78. Julian Fellowes

Job: writer, actor, director Age: 61 Industry: broadcasting New entry Julian Fellowes was responsible for the surprise hit of 2010 . Downton Abbey, written by him and starring Hugh Bonneville and Dame Maggie Smith, finished its run with more than 10 million viewers , the sort of audience usually reserved on ITV1 for shows with Simon Cowell's name attached. But perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised after all. As the Oscar-winning writer of Robert Altman's Gosford Park , Fellowes has made a career out of the interplay between the upper and lower classes and has been described as the nation's foremost contemporary chronicler of the English landed gentry. With Downton Abbey, which beat BBC1's revived Upstairs Downstairs at its own game, he turned viewer expectations of ITV drama on its head and drew favourable comparisons with Brideshead Revisited, which aired on the commercial broadcaster 30 years ago. It is a recipe Fellowes will look to repeat on a second series of Downton Abbey and a four-part retelling of the Titanic story , also for ITV1. Our panel compared him to another drama hitmaker, Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat. "They do different things for different audiences but they work," said the judges. Fellowes, who was made a Conservative working peer last year , has a bow with no shortage of strings, including actor (Monarch of the Glen, Our Friends in the North), screenwriter (Young Victoria, The Tourist) and author, with best-selling novels Snobs and Past Imperfect. He will also take part in a review of government film policy led by former culture secretary Chris Smith.