THE SHoRT LIST

When a hopeless romantic reacts violently to heartbreak she joins an unorthodox anger management group to harness this unfamiliar feeling: rage.

Emma is a screenwriter from Edinburgh currently residing in Glasgow. Since completing a Screenwriting MA in 2019, Emma has trained in TV drama development at Two Rivers Media under the mentorship of Marcus Wilson (Luther, Doctor Who). Since placing as a finalist in the Short Com competition with 'Sorry', she now has a TV comedy-horror in development with Two Rivers and was in the writers room for an adult animated sitcom for Wild Child Animation. As well as writing, Emma is keen to progress with her script editing and development work and is attached to direct her first short film in Spring 2021.
 

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A platonic love story about an irascible elderly woman being moved into a care home and her put upon son in law. Getting on is hard. Getting on with others is even harder.

 

Joe Barnes is a comedy writer and performer. He is one half of Edinburgh Comedy Award (formerly Perrier) and Chortle award nominated sketch act Goodbear. He has written for The Now Show (BBC Radio 4), Newsjack and Newsjack Unplugged (BBC Radio 4Extra) as well as sketches for BBC3 and Channel 4.

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As an actor, he plays Joe in Rose Matafeo’s Starstruck for BBC and HBO Max.

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Joe’s script won the inaugural Shortcom Comedy Script Competition

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A pitch black comedy drama skewering the chaos and carnage that is life on today’s NHS frontline.  

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Rohin has been an NHS doctor for 15 years. As a student, Rohin featured in film festivals and won Mirror and Guardian Media Awards. Now, he performs stand-up comedy and has over 450,000 followers on social media, where he combines his love of science with dad jokes. You can watch some of his videos here: www.youtube.com/c/medlifecrisis 

Rahul is one of those workshy, three-hour-lunch-break-taking, millionaire GPs that you may have read about in the tabloids. At medical school Rahul was editor-in-chief and wrote for the newspaper (it won something shiny), wrote and performed comedy medical songs and made short films. This came to an abrupt halt on graduation! He’s now returned to writing in response to the increased spotlight placed upon the NHS.  

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The uncool manager of a hipster workspace desperately tries to prove she belongs, all while dealing with useless colleagues, cocky start-up creators and a profit-driven parent company.

Joe is a comedy writer who divides his time between Edinburgh and Prague.

Since completing a Scriptwriting degree at Bournemouth University, he's worked primarily as a travel journalist for the likes of Lonely Planet, National Geographic and The Guardian. But he has recently gravitated back to his first love of comedy writing, contributing sketches to The Skewer on BBC Radio 4, writing and directing award-winning short films, and co-founding the BBC New Comedy Award-nominated sketch group Birds. He also co-created the YouTube series The Green & Pleasant Guide.

Joe’s script Coworking won the 2022 Short Com TV Sitcom Writing Competition.

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A dysfunctional and destructive children's party entertainer is faced with living up to the ultimate responsibility as an adult.

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Caroline is a comedian, actor, radio presenter and writer. Her credits include BBC Radio 4’s News Quiz, Performance Anxiety on Comedy Central, Before the Morning After on NBC. As a stand-up, she has six solo Edinburgh Fringe shows under her belt on subjects as diverse as breakfast, dog-grooming and post-natal depression. She’s a circuit favourite, appearing at festivals, theatres and clubs all around the country. 

Throughout lockdown and beyond Caroline hosted a weekly show on Riverside Radio, showcasing music by female vocalists. She is the co-host of the Self-Renovators podcast in which she and Taylor Glenn (Drunk Women Solving Crime) road-test self-help tips off of the internet.

Her comedy drama Joy was also a finalist in Raindance script contest 2022 and winner of BCG Spring Sitcom Selection.

Lone wolf police interceptor Julie Haddaway is assigned a fresh-faced recruit as a ride partner and she is far from happy about it.

