our pedigree

Testimony is one of Britain’s most established and successful independent producers of social history and life story programmes in Britain.
It has a reputation for consistently delivering big ratings and critical acclaim. Amongst Testimony’s back catalogue is the highest rated social history series on all channels for 2001, Some Liked It Hot: The Story of the British on Holiday, broadcast on ITV 10-11 p.m. As well as achieving ratings of around 6 million it won much critical acclaim. Other hits are the six parter A Secret World of Sex based on his book of the same name. In 1992 it achieved ratings of 5.7 million making it the most popular factual programme on BBC2 that year. The following year A Labour of Love another six part BBC2 series consistently won over 4 million viewers in the 9.50 p.m. slot.
For Channel 4 Testimony has produced other major series which have scored high ratings like Hooked: A Secret History of Addiction, (1998); Far Out: The Dawning of New Age Britain (1999) and the six x 1 hours Green and Pleasant Land (1999) –the untold story of the British countryside.

We have also produced highly successful one-offs for all channels including Sex in a Cold Climate for the Channel 4’s Witness strand in 1998. It was an exposé of nuns’ abuse of young unmarried mothers. It achieved one of the highest ever Witness ratings of almost 3 million. It led to a huge helpline response and directly inspired the Peter Mullen’s feature film The Magdalene Sisters (2002), which enjoyed international acclaim in recent years. As a result of this public attention Catholic run institutions for women and children in Ireland and elsewhere have been subjected to government scrutiny resulting in the payment of millions of pounds of compensation to victims. In 2005 Sex in a Cold Climate was voted number eight in Broadcast Magazine’s top ten programmes of all time that have changed the world.