February is LGBT+ History Month in the UK and to celebrate the occasion we've pulled together a collection of great stories and scripts together with interviews with great writers.
Watch The Break
The Break is our returning series of short dramas for BBC Three by writers new to broadcast. Watch two episodes below from the third series.
A Vocal Minority written by Stewart Thomson
Billy loves an Old Firm match just as much as his football obsessed Dad but today he wants to talk about more than just the score...
(A Vocal Minority was nominated for a Celtic Media Award in 2019.)
Soul Journey written by Omar Raza
Kammy loves his father...nearly as much as he loves Girls Aloud. He wants to live up to his family's expectations but there is someone else in his life.
(Soul Journey was nominated for a MIPCOM Diversify TV Excellence Award for representation of LGBTQ and Omar Raza was nominated as Best Writer in the RTS Scotland Awards 2019.)
Russell T Davies
Russell T Davies' new drama It's a Sin tells the story of five friends, whose lives are tested in the shadow of AIDs in the 1980s. It has been a huge hit for Channel 4, breaking records on their All4 streaming service.
Russell's previous shows include Years and Years (watch on BBC iPlayer), Doctor Who (watch on BBC iPlayer), Queer as Folk and Torchwood (watch on BBC iPlayer).
We spoke to Russell at our Wales Writers' Festival in December 2019 where he gave his top tips for other writers, explained how he deals with people's expectations, listed some of the common misconceptions he has to deal with and the hardest things about writing.
He also explained why he thinks Doctor Who is the hardest show to write on television.
A Very English Scandal
Russell T Davies' recent dramas for the BBC include the Emmy, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated A Very English Scandal which is a dramatisation of the 1976-79 Jeremy Thorpe scandal and the events which led up to it. It begins in the late 1960s, homosexuality has only just been decriminalised, and Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party, has a secret he is desperate to hide.
Watch A Very English Scandal on BBC iPlayer
A Very English Scandal - download and read the scripts
Read more writing advice from Russell T Davies on our blog
Download and read more scripts by Russell T Davies from our Script Library including:
Boy Meets Girl
Boy Meets Girl was created as a result of the Trans Comedy Award which BBC Writersroom ran in partnership with the organisation All About Trans. The BBC received 320 script entries, with the winners being Boy Meets Girl (then titled Love) by Elliott Kerrigan and Nobody's Perfect by Tom Glover.
Boy Meets Girl was produced for BBC Two starring Harry Hepple as Leo and Rebecca Root as Judy and ran for two series in 2015 and 2016.
Find out about Boy Meets Girl's journey to the screen in a blog post from writer Elliott Kerrigan and Find out more about the show's development
Boy Meets Girl - download and read the complete scripts for Series 1
Gentleman Jack
Gentleman Jack was adapted by Sally Wainwright from the diaries of Anne Lister. Written in the early nineteenth century and kept at Calderdale Archives in Halifax the diaries were partly written in a code of Anne's own invention. When originally decoded in the late nineteenth century they proved to be startlingly intimate. Anne is probably best known for her lesbian relationships, which she recorded religiously and in tantalising detail. For this reason the diaries were repressed, and it wasn’t until almost a century later that the truth of what the code revealed fully emerged, thanks to the pioneering work of local historians and academics.
Find out more about Anne Lister's diaries
Sally Wainwright introduces Gentleman Jack
Gentleman Jack - read the complete scripts for Series 1 by Sally Wainwright
Pride
It’s the summer of 1984 – Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is on strike. At the Gay Pride March in London, a group of gay and lesbian activists decides to raise money to support the families of the striking miners. But there is a problem. The Union seems embarrassed to receive their support.
Pride was nominated for three BAFTA Awards and won Best British Independent Film, Best Supporting Actress for Imelda Staunton and Best Supporting Actor for Andrew Scott at the 2014 British Independent Film Awards.
London Spy
In London Spy, broadcast on BBC Two in 2015, a romance between an MI6 code genius and an ordinary man promises happiness. But tragedy strikes when the spy dies in suspicious circumstances, forcing his lover to pursue the truth behind his death.
Find out more about London Spy in an interview with the writer Tom Rob Smith
London Spy - read the script for Episode 1 by Tom Rob Smith
Tom Rob Smith on his drama The Assassination of Gianni Versace
Man in an Orange Shirt
Man in an Orange Shirt written by Patrick Gale was broadcast in 2017 as part of the BBC's Gay Britannia season which marked the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act 1967. We caught up with Patrick who explained the drama's genesis, why that was such a hugely important anniversary, and asked the question “Are things entirely better for gay people now?”
1977
1977 written by Sarah Wooley was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015. It told the story of Angela Morley, who was a transgender woman in the 1970s who had become famous before transition as a saxophonist, conductor, arranger and film and TV composer. After transition Angela went on to compose the score for Watership Down as well as music for Dallas and Dynasty, Cagney & Lacey and Wonder Woman. Sarah explains how she wanted "to tell a story where the protagonist was transgender but where the focus of the story wasn’t actually on that".
Read Sarah Wooley's blog post about discovering the story of Angela Morley and writing 1977
Read More Interviews and Scripts
We have spoken to former EastEnders writer Leo Richardson at several points through his career, including when his original drama pilot Stanley Park was broadcast on BBC Three back in 2010, when he attended one of our writer development workshops in 2015 and last year after his move to the USA when Katy Keene, a spinoff from the hit show Riverdale, came to BBC iPlayer. In that recent interview Leo shared his advice for other “queer and working class” writers.
My Mother Taught me How to Sing is a BBC Radio 4 Docu-drama broadcast in 2017. Originally intended as a fictional piece based on Gay adoption, during the development process the writer, Daf James' mother died and the play morphed into something quite different.
Daf’s adoption experience now took on a new significance: the idea of instigating a family of two dads, a family missing the traditional gender-based ‘mother’ figure, was thrown into focus. And so the plan for the radio play evolved – the context of Daf’s loss gave his gay adoption story an angle: What does it mean to be a mum?
Read producer James Robinson's blog post about developing My Mother Taught me How to Sing
My Mother Taught me How to Sing - read the script by Daf James
The Night Watch was broadcast on BBC Two back in 2011. A tragic and tender adaptation of Sarah Waters' best-selling novel by the award-winning Paula Milne (Small Island, Endgame, The Virgin Queen and The Politician's Wife), The Night Watch is set against the turbulent backdrop of Forties London and tells the stories of four young Londoners inextricably linked by their wartime experiences, with a focus on previously untold gay and lesbian relationships.
Listen to Paula Milne discussion the adaptation at our 2011 TV Writers' Festival
BBC Radio 4 Drama Breaking up with Bradford was first broadcast in 2017 and is written by Kamal Kaan who was part our Drama Room development group in 2017.
Kasim's return to his hometown of Bradford after three years away at University isn't quite what he anticipated. His time away has changed him, but is Bradford ready for the new Kasim? Starring Luke Newberry and Darren Kuppan.
Kamal describes the writing and production of Breaking up with Bradford on our blog
Marking LGBT+ History Month across the BBC
Celebrating the LGBT+ community and its history - watch programmes on BBC iPlayer
BBC Bitesize - The evolution of LGBT+ History Month
BBC Newsround - LGBT+ History month: 12 icons you should know about
LGBT+ History Month: The history of the Gay Games on BBC Sport
