Overview

From pitch to pilot – work on your original TV drama with top industry professionals. During this eighteen-week course, fifteen talented writers will each develop an idea for a drama serial, write a sixty-minute pilot episode and evolve a plan for further episodes – supported by the expert teaching of experienced screenwriter, producer and director Jamie Nuttgens. Each writer will also receive an in-depth one-to-one tutorial from an experienced script editor Clare Alan as well as a series of five masterclasses from leading TV-industry professionals. Curtis Brown’s Theatre, Film and Television agents will deliver a pitching session – and each writer will have the opportunity to share materials with the agent team at the end of the course.

This course will help students to develop their work to the best of its potential and will also be highly practical, giving a real-world education about what the industry is looking for and how to pitch their work effectively. Students will work on a range of important materials as well as writing their pilot script and workshopping extracts from it. They’ll be getting advice from top professionals on how to develop their idea, and on how to write pitches, outlines, treatments, character biographies, scenes and sequences, series overviews, and more.

While we don’t guarantee that students will find representation with Curtis Brown, our agents will be on the look-out for exciting new talent and will call in the full scripts of writers whose work they particularly connect with.

In the eleven years since we’ve started Curtis Brown Creative, over 150 of our novel-writing students have gone on to get major publishing deals for their novels, including Jane Harper (The Dry), Kate Hamer  (The Girl in the Red Coat), Nicholas Searle (The Good Liar is now a major feature film starring Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren) and Jessie Burton, whose debut The Miniaturist sold more than a million copies and became a BBC mini-serial. Read more about the published authors who’ve studied with us here. We launched our first Writing an Original TV Drama Serial course in 2020 and are thrilled to be running it for the fourth time with the support of Curtis Brown’s Theatre, Film and Television department.

TEACHING IN LONDON – SUPPORTED BY ZOOM

We are so excited about the return of our London courses. We love the energy of our in-person courses, and so do our students. However, your safety is our first concern. We are carefully monitoring the ongoing Covid-19 situation, factoring in government guidance, and listening to feedback from our students. We hope to run all sessions at our central London location, with some visiting speaker sessions to be held on Zoom. Should it prove necessary we will move some or even all classes of this course to Zoom.

In-person classes will be held at comfortable, spacious venues in central London (Asia House, unless otherwise specified), and will be fully compliant with government rules on distancing and hygiene. We have a Covid protocol, the current version of which can be read here. The protocol is reviewed, ongoing throughout the duration of the course, and our students and staff will be kept fully informed of any amendments made in their interests.

Teaching sessions and workshops will take place weekly on Monday evenings. Please read to the end of this course description and schedule for full details.

For those not familiar with Zoom, it’s a video conferencing platform that enables you to meet up virtually with others. You’ll be able to connect with your class and experience live teaching as if you were all in the same room. You’ll get to ask questions and give your thoughts, ensuring the natural back-and-forth you’d encounter in the classroom. It’s easy to use – we’ll send you a link to join the relevant masterclass sessions by email – and the CBC team will be on hand to help if you have any problems.

If circumstances dictate that this course runs entirely on Zoom, the fee will be reduced to £2,600.

WHAT DOES THIS COURSE GIVE YOU?

MASTERCLASSES FROM TV PROFESSIONALS

This course will feature a series of five special masterclasses delivered by TV professionals – organised and ordered to reflect the process of real-world television drama development. Students will be asked to prepare a specific piece of work relating to their own project for each of these sessions. The masterclass will start out with the guest TV professional giving the inside track on their role to demystify it for the students, and answering their questions – and will then move on to discussion of the students’ work. Each guest professional will discuss in detail the work of three students – and will do so in such a way as to be educational for the whole group. Each student will have their work specifically considered in one of these masterclasses (see the schedule below for details of the focus of each masterclass and the work to be completed). Former masterclass speakers for this course have included the best the industry has to offer, including Sally Woodward Gentle, the BAFTA winning, Golden Globe and Emmy nominated, executive producer of television dramas including Killing Eve, The Durrells and Whitechapel, co-founder of Bad Wolf Productions Julie Gardner – best known for her work helping to spearhead the revival of the BAFTA-wining series Doctor Who, and Manda Levin, Senior Commissioning Editor for Development at BBC Drama. Masterclass speakers for this course are yet to be confirmed, this page will be updated with scheduled speakers as they are announced.

Working with other writers

We pride ourselves on the tightly-knit writing communities that are established on our courses. As well as getting feedback on your work-in-progress during the course, we’ll be asking you to read the work of your fourteen fellow students week by week, and provide constructive comments (both in writing and verbally at the group workshop sessions). We find the process of offering feedback to others helps you to reach important conclusions about your own work and sharpen your material. On ten evenings across the course (as detailed in the schedule), three students will have 10–12 pages of their pilot script (up to 2,000 words on each occasion) workshopped by the rest of the group and the tutor. It’ll be your turn to get the group’s dedicated workshop attention twice during the course.