Category: THE WRITERS ROOM
Blanc canvas
Actors and co-writers Sally Lindsay and Sue Vincent share their experience of creating Channel 5 and Acorn TV drama The Madame Blanc Mysteries, explaining how they came up with its characters and tackled multiple languages on screen.
Arrested development
Back to Life star Daisy Haggard and series co-writer Laura Solon reflect on making the dark comedy drama about a determined yet naive woman’s return to her family home after spending 18 years in prison.
Gone fishing
Gísli Örn Garðarsson, one of the creators, writers, directors and stars of Icelandic drama Blackport, speaks to DQ about why he wanted to dramatise the real-life impact of the country’s fishing quotas in the 1980s.
Wolfe at the door
Shameless and No Offence creator and writer Paul Abbott tells DQ about his latest series, darkly funny forensic crime drama Wolfe, and how he created the unique character at the heart of the show.
Top Class
Zebrarummet (A Class Apart) writer Michaela Hamilton reveals how she tried to grip viewers with this suspenseful Swedish murder mystery set at an elite boarding school.
Feeling Lucky
When a madcap family hits the lottery jackpot, will scheming patriarch Loïc be able to grow their new fortune and keep them united? Writers Vincent Poymiro and Anne Feinsilber tell DQ about Swiss comedy La chance de ta vie (Lucky Day).
Taking a stand
British writer Bisha K Ali opens up about her journey from stand-up comic to TV showrunner and explains how her experience paved the way for a new Netflix- and Sky-backed talent programme to support underrepresented writers.
Promising start
Former Engrenages (Spiral) showrunner Anne Landois tells DQ about creating crime drama La Promesse (The Promise), one of France’s biggest hits of the year so far, which revolves around the fallout from a young girl’s disappearance.
Us and them
Bafta-winning screenwriter David Nicholls recalls how Us, his novel about a man seeking to repair his marriage during a family holiday around Europe, made the journey to the small screen.
Breaking good
As filming begins on the series adaptation of Finnish novel The Man Who Died, author Antti Tuomainen and screenwriter Brendan Foley tell DQ how they have created a drama from this darkly comic story about a dying man who falls in love with life.
The joy of Six
Éramos Seis (Once We Were Six) writer Ângela Chaves reveals how she brought a modern sensibility to a classic Brazilian novel and explains how music plays an important part in her storytelling.
Derry girl
Derry Girls is the proof that local comedy can travel around the world. Creator and writer Lisa McGee talks to DQ about what inspired her to create the series and how she sees comedy progressing in the future.
As Luc would have it
Screenwriter Luc Dionne reflects on the success of his Quebecois crime drama District 31, discusses how he has navigated a film and television career over more than 25 years and offers some words of advice to new writers.
Polishing Bad Apples
Mia Ylönen, creator and head writer of Finnish series Mädät Omenat (Bad Apples), reveals how the female patients who once lived in an asylum on an isolated island inspired streamer Elisa Viihde Viaplay’s psychological thriller.
Breaking Out
The vast Arctic landscape sets the scene for Outlier, in which a young criminology student starts the hunt for a potential serial killer. Arne Berggren and Kristine Berg tell DQ about creating this Norwegian crime drama.
Shadow people
Showrunner Eric Heisserer and author Leigh Bardugo discuss adapting the latter’s Grishaverse novels for Netflix fantasy drama Shadow & Bone, in which a lowly soldier unleashes an extraordinary power that might just set her country free.
Head case
Christina Lee and Alissa Nutting tell DQ about writing Made for Love, an HBO Max original series based on Nutting’s darkly comic sci-fi novel about a woman on the run from her controlling tech billionaire husband – who has implanted a monitoring chip in her head.
Frank discussion
The Queen’s Gambit writer, director and executive producer Scott Frank remarks on how the story of a young female chess prodigy in 1950s America became one of Netflix’s biggest series of 2020.
Saints and synners
As Kay Mellor’s lottery drama The Syndicate returns after a six-year break, the writer and director tells DQ how the BBC series overcame the odds to film in Yorkshire and Monaco during the Covid-19 pandemic.
True to life
In Los Espabilados (Alive & Kicking), the latest series from Albert Espinosa, four teenagers are pursued by a detective after they escape from a psychiatric institution. DQ chats to the prolific Spanish writer about why he continues to mine his own experiences for television.