Derek Wax is a multi-award winning British television producer, and Managing Director of Wild Mercury Productions. Wild Mercury’s 6 part original eco-thriller THE RIG launched on Amazon Prime Video in January 2023, and became a global hit, receiving a series 2 recommission.
The second series has just finished filming in Edinburgh. Derek was also recently Executive Producer on Wild Mercury’s true crime mini series THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT, which launched in summer 2023 on BBC One and i player to critical acclaim and is currently BBC’s second highest rating drama of the year.
Derek’s past productions include SEX TRAFFIC, OCCUPATION, THE HOUR, TROY: FALL OF A CITY, CAPITAL, LIP SERVICE, FROM THERE TO HERE and HUMANS. He started his career directing in London-based theatres, before moving to BBC to work as a script editor in TV series development and production. He was a producer at Granada TV from 2001–2005 and an executive producer at Kudos from 2005–2016. He left Kudos to launch his new label Wild Mercury Productions in 2017, under Endemol Shine Group, now part of Banijay UK.
Wax´s first major work came as a producer of the BAFTA nominated single drama FLESH AND BLOODfor BBC2 in 2002. This was followed by the Channel 4 series SEX TRAFFIC, which won 8 BAFTA awards in 2005, including Best Mini Series, also the Prix Italia. His first role as an executive producer came on the BBC and HBO mini-series, TSUNAMI: THE AFTERMATH. In 2009, he executive produced the BAFTA and Prix Europa winning Iraq war BBC mini-series, OCCUPATION, which also won Best Mini Series at the Broadcasting Press Guild, followed by two seasons of the Emmy winning and Gold Globe nominated THE HOUR for BBC2, and two seasons of Glasgow based cult series LIP SERVICE for BBC3, FROM THERE TO HERE, a 3 part family sage for BBC 1 and BBC miniseries CAPITAL, which won the International Emmy for Best Mini Series in 2016. Between 2014–2018 he was EP on three seasons of the groundbreaking BAFTA nominated Channel 4 and AMC hit futuristic series HUMANS, which became Channel 4’s highest rated drama in 23 years when it launched in 2015, and TROY: FALL OF A CITY for BBC One and Netflix.