Four fresh, funny, female-led shorts from some of Northern Ireland’s newest writing talent. Simon Nelson, Development Exec for BBC Writersroom, explains how Lady Shorts were produced.
Today sees the launch on BBC iPlayer of Lady Shorts, four comedy short films written by some of Northern Ireland’s most exciting up-and-coming women writers – Diona Doherty, Sarah Gordon, Susannah McKenna and Emma Moran. Several of the writers had previously been members of our Belfast Voices and Comedy Room writer development groups and Sarah has gone onto a place in our current Drama Room Group, and it is particularly satisfying to see them gain broadcast credits.
Each film is distinct, reflecting the unique nature of each writer’s voice: across the four pieces we encounter poignance, sadness, suspense, affection as well as laugh-out-loud joy. But in each piece the writer displays a unique, authentic view of today’s society and I feel privileged that we were able to work with these brilliantly talented writers, and to make their work come to life.
Watch Lady Shorts: Sorta Stepmum
This series of shorts is the result of a collaboration between BBC Writersroom and BBC Northern Ireland’s Learning Department – as so often happens in the BBC Writersroom, we were able to combine our skills with those of another BBC department to create something exciting and new. Back in the early days of the pandemic, we teamed up with BBC NI’s Gareth Hawthorne and David Monahan to develop several scripts with a view to making some of them for BBC iPlayer. After some workshops, a couple of pitch sessions and a lot of hard work from our amazing writers, we commissioned several scripts with a view to taking three of these into production.
As it happens, the scripts were so good that four of them were produced in the end (thank you to our script editor, the amazing Gemma Arrowsmith, as well as very our own Hamish Wright & Anna Hinds for their parts in making that happen). But getting them made was no easy feat – Covid was doing its worst and – along with the rest of the UK television industry – we had to quickly find ways to make programmes in a safe, healthy and socially-distanced manner. That task fell to our tireless producer, Chris Martin from Belfast-based Indie Movie Company and director Jonathan Kesselman.
Watch Lady Shorts: The Catholic Marriage Bureau
Thank you again to our writers and to our former NI Development Producer Keith Martin for kicking the whole thing off at the very beginning!
