Heather Fallon
21 Aug 2026
A ‘comic sensibility’ is at the heart of everything Ranga Bee has done since launching 10 years ago, from scripted and entertainment series to children’s shows and podcasts. Co-founders Benjamin Green and Romesh Ranganathan talk to Heather Fallon about being more than a talent-led indie and what is coming next.
This might depress Romesh, but I feel like we’re just at the start,” says Ranga Bee co-founder Benjamin Green, when asked about the outlook for the 10-year-old indie. Romesh Ranganathan, the indies’ other co-founder, puts his head in his hands.
“No, I really do!” laughs Green. He argues that after several phases of figuring out what the
company should be, it is now on firmer footing and ready to really get going. “To use a very wanky term, our growth curve is really exciting right now,” he says.
The duo’s close rapport is clear as they sit down with Broadcast in their Covent Garden office,
despite it being the end of an exceptionally hot day of overseeing back-to-back recordings of their hit podcast, The Romesh Ranganathan Show.
They first met when Ranganathan fronted Rumpus Media’s BBC3 series Asian Provocateur, which Green directed, back in 2015.
“We instantly got on and had a similar comedic and creative mind,” Ranganathan says. “There are certain people who bring out the best in you. Even before I got into TV, I was told that if you meet someone that you enjoy working with and you trust them, hang onto them.”
Comic creative hub
The company was born a year later, with the dream of “creating a little comic creative hub”, Green says, which would allow for “autonomy… and a space to protect other comics and voices coming through”.
The first challenge was to “prove we could make a show and be a trusted production company”, he adds. The pair quickly sealed a first-look deal with Sky Studios and support from C4’s Accelerator scheme, creating a mix of comedy entertainment and scripted programming, including the projects that would go on to be BBC1 sitcom Avoidance and Sky Comedy’s Romantic Getaway, both starring Ranganathan.
Early on, major distributors advised the duo to “pick a lane” and choose between scripted comedy and entertainment. They weren’t keen. “We’ve always been quite entrepreneurial and diverse in our slate, just going for ideas that we love,” says Green. Instead of following the advice, they decided their ‘lane’ would be a “comic sensibility”, and have been vindicated.
“The markets have changed – suddenly the scripted comedy game has gotten so small,” Green says.
“But two years ago, nobody could sell a panel show and now that’s come back.” Being adaptable and offering a diverse slate, he says, is what has not only kept the company afloat but made it successful.
Having a talent as well known as Ranganathan co-leading Ranga Bee has, at times, opened doors for the company, the pair acknowledge. But in many ways, it was a significant hurdle for them to overcome. Pitch meetings often came with the expectation that Ranganathan would be front and centre, with commissioners assuming the indie was purely a talent vehicle.
Having proved that they could make shows with the best of them, Green says, the second step was to prove “that we could do things beyond Romesh”.
This had always been Ranga Bee’s ambition. “On-screen talent has a shelf life,” Ranganathan says. “There’s going to be a time when people don’t want to see me on anything and I don’t want to be seen on anything. So having me [front and centre] in everything is not a long-term strategy.”
RANGA BEE’S KEY SHOWS
Avoidance (two series)
BBC1, 2022-24
Romantic Getaway
Sky 1, 2023
King Konan’s Trap Door
Channel 4.0, 2023
Romesh Ranganathan’s Parent’s Evening (three series)
ITV1, 2024-26
Go Get Arty (two series)
CBeebies, 2025-26
Unacceptable (two series)
TLC, 2026
It took commissioners a while to be convinced, however. “As diverse and successful as the slate is [now], there were times when Ben and I would say, ‘What the hell are we going to do?’,”
Ranganathan says. “The first time it happens, you say, ‘Okay, we go again’, the 100th time, you ask, ‘Can we go again?’.”
Frustratingly, or perhaps reassuringly, many of the company’s staples were among the ideas that were initially rejected. Romesh Ranganathan’s Parents’ Evening is in its third series on ITV1 and has just sold to Australia’s Network 10 via ITV Studios, but took around five years to get off the ground.
Comedy format Unacceptable, which has just secured a second run with TLC, also went through multiple iterations. “It comes down to timing,” Green says. “We knew there was a great idea there.” Ranganathan adds: “What you’re seeing on screen is the result of evolution – they’re like Pokémon.” Ultimately, he says, every indie has to compromise, but also decide what its non-negotiables are. For Ranga Bee, that is “funny”.
Ranga Bee head of entertainment Shereen Docherty came up with an acronym that, for Green, sums up what the company is aiming for: HUG. This, Green says, breaks down to having ‘humour’, ‘universality’ [“we’re not trying to create niche shows”] and being ‘gettable’, meaning a show you can instantly get your head around. Having built a trusted production company, and proved they didn’t require Ranganathan to front a show, the third phase of Ranga Bee’s journey was to move into digital spaces.
Even with Ranganathan’s considerable profile, the pair say, The Romesh Ranganathan Show podcast has “done so much better than we ever thought”. After only nine months, it has cumulatively landed more than 50 million views across Spotify, Apple and YouTube. While there are numerous comedy interview shows in the podcast market, Green argues “there was
a gap” for something straightforward and light on format. Many of their rivals revolve around a theme, he says, pointing to Off Menu or Parenting Hell as examples. The Romesh Ranganathan
Show is more akin to US-style podcasters such as Theo Von.
Ranganathan says the podcast team’s efforts to promote the show on socials have been a key factor in its success, with clips regularly hitting tens of millions of views.
