The Brit List, the annual selection of the best unproduced screenplays as voted for by the industry, has launched a TV offshoot with an inaugural 20-strong crop of series.
Since 2007, a selection of screenplays for feature films has been published in the autumn. This will happen again in 2018, following on from the launch of The Brit List: TV. From 2019, the lists will alternate year by year from film to television.
The first Brit List: TV saw more than 100 nominations put forward by 70 British TV companies, with 20 making the final list by gaining two nominations or more from different participants. Companies can put forward three of their own projects, but must also submit three projects that they are now involved in. All voters are anonymous.
This year’s list features series from companies including BBC Studios, Scott Free and Warp Films.
Alexandra Arlango, who has overseen the Brit List over the last decade, said: “I’m delighted that the first Brit List: TV has been released, and thrilled with such a wide and enthusiastic turn out. In its first year, this is very exciting.
”The aim has always been to give new writing voices a platform and to create industry awareness of upcoming talent. Looking back over the last ten years at the names that have been included, it’s fair to say it has been a great success. And I’m sure, looking forward, we will have a comprehensive showcase for the emerging and developing talent of the future.”
Projects produced after being showcased on the Brit List include James Graham’s Gypsy Boy, which is now in produced with BBC Films and has Benedict Cumberbatch starring, and Aschlin Ditta’s Swimming With Men, which is now complete and was recently picked up for UK distribution.
The full list:
FOUR VOTES
AUTUMN by Emily Marcuson (The Agency)
Producers: Mam Tor Productions
Summary: Ruby returns to her small rural town after serving 12 years in prison, initially for killing a local father and daughter in a driving accident, she then killed again inside. Unsure how to live life on the outside she starts to question everything she had been told about the night of the accident, and whether there are others who have hidden their guilt all these years. If you’d had the formative years of your life stolen from you, how would you take revenge?
DARKLANDS by Laura Grace (The Agency)
Producers: Bad Wolf
Summary: A high-octane thriller set in a pitch-black world of cybercrime, teen hackers and internet subculture. When a brilliant IT security expert is forced to confront her murky past, she finds herself faced with her worst nightmare: teaming up with the man who arrested her as a teenager, to find the terrorist who destroyed her life.
FULL FRONTAL by Hania Elkington (United Agents)
Producers: Mam Tor Productions
Summary: 16 year old FAITH wakes from a coma after suffering a head injury on a night out. She can’t remember the night, or much of the last 3 months of her life during which time she discovers she hit self destruct on all the key relationships in her life. Inspired by classic film noir, Faith takes on the roles of femme fatale, detective and suspect as she tries to work out what the hell happened to her life, and was she the victim or the cause.
HIGHWAY by Mickey Down (Curtis Brown) & Konrad Kay (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Ecosse Films
Summary: In a socially divided Georgian England, a young mixed-race woman is the only witness to her father’s brutal murder. Her life in ruins, she is forced to team up with a notorious highwayman in order to uncover who is behind her father’s killing and take her deadly revenge upon them.
THREE VOTES
DARKNESS AT THE EDGE OF TOWN by Neil Webster (Curtis Brown)
Producers: Various Artists Ltd.
Summary: Five old friends meet up for their annual get-together in a country cottage. Beneath the happy façades put on for their wives and girlfriends, they are bound by a disturbing and terrible secret they can never forget, and which someone unknown outside of their trusted circle has found out.
FRANKIE MACKIE by George Kay (Curtis Brown)
Producers: Idiotlamp
Summary: Told he has one year left to live, 15 year old Frankie Mackie must live his entire life in one angry, adolescent, sex obsessed year.
FRAGMENTS by Adam Gyngell (Sayle Screen) & Fred Armesto (Sayle Screen)
Producers: Two Brothers Pictures
Summary: A psychological thriller series about Hope, a woman who comes to with no memory of the last 5 hours. There are bloodstains on her clothes and in her car: something bad went down and she’s worried that she might have done something terrible.
QUEENS by Matthew Barry (The Agency)
Producers: BBC Studios
Summary: QUEENS explores the multisexual world of Soho in 1953 and follows the people who inhabit its seedy yet vibrant streets. This includes Joe, who has a female fiancée, and Danny, an aspiring actor.
TWO VOTES
BEAST by Dafydd James (Curtis Brown)
Producers: Scott Free
Summary: In an alternative mythological world, mother Non and daughter Lea must battle for survival, against the odds, against their community, against the Beast…
BEAUREGARD by Ed Hime (United Agents)
Producers: Fifty Fathoms
Summary: Sci-fi thriller. A brilliant but troubled scientist returns to the remote island of her childhood to revisit her past in order to confront her future.
THE ASSEMBLY by The Clarkson Twins (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Bad Wolf
Summary: Grounded sci-fi drama series: in the not too distant future everyone in the United Kingdom is born infertile and must gain the right to procreate. Those individuals denied the right to have children will never be able to present their case again; they have only one chance to pass Assessment.
DUST by Mark Denton & Jonny Stockwood (The Agency)
Producers: Headline Pictures
Summary: International crime thriller following the heroin trade from Afghanistan to London.
KINGS CROSS by Emerald Fennell (United Agents)
Summary: One train. Two strangers. And a huge romantic mess. Two weekly commuters meet by chance, hit it off, and try not to fall irrevocably in love with one another. A story for anyone who ever glanced across the train carriage and thought, ‘what if?’
LADY JUSTICE by Joseph Wilde (Berlin Associates)
Producers: Hat Trick
Summary: A retired vigilante superhero goes back to work after 15 years of being a full- time mum and renews rivalries with her old enemies.
ORBITAL by Adam Dewar (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Warp Films
Summary: Crime drama charting the corruption of a man as he rises from lowly traffic cop to the heart of government. It begins in 1989 when an officer assigned to the new M25 is pulled into a rogue branch of the police, and into a strange series of ecstasy deaths at illegal raves around the motorway’s perimeter.
PERCENTAGES by Tom Nash (Berlin Associates)
Producers: Red Planet
Summary: A dark and compelling drama, Percentages delves into the pulsating world of professional football, telling the story of both the lives of the young sports stars and their ruthless, business-minded agents.
RESPONSIBLE CHILD by Sean Buckley (Knight Hall)
Producers: Kudos/Dragonfly
Summary: Inspired by a real life case, RESPONSIBLE CHILD is an uncompromising examination of the age of criminal responsibility in the UK and its consequences for two young boys who kill their stepfather.
TIGER FEET by Robert Murphy (42) & Tim Whitnall (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: (Available)
Summary: Drama – set in Glasgow in the 1970s, a young man discovers his love of performance.
WE ARE YOUR CHILDREN by Ryan J Brown (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Ugly Duckling Films
Summary: A thriller inspired by true events: a female detective, a gay activist and a Drag Queen unite to stop a serial killer in 1970’s San Francisco. It’s based on the LGBTQ community’s involvement in some of the worst unsolved serial murders committed; and prejudiced police and press were uninterested in investigating.
WIFE AFTER DEATH by Georgia Pritchett (Curtis Brown)
Producers: Ecosse Films
Summary: WIFE AFTER DEATH is a provocative comedy series about Mel, a 36 year old woman who becomes a widow when her husband dies while they are having sex.
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