Ralph Lee

Ralph Lee was appointed Head of Factual at Channel 4 in November 2011, following a change to the structure of factual commissioning which brought the documentary and specialist factual teams together into one enhanced department.
He is responsible for history, science, religion, documentaries and arts programmes. The department's ambition is to deliver both public service and commercial value to the channel, remaining populist and audience facing while giving alternative perspectives on major PSB genres often ignored by commercial TV.

Notable programmes have included Richard III: The King in the Car Park, The Plane Crash, The Real King's Speech; Jamie's Dream School; Rome Wasn't Built in a Day; Street Summer; Mummifying Alan and The Food Hospital - in addition to the short form strands 4thought.tv and Random Acts. Lee now oversees flagship documentary strand Cutting Edge, the strand for new directors, First Cut, and for More4’s output, the acclaimed True Stories documentary strand, as well as other formats, singles and series such as One Born Every Minute, 24 Hours in A&E, Coppers and The Hotel.

Lee originally joined Channel 4 in September 2002 as specialist factual commissioning editor and was subsequently promoted to Deputy Head of Specialist Factual. He was responsible for a broad range of commissions from the living history format That'll Teach ‘Em to acclaimed feature Deep Water, about tragic round the world yachtsman, Donald Crowhurst.

Lee left Channel 4 at the end of 2007 to take up the post of Head of Factual at Five before returning to 4 as Head of Specialist Factual in March 2008.