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Paul is a comedy writer who has written for Newsjack, DMs Are Open, Breaking The News and is always working on original comedy scripts. A two-time runner up in the Fresh Voices Screenplay Competition, he has placed highly in various other competitions and initiatives including BBC Writersroom, BAFTA Rocliffe Comedy Crowd and Final Draft Big Break. Paul came 2nd in the 2023 Short Com TV Sitcom Writing Competition.

After an unfortunate mistake causes a successful rap star to fall victim to Cancel Culture, he must stop an anonymous blackmailer from delivering the final nail to the coffin of his career. Meanwhile, as he lays low in his small seaside hometown, he finds himself having to adjust to life as an average person. But with arrested development & a horribly tattooed face that’s hated across the nation, it is easier said than done.

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Ollie Adewusi is a screenwriter of Nigerian heritage. Having grown up in the United Kingdom and Nigeria, his writing is often influenced by his experiences from both countries and cultures. After graduating from the National Film and Television School, Ollie found work in Scripted TV Development and on programmes such as Coronation Street, and divides his time between this and writing his own material.

'If we're both still single when we're fifty, we'll marry each other.' Will old school friends Alice and Ben really go through with the ultimate back up plan?

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Richard Lazarus is a playwright and dramatist whose passion is comedy. His stage plays Hoofprints In The Sand and Shopping Lists and Suicide Notes have been produced on the stage in Edinburgh and London. He is a former core writer for EastEnders, and has written over 50 episodes of the BBC flagship drama. His first Sit Com script, Being Jane Brown, co-written with Manjnder Virk, was picked up by Henry Normal at Baby Cow and commissioned to script by the BBC. 

A fish-out-of-water animated sitcom about a mermaid who comes to LA in the hope of making the world a better place.

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Ian Sweeney & Alex Scott (AKA Alex & Ian) write things together. When they’re not working on comedy scripts, Ian writes and directs commercials and music videos in New Zealand. While Alex helps charities in a marketing type way in Brighton.

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Although they live 19,256 km apart, they have met twice and got on surprisingly well. 

In this pitch black Irish comedy series Posh Pandora is forced to enlist her “common” cleaner and “foreign” neighbour for a well-intentioned murderous plot to bump her comatose husband up the heart transplant list.

Seán Keeley has been working as a film and television editor for over 15 years, cutting a wide range of projects from BBC’s Red Rock to the upcoming psychological horror Mandrake. He sees himself very much as a storyteller and in 2015 whilst working on Red Rock he enrolled in the MA in screenwriting course in IADT where he received a first class honour for my script “The Brink”. Since then he has continued to write and have placed well in competitions for two of his comedy pilots.

The Dingles are the perfect influential family with a dedicated online following. Until the father's mask slips and the struggle begins to maintain their public perfect persona.​

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Henry Perryment is an actor, writer, comedian. Henry is part of critically acclaimed sketch comedy double act, Goodbear. His 2019 show, Dougal, was nominated for the prestigious Dave comedy award at Edinburgh Fringe festival. He has performed sell out shows across the country, with each of Goodbear’s Edinburgh shows transferring to London’s Soho Theatre. Henry has appeared in content for Netflix, Sky, BBC3, Channel 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra.

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A serial killer's modus operandi is thrown up in the air after agreeing to allow his irritable work colleague join him on his killing sprees.​

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Karl Marx: The Haçienda Years is an alternative-history sitcom, imagining if socialist heroes Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels arrived in Manchester as hard-partying young men during the 1990s, rather than the 1850s. Think Horrible Histories meets 24-Hour Party People. Well-meaning but clueless, the lads are more focused on pills, thrills and bellyaches than the plight of the working poor. In Manchester’s resurgent decade, helped by local heroes from across history (Pankhursts, Gallaghers, Tony Wilson et al), they build a world-changing vision.

Shaun Lowthian is a Mancunian improviser, actor and writer. As co-writer of comedy short-film and miniseries Spokke received nominations for a Writers' Guild Award (2019) and RTS West Award (2020). Shaun has performed and taught improv with DNAYS, The Homunculus and Free Association across 10 countries since 2007. In 2023, he created and directed original shows Winner and Three, and is co-creator and founding cast member of St Doctor’s Hospital and The Badge. He plays multiple characters in podcasts Fact Up, Mind Canyon, Jetskii and I Will Write Your Book.

