It might sound obvious, but Anne Mensah really is a TV obsessive.

The prolific television executive is now Vice President of Content for Netflix UK and leads on the streamer's original series offering, having built her career at Sky and the BBC before joining Netflix in 2019. She was named one of the UK's most powerful Black Britons in the 2022 Powerlist and is Vice President for Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

This week, Mensah joined many of British TV's most influential commissioners and executives at the Edinburgh TV Festival 2026 to discuss Netflix's UK positioning, unveiling a flurry of returning shows and new content along the way.

Following the jam-packed panel, I spoke with her for Radio Times.

We started with one of the headline announcements: the return to the Top Boy universe with two spin-offs - the Barry Keoghan-fronted Jonny Boy and Jasmine Jobson vehicle Jaq.

Praising creator Ronan Bennett for tackling the world with "authenticity" and "love," Mensah said: "Ronan created this world, and actually there's not many shows in the whole history of British drama that have lasted 10 years and have moved, because you have to give absolute props to Channel 4 for launching it and then handing it over to us. But its longevity is because it's great drama with characters people properly invest in."

The old-school watercooler moments were another key part of its success. Mensah recalled fans' disbelief over Michael Ward's character Jamie's death: "People just didn't even believe. I'd have random people, not to mention my hairdresser Melissa, who would be like, 'But he's obviously not dead?'... that passion sets the template, and it's not manufactured fandom, it's like real people across the country and all ages... It resonates across the whole country because it's about people and relationships and family."

On the delay in returning to the world: "It would be much worse to disappoint people... we really did properly go, 'Unless it's brilliant, we're not doing it.'"

Talk turned to the unfinished trailer shown of Dolly Alderton's Pride and Prejudice adaptation, which was shown during the festival, with a strong look at Emma Corrin’s Elizabeth Bennett and their accompanying leading man.

After asking me my thoughts about the wonderful Jack Lowden as Mr Darcy - which were positive - Mensah responded: "I'm in a sort of campaign against the word 'bold' because I think it's overused. But actually, [the new adaptation] is really interesting; the turn of the wheel we're doing there is, weirdly, to be traditional.

"When you are the channel that has Bridgerton, you need something that sits comfortably next to that, and our Pride and Prejudice is sort of the best of British in so many ways...

“[With Pride and Prejudice adaptations], I'm always interested in the fact that you can often remember one but not the other, but think you're going to remember both of them, Lizzie and Darcy."

She was eager to work with Everything I Know About Love author Alderton, calling her "a properly honest and authentic person" whose voice, despite coming from "a deeper understanding of Austen than I come from," is "naturally modern and funny."

Mensah also reflected that hits like Heartstopper and Sex Education have shone because they sit "authentically in the space" they depict, similarly to Alderton's work.

Speaking about a title that recently had been fronted by one of the many Sex Education breakouts, I asked about the future of Doctor Who - which is soon to be put out for competitive tender by the BBC.

During the Netflix panel, Mensah had said she "loves" Doctor Who and shared her belief in its continued longevity, while with me she especially didn't hide her admiration for Russell T Davies: "Russell's like my person most missed in my life... he's a freaking genius."

But she was clear on where she thinks Who belongs: "I think Doctor Who belongs on the BBC, and I think all of its iterations. I was there when [former Controller of Drama Commissioning at the BBC and Bad Wolf co-founder] Jane Tranter relaunched it. It's a really special show, but it belongs on the BBC. We've got Supacell!"

Netflix’s BAFTA-winning superhero drama Supacell has just wrapped its much-anticipated second season, of which Mensah is immensely proud.

The streamer, she insists, isn't too interested in hitting or bucking trends — instead, Mensah argues they are "creator first," which is why writers keep coming back. "Whereas I worry that when you're genre specific, you narrow the field," she said. "You basically say, 'Amazing writer, you might want to write a rom com, but today we're not looking for rom coms' - that just seems very restrictive to me. As opposed to amazing writer, we want to back you and your voice."

Another recurring collaborator for the streamer is the prolific writer and producer Steven Knight, who is due to pen the next James Bond film and whose acclaimed historical crime drama House of Guinness is returning for a second season.

On the wait to announce its return after the first run's explosive cliffhanger, Mensah said: "In all honesty, we were just cracking on. Steve wrote the Peaky Blinders film [The Immortal Man] with us, so he was busy. And sometimes with announcements, you want to find the right moment."

On bundling the renewal news for the second run in with other titles like Legends and Being Gordon Ramsay: "We're having a conversation with the audience that says, 'Here are all the things you loved'... the point of Netflix is that it's range and variety... you can come to us for anything you love." She also called Knight a "genius" who "could do anything he wants."

