Writing for Continuing Drama Series

"To make the good popular and the popular good."

Continuing Drama Series is the department that produces EastEnders, Casualty, Holby City and Doctors. We produce a huge volume of drama – nearly 400 hours per year made up of four episodes of EastEnders per week, 52 episodes of Holby per year, 48 of Casualty, and 236 of Doctors.

We have now established a central system for writer recruitment across all four shows.

We will only accept scripts that have been submitted via agents.  We cannot accept unsolicited scripts not sent by an agent – they will be forwarded to the writersroom.  

BBC writersroom

We work closely with the BBC writersroom, who read all unsolicited scripts sent to the BBC and recommend promising writers on to us.

Agents

Agents can submit scripts by email or post to Ceri Meyrick, Development Producer, New Talent.

Ceri reads all scripts submitted to her with a view to recommending them on to one or more of the shows for further development.  She also ensures that all the shows are talking to each other about writers, and that names of interest are passed around.

Agents can also submit scripts to individual shows:

EastEnders: James Peries, Development Editor
Casualty: Bianca Rodway, Script Producer
Holby City:  Simon Harper, Development Editor
Doctors:  via Ceri Meyrick (see above)

Writers Academy

If you have a professional writing credit you can apply to the Writers Academy (with or without an agent).

Ceri writes about the Academy process on the writersroom blog.

Continuing Drama Shadow Schemes
Each of the four BBC Continuing Drama shows has a shadow scheme to help introduce new writers to the programme.

BBC Drama Writers Academy
Find out about the BBC Drama Writers Academy

John Yorke Interview
Interview with John Yorke, the BBC Controller of Drama Production and New Talent