ITVX "Smile" ft. Matthew Macfadyen is part of The Freshest series of ads that includes world class acting talent - Emmy Award-winning Macfadyen, Oscar-winning actress Helena Bonham Carter and BAFTA rising star John Boyega. The ads consist of sharp-witted comedy sketches which are set in a rehearsal room - where we see a director and producer put the stars through their paces, as they are challenged to improvise their way through different scenarios in the question to effectively bring to life the UK's freshest streaming service.

In November of 2021, ITV released ITVX, a British online video-on-demand service operated by ITV providing ‘The Freshest’ British entertainment. To promote the release of ITV’s new and fresh streaming service ITVX, we created a series of star-studded comedic sketches titled ‘The Freshest’.

The series of films consisted of sharp-witted comedy sketches which are set in a rehearsal room—where we see a director and producer put the stars through their paces as they are challenged to improvise their way through different scenarios in the quest to effectively bring to life the UK’s freshest streaming service.

The films included world-class acting talent, from Emmy award-winning Matthew Macfadyen, Oscar-winning actress Helena Bonham Carter and BAFTA rising star John Boyega. They are directed by an Emmy Award-winning director. Each and every film is different - the sixteen bespoke films will vary in length from 3.30 minutes to 20 seconds.

It takes a courageous actor to improvise an entire scene when that actor is the only person who doesn’t know what’s going to happen. And that was the case here. The director gave lines and the beats of the scene to Matthew Macfadyen’s scene partners in the hope that what would ensue was a gloriously messy but somehow coherent piece. And that’s exactly what happened.