Hot Shots 2026: Serena Basra

Serena Basra’s had a meteoric rise in the four years since joining Channel 4’s comedy department as an assistant.

Through her involvement in multiple talent development initiatives, mentorships and backing of new voices – and reading more than 200 submissions a year – she’s expanding the diversity of voices in the broadcaster’s output while paying forward the early support she received through access schemes Creative Access and The Network.

Serena has worked across editorial on two Blaps – The Pharmacy and Misguided, both from Objective – and has developed her own slate of projects, including rising star Tatenda Shamiso’s Jim Jamz School 4 Dads, a Fable production that sits in C4’s experimental Playground strand.

After championing Break Clause, a BBC Studios romcom that grew out of a Comedy Blap, C4 head of comedy Charlie Perkins brought Serena on to work as a development executive on upcoming series Leo Reich’s It Gets Worse.

Serena also pitched, and is shaping, two of C4’s new Scripted Labs, which seek to broaden and demystify routes into commissioning for people from British East and South-East Asian, and British South Asian communities.

Perkins says: “I trust Serena implicitly both creatively and administratively, and the value she adds to all our projects is palpable. She interrogates things with an astute eye, approaches everything she works on with inclusivity at the fore, and communicates in a clear and compassionate way without exception.”

With a stage background from the National Theatre to the Royal Court, Serena has also written for gal-dem and served as a trustee for Olivier-winning company Papatango.

Alongside her core C4 duties, she’s somehow found time to develop three projects through the NI Screen and C4 Comedy Lab, worked with RISE to nurture deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent off-screen talent, sat on the steering committee of C4’s First For Funny line-up at the Roundhouse 360 Festival and sat on the judging panel of the Sean Lock Comedy Award and Funny Women.

“Serena’s additive to every single aspect of our work at Channel 4 Comedy,” adds Perkins. “She’s professionally and personally exceptional. I almost don’t want to give this quote as I want to work with Serena myself forever.”