Hot Shots 2026: Maisah Thompson

In the past six years, Maisah Thompson has worked with some of the most exciting comedy minds in TV today. Working for Baby Cow for almost two years, she was an assistant producer on series three of Liam Williams’ BBC3 comedy Pls Like before producing Kiell Smith-Bynoe’s Red Flag, a Broadcast Digital Award-winning Channel 4 Blap that benefited from her love of oddball comedy and unexpected story structure.

Propelled by her role as assistant producer on series one of Kat Sadler’s Bafta-winning Such Brave Girls, Maisah stuck with producer Various Artists Limited to sharpen the storytelling and visual language on series two of fellow BBC3 comedy Juice alongside creator Mawaan Rizwan.

A self-confessed long-term ‘comedy nerd’ raised on Chewing Gum and Little Miss Jocelyn, Maisah broke into TV work as a runner on BBC2’s Upstart Crow. After a stint as a C4 script reader, she bagged assistant producer and junior researcher credits at Objective.

Now she’s running VAL x LAB, a writers’ programme she created to develop and mentor the next generation of underrepresented comedy writers through writing classes and writers’ room-style environments.

Producer Catherine Gosling Fuller, who worked with Maisah on Such Brave Girls, enthuses: “Maisah’s super smart and a very positive presence. She is incredibly creative and I have no doubt that she will be responsible for much of the comedy we watch in the future.”