Celia Taylor, Sky

A few years ago, a YouTube clip of a dog driving a car in Australia received 14 million views. Most people who saw the clip filed it alongside the bulldog on the skateboard and the Japanese cat obsessed with jumping into cardboard boxes.

Not so Celia Taylor, head of non-scripted commissioning at Sky, who wondered what other vehicles dogs could operate.

This curiosity lead Oxford Scientific Films to test whether mutts made safe pilots in Sky 1’s six-part series Dogs Might Fly, which launched last month.

The show, which recorded overnights of 224,000 (1%) on its launch, has led Taylor to look for other miraculous animal feats – she is currently investigating ideas around pigs that swim in the Bahamas.

It’s the latest in a long line of absurd questions posed by the pay-TV broadcaster, which has also asked whether a computer could write a musical (Sky Arts’ Computer Says Show) or a 71-year-old woman could skydive (Sky 1’s 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy), and tested myriad outlandish claims on Sky 1’s Duck Quacks Don’t Echo.

The former Virgin Media exec has a simple requirement of her viewers. “I want them to say: ‘you did what?’.”

Dogs Might Fly comes a year after Taylor, who had previously looked after factual commissioning, was promoted to oversee all 400 hours of non-scripted programming.

“We’re all about genre-busting. Most of our hits have been when we’ve mixed genres,” she says. “Where does factual stop and factual entertainment begin, and then where does entertainment bleed into them?”

However, she says there is no danger of Sky going full Partridge and ordering a run of Monkey Tennis. “We’re intelligent and sensible and we know where the line is. Incredulity is good when it’s gripping and fails when it’s ridiculous. But that is an interesting line to play creatively, and that’s what Sky is all about.”

Many of Sky’s recent non-scripted hits, such as The Moaning Of Life with Karl Pilkington and Micky Flanagan’s Detour De France, which is set to return for a second series, fall within its funny factual strand.

However, Taylor warns that the genre is harder than it looks: “The big thing about funny factual is that it’s very difficult to do, because it is not about a funny person doing a travelogue; it’s more complicated than that. It requires certain skills and brilliant comedic understanding, and you cut it differently.”

Talented women

The broadcaster has similar projects in development and would like more women on screen. Taylor highlights Bring The Noise panellist Katherine Ryan. “There’s a whole generation of female comics who are mainstream and successful, so you’ll see that changing. I’m actively talking about a number of female-fronted funny factual shows. I’m a feminist; I’m keen to get more women on television.”

But Sky 1 still has men in its sights. “I’d love a male-skewing weeknight factual entertainment show. Not necessarily a survival show – there’s quite a few of those out there with Bear Grylls – but the same tone: authentic, tough.”

Meanwhile, the pay channel will be hoping to pull in a younger audience with its version of Renegade’s Don’t Tell The Bride after it snapped up the former BBC3 series.

Taylor says it was “very funny and full of joy”. “What’s brilliant about Don’t Tell The Bride is that it has a very loyal audience,” she says.

She has no reservations about playing a show that was a landmark programme for a rival channel. “It’s about a mixed economy. It was an opportunity and we took it.”

Sky will hope similar opportunities present themselves with hit formats including The X Factor (if ITV doesn’t extend its deal next year) and The Great British Bake Off (which is believed to have one more season left to run on its current BBC1 contract).

“We always want to be in the mix for every show,” she says. “We are really ambitious so whenever there’s an industry shift, of course we’re in the heart of those things – why wouldn’t we be, just like every other broadcaster is?

“I would much rather our name was in any debate because we’re players. Seismic television moments don’t come up often, but I’m very ambitious to bring the best content to Sky, so I talk to everybody.”

One star that Taylor has succeeded in bringing to Sky 1 is Harry Hill. Sky is understood to have been trying to woo the TV Burp star for years and has now given him a two-series commitment for cooking parody series Harry Hill’s Tea Time.

All of the major broadcasters have struggled to bring through new entertainment formats in recent years. Sky tried with shiny floor studio format Bring The Noise, but the musical take on A League Of Their Own failed to cut through and was cancelled. Despite this, Taylor is optimistic about the future of entertainment in the UK.

“We’re getting loads of brilliant ideas. I don’t think it’s in a state. I’m an optimistic person – why waste your time lamenting anything? Just crack on and work with the best people and get the best ideas.”

Taylor is also still searching for factual ideas and following the success of Netflix’s Making A Murderer and HBO’s The Jinx, she is working out how best to do ‘box-set factual’.

“We have some box-set documentary ideas in development, things that take a long time to complete,” she reveals. “Some are real crime stories and some aren’t. It’s always about being one step ahead.”

Sky Atlantic has been a partner on a number of award-winning feature documentaries including The Act Of Killing and Ralph Steadman film For No Good Reason. While it will no longer schedule them in a dedicated strand, it is still looking to finance and co-produce high-end docs.

“It’s a very specialised market. If you bring a feature documentary to us, it has to have the right talent and be epic and cinematic,” Taylor says. “There are films that are going to go to Sundance, Toronto and Berlin.”

Sky Arts is close to commissioning a landmark music documentary series from Vice-owned Pulse Films about the history of rock, with Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl. “It’s going to have anybody and everybody we want to be in it. It’s a big old piece.”

Taylor is aware that non-scripted is of huge importance to Sky and says it’s only getting started. “We’re still really ambitious. It’s a big mountain and we have a long way to go.”