MA/PgDip TV and Radio Scriptwriting

As well as establishing themselves as successful scriptwriters, our graduates have also entered occupations including producer, storyliner, script editor, and story consultant with employers as diverse as Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, EA games, Hat Trick, Sony and SEGA.

Our graduates have predominately entered the scriptwriting and satellite professions in roles such as producer, script editor, storyliner, and story consultant as well as narrative director and narrative and speech design for video games. All of these professions involve knowledge not just of the detail of scriptwriting but also of industry practices and conventions.Richard Smith's Trauma starring Colin Firth and Mena Suvari was, we believe, the first MA script project to progress to feature film production.

Our graduates have worked on Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Shameless, Hollyoaks, The Street, Heartbeat and Doctors and have written plays for BBC Radio 4.

Recent graduate David Isaac's Lunch Monkeys (starring Nigel Havers) is in its second series on BBC 3.

Andrew Walsh won the 2009 Writer's Guild award for best video game with Prince of Persia.

In 2010 Hannah Pike won the BBC's New Writers Award.

In 2011 Bill Grundy won the BBC's New Writers Award.

Alumni Profile

David Isaac came to the MA from a background as a solicitor. He had always been interested in writing, especially comedy, and was keen to explore the opportunities offered in scriptwriting. He benefited from the course's emphasis on regular writing exercises and group and individual feedback which resulted in the honing of his comedic writing skills and the importance of character, plot development and timing. He went on to write for BBC's Scallywagga and Lee Mack's sitcom Not Going Out, and these experiences led to his first writing commission, Lunch Monkeys, for BBC 3. This series was based on David's own experience of the legal profession and won him an RTS NorthWest Awards nomination for Best Scriptwriter. David is now firmly established in his new profession.

Industry Links

Industry links are a significant component of the course at present and their numbers are increasing all the time. This course is actively involved with the following companies: BBC, Granada, Baby Cow Productions, Ten Alps, Red Productions, Channel K, Tightrope Productions, Lime Pictures.

These links provide opportunities to network with key industry figures and to get feedback on their work; to learn the demands the industry makes on writers; to be at the cutting edge of changes and developments that occur in the industry; and to develop mentoring relationships that may persist beyond the course.

Further Study

Graduates could go on to further study at PhD level after the completion of this course. Academic analyses of the process of scriptwriting are growing and this is now an acknowledged field of academic enquiry. Other possibilities include PhDs in the field of the television and radio industry and/ or cultural history.