The podcast is formed of two weekly episodes, one featuring a guest interview (which is the core driver of audience growth) and one in which Ranganathan is joined by his mum. These
episodes, Green says, have developed “a loyal fan base” of their own.
Ranganathan admits he had secretly harboured a desire to front a chat show for a while – but he’s been revelling in the freedom afforded by the podcast format. Where their TV equivalents “have to be so heavily produced”, with research conversations ahead of time to elicit the right conversation during recording, “the luxury of a podcast [is] if you have a shit ten minutes, it’s not going in”.
Ranganathan continues: “If people are coming to a podcast interview, it’s to sit down and [for us to] get to know those people.” Like most major podcasts, the show is available in both audio and video format. The pair are speaking with Broadcast in Ranga Bee’s podcast studio – a slick, wood-panelled room that already boasts a YouTube plaque recognising that the show has surpassed 100,000 subscribers on the platform.
The UK has been largely “behind the curve” when it comes to visualised podcasts, Green observes. “For a while there was so little effort put into the visuals,” he says. “But you can see that other podcasts are starting to upgrade.”
Pursuing podcasts
This obviously requires investment, but a look across the pond suggests it will pay dividends, he
adds. Many indies are now rushing into the podcast world hoping to capitalise, as Ranga Bee has. But Green warns results are rarely instantaneous.
“It’s the same challenge whether it’s a great podcast or a TV format,” he says. “You can spend a lot of money on a reality show and it still might not find an audience.
“If you look at MrBeast or any big YouTuber, they’ve been doing it for 10 years. The idea you’re going to jump in and do it in a week is unlikely.”
While Ranga Bee might be more than a talent vehicle for Ranganathan, the duo are clear-eyed about the impact of his star power, and where it can be put to good use. “We were helped by my profile in terms of getting money behind the podcast. That meant we were able to roll the dice,” Ranganathan says.
A show featuring newer talent would likely have struggled to get such immediate backing, he
admits – but the only way around that may be to put money behind the project and wait for it to grow, he says: “It’s really hard but sometimes you have to back a horse.”
The podcast’s success will hopefully allow the company to launch new shows with different talent, Ranganathan says: “Imagine a new show that we’re launching, we drop it on The Romesh Ranganathan Show channels, and you can get millions of eyeballs.
“You’re sort of doing the job a broadcaster used to do. Now we can do that internally. It’s exciting.”
The company is also looking to expand its podcast offering. It acquired the Wolf & Owl podcast, hosted by Ranganathan and fellow comic Tom Davis, in February. The show originally launched in 2020, but since its acquisition has doubled its audience. And the team are open to buying more. “Whether it’s a new show or an existing one, if we feel there’s a way of supersizing it and growing it, then that’s very interesting to us,” says Green. They would also be open to partnering with other podcasts provided, Ranganathan says, they “really love it”.
A decade in and still at the beginning of the journey, what is the next phase for Ranga Bee?
The indie’s slate now comprises a wide range of programming, including Unacceptable, which is hosted by comedian Ed Gamble, children’s art show Go Get Arty on CBBC and a third series of gameshow Romesh Ranganathan’s Parents’ Evening on ITV1, as well as the podcast division.
Cross-genre ambitions
While there has been little in the way of scripted comedy in recent years, Green says they haven’t abandoned the genre – Ranga Bee development executive Lauren Jupp currently has two big hour-long comedy dramas in paid development.
“Maybe we were a bit naïve at first and had too many [scripted] things on the slate,” he says. “Now we’ve really homed in and spend a lot of time and love on them. It’s much more focused and intentional now.
There are signs the company is elbowing its way into the big leagues. At time of writing, Ranga Bee is on a shortlist of three for a BBC2 comedy entertainment format tender, alongside heavy
hitters Avalon and Expectation. Green and Ranganathan tease that they are also working up a
reality series, although they can’t divulge more.
Green says commissioners have been “really receptive” and notes that they’re now much more open-minded to cross-genre ideas. Ranganathan says that the more challenging commissioning environment has been tough for all indies, Ranga Bee included, explaining: “In the past, it felt like almost anything in the entertainment space would go straight to television but that’s not the case now. Ideas have to be better and more interesting, and the quality of TV is getting better as a result. “Previously, we’ve all watched stuff and thought, ‘Fucking hell, how did that get on air’,” he says. “I don’t think that’s the case anymore, and that makes it an exciting time for TV.”
And, in a world where indies have their own direct-to-consumer offerings, there are new
opportunities for partnership, Green says, pointing to Netflix’s ongoing relationship with
Goalhanger. “They’re serving each other. It’s going to increase Goalhanger and Netflix’s audience. I think that will happen more and more.”
When it comes to the indie’s immediate future, Green says it is not actively in the market to be
acquired. Ranganathan agrees, although he would never say never: “If we suddenly thought that going in a different direction would help us to expand in a way we couldn’t on our own, then we’d definitely be open to that.”
For now, it seems they’ve found their rhythm – and their roles within the company. Green describes Ranganathan as “brilliant at pitching and selling ideas”, “genuinely insightful” and able to “read a deck and give brilliant notes incredibly quickly”. To spare his own blushes, Ranganathan admits he’s “not as business minded”, but that’s what Green brings to the table.
“You’ve found us in a bit of a sweet spot,” he says, but is careful not to tempt fate. “We say all this, six months before Broadcast reports our closure.”
“We thought we cracked it,” laughs Green.