Nicky Bolster
Documentary Producer & Director
CV
Broadcasters
Profile​​
I am a versatile, highly experienced Producer/Director & Edit Producer with fluent German and French. I'm an accomplished newspaper-trained journalist and have made observational and presenter-led documentaries on sensitive subjects, gaining access in situations where a refusal might typically have been expected.
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I have also worked across a broad spectrum of current affairs programmes and have a solid track record in foreign filming. I have directed multi-camera shoots and was recently involved in creating a new format.
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I have strong writing and storytelling skills, plus a very good nose for those wonderful quirky characters who make great television.

I’m a confident self-shooter on the Canon XF305 and Sony EX3 cameras.
I have also run a team on Watchdog, the live BBC1 show, and series produced and directed six investigative programmes for the Irish broadcaster RTÉ.
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BBC1
BBC2
BBC4
BBC World News
Channel 4
Channel 5
Sky Atlantic
UKTV
RTÉ
TLC
National Geographic
Discovery Networks International
​The Travel Channel, USA
Languages
English
French
German
Conversational Spanish
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Credits
Co-producer
Passions: Forbidden Culture by Barry Humphries,
Rumpus Media for Sky Arts
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Documentary exploring Barry’s life-long passion for the music and art of the Weimar Republic.
Producer/Director
World’s Most Evil Killers,
Woodcut Media for Sky Pick
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Directed and edit produced four fast-turnaround true crime murder documentaries: Paulin in France; Kroll, Honka & Eckert in Germany.
Edit Director/PD
World War Weird
WAG TV for Yesterday, UKTV
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Cutting archive history stories from WW1 and WW2, directing the on-screen talent and running two finishing suites simultaneously.
Senior Producer/Director
Sex, Lies & Online Affairs
Mentorn Media for TLC
Led the team and directed this fast-turnaround documentary on infidelity aided by the internet following on from the hack of the adultery website Ashley Madison. We got access to a whistleblower and to three people currently cheating on their partners.
PD/Edit Producer
Aftershock: Disaster in Nepal
ITN Productions for Discovery Networks International, 2015
Fast-turnaround film telling survivors’ stories and looking at the science behind the two recent earthquakes.
2010 - present
2010 - present
Producer/Director
Why Buy in Dubai?
BBC World News, 2015
Film presented by Mark Lobel about the property market in Dubai, looking at how people got stung in the 2008 crash and at the investors who are buying now.
Producer/Director
Mysteries at the Castle,
Optomen Television for The Travel Channel, USA, 2014
History series shot across Europe. Directed on-screen talent, wrote detailed formatted story pitches to secure film commissions and used my French and German to gain difficult access to private castles rarely seen on television.
Producer
Imagine: The Art That Hitler Hated & The Sins of the Fathers,
BBC Arts, 2014
This history film takes the dramatic discovery of a hoard of valuable art in a Munich apartment as its starting point. From there it explores the Nazis' campaign to wipe out modernist German art through the persecution of Jewish collectors and dealers who nurtured the great talents of the day - and it follows the current fight by their heirs to get back the works that are rightfully theirs. Filmed in New York and Germany. Presenter: Alan Yentob
"...a riveting two parter examining one of the most extraordinary and explosive art stories of recent times"
Daily Mail
Producer/Director
Megastorm: World’s Biggest Typhoon
ITN Productions for Discovery Networks International, 2013
Director and edit producer on fast-turnaround one-hour film on Typhoon Haiyan which hit the Philippines: using archive and interviews to tell the story, plus specially shot demos of how the wind and storm surge claimed so many lives.
Development Producer
The Jailbreaker
ITV Studios for Channel 5, 2013
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Miscarriage of justice documentary series
Self-shooting Producer/Director
Extraordinary People
Transparent Television for Channel 5, 2013
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The story of a woman in Germany who suffers from the rare health condition Stiff Person Syndrome.
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Producer/Director
Forbidden
Beyond Productions for Discovery Networks International, 2013
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Directed character-driven observational films in Denmark and Poland and a story about collectors of horror show memorabilia in the UK for a high profile new series about people whose lives diverge from the collective norm.


​Producer/Director/Edit Producer
The Ideas Exchange
Gogglebox Entertainment for BBC World News, 2012
Directed and edit produced four documentaries in which global entrepreneurs swapped stories of their successes and failures. Used actuality and archive to illustrate their dramatic tales.​ Filmed in India, Dubai and Spain.
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Producer/Director
Taboo
Beyond Productions for National Geographic, 2012
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Directed a film in Germany about an athlete who had female to male gender reassignment surgery, and a film on the Ugly Models agency.


Producer/Director/Edit Producer
Inside the International Criminal Court
Mandrake Films for the Open University, 2012

Directed and edit produced five fast-turnaround films about the history and structure of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Predominantly archive and interviews with prominent lawyers.


Edit Producer
Charles: A Royal Life
ITN Productions for Channel 5, 2012

Fast-turnaround 50-minute obituary film, using archive and interview to tell the story of Prince Charles’s life.


Edit Producer
Fish Town
Mentorn Media for Sky Atlantic, 2011

This series won a Creative Diversity Network award.
Cut two 60-minute films about life in the Devon fishing town Brixham. Involved digging out the gold from swathes of observationally shot footage and commissioning new material to build on existing storylines.
"It’s lyrical, charming and it looks ravishing." Daily Mail


Producer/Edit Producer
The Consumer Show
Coco Television, Dublin, for RTÉ1, 2010

Having run a series for them in 2009, RTÉ asked me back to work on a new show.


Self-shooting Producer/Director
Maverick Television, for NHS Digital, 2010
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Self-shot and cut short films on public health subjects for the web.


Producer
The Secret Life of the Berlin Wall
Diverse Production for BBC2, 2009
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90-minute documentary telling poignant stories from behind the Wall: about the people who fought to bring it down and those who want it back. The film, a combination of newly shot material and archive, won a BAFTA for the editing.
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Series Producer/Director
Buyer Beware
Animo TV, Dublin, for RTÉ1, 2009

Led a team making six half-hour investigative consumer programmes. These included films about people whose lives were blighted by doorstep lenders and the story of an elaborate property fraud. Presenter: Philip Boucher-Hayes


Producer/Director/Edit Producer
The Verdict
RDF Media for BBC2, 2007
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90-minute film looking at what goes on behind the closed doors of a jury room by staging a rape trial with real barristers, a real judge and a celebrity jury. A combination of OB and observational filming. I directed a multi-camera actuality shoot and ran two suites during the edit.


Producer/Director/Edit Producer
Dispatches
Wall to Wall for Channel 4, 2007
Led the team to make this fast turnaround one-hour film looking at credit card debt and how card companies make their money. Included secret filming showing how little people who offer us store cards know about products they are selling and a stunt where we sold a fictitious credit card to show how easy it is to hide bad terms and conditions.


Director/Camera
Europe in One Room
Paladin InVision for Stanford University, 2007
Self-shot observational film, following an experiment which involved bringing people from all 27 nations of the EU to Brussels for a weekend of discussion on major issues to examine the extent to which debate influences opinion.
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Producer/Director
The One Show
BBC1, 2006
Film looking at why Sir Bobby Charlton encouraged Manchester United to support a scheme to help men suffering from depression.
Presenter: Rajesh Mirchandani.


​Self-shooting Producer/Director
Britain’s Streets of Debt & Britain’s Streets of Booze
BBC1, 2005/6
Two 45-minute observational documentaries: one about a couple whose home was about to be repossessed, the other about a young alcoholic trying to kick his habit.
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Programme Producer
Watchdog
BBC1, 2004/5
Led a team of six APs and researchers. Highlights include secretly filmed undercover investigation of a loans company and a film about an airline which sold 1,000s of tickets but didn’t have a plane.


Producer/Director
The Death of Equitable Life
BBC2, 2002
40-minute Money Programme film about the events leading to the near-collapse of Britain’s oldest insurance company.
Reporter: Michael Robinson.


Associate Producer
With Friends Like These
BBC2, 2003
60-minute documentary on the relationship between Britain and Germany. I got interviews with Gerhard Schroeder & Helmut Kohl.
Reporter: Michael Cockerell.
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2nd Director
Daniel Barenboim, Prodigy &Peacemaker
BBC4, 2002
30-minute documentary, observing Barenboim in rehearsal and performance at the Staatsoper opera in Berlin and world-class singers in their dressing rooms backstage.


Producer
War, Do or Die
BBC2 and BBC Choice, 2001

60-minute reality film, looking at what happened when 12 ordinary people were put in simulated war zone conditions.
Presenter: Jeremy Vine.


Producer/Director
Jump Over Your Shadow
BBC Open University, 2001
30-minute character-driven observational documentary looking at why East and West Germans still could not get on, 12 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.


Producer/Director
Correspondent
BBC2, 2000/1
45-minute documentary looking at the chaos that reigned in Kosovo two years after the war. Reporter: David Sells. Also produced 45-min films on far-right Austrian politician Jörg Haider and the November 17 terrorists in Greece
Reporter: Ed Stourton. Included reconstructions of three murders.
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Director
The Forgotten Children
BBC1, 2000
50-minute observational documentary on what happened to the Romanian children adopted by British couples following the fall of Ceausescu. We followed a 10-year-old boy back to Romania, where we filmed his emotional reunion with his birth mother.
Nominated by the BBC for the BAFTA Flaherty Documentary Award.
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