Unleashing a ‘Carnival’ of Joy in ITV’s Time-Jumping Epic

​ITV’s new brand platform, ‘There’s No Place Like ITV’, is a pacey, time-jumping tour through human history. Created by ITV Creative and directed by Stink Films’ Felix Brady, the campaign positions the broadcaster as the home for shared cultural moments.

“This new brand campaign is all about our audience – celebrating the joy of enjoying something together,” says Tom Houser, executive creative director at ITV Creative. “The things we watch might change and the ways we watch them may shift, but the joy of being part of an audience? That’s forever.”

ITV has just celebrated 70 years of broadcasting, but the entertainment brand didn’t want this new campaign to spend too much time looking back. “It needed to feel fresh,” says Tom. “Depicting audiences from the Stone Age onwards then blending them all together? That felt different, and it makes the point in a less worthy, more fun way.”

With a visually ambitious idea like this, Tom and the ITV Creative team knew the most important thing was finding the right collaborators to bring it to life. “Felix [Brady] and the team at Stink got what we were trying to do immediately – his reel shows how much flair he always brings,” says the ECD. “We're a broadcaster, and I'm a perfectionist,” he laughs. “So production values really matter – you can see from the film how much work went into the sets and costumes and casting, it's a beautiful thing.”

It was really more about emotional truth though, even though the job was to zip through various eras of history. “Personally I’m not super pedantic about keeping things period accurate,” admits Felix. “So the most important thing was to find ways to show off that period in an immediate and engaging way. Originally I had loads of wild ideas that took history but spun in a modern context.”

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He gives an example of something he suggested early on. “I wanted to string up a mile long Bayeux tapestry along a big castle perimeter wall and create a wooden TV wagon that was pushed along and provided its seaters with a lateral TV experience through a wooden frame attached to the wagon facing the wall. 

“And another was a medieval flyering from a medical blimp but they hadn’t invented paper by then so the wooden flyers knocked out people as they fell from the sky. The most important thing was to make each period moment have something interesting happening in it.”

Period-appropriateness notwithstanding, there were plenty of challenges in making this ambitious work. Felix has got his share of production war stories. “The funniest production challenge to overcome was creating a huge blood cloth gag that ejected from the protagonist’s chest after being slain by Romeo,” he says. “We got a very thin sheet of red velvet and packed it tight inside of the chest and then tied strings to each corner and eventually those strings were tied to poles operated by seven individuals outside of the stage. We only had about three goals in the day because of time but we were lucky that all of the helpers managed to pull it at the same time and it came out brilliant.”

With such a wild mix of textures – from 1960s fan footage to medieval fantasy – finding a cohesive visual thread was vital. That task fell to RASCAL colourist Tim Smith. “On the whole, we went for richness throughout all scenes,” says Tim. “I like to have distinct colour separation. The Stone Age and 1960s fan footage had to match, but there is no reference for both a medieval scene or older. We had to create something that fit.”

Tim notes that the biggest win was managing to make the film feel consistent across such varied environments. “From the dreamlike hills at the start through to the couch scene at the end, we were able to bring everything to a place that felt both creatively strong and technically sound. Achieving that balance, and being genuinely happy with it on both fronts, is always a real win.”

Creating the right emotional atmosphere throughout this fast-paced festival of audiences and entertainers required a soundtrack that delivered those cues. And the team at Soundtreewere more than up to that task. “I love it all, but the score from the team at Soundtree is really spectacular,” says Tom. “Being able to work with a team of talented folks to actually score to picture is a huge huge privilege, and listening to them build it layer by layer from demo to finished article? A career highlight.”

​Luke Fabia, composer, explains his creative goals and how they got there. “Overall we aimed for the feeling of a carnival,” he says. “Fun, energy, a slight irreverent nature – to match with the vibrant story and visuals. Hitting varying emotions throughout was also important to line up with the varied ITV content, such as more emotional sweeping strings on the romantic coming together moment.

“Going for more bombastic and punchy instrumentation such as live trumpets and low tonal percussion like surdos and timpani, contrasting with the live strings for emotion. Due to the slightly chaotic nature of the spot we also reached deep into our percussion tool box and had lots of fun layering shakers, woodblocks, glass bottles and even an old hollowed out wooden owl that makes an irreverent ‘hooting’ sound.”

Beyond the music, the hardest scene to get right for the sound designers was the medieval crowd watching Romeo and Juliet, says Henning Knoepfel, sound designer at Soundtree. “Balancing the mix elements of the music and VO with the SFX here was quite tricky. The mole in the opening scene hitting the post is a fun detail that sets the light-hearted and comedic tone for the film.”

His sound designing compatriot Jack Patterson recalls responding to the fast pace, having to create three different emotional reactions in a very short space of time. “It starts with romantic 'ahh', then switches to a shocked gasp during the sword stab and finally the 'cheer' payoff. Selecting the right sound effects to augment the set-sound was crucial. I will definitely remember Henning's cave-man impression.”

A campaign that celebrates the best of what Britain’s oldest commercial broadcaster can do in 2026 is a hefty brief. But doing it in a way that captures the heights of how entertainment makes us feel was something everyone involved found a passion for. As ECD, Tom’s enduring memory of creating this work is pure: “That it was fun to do. I'm lucky to have made many films in my career, but this one was silly and fun and really enjoyable to work on from start to finish.”