大象传媒

Award-winning writer and director Mike Bartlett didn鈥檛 always write: he dabbled in acting at university and afterwards wanted to go into directing theatre but would always 鈥渇lunk the interviews鈥�. Bad times.

He began to write for a few reasons - one of which was boredom - and suddenly found his job interviews started to go well. Good times.

The reason? 鈥淏ecause I didn鈥檛 have to sell myself - I just put the script on the table. It was all about the work, not me.鈥�

His latest show on 大象传媒 One was the massively popular Doctor Foster starring Suranne Jones and Bertie Carvel. The series was the most watched new 大象传媒 TV drama so far this year with nearly 8 million people tuning into the finale.

Writing for TV didn鈥檛 come until quite a few years into his career, but that wasn鈥檛 a conscious decision, he says.

Mike has written for quite a few mediums. He鈥檚 adapted theatre for radio (Not Talking), turned radio plays into stage plays (Contractions) and written for TV (ITV鈥檚 The Town and 大象传媒 One鈥檚 Doctor Foster). Is his approach the same for all those mediums? What are the main differences he鈥檚 found?

In this podcast Mike talks to Henry Swindell of 大象传媒 Writersroom about the importance of planning before writing absolutely anything. He discusses the differences when writing for different mediums, talks about how he came to write for TV, and shares his techniques for getting into the psyche for writing.