Television
Authentic Tours
What happens when you abandon yourself to the rhythms of London life?
A mockumentary serial (7 x 15 mins) – we follow a group of young people travelling around London as they film with interesting characters that they happen to meet along the way. Over a series of short, online episodes a picture emerges of the massive variety of multi-cultural life in the capital city – its funny side, but also the sadness that can exist.
We first meet Norman, a hapless tour guide in his sixties, and follow him on one of his tours. After an altercation with a pregnant Canadian tourist we get a glimpse of her life as she prepares to give birth in the capital. Driving her to hospital is a shrewd female ride-hailing app driver who later introduces us to our fourth character, a naïve takeaway-app cyclist who delivers food to our fifth, a trainee barrister preparing to present in court the following morning. At the trial, we meet a Police Community Support Officer and follow her as she patrols for truancy in her local area. Ultimately, she introduces us to a young schoolboy at the local comprehensive who will need to be dragged kicking and screaming to where he is meant to be: another of Norman’s authentic tours.
Episode 1 / Pilot – “The Tour Guide”
Complete episode available on request – we meet Norman as he prepares to take us on one of his “authentic” Jack the Ripper Walking Tours. The poor weather becomes the least of his worries when Sally, a heavily pregnant and hostile tourist slips onto the tour without paying.
Episode 2 – “The Tourist”
Complete episode available on request – back at Sally’s hotel, we discover that her life is even less straightforward than it seemed earlier. After a spicy curry in Brick Lane, she demonstrates her tips to induce a pregnancy with an apparently predictable outcome.
Hexagonal Man
What if you could glimpse the semi-conscious fantasies of a better life that torture a recovering alcoholic? Would they really be any better than the real life he has with his family if he actually got to live them out?
A blackly comic drama serial (6 x 30 min episodes) – “Hexagonal Man” builds on the mixed tones of recent shows such as Flowers (Channel 4, 2016-18) and Fleabag (BBC, 2016-19) by giving us glimpses into the semi-conscious fantasies that torture Gary – a recovering alcoholic. Will he be able to process these fantasies, reunite with his wife and see the value of the challenging but real life that they share with their children?
Gary always believed that he could be or do anything, but in his middle age he seems only to be a bitter, recovering alcoholic and web designer. So, when his wife sleeps with his brother everything falls apart. Gary resumes drinking after years sober and his brother commits suicide.
Alongside glimpses of alternate and seemingly more prestigious visions of Gary’s life (as a superhero vigilante, a precocious nineteenth-century poet and a modern politician), we see not only how he navigates this earth-shattering predicament, but how he alone is the one that is able to piece his life back together and forgive his wife for her infidelity. As he learns to do so, his fantasies increasingly drop away and a richer sense of the value of his life with his family emerges in their place.
To enhance the theme of detachment and Gary’s dream-like mental state, the story makes use of the shoegaze musical subculture. For examples of the songs that a teenage Gary and Rachel fell in love to: Hexagonal Man.
Episode 1 / Pilot – “Heroes and Villains”
Complete episode available on request – Gary deceives an old friend and resumes drinking after years of abstinence. Rachel, his wife, and their two children set up at her parents’ house where she discloses the devastating nature of her infidelity. We get glimpses of Gary as a superhero suffering a televised breakdown. Rachel races back home when Gary breaks off communication, and news of his brother’s suicide comes at the worst possible moment.
Civil War
A drama serial – contact me for a pitch built around exploring the English Civil War through the eyes of a noble family split into two factions by the conflict, the perspectives of the ordinary men and women of the time, and the period’s uncomfortable connections to our own political moment.