TV and theatre scripts

Our Father

What do you do when your father’s a rock star? Perhaps you live in the lap of luxury, going to gigs, meeting famous people. Your Instagram is chockful of yachts in the south of France and celebrity parties, and you spend all your free time in your home studio, emulating your dad.

Or perhaps he abandoned you when you were a child, and the only time you know he’s in the country is when his Facebook page tells you.

Jimi and Lennon Playford – talented musicians and on the cusp of turning eighteen – are sadly in the latter camp, and haven’t seen their dad properly since their twelfth birthday. But that’s about to change, as Dad’s back. Apparently a changed man, and ready to reconcile with his family, Adam Playford wants to make amends for the last eighteen years – but hasn’t reckoned on how much change happened in his absence.

Let’s take Izzy, his estranged wife. An artist, she’s spent the best part of the last two decades bringing up two kids, but is ready to embark on her own journey of self-discovery.

Family patriarch, Robert is the stalwart substitute dad, and – with the help of feisty next-door neighbour Abi – will do all he can to send Adam back from whence he came.

And then there are the kids. Jimi and Lennon are as different as two identical twins can be. Jimi wants to be a rock star, and is only interested in his dad for the trust fund he has been promised. Lennon, meanwhile, is a studious over-achiever, desperate to please, wanting nothing more than a normal life. Neither are going to get what they want, particularly when history threatens to repeat itself when Jimi’s girlfriend Aimee reveals she is pregnant.

Adam is perhaps not the reformed character he makes himself out to be – a worsening drug habit and diving bank balance make it hard to concentrate on being a good dad.

As the twins’ eighteenth birthday party approaches, secrets are revealed, agendas are exposed, and truths come out – culminating in tragedy.

Written as a six-part series for TV, Our Father is a coming of age comedy drama, exploring human relationships in all their murky glory.  With the punch of ‘Fleabag’ and the drama of ‘This is us’, Our Father is full on from the start, depicting a modern family, warts n all.

Read the first episode here.

How to get laid at a funeral

Thirty-five-year-old Paul is a successful graphic designer, working in London, free of his provincial upbringing. Until his dad dies in a freak accident, and he must return home for the funeral, to comfort his grieving mum and face up to his past – which he’s actually doing a good job of avoiding, as entirely without noticing, he’s managed to pull. As an eager-to-comfort fellow mourner gets to work on taking his mind off the events of the day, Paul narrates his story – the events leading up to his father’s death, and the childhood shaped by the man he never really got the chance to know.

Next door, in her own room, sixty-something Marjorie mourns her dead husband. Widowed for eleven days, and now with the funeral behind her, she’s just not sure what to do. When old friend – and old flame – Eric knocks on her door with a clear idea of what they could be getting up to, she’s conflicted. I mean, what if ghosts actually do exist? Can her dead husband see exactly what she’s getting up to?

Lost in their own thoughts, both mother and son find themselves getting lucky on this most inauspicious night – and telling us, their silent confidante, their innermost feelings. From the momentous to the mundane, the profanity to the profound, they reveal their hopes and worries for each other – and themselves.

A darkly comic – and little bit rude – short play, How to Get Laid at a Funeral challenges the taboos of how we’re meant to grieve.

Click here to read the script.