A struggling musician with a penchant for cynicism gets thrust into the media spotlight when his belly button turns into a mouth with the voice of an angel and the personality of a talk show host. This could be his big break, but is he ready for it?

Ian is a writer and director who is currently sheltering from COVID, Brexit and the British weather in New Zealand. He writes and directs commercials and music videos. He’s won a bunch of awards for some of them. His sitcom Saviour is based on a music video he directed for New Zealand rapper Randa. You can watch it here
 

Amateurs is a glimpse into the high stakes world of teenage society, as best friends Georgia and Emma struggle to navigate the pitfalls and triumphs of adolescence together.

Chloe Page is an aspiring sitcom writer from somewhere up North, where writing and planting potatoes are all there is to do. Mostly preferring the former, Chloe has created several sitcom scripts over the years, with a few being long or shortlisted in competitions.

She has also contributed sketches to the likes of Brighton’s Treason Show. She has been known to dabble in long and short form fiction, having completed a Creative Writing degree back when she was a whippersnapper, since when she has written many short stories and half a novel.

Four dysfunctional and stunted, adopted siblings in their 30's, inherit their late father's children's program, along with the responsibility of raising the country's youth, and their newly discovered, alleged 12 year old  sister.

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Route 20 is a writing team made up of Roger Jenisch, Dylan Thomson, Kirstie McHugh, and Adam Zeitoun. formed back in 2008, when the four met in high school and they've been writing together ever since. The group is based out of both Los Angeles and Chicago and writes. The name Route 20 derives from the road that all four writers lived off of, and the route that still connects their cities to this day. In addition to writing, has been producing, acting, directing, performing comedy and music in both Los Angeles and Chicago. 

An astronaut's dream of tranquility of living a solitary life on Mars is shattered after the arrival of several unwanted guests.

 

Liam is a Psychology teacher, screenwriter, and character comedian based in the North-West of England. He was a finalist in the BlueCat Screenplay competition 2020 and the Script2Comic Contest 2022, and a semi-finalist in the Shore Scripts TV Pilot Contest 2021 and ScreenCraft’s Pilot Competition 2021. He particularly enjoys writing comedy and science-fiction. Many of his pilots and features are dystopian imaginings of the future with an undercurrent of dark humour throughout. He regularly explores philosophical concepts in his writing such as determinism, personal identity and morality.

A workplace comedy with a supernatural twist. Graham Reaper is a reluctant soul collector​ plagued by his horrifying reputation and a never-ending pile of admin work. Not quite the skeletal embodiment of Death and Damnation, Graham's misunderstood—just your average guy trying to survive his dead-end job.

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Eden McIntyre is a Scottish writer, editor and script consultant with an MA in TV Fiction Writing from Glasgow Caledonian University. Eden writes and edits content for TV, stage, radio and online, and was appointed as a BBC Writers Room Scottish Voice in early 2020. Alongside, Eden judges creative writing and screenwriting for the international competition NYC Midnight, plus consults and edits scripts and stories on a freelance basis.

You can usually find Eden creating, reading, trying to pay bills, and writing in the third person.

Bat Sh*t Debbie is a half-hour scripted episodic comedy series about the painfully hilarious moments experienced by Debbie Segel, a lovable modern day Lucille Ball, with severe ADHD making the challenges of motherhood, marriage and daily life unusually messy for everyone around her. 

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Billy is a comedy writer, stand-up comedian and graphic designer with a degree in Public Health. Billy’s ADHD made high school hard to get through–for her parents–and now uses it as a superpower to make people laugh.

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Her TV pilot BAT SH*T DEBBIE has placed in numerous script competitions but her greatest accomplishment yet – 2002 Canadian Bingo champion. 

Billy is a Canadian expat now living in Portland, OR with her neurotic American husband and two extroverted kids. If it weren’t for Trader Joe’s, she’d move the family back to Canada.