Matt Bennett is Shine’s Senior Executive Producer, recently responsible for the BBC2 hit series Rick Stein’s Cornwall and for co-developing and running ambitious shows such as the Grierson award winning, BAFTA nominated Hunted, Celebrity Hunted and The Heist. He first met Shine when they marooned him on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to live with 12 other blokes, helping to film & direct the first series of the BAFTA/RTS award winning series, The Island with Bear Grylls.

Before working at Shine, Matt was a freelance executive producer and director working in obs-doc, factual entertainment & current affairs, making the first series of Trawlermen for the BBC, travelling with and bringing to the screen the majority of Ross Kemp’s documentary output for SKY1, including the ground-breaking trilogy of series in Afghanistan, the blue-chip current affairs strand Extreme World, and Ross Kemp on Gangs. For his work with Ross he was nominated for two BAFTAs and won an Asian Media Award for best investigation into India’s child traffickers. Matt’s also produced and directed three major travelogues for ITV with Joanna Lumley, including Joanna Lumley’s Nile, where they travelled the length of this great river for 3 months.