EXCLUSIVE: Matilda the Musical writer Dennis Kelly is penning a BBC adaptation of prisons philosopher Andy West’s heartwrenching memoir.
Kelly is working with Black Doves producer Sister on the TV series, which was hinted at by Sister boss Jane Featherstone several weeks back when she was discussing the struggle to fund TV shows in front of a parliamentary inquiry.
Published two years ago, West’s The Life Inside: A Memoir Of Prison, Family and Learning to be Free is an intense and sobering portrait of the life of a man whose father, uncle and brother have all spent time behind bars. West built a different life for himself and instead teaches philosophy in prisons. His book, which was critically acclaimed, sees him discuss pressing questions of truth, identity and hope with his students, as he searches for his own form of freedom.
Kelly won a BAFTA three years ago for James McAvoy-starring Covid drama Together and was nominated a year on for Matilda the Musical. He wrote the stage play and movie script for the latter. He is perhaps best known in the UK for creating Utopia, the hit Channel 4 series that won an International Emmy.
Featherstone referenced the then-under-wraps Kelly project during a bombshell culture committee hearing a few weeks back, when she revealed that the BBC has a number of scripted shows on its slate that it “can’t fund,” a fact the BBC and big-name writers like Peter Kosminsky have since acknowledged.
Featherstone said several weeks back: “The BBC give us the greenlight and now we go, ‘How are we going to fund it?’, because a greenlight is 30% of the budget, which is traditionally now what a [Public Service Broadcaster] can only afford to put in. Each case is different but it leaves us with gap of say 60% of the budget. We are now [in the UK] getting closer to that indie film model at the lower cost end.”
The news comes a few days before the London Book Fair, the annual publishing confab at which TV and film execs will descend on the Hammersmith Olympia seeking out the next big adaptation.
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