Sally Anne WainwrightOBE (born 1963) is an English television writer, producer, and director.[1][2] She is known for her dramas, which are often set in her native West Yorkshire, and feature "strong female characters".[3][4] Wainwright has been praised for the quality of her dialogue.[3]
Wainwright said that she had always wanted to write, had started writing from the time she was nine years old, and wanted to write for Coronation Street.[12] She said that when she was 16 years old, she saw a play called Bastard Angel by playwright Barrie Keeffe at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and was impressed by its short sentences and naturalistic approach to dialogue.[13]
Career
While at the University of York, Wainwright took an original play called Hanging On to the Edinburgh Festival and in the process found an agent, Meg Davis, for her writing.[10] Meanwhile, she worked as a bus driver.[10] When she was 24, she left the driving job after she started writing for the Radio 4 series The Archers.[12] One of her contributions was to write an atypical story for the long-running radio soap in which the village shop was robbed.[citation needed] After that she wrote for Coronation Street, developing her writing skills, from 1994 to 1999. She has since said that working on continuing drama was "a great education in discipline and a lesson that great stories are hard work".[14] She was mentored by Kay Mellor, who encouraged her to stop writing for soaps and to concentrate instead on original work. She created the TV series At Home with the Braithwaites about a woman who had secretly won the lottery. The programme was nominated for multiple awards.[15] In 2006, she wrote the drama series Jane Hall, which depicts the life of a woman bus driver in London. Wainwright drew on her own experiences in scripting the series.[16]
She won the 2009 Writer of the Year Award given by the RTS in 2009 for Unforgiven, which took several awards including best TV series.[17]
Wainwright says that her strong yet flawed female characters are "almost real" to her and arrive "fully formed" in her imagination. She likes to control the television that is created and has done some directing and producing of her own work,[15] partly to ensure the scenery and dialogue reflects Yorkshire.[18]
In 2011, she wrote Scott & Bailey, a series about two female police officers. The idea for the series came from the actresses Suranne Jones and Sally Lindsay and former Detective Inspector Diane Taylor, who assisted with bringing the series to air.[19]
Wainwright based the plot of her series Last Tango in Halifax on the story of her mother, who was widowed in 2001.[10] Her mother, Dorothy, moved to Oxfordshire to live with her daughter and rediscovered a lost love via Friends Reunited.[10] With her mother's permission, Wainwright developed the story of how she remarried so rapidly, showing extracts from the series to her mother before broadcast.[15]
When she told the story to Nicola Shindler, she suggested she turn her mother's experience into a television series. Shindler became the series' executive producer.[citation needed] Both Last Tango in Halifax and her crime series Scott & Bailey were turned down by both the BBC and ITV before being accepted retrospectively. The former was voted by BAFTA to be best series in 2012 and Wainwright was given the award for best writer.[20]
Happy Valley, which was shot in Yorkshire's upper Upper Calder Valley and Hebden Bridge,[21][22] stars Sarah Lancashire, whom Wainwright had in mind as she wrote the role.[23] Wainwright made her directorial debut with episode 4 of the first series.[23] Wainwright had previously said that she was willing to write a third series of Happy Valley, but had commitments to work on other projects, and in 2016 producer Nicola Shindler indicated that the third series would not air until 2018 at the earliest.[24] In 2022 it was announced that a third series would debut on 1 January 2023.[25] The final episode was broadcast on 5 February 2023.
Wainwright wrote and directed a two-hour drama special for BBC One entitled To Walk Invisible, which aired on BBC One in 2016 and in the US in 2017. Its subject is the Brontë family, particularly the relationship the three sisters, Anne, Emily and Charlotte, had with their brother, Branwell. While working on the drama, Wainwright said "I am thrilled beyond measure that I've been asked by the BBC to bring to life these three fascinating, talented, ingenious Yorkshire women."[27]
In 2019, Wainwright's Gentleman Jack, a drama about the 19th-century Yorkshire landowner, diarist, and open lesbian, Anne Lister, played by Suranne Jones, and Lister's courtship of Ann Walker, played by Sophie Rundle, premiered on both BBC One in the UK and HBO in the US.[28]
Her female-led highwaywoman epic Renegade Nell streamed on Disney+ from 29 March 2024.[29] In 2024, filming began on her series Riot Women, about a collection of women who form a band in Yorkshire.[30]
Sowerby Bridge is a market town in the Upper Calder Valley in Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. The Calderdale Council ward population at the 2011 census was 11,703.
Kay Mellor was an English actress, scriptwriter, producer and director. She was known for creating television series such as Band of Gold, Fat Friends, and The Syndicate, as well as co-creating CITV's children's drama Children's Ward (1989–2000).
Sarah Ann Akers, known professionally as Suranne Jones, is an English actress and producer. Known for her numerous collaborations with screenwriter Sally Wainwright, she rose to prominence playing Karen McDonald on ITV's Coronation Street between 2000 and 2004. Upon leaving, she furthered her television career in drama series such as Vincent (2005–2006), Strictly Confidential (2006), Harley Street (2008), and Unforgiven (2009).
Sarah-Jane Abigail Lancashire is an English actress. Known for her work in television and theatre, she has received numerous accolades over a career spanning four decades, including three British Academy Television Awards and a nomination for an Olivier Award. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2017 for services to drama.
Nicola Jane Walker is an English actress, known for her starring roles in various British television programmes from the 1990s onwards, including that of Ruth Evershed in the spy drama Spooks and DCI Cassie Stuart in Unforgotten (2015–2021). She has also worked in theatre, radio and film. She won the 2013 Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress for the play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and was twice nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress for the BBC drama Last Tango in Halifax.
Katherine Kelly is an English actress. She rose to prominence with her portrayal of Becky McDonald on the ITV soap opera Coronation Street (2006–2012), for which she received multiple awards, including the British Soap Award for Best Actress (2009) and the NTA for Best Serial Drama Performance (2012).
Nigel Cole is an English film and television director.
Siobhan Margaret Finneran is an English actress. She made her screen debut in the 1987 independent film Rita, Sue and Bob Too, and subsequently worked consistently in television drama including roles in Coronation Street (1989–1990), Clocking Off (2000–2002) and The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (2006). In 2005, Finneran originated the lead female role in the stage play On the Shore of the Wide World and was awarded the Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Also a comedy performer, Finneran appeared as Janice Garvey, a leading character in the first seven series of ITV sitcom Benidorm (2007–2015).
Joanna Marion Scanlan is a British actress and writer. On television, she is known for her roles in The Thick of It (2005–2012), Big School (2013–2014), Puppy Love (2014), No Offence (2015–2018), Requiem (2018), and The Larkins (2021). She was nominated for three BAFTA TV Awards for Getting On (2009–2012), including two for Best Writing.
Nicola Shindler is a British television producer and executive, and founder of the independent television drama production company Quay Street Productions, having founded and run Red Production Company from 1998 to 2020. She has won eleven BAFTA TV Awards.
Last Tango in Halifax is a British comedy-drama series that began broadcasting on BBC One on 20 November 2012 until its final episode which was broadcast on 15 March 2020. The series stars Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid as Alan and Celia.
Happy Valley is a British crime drama television series, set and filmed in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. Starring Sarah Lancashire, James Norton and Siobhan Finneran, it was written and created by Sally Wainwright and directed by Wainwright, Euros Lyn and Tim Fywell. The first series began on BBC One on 29 April 2014, the second on 9 February 2016, and the third and final series on 1 January 2023. It won the 2015 BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series, and won another BAFTA for Best Drama for the second series.
Philippa Lowthorpe is an English film and television director. She was awarded the Deluxe Director Award at the WFTV Film and Television Awards for the miniseries Three Girls. She recently directed episodes of the second season of The Crown and the 2020 film Misbehaviour.
Caroline McKenzie-Dawson is a fictional character in the BBC1 drama series Last Tango in Halifax portrayed by Sarah Lancashire. The character was created by lead writer and executive producer Sally Wainwright and appears from the first episode of the series broadcast on 20 November 2012. Lancashire was initially unavailable to commit to the series, but was cast after the production of Betty Blue Eyes she had been starring in closed early.
Neasa Hardiman is an Irish director of both fiction and nonfiction, predominantly known for her television work.
Two Brothers Pictures is a British television production company founded in 2014 by brothers Harry and Jack Williams. The company launched with the BBC One series The Missing. The show was nominated for 2 Golden Globe Awards, 4 BAFTAs and 2 Emmys as well as winning two Nymph d'Ors, Bulldog, and BPG awards. The Missing returned in 2016 for a second series airing on BBC One and Starz.
Gentleman Jack is a historical drama television series created by Sally Wainwright for BBC One and HBO. Set in the 1830s in Yorkshire, it stars Suranne Jones as landowner and industrialist Anne Lister. The series is based on Lister's collected diaries—which run to an estimated 5 million words with about a sixth in secret code,—documenting a lifetime of lesbian relationships. Helena Whitbread began decoding and transcribing the diaries in the 1980s. Other transcribers have carried on the work. The research carried out for Wainwright’s Gentleman Jack amounts to hundreds of thousands of words of new transcription of the diary.
Nicôle Lecky is a British actress, singer and writer. She is best known for her 2018 play Superhoe and its 2022 TV-series adaptation Mood.
Riot Women is an upcoming British television series written by Sally Wainwright and produced by Drama Republic.
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