In production
Dramas Currently in Development:
ALMOST AMERICA
A fresh, witty action packed take on the American War of Independence, based on little known diaries. How two Irish Brothers, one fat, one thin - Henry and William Knox, saved America from defeat by dragging a unit of heavy cannons through the freezing Winter of 1776, to rescue General Washington outside Boston, and all for the love of the daughter of the English Governor, who was forced to make a choice
– her father and wealth, or her lover and the New World.
10 x 1 hour co-producing with Marsha Lee at Definition Films
WANT OF A WIFE
A rude and heart-rending spin on the real world of Jane Austen. The Favourite meets Pride and Prejudice. Imagine the life of Lizzie’s younger sister, Lydia, banished from the Bennett household – arriving at a boarding house with her runaway officer, only to be abandoned to the fate of so many unlucky young women of the time. But she is our heroine, and she will not be put down.
Based on recently discovered facts – that up to half of all women in the 18th Century entered the sex slavery of the demi monde, and Jane Austen’s own aunt was one such madame.
Feature film; co-written with Jemma Kennedy & John Toba
OUTSIDE CHILD
A most unusual, yet uplifting TV series that takes our heroine of a certain age, ELEANOR, from an unfulfilled marriage to a successful professor of rainy Oxford, to a second chance in the sun-drenched beaches of St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean. Eleanor is haunted by the image of a young woman who landed in the Caribbean as an indentured servant in the earliest days of colonisation, a time of disease, hardship and early slavery in the cotton fields. But above all, is made aware of the child she never had. A child born out of wedlock, of mixed race, what they call “an outside child”.
Part French Lieutenant’s Woman, part Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, this mini series offers up a role for a dame of the British Theatre Royalty.
Co-written with Tina Pepler (Downton Abbey)
Feature Documentaries in Development:
LOOKING FOR WICKER MAN
A Feature Documentary that begins with the global success of cult British horror film, The WICKER MAN, 1973, to commemorate its 50th anniversary.
But the heart of the film traces the life and loves of its director, Robin Hardy, father of Justin, and of numerous other siblings, spawned around the world, wherever Robin lay his hat. Justin goes on a lyrical journey, starting in the seaplane that triggers the original movie, to find and meet his family, and to discover who his father really was. A sexually driven Pagan, like the islanders of Summerisle? Or a father worthy of Christian forgiveness, like Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie? Interweaving the sensual dance of Britt Ekland, the brooding presence of Christopher Lee, and Howie’s search for a missing child with the present day search for a family, this is a clash of cultures – 1970s sexual liberation with modern day conservatism. All leading, to a trip into Hardy’s last known bonk fest in the Inuit community of Greenland, and a meeting with his own Wicker Man.
