Stephen Lambert is the founder of Studio Lambert, one of the most internationally successful independent production companies to have emerged from the British creative ecosystem. His credits span the full arc of modern unscripted television: from the social experiment formats that defined the early 2000s like Wife Swap, Undercover Boss, Secret Millionaire to The Circle, three seasons of Squid Game: The Challenge for Netflix.
Lambert’s account of what made the British creative ecosystem distinctive begins not with legislation but with culture, specifically, the commissioning culture that prevailed in British broadcasting from the 1980s onward. In Britain, buyers rose through their organisations by commissioning original ideas. The person who backed an unknown concept before it was proven earned professional reputation and career advancement. Originality was the currency of professional prestige.
“There was always a great premium on buyers in Britain to buy an original idea. You rose in organisations, you rose at the BBC, if you were a buyer who bought an original idea. That was how you were seen to be somebody.”
Lambert notes that this cultural premium has a long tradition. It always was the BBC’s founding belief that it was there to enlighten and educate, with entertainment serving merely as ‘ground-bait’ to attract viewers. In that patrician culture, originality was the only currency that counted.
This operated in direct contrast to the American agent-driven pitch system, where ideas were expected to be fully developed and exposed to multiple buyers simultaneously. Lambert notes that British practice has since evolved toward the American model (he now pitches to multiple buyers simultaneously) but the underlying commissioning culture remains significant. The British buyer’s historical appetite for original, unproven ideas created the conditions in which genuinely new formats could find a home.
“There was always a great premium on buyers in Britain to buy an original idea. You rose in organisations, you rose at the BBC, if you were a buyer who bought an original idea. That was how you were seen to be somebody.”
– Stephen Lambert
Our reflections: Lambert’s cultural observation complements what the creative ecosystem model identifies as structural factors. The 2003 Communications Act changed economic incentives. But the cultural norm that rewarded buyers for commissioning original ideas preceded the Act and prepared the ground for it. Ecosystems are shaped by both formal institutions and informal norms: what career success looks like, what kind of risk-taking is admired. The British combination of formal rights protection and informal commissioning courage produced a creative environment in which the experimental space was genuinely wide.
Around five to six years ago, Studio Lambert made a conscious decision to concentrate on big shows. The reasoning was that the market for large-scale unscripted was less crowded than the market for mid-budget programming. If you were one of a small number of producers capable of reliably delivering high-production-value formats, you were in a structurally better position.
“The club was quite small. And if you could get into the club, it was actually a less crowded marketplace.”
The entry point was The Circle for Channel 4 and then Netflix. That track record made Squid Game: The Challenge possible. And Squid Game, in turn, opened the door to the Amazon Prime deal for an unscripted version of Fallout. There is a catch-22 embedded in this strategy: you’ve got to do it once in order to be able to do it again. And yet to do it the first time is really hard.
Alongside scale, Studio Lambert has developed a second strand: formats based on existing IP. Squid Game for Netflix, Fallout for Amazon Prime. Lambert is careful to nuance this existing IP changes the risk calculus for the buyer without eliminating the creative challenge for the producer. Even if it’s Squid Game, the game played in the drama is not easily convertible to an unscripted show with real people. There is significant creative work in making that translation.
Our reflections: Lambert’s blockbuster strategy is a deliberate response to structural changes in the format market. As streaming platforms consolidated global rights and linear broadcaster budgets declined, the economics of mid-budget unscripted deteriorated. The shows that retained their value were those large enough to justify streamer investment. By concentrating on this segment early, Studio Lambert positioned itself ahead of a market shift that was predictable in direction but not in speed.
Studio Lambert has consistently structured itself to give creative people a genuine financial stake in the organisation’s success. Subsequent iterations of the company have been created as new companies in which creative partners hold shareholdings realised when new shows succeed. Those shares only have value if new shows are created which means the economic incentive points toward origination rather than exploitation of existing IP.
Lambert also makes a specific point about how ideas are rewarded within the team. The company deliberately avoids attributing ideas to individuals, because individual attribution creates incentives to protect rather than develop collaboratively.
“We’ve always had a view against rewarding the author of an idea, because that tends to keep ideas very close to individuals. It gets more important to have people working in an environment where they’re sharing and sparking off each other.”
The development team is also unusual in its trans-Atlantic integration. Where most companies that straddle both markets maintain separate UK and US development teams, Studio Lambert’s team covers both simultaneously. The head of the American operation was previously head of UK development. The result is a team with dual-market fluency from the outset and a virtuous circle in which excitement from one market’s buyers creates momentum with the other.
Our reflections: Lambert’s organisational model is a micro-level implementation of the principle the creative ecosystem framework identifies at the market level: incentive structures determine behaviour. At the market level, the Communications Act changed what producers did by changing what they could gain from original development. At the company level, Lambert has engineered the same principle into Studio Lambert’s ownership structure. The people who develop new formats have a direct financial stake in their success which is precisely the condition necessary for sustained innovation capacity.
Lambert’s deepest insight connects his documentary background to his business method. A format, he learned, is not primarily a game mechanic or a production structure. It is a device that guarantees you are present at the beginning, middle and end of a human story, the very thing documentary makers spend their careers trying to control but rarely can.
That same ability to read people, to understand what drives them, what they fear, what they need, is what he identifies as the foundation of everything else. It applies to the contestants in your programme, the executives you are pitching to, and the clients you are trying to serve. The skill is always the same: enter their world before you ask them to enter yours.
“You’ve got to work out what’s in their interest to do it — not why they should be helping you.”