Showrunner · Executive Producer · Director
Dark stories, told with compassion.
True crime from inside the investigation — by the people who worked it.
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Peabody-winning showrunner and director of true-crime and investigative documentary series, based in Miami.
Currently: Showrunner and Executive Producer of the reboot of The FBI Files for Radial, produced by Bright North Studios.
Mary Bissell is a Peabody-winning Executive Producer, Director and Showrunner from Vancouver, based in Miami. She is currently Showrunner and Executive Producer of the reboot of The FBI Files for Radial (Bright North Studios). Her recent credits include Jack Carr Investigates: Carlos the Jackal for Fox Nation and Special Ops True for Paramount+ (Co-Executive Producer, 2026), twenty episodes of PD True for Paramount+ (2024), named Outstanding Series at CrimeCon 2025, and twelve episodes of The Christmas Killings, hosted and executive produced by Nancy Grace, for FilmRise and Bright North Studios (2024).
Earlier, she served as Co-Executive Producer of the critically acclaimed six-part series Surviving R. Kelly for Lifetime (Bunim Murray), and as Executive Producer, Director and Showrunner for two seasons of Investigation Discovery's reboot of Who the (Bleep) Did I Marry? (Efran Films).
Before moving to the United States in 2014, Mary lived in Canada, where she wrote and produced independent documentaries for CBC Television and the Knowledge Network, worked on socio-economic and environmental projects in Sri Lanka and The Gambia, and was Series Director of the crime series The Devil You Know and Very Bad Men. She is the recipient of multiple Leo Awards, including Best Director, Best Writer and Best Information Series. The show that gives her the greatest pride is My Big Fat Diet, which she co-directed with acclaimed First Nations filmmaker Barb Cranmer and which premiered at the American Indian Film Festival.
Mary is a past President of Women in Film and Television Vancouver and a past board member and graduate of Women in the Director's Chair. She believes in the quote, "Stories teach us through symbolic experiences how to be human."
Mary holds a BA in English Literature from the University of British Columbia and an MA in Liberal Studies from Simon Fraser University, and is a graduate of the Women in the Director's Chair program at the Banff Centre.
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Outstanding Series, CrimeCon 2025
Full season on FilmRise
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