Out of nearly 300 script titles recommended by the industry, 18 received the minimum number of votes to make it on to the list.
After the success of last year, going forward, The Brit List will be made up of a mix of both TV and Feature scripts. Nearly a third of the scripts on The Brit List 2021 are Feature scripts, and 65% are written by female writers – more than ever before.
With the support of our sponsors, The Brit List will this year extend the programme of workshops and events offered to our writers to help them navigate the film and television industries both here in the UK and globally.
Every effort has been made to supply accurate information. Apologies are made in advance for any inaccuracies or misspellings.
15 recommendations
OBEAH by Tianna Johnson (Curtis Brown)
Producers: Available
Form: TV
Genre: Urban Fantasy Drama
Summary: When the bodies of young people start showing up across the country, an angsty woman finds herself on the hunt for a serial killer acting out a very ancient revenge. Set in present-day North-West London, Obeah is inspired by the indigenous spiritual practices from the Caribbean and its clash with the descendants of practitioners.
13 recommendations
MAPS by Jessi Drewett (Unrepresented)
Producers: Available
Form: TV
Genre: Sci-fi
Summary: A portrait of love, loneliness and loss, MAPS is a soulful sci-fi about a woman who secretly assumes a false identity working in the interstellar mines of the Kuiper Belt to save her family from ruinous debt.
12 recommendations
ANIMALS by Laurence Coriat (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Warp Films & Haut et Court
Form: TV
Genre: Comedy Drama
Summary: How far will Liv – wife, mother, daughter and overlooked scientist – be willing to go in order for her ground-breaking research into chimpanzees behaviour to be heard? Seeking her independence she challenges the status quo of 1970’s British, male-dominated academia, stealing her (Alpha-male-of-primate-research) husband’s spotlight, and throwing her family, reputation and self into an upheaval that quickly spirals out of her control.
THE LAST MAN IN EUROPE by James Roblin (Unrepresented)
Producers: The Lighthouse Film and TV
Form: Feature
Genre: Drama
Summary: On the isle of Jura, George Orwell fights a losing battle with time & tuberculosis as he wrestles with the dark dystopian visions of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
11 recommendations
APHRA by Jessica Lambert (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Origin Pictures
Form: TV
Genre: Drama
Summary: The outrageous true story of Britain’s first female playwright – a bisexual libertine who lived an incredible double life as a 17th century spy. A Restoration thriller told with the same iconoclastic mischief with which Aphra Behn lived her life.
FOOL’S GOLD by Ryden & Rowe (Curtis Brown & Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Company Pictures
Form: TV
Genre: Darkly Comic Crime Drama
Summary: Manchester Firearms Officer Sonny Gilbride trades the hazardous life of counter-terrorism for the rural tranquillity of the West Country, only to find himself embroiled in a personal odyssey of love, murder and international crime in the illegal eel trade.
10 recommendations
MALFEASANCE by Jon Baker (The Agency)
Producers: Artis Pictures, in development with the BBC
Form: TV
Genre: Thriller
Summary: A dark, funny, completely untrue, Northern Irish, crime story…
LET’S GO GET YOUR F***ING DOG BACK by Poppy Damon (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Joi Productions
Form: Feature
Genre: Gangster Thriller
Summary: A mobster’s daughter is trying to arrange a secret abortion, a pair of women hide a stolen dog, and a grandmother sells ketamine for her granddaughter’s college fund. All these stories connect in a tale of theft, murder and betrayal in New York City.
WHITE STORK by Chris Dunlop (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Eleven Film
Form: TV
Genre: Thriller
Summary: WHITE STORK is a tightly choreographed political thriller about finding and burying truth in this post-truth world.
8 recommendations
MISGUIDED by Charlotte Alexander (Unrepresented)
Producers: Available
Form: TV
Genre: Drama Comedy
Summary: A darkly comic, high-stakes, domestic family drama. When a young and out of work actress is forced to join her parent’s Robin Hood-esque, white-collar crime consultancy business, the last thing she expects is for it to be the key to her wildest dreams, as well as liberation from toxic co-dependency with her mother. But at what cost does freedom and success come?
MISADVENTURE by Leanne Davis (The Haworth Agency)
Producers: Heyday TV
Form: TV
Genre: Drama with Comedy
Summary: Jess has always been a ‘good’ girl. But when she discovers a secret – that her 55-year-old mother has early onset Alzheimer’s – it suddenly dawns on her that if ‘being good’ doesn’t stop the bad things happening in life, then ‘being good’ can fuck right off.
7 recommendations
A TRUE CRIME STORY by Joseph Baker & Lydia Rynne
(Independent Talent & Curtis Brown)
Producers: Various Artists Ltd
Form: TV
Genre: Comedy Drama
Summary: A lonely true crime junkie teams up with her former high school bully to fake a disappearance that will catapult them both to stardom. But their audacious plan is thrown into chaos by a much grislier real-life crime.
LEARNING TO BREATHE UNDER WATER by Richard Brabin (Unrepresented)
Producers: Shudder Films
Form: Feature
Genre: Family Drama
Summary: Leo, 8, lives alone with his grieving father, Peter, and his only friend is a thirty-foot metal shark. Anya, a Polish au pair, enters this broken family unit and breathes new life and new hope into both Peter and Leo.
WRITE OFFS by Lela London (Casarotto)
Producers: Bad Wolf
Form: TV
Genre: Drama Comedy
Summary: A young American journalist is thrust into personal and professional chaos after arriving in London to start her dream job at the country’s most successful newspaper.
BIRDSONG by Sheila Nortley (Knight Hall)
Producers: BBC Film and Parkville Pictures
Form: Feature
Genre: Drama
Summary: When British-born Danielle returns to Ghana to visit her dying grandfather, she unearths a past love and the tumultuous family secret that alienated her from her ancestral home, embarking on a journey coloured by memory and magic on Africa’s west coast. Based on a True Story.
EASY OUT by Melissa Osborne (Casarotto)
Producers: Available
Form: Feature
Genre: Coming of age, comedy drama
Summary: Benny, a terminally ill teen, asks his life-long friend Clover to help him die, but as Clover wrestles with the heart-breaking decision, life throws her a curveball that sets her previously ordered world spiralling out of control.
URSULA by Kat Rose-Martin (United Agents)
Producers: RED Production Company
Form: TV
Genre: Grounded fantasy comedy-drama
Summary: Humorous grounded genre. A Yorkshire country bumpkin falls pregnant and, by the power of Oestrogen, is able to predict the future. Her skint sister shoves her into the spotlight to cash in.
CONFINEMENT by Lydia Yeoman (Casarotto)
Producers: Available
Form: TV
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Summary: After a strange encounter with a patient goes horribly wrong, an arrogant Doctor is imprisoned for manslaughter. There she discovers she is pregnant and must experience pregnancy and childbirth in an environment in which she has no privacy or control.
Thank you
This year’s list was announced on Monday 22nd November 2021, online at 16:00 GMT. It was made possible by the following generous sponsors:
- Our executive producer and headline partner: Kinetic Content
- Our Co-Producer: Final Draft
- Our Associate Producers: Film Distributors’ Association and ScreenSkills as part of the BFI Future Film Skills programme using funds from the National Lottery