Speaking of creative genius, we spoke about the upcoming Black Mirror season 8, from Charlie Brooker, and Mensah hasn't seen a cut but has read scripts: "This season feels... the word I really don't like... bold to me. It feels like he's stepping forward again."

On Brooker’s pen and occasional opportunities to laugh at Netflix, Mensah said: "He understands his audience, so the whole point is always get out of the way of these brilliant people."

Other recurring collaborators include The Crown's Peter Morgan, now working on "the blockbuster of a show" The Boys in Brazil, which will star Jeremy Strong and Gillian Anderson in an adaptation of Ira Levin’s Nazi-hunter thriller novel, but Mensah remained tight-lipped when asked about a reported prequel to The Crown.

Another consistent colleague is also the one-man writing factory Jack Thorne, whom Mensah first worked with back in her days at Sky, and who helped give Netflix arguably its biggest-ever awards darling, Adolescence.

"This idea of working with these people again and again actually means that they can do their best work because there's a position of trust," she said - a trust she also uses to bring in newcomers, like Grenfell: Uncovered director Olaide Sadiq, whose surrounding team has worked with Netflix before.

On a wider scale, we discuss the often pessimistic framing around the future of the UK television and film industries at large, and Mensah says Netflix isn't sitting on its laurels.

“I don't underestimate our privilege of being a team that is super well supported by our bosses; they support us with freedom, and they support us with money, and you can't underestimate that,” she said. “And so, therefore, we have to sort of pay it forward in terms of making sure that we turn up properly for the UK infrastructure, like all of us have worked across multiple broadcasters and multiple indies for years, and so we know what the industry needs, but we’re not always perfect.”

The overseer of Netflix's content welcomes competitors like Disney and Prime Video having a growing UK presence, stating that "the UK deserves to have all the spaces to get commissions”, but also stressing Netflix's investment in mid-career training and multi-show commitments, noting that often: "We're going to do two or three shows with you until you're properly established."

She compared Netflix's responsibilities, as arguably the first major television streamer, to those of the BBC: "That's our responsibility... we can pay it back into the industry, and those people will go on to work other places. And that's okay, as long as we give them a really good experience — they'll come back."

When inevitably asked about the impact of AI in the creative industries, her response for Netflix was straightforward: “Honestly, it's super simple. Creatives are geniuses, and they use tools really well, and we will never mandate anybody to do basically anything, but you have some creatives that want to embrace the technology, and we will support that too, and we'll try and be clever about it, and we'll try and make sure that it means that we can do our best work. But that's all that matters, because anything else is inauthentic and is against what we stand for. So it's always about the creative first, last, and always.”

Asked her for her desert-island rewatch, Mensah answered instantly: Law & Order. "I actually own every single episode... on Apple, because I actually think it's television perfection." Boston Legal was her runner-up, though it has fewer episodes.

After turning the question back on me and I named BBC soap opera EastEnders, Mensah lit up over continuing drama and her dislike of the snobbery surrounding it: "It makes me cross, because we chat a lot about shows that do a lot fewer viewers than EastEnders, and as an industry we need to check ourselves on that...

“Like Danny Dyer - everybody's talking about Rivals, but Danny Dyer was a mainstay of EastEnders, and that's a reason why people love him."

She noted that Rivals showrunner Dominic Treadwell-Collins, who created iconic EastEnders characters from the Carters to Ronnie and Roxy Mitchell, "did all of his storylining and his ability to make big worlds through EastEnders, and you just cannot be snobby. I really hate snobby TV people."

She's equally defensive of one of her old stomping grounds, Waterloo Road: "I'd go down fighting for Waterloo Road because it's the best... you properly learn TV through those shows."

Asked if Netflix would ever enter into the realm of continuing drama, she quipped: "I'd consider Waterloo Road if they'd give it to me... it properly speaks to families and young people."

This once again brought us to the important issue of representation on television - viewers need to see themselves.

“It's also because there's a class thing,” she noted. “Like I think that we need to remember to make EastEnders, Waterloo Road, to make comfortable shows - not about class - but are comfortable within their own class; the element of diversity we don't talk about now. People want to see themselves, and you can do that in clever ways. That's why Adolescence resonated because it was of the world of the people that were watching.”

As our chat closed, it was clear Mensah sees Netflix's approach as rooted in serving the industry but most importantly the audience at home: "People forget that they're making it not for themselves; they're making it for real people who love television and entertainment."

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