Robert Frost: Television Series Editor 

From Robert’s formative days on the Film and TV Production course to shaping some of the most talked-about dramas on screen today (Slow Horses, Sex Education, Hijack), he reflects on the people, projects and pivotal moments that helped guide his journey and why editing, at its best, is about much more than cutting footage.

When Robert joins the call from his home in Northwest London, he is in the middle of a working pattern that would have sounded unusual not so long ago, but now feels entirely normal in post-production. “ I’m working from home for the rest of the year now,” he says. “Which is quite nice.”

That shift, he explains, has been helped by changes in the industry itself. “Whilst they’re filming, there’s no need for us to be in an expensive studio,” he says. “Thanks to the pandemic, the tech allowed us to work from home.” Even now, he works closely from the material coming off set, moving scenes around, refining performances and shaping the emotional rhythm of an episode long before the final cut is locked.

The route that brought him here began at York in Vanbrugh College, where he graduated in 2014 after studying BSc Film and TV Production. But even then, he was still discovering what the future might hold. One moment in particular changed everything. “Joe Walker came in and did a lecture for us when I was at uni,” Robert recalls. “It was genuinely the first time that I considered editing as an actual career.” The session wasn’t just theoretical. “He brought in some rushes from the film “Shame” and tasked us with cutting the scene and editing it,” he says. “It was very practical.”

That early encounter stayed with him. Years later, he bumped into Walker in Los Angeles and reminded him of the lecture. “He remembered,” Robert says. “And, ended up inviting me to his home to see his edit suite. It was amazing.” It’s the kind of connection that captures what an alumni network can do when talent, memory and generosity overlap. “He’s one of the top working editors today,” Robert says. “That connection is amazing.”

York, though, offered much more than one memorable guest lecture. Robert was part of the second cohort to go through the department’s new building, and he remembers how excited everyone was by the facilities. “We were all excited about the equipment and the studios and the practical side of it,” he says. “Also, our lecture theatre was a cinema – a custom-built cinema.” That immersive environment made the course feel unusually close to the realities of the industry. “Having an actual working studio is really great,” he adds, recalling the two TV studios where students could try game shows, magazine programmes and other live formats he had never imagined himself doing. “It was one of the most fun parts of the course because it’s totally, totally different to what I’m doing now.”

What stayed with him most, though, was the combination of practical work and a wider critical grounding. “Looking back, I really appreciate the cinema and TV history lectures,” he says. At the time, the priority was making things; now, he sees how much those foundations mattered. “There’s a foundational knowledge through those film history courses and the cinematography courses we had,” he explains. “I wish I had savoured those history courses more, as now I devour any cinema history books I have time for!”

He also points to the way the course brought people together. “It’s the people really because I’m still friends with a lot of them,” he says. “Many of them moved to London around when I did, so it’s nice to know you’ve got these connections with people that are still in the industry but in different roles.” On a course full of “film nerds,” as he puts it, the shared energy mattered. “We all bonded as a course.”

After graduating, Robert moved to London and started in the industry in the way so many editors do: with a runner job in post-production. “I’d thrown my CV towards anything that was remotely relevant,” he says. “And Ecore Post on Wardour Street came back and it was literally, ‘Can you start next week?’” The job was in Soho, and although the work was basic – coffee, food, errands, and constant movement – it gave him something crucial. “You get to meet a lot of different people and see all the different projects that that particular facility are posting,” he says. “That was a really good basis.”

He is clear that the industry still tends to work through relationships, but he is equally clear that people without connections can still make their way in. “The cliché about film and TV is it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” he says. “But I didn’t know anyone. And if that’s the case, then what you need to do is just go and actually start meeting people and form those connections. It’s not blocked off to anyone. You just have to put in the work.”

For Robert, part of that work was simply being present and making himself useful. “There was one show there that I had heard the trainee was going to have to leave for a different job, and so there was going to be a vacancy,” he remembers. “Whenever they called down for coffee, I always made sure I was the person that brought them their order. I tried to engineer it so that when they needed someone, I was the person who was the most obvious choice.” It’s funny, he admits, but that kind of reliability opened doors.

“A scene can be filmed from multiple angles, with multiple possible emotional emphases, and the edit room becomes the place where meaning is finally made.”

Eventually, he rose through the ranks in the traditional way, becoming a trainee, then second assistant editor, then first assistant editor. A major turning point came when he began assisting editor David Webb on Sex Education. “I was a fan of the first season, and then to work on the second was really fun,” he says. “Working with the same person for a number of years and getting to show that I was interested in moving up to editing – editors give you more chances to put scenes together and contribute creatively.” When Webb moved on to a new ITV project, Robert asked directly for the chance to edit an episode himself. “I was like, ‘What about me? I could do an episode.’ And they gave me the chance.”

That confidence marked a real shift. “I think that was when I felt like I’d been waiting to show that I could do it,” he says. “And when I got that opportunity, I just went for it.” He was still assisting while editing his own episodes, which he now describes with a kind of disbelief. “When I look back on it now, I’m like, how did I even do that?”

The recognition that followed – including a 2025 BAFTA TV Craft Award for Best Editing for Slow Horses – still feels slightly surreal. “I really didn’t expect to win,” he says. “The nomination was crazy.” It also brought wider recognition for a show that has steadily grown in stature. “There’s not that many shows that reach beyond two or three seasons these days,” he says. “So I think it had begun to grow an audience and recognition.” Even with the acclaim, he remains refreshingly grounded. “Every day I still experience imposter syndrome,” he says. “It’s still the same job, and it’s quite hard, but it’s nice to know, oh, maybe I did know what I was doing at one point.”

If there is one thing Robert returns to again and again, it is that editing is not just technical work – it is storytelling, structure, rhythm and emotional judgement. He describes it as a process of constant interpretation, not simply assembly. “You’re controlling the flow of information,” he says, “and so much of it is about you as well. A scene can be filmed from multiple angles, with multiple possible emotional emphases, and the edit room becomes the place where meaning is finally made.”

“With Slow Horses, often we move scenes around so that information that was revealed earlier comes later,” he explains. “Sometimes you watch the first cut and quite often it’s fine, but it’s not great, and you would never want anyone to see it.” That rough first pass is only the beginning. Over weeks of revision, the editor keeps asking the same question from the audience’s point of view: “If I was an audience member watching it for the first time, what am I thinking and where are the emotions?”

That perspective is what makes editing feel so much like authorship to him. “You’re not just cutting scenes,” he says. “You’re trying to tell a story.” The work is shaped by constant feedback from the director, the executives and the platform. “There are lots of opportunities for people to give you their response,” he says. “I didn’t understand this, or why is this character doing that? And then that prompts you to re-evaluate the cut.

That is where he sees the real creative challenge of the job. “Sometimes a scene worked on the page, and on the day it was shot,” he says, “but suddenly you find these problems and it’s in the edit room that you have to find solutions.” Those fixes might mean removing material, re-ordering scenes, or recutting emphasis so the audience focuses on the right emotional thread. “You recut scenes to put the focus somewhere else so that audiences are picking up on what you need them to understand,” he explains. “And letting the other stuff slide away. You’re trying to emotionally guide people.” 

That emotional guidance becomes especially delicate when a show mixes tones, as Slow Horses does. “Sometimes it’s described as a thriller that happens to be funny,” Robert says. “Sometimes it’s described as a comedy about spies.” For him, that means the timing of every cut matters. “When you’re editing comedy, the actors will nail it on a particular take, and that timing you cannot tamper with,” he says. “If you bring the punchline in too soon or too late, it’s not funny anymore.”

At the same time, editing isn’t only about preserving what’s already there. Sometimes it is about rethinking a scene’s purpose entirely. “Maybe something didn’t quite work, or maybe the way that it was originally shot, the purpose for the scene now is different,” he explains. “So you’re moulding what was shot into something new and taking things out and rewriting almost.”

Sometimes though, the best solution is restraint. Robert points to a scene in Slow Horses where holding on a reaction proved more powerful than cutting away. “Sometimes you can create meaning just by holding on shot and letting the actor do their thing,” he says. “With Slow Horses we’re working with the best of the best so you can usually hold on a take and it works.”

On Hijack, his work became even more intricate. The show’s real-time structure meant the edit had to preserve the tension of events unfolding minute by minute. “You cannot do the tricks that an editor would normally do of compressing time or removing things,” he says. “You had to find different ways of keeping the suspense.” One of the most fascinating parts of the process was the cutting room map of the plane. “We had a map of the plane and all of the seats were assigned, so we knew where every single character was sat at any given point” he says. Because the story remained in one confined space, the team could use shots from elsewhere in the series to intensify a sequence. “You could steal footage that was shot for a different episode,” he says, “people at the back of the plane craning their necks or hijackers waving guns around just to add to the tension.”

That kind of structural flexibility is part of what keeps editing interesting for him. It is also why he says the job is often harder to explain than to do. “Editing is really hard to talk about because essentially, lets say you’re choosing between two takes, often you simply feel which one is the right one,” he says. “And that is a human thing.”

For Robert, the human element is exactly what will keep editors essential, even as the industry shifts around them. He is aware that working from home can make it harder for newcomers to break in, since so much of the early career pathway still depends on being physically present and building relationships in person. “If you want to be a runner and you want to break into the industry with everybody working from home, it must be so much harder,” he says. But he believes the centrality of collaboration will remain. “It’s up to editors and those in charge to champion working environments that encourage collaboration and including new voices.” He also advises students and alumni who want to break into the industry to, “learn the software – especially Avid Media Composer, because that’s the industry standard. But just as important are the soft skills: being able to talk to people, collaborate, and work well with others.”

He is similarly thoughtful about AI. “No one really knows how that will affect the job in a year, let alone five or ten years,” he says. But his view is clear. “There’s always going to need to be a human element to film and TV production. At the end of the day, if it’s not us crafting the story, what’s really the point?”

That belief is what continues to excite him about the work. He is looking forward to Slow Horses season six reaching audiences, and he has also just finished a contemporary comedy that marks a change of pace from the thrillers that have dominated much of his career so far. “Almost everything I’ve ever done is a thriller set in London,” he says. “So I would love to do something that’s in space or something, and just push myself in a different way.”

For now, though, Robert’s journey from York’s practical studios to some of the most talked-about television on screen is a reminder of how much craft, patience and instinct go into the role of the editor – not just as a technician, but as someone quietly shaping how we feel, what we understand and when we understand it.