‘True Detective’, ‘Extraordinary’ & ‘Faithless’ Scribes Talk Challenges In Writing Returnable TV As Inaugural Screenwriting Fest Storyhouse Kicks Off In Dublin

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When it comes to keeping the momentum for storytelling, writers from hit shows such as True Detective: Night Country, Irish hit dramedy Faithless and British superhero comedy Extraordinary all have different approaches for making returnable television series.

Speaking at the inaugural screenwriting festival Storyhouse in Dublin, Irish writer-actor and presenter Baz Ashmawy spoke about his debut writing project Faithless, a six-part series for Virgin Media, which follows an Irish-Egyptian dad who is presented with the life-changing responsibility of raising his three young daughters alone.  “I was more clear on the tone of it because I saw a gap in Irish shows that were either sitcoms pre watershed or crime dramas,” said Ashmawy to a packed theatre at Dublin’s Light House cinema. “I saw there was a hole for dramedy – to make someone laugh one minute and then upset them in the next scene.

I’ve always found that playing with the emotion from laughing one moment to receiving poignancy, it loses its ick when it’s mixed with comedy.” Namsi Khan, a prolific writer who has worked across projects such as the latest series of True Detective, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror and an earlier iteration of the yet-to-be produced season two of The Night Manager, spoke about her experiences in the writers’ room and working with established material at different stages.

With Black Mirror, Khan said Brooker has “such an incredible mind” and “strong voice” and in the writers’ room they were given pages of ideas that were “loosely put together.”  “Charlie is so prolific, and he generates ideas like a machine and he had like ten or fifteen ideas that he wanted to put through the season,” she said. “He wanted to sit with us and interrogate