Kevin Loader is one of the UK’s most established film and television producers.

His current work includes his most recent collaborations with Armando Iannucci: The HBO/Sky Atlantic comedy series Avenue 5, starring Hugh Laurie, Josh Gad, Zach Woods and Rebecca Front, and award-winning feature film The Personal History of David Copperfield, starring Dev Patel as Dickens’ hero in a version that has been praised for its wit and contemporary resonance.

Loader’s previous films with Iannucci were The Death of Stalin and In The Loop.

Loader spent fourteen years at the BBC, working in current affairs, arts documentaries and drama. He was the founding Executive Producer on the BBC’s ground-breaking daily cultural magazine The Late Show, before moving to BBC drama and working on serials which included The Buddha of Suburbia, Clarissa, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and The Crow Road.

Since leaving the BBC he has produced over a dozen feature films, including John Madden’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Nowhere Boy, Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights, Julian Jarrold’s film version of Brideshead Revisited, and Alpha Papa: The Alan Partridge Movie. The Lady In The Van, a huge hit at the UK box office, marked Loader’s second collaboration with Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett after he produced 2006’s film of Bennett’s award-winning play The History Boys. 

Loader has worked extensively with director Roger Michell and produced most of Michell’s British films over the past fifteen years, including My Cousin Rachel with Rachel Weisz; Le Week-end, starring Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan; Venus, for which Peter O’Toole received his final Oscar nomination; The Mother, starring Daniel Craig and Anne Reid; the film of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love; and Hyde Park on Hudson, starring a Golden Globe-nominated Bill Murray as FDR. The pair also made the ITV Drama The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies, which won both Bafta and RTS Awards for Best Drama Serial in 2015.  

Loader’s most recent television project in 2020 was the re-made versions of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, starring Jodie Comer, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton and Martin Freeman.

Speaking on: Master Class: HBO’s Avenue 5