Gripping docuseries from Stern & Wild client nominated for true crime genre prize

Congratulations to Stern & Wild filmmaker Gareth Johnson whose extraordinary three-part docuseries The Body Next Door has been nominated for a 2025 True Crime Award. The series, which premiered on Sky in August 2024 to rave reviews, soon became the channel's most-watched documentary ever. 

The Body Next Door pieces together the story of one of the most bizarre murder investigations of the last decade. In November 2015, a macabre discovery thrust Beddau, a sleepy former mining village in the heart of the Welsh Valleys, into the spotlight. What began as a seemingly harmless prank involving a medical skeleton took a horrifying turn when it was revealed that the ‘skeleton’ was, in fact, a real human body. The production uncovers a gripping murder mystery intertwined with a dramatic family saga reaching from the Valleys to the suburbs of New Zealand.

The series was nominated for a 2024 RTS Best Editing award (non-scripted). It is a RAW production commissioned for Sky Documentaries by Zai Bennett, Managing Director of Content and Poppy Dixon, Director of Documentaries and Factual. Gareth is the Director with Phelen Glen as Producer. Exec Producers are Louise Norman and Keeley Van Dyke for RAW and Tom Barry for Sky.

The True Crime Awards were launched in 2023 to celebrate content produced across the true crime genre in the screen, podcast and publishing sectors. The 2025 winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on 5 June at the Hilton, London Bankside. For a full list of the screen sector nominations, click here.