Since it was founded by Amanda & Simon, Cactus has enjoyed success producing a wide range of entertaining and popular programming across a huge variety of genres – everything from low-budget channel ‘interstitials’, to high-volume studio-based quizzes, to large-scale TV events and musical spectaculars…
Major music events include Sir Cliff Richard: The Hits I Missed (ITV), and Songs of Bond (ITV). Cactus originally created The British Soap Awards, and produced the TV coverage for four years until 2002; during that time, it was ITV’s highest-rated entertainment show for three years running.
Cactus quiz and game shows include Incognito (BBC1 – 2 series, 87 shows in total), King of the Castle (ITV – 19 shows), It’s Anybody’s Guess (ITV - 40 shows), Sports Anorak of the Year (UK Gold - 2 series, 64 shows), Intuition (ITV), Upshot (Anglia) and Morphit (BBC1).
For the youth market, Cactus produced the funky current affairs discussion show Mad For It, which was nominated for 3 RTS Awards, and Off The Wall (Anglia). Other youth series included Pop-elganger (UK PLAY), For Your Ears Only, (UK PLAY) and The TV Set (LWT).
Comedy features included In Search of Fame (BBC1), a consumer problem-solving series How To Deal With… (BBC1), and an infotainment graphic animation series - The Incredible Journey (BBC1). As well as making Lifestyle strands for BBC Daytime, Cactus produced two travel series, The Real America (BBC1) and Britain Into Europe (BBC1).
In 1999, The ITV Network Centre asked Cactus to take over the production of the prime-time charity TV event Men For Sale from Action Time, in order to re-format the show and take it upmarket. It was considered a major success, and the participation of stars including Boyzone, Michael Bolton, and the legendary Jean Claude van Damme helped the show raise over £325,000 for charity – almost five times the sum raised in the previous year.
Cactus-produced chat shows include The Last Resort Revisited (Channel 4) with Jonathan Ross, and Rowland Rivron Bites The Bullet (UK Gold). Cactus also produced a controversial debate show, The Spirit of Diana: The Debate for Living TV – which scored double the channel’s normal ratings for its slot.
In 2005, Cactus made a 10-part wine series for More4 as a spin-off from the Richard & Judy Wine Club. The company’s reputation for delivering high quality programmes with low budgets helped it win long-running contracts with Film Four and Channel 4 for interstitial programming – and FourSite, our fact-filled pop-ups for film buffs, aired on Channel 4 for over two years.