadcast Award-winning To Catch A Copper.

Pettitt spent more than four years securing and maintaining access with the counter-corruption unit at the core of the show, and building the narrative progression of the cases featured. The series has been directly attributed to helping to grow public confidence in policing and increase reporting of complaints about the police by 13%.

Sacha Mirzoeff, head of C4 Bristol and factual commissioning editor, remarks that Pettitt “has become a senior voice within the industry at a young age”, adding: “With an aptitude and desire to learn, Hugo has honed his access skills to a fine degree, and can navigate his way in many institutions that traditionally might have been thought of as out of bounds.”