Justin is a BAFTA-award winning global content specialist, format creator and trainer with 30 years’ experience in the industry, known internationally as The Format Doctor.
Justin works with leading broadcasters, distributors and production companies around the world to improve the creation, development and delivery of their formats in genres including gameshows, talent, factual entertainment lifestyle, make-over, reality, chat, and social experiments.
He is the creator of hit formats including cooking competition “Chef In Your Ear”, produced in 13 territories worldwide to date. He co-created song-writing format “Sing My Song” (China’s CCTV) 3 seasons to date, averaging 252m viewers per season. Justin helped develop KYKNet’s cooking format “Kokkedoor”, 10 seasons to date, and NRK’s hit format “Doctors vs Internet”, 5 seasons to date, licensed to 12 territories, winner of Best Studio Gameshow at the International Format Awards.
Other formats he has consulted on include reality car show “Sixth Gear”, gameshows “Battle Of The Generations”, “Splatalot!”, “Canada's Super Spellers” and “Canada’s Smartest Person” , “Pablo” (BBC/Netflix) the first animation series led by a character on the autism spectrum; music shows “Fanbase” and “Beter Assie Bure” for SABC, and Discovery’s “Know It All”, adapted in Sweden as Genikampen.
Justin is currently Executive Producer of the legendary BBC quiz “Brain of Britain” - a co-production between The Format People and Telltale Industries.
Justin advises the National Film Board of Canada on unscripted and scripted formats including adaptation from animation shorts and documentary film.
As a Flying Producer Justin has installed international versions of “Chef In Your Ear”, Spanish game show “20 Little Piggies”, Chinese kids talent format “Little Masters” and Canadian cooking show “Fridge Wars” among others. Justin writes format bibles, including for long-running UK property show “A Place In The Sun” , Chinese mega-format “Street Dance Of China” and Canadian cooking show “Fridge Wars”, and created the industry-standard format bible generator for FRAPA.
Justin has led masterclasses in formats for the International Emmys, PRIMA (Czech), WKO and CIMiX (Austria), NRK and Kristiania University (Norway), MBC, CJ E&M and KOCCA (S. Korea), SABC and MNET (South Africa) and in the UK, the National Film & TV School, ScreenSkills, N. Ireland Screen, and TRC’s FormatLab and Supersize Entertainment courses.
He has been a speaker at Content Europe 2026 in Lisbon, Copenhagen TV Festival, Kiev Media Week, IPXchange and many others, and a Jury member for BAFTA, Rose D’Or, Seoul Drama Awards, International Emmys, RealScreen Awards, Banff ‘Rockies’, Asia Television Forum and MIPFormats.
Justin co-devised and produced history game format “Codex” at London’s British Museum, and reality shows “Shock Treatment” (Sky) and the BAFTA-winning “Starfinder” (ITV). Previous production credits include cult game-shows “Treasure Hunt” and “Crystal Maze”.
Justin has co-hosted the popular podcast TV SHOW & TELL with David Bodycombe since 2021. He is the author of 11 books for children and adults, and has a baddie named after him in Richard Osman’s thriller “WE SOLVE MURDERS”.