Matt Bennett is Shine’s Director of Programmes, recently responsible for helping to bring The Summit to ITV (TX 2026) co-developing and running ambitious shows such as the Grierson award winning & BAFTA nominated Hunted, Celebrity Hunted and The Heist; developing and directing BBC’s hit series Rick Stein’s Cornwall and Rick Stein’s Food Stories.

Matt first met Shine when they marooned him on a Pacific desert island to live with 12 other blokes and 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 & shooting-director working in obs-doc, factual entertainment & current affairs, making series such as Trawlermen for the BBC, 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 which 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.