Last Tango in Halifax
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t is doubtful whether Sally Wainwright’s writing has ever been described as inauthentic – her TV drama is populated with real people, speaking natural, colloquial English. “My imagination doesn’t seem to click in if what I’m writing doesn’t feel real, or if it’s phoney, or if something feels a bit cheesy or sentimental,” she told Endemol Shine UK COO Lucinda Hicks, who hosted an RTS webinar with the writer in May. Discussing her work, Wainwright said: “I hope it’s down to earth and feels authentic.” But in her hands – unlike gloomier dramatists – authentic should not be read as dour. “I hope everything I do is funny, even when it’s very dark, like Happy Valley. It’s always important for me to entertain people,” she said. Happy Valley, which starred Sarah Lancashire as a Yorkshire police sergeant, gave Wainwright some of the best reviews of an award-laden career that began, on radio, with The Archers in the late 1980s and then, on television, with Coronation Street, in 1994.
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BBC
The people’s writer Sally Wainwright, busy on season 2 of Gentleman Jack, tells the RTS why her work has to be grounded in reality “I can’t remember not writing,” said Wainwright who, as a child, turned out stories and cartoon strips with her sister. In her early teens, Thames TV’s musical drama Rock Follies of ’77 “had a really profound effect on me”, she recalled. “I remember being so excited about the show and tangibly thinking that’s what I’m going to do – I’m going to make television programmes.” Wainwright “learned a heck of a lot” as a writer from The Archers and Corrie. “Particularly on Coronation Street, some of those writers had been there 20, 30 years and they were very, very skilled storytellers. “I didn’t speak. I was shy – I could
write – but for the first few years I didn’t contribute, which is not good for your self-esteem. But I did soak it all up.” She added: “[Soaps] are a fantastic place to start. It always makes me laugh when young people want to work in Hollywood and they