Founded | 1984 |
---|---|
Defunct | 2006 |
Headquarters | United Kingdom |
Products | Motion pictures, television production |
Zenith Productions (later Zenith Entertainment) was a British independent film and television production company. creating content for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and UKTV. which made a number of drama series including Inspector Morse for ITV, and several series including Byker Grove and Hamish Macbeth for the BBC. Zenith also, through its subsidiary Blaze Television, produced the Saturday morning series SMTV Live and CD:UK for ITV featuring Ant & Dec. The company ceased trading in 2006.
Zenith was established in 1984 as a subsidiary of Central Television, the holder of the ITV Midlands broadcast franchise. The company was headed by Charles Denton, formerly Controller of Programmes at Central's predecessor, ATV. Some of Zenith's early productions or co-productions included the films The Hit, Wetherby, Insignificance, Sid and Nancy, Personal Services, Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, Prick Up Your Ears and Wish You Were Here. Other productions it was involved with included Escape from Sobibor, A Gathering of Old Men and an adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead. On television Zenith scored a major hit with Inspector Morse, which began airing in 1987.