Turns out there was an answer after all.
When Netflix UK content boss Anne Mensah was asked at the Edinburgh TV Festival’s August 26 Netflix panel whether the streamer would go after the Doctor Who tender, she offered the diplomatic non-answer we covered, predicting the franchise would live on without saying a word about Netflix’s role in it.
Pressed again by Radio Times in an interview after the panel, she gave the real one: “It’s a really special show, but it belongs on the BBC.”
Netflix takes itself out of the race
There wasn’t much wiggle room in the rest of it, either.
Mensah said she believes the show belongs at the BBC in all of its iterations, noting she was at the corporation when Jane Tranter, the former BBC drama chief who went on to co-found Bad Wolf, relaunched the series back in 2005.
She described herself as having been obsessed with Doctor Who, so this isn’t a case of an executive who doesn’t rate the property. It’s an executive who rates it and still thinks it should stay where it is.
And she capped the answer by pointing to Netflix’s own homegrown sci-fi, Supacell, which has just wrapped production on its second season.
The door she did leave open is for Russell T Davies
Mensah said the person she misses most is Russell T Davies, called him a genius, and offered that the better question would have been whether she’d love to work with Davies, which she absolutely would.
That’s an open door for Davies at Netflix, not for Doctor Who at Netflix.
Davies exited the series alongside Bad Wolf when the BBC canceled the 2026 Christmas special and announced the tender, so he’s a free agent, and one of the most senior content executives at the biggest streamer on the planet just publicly recruited him.
The field narrows
With Netflix’s UK content chief on record that the show should stay put, the streamer speculation effectively comes down to Prime Video, whose UK scripted commissioner Oliver Jones said at the same festival that Amazon’s door is open for conversations.
The confirmed field remains what it was: BBC Studios and Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment.
The tender itself still hasn’t opened, there’s no timeline, and insiders say the show won’t return until 2028 at the earliest.
For the full picture of the tender, the timeline, and who’s actually left circling, here’s what’s next for Doctor Who.
