He also produced and directed Ben Elton's first solo TV project, Happy Families, with Jennifer Saunders, Adrian Edmondson, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry amongst others and the follow-up series to The Young Ones, Filthy Rich & Catflap.
In 1982, Jackson left the BBC and went freelance, producing The Cannon and Ball Show for LWT and two series of Girls on Top (starring Tracey Ullman, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Ruby Wax) for Central Television.
Eighteen months later, he set up Paul Jackson Productions, one of the newly created independent producers made possible by the arrival of Channel Four.
At this time Jackson was a member of the council of IPPA, a forerunner of Pact, the body which established terms for trade between independent producers and the BBC and other broadcasters.
Jackson served as the managing director and the company produced Red Dwarf, the long-running and internationally successful comedy series, the pilot episode of Bottom (Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson) and, working with LWT, the hugely influential Channel Four variety show, Saturday Live.
Saturday Live featured such comedy stars as Lenny Henry, Pamela Stephenson, Michael Barrymore, Peter Cook and Barry Humphries and brought to prominence talents such as Ben Elton (as a performer), Fry and Laurie, Harry Enfield and Julian Clary.
The company also held the contract to provide all entertainment programming for the short lived UK satellite service, British Satellite Broadcasting and produced shows featuring then unknown names such as Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan, Lee Evans and Jack Dee, as well as The Happening, a precursor to the long-running BBC show Later... with Jools Holland.
As well as cementing Harry Hill's TV Burp into the heart of the network's Saturday nights, Benidorm, Headcases, Ladies of Letters and No Heroics were all commissioned by Jackson's new team, alongside one off comedy films starring talent such as Catherine Tate, Shane Richie, Timothy Spall, Julia McKenzie and Anton Rodgers as well as writers such as Caroline Aherne, Richard Herring and Irvine Welsh.
In their first year they produced two films featuring Nadya Suleman including The Octomom, and a series for Channel Five starring Justin Lee Collins.