Alongside my work in poetry and fiction, I have an interest in scriptwriting for radio,  televison and film. I gained an MA in Scriptwriting from the University of Salford, where I wrote full length TV and radio scripts. Between the 2000s and 2018, I developed full-length screenplays, television scripts, and radio plays across genres including sci-fi, horror, and coming-of-age drama. Three of my radio plays were broadcast by  BBC Radio 4. 

Although I no longer develop scripts,  I still experiment with the kinetic energies of script conventions and narrative structures in my practice. My current novel, The Undiscovered Country, began life as a ten-part TV concept — and it retains the rhythm and potential of cinematic storytelling.

BBC Broadcasts:

Ice Dreams (BBC Radio 4) [2005] — This sci-fi drama follows a day in the life of Matthew Cain, case worker at the New Life Agency whose role is to analyse the ice dream state of families put into cryogenic suspension ahead of a world destruction event – with a view to offering recommendations of their elibility for application to return into a newly expanding post apocalypse society. The play centres on the analysis of three frozen ‘ice dreams’, one from each of the three members of the Strode family. Will their dreams qualify them for a place in the new world?

Paradise Hazard (BBC Radio 7) [2009] — Paradise Hazard was Episode 3 in Series 2 of Planet B, a science fiction drama series which was first broadcast on BBC Radio 7 in 2009 as part of BBC Radio’s science fiction season. Planet B is set in a virtual world called “Planet B” in which people play as life-size avatars. My episode is set in an online Cold War gated community called Happy Valley in which players gain credits by spying on their neighbours and informing on them to the authorities.

Phonebreaker (BBC Radio 4)  [2011] — This coming of age drama set on a Leeds market stall which sells reconditioned mobile phones concerns teenage stall-worker Matt’s exposure to the lo-rent world of reality TV production when he traces a lost mobile phone back to its owner in a small visiting production company; and unearths more than he is prepared for.

Screenplays & Television Scripts:

My screenwriting often worked within recognisable genres but always pressed against their limits, testing how narrative form could verge on the surreal without losing audience engagement. A number of these scripts were pitched to broadcasters and production companies, among them BBC, Channel 4, Sky and Warp Films. Some of these pitches were made possible by being one of three national finalists in a Bafta sponsored screenplay competition in 2016, with my sci-fi drama script, The Fifth Dimension. 

Read about The Fifth Dimension here

Key scripts:

Black Sun (feature film/ psychological horror/ coming of age) – Teenage Esther tries to ruin her new blended family’s bonding holiday by inventing a ghost from the cottages’ isolation hospital past to scare her new step family. Her invention outstrips her.

Gatekeeper (feature film/ psychological horror). In this study of a breakdown refracted through an absurdist psychological thriller, a film classifier’s routine collapses when his daily jog is regularly halted by an air rifle sniper. Who hates him and what can he do?

Uncle Barney (Feature film/ psychological horror) – A husband’s harassment of his wife to quit the cigs finds him at her smoking cessation hypnotherapy where he ends up hypnotised himself – and stalked by an Uncle he doesn’t remember.

The Hollow Man (feature film/ colonial horror) – When a dead man returns to a successful bar owned by the friend who murdered him ten years previously, how did he come back – and what does he want? 

The Undiscovered Country: From Screen to Novel

The Undiscovered Country exemplifies the continuity between my screen and literary practice. First conceived as a ten-part television drama, it has since evolved into an experimental literary novel. Yet I continue to imagine it as a work that could move across mediums — a novel on the page, but also a potential screenplay for screen or stage.

Teaching

I have taught scriptwriting at undergraduate and postgraduate level at the University of Salford, introducing students to the craft of structure, character, and dialogue while encouraging them to break open those forms through experiment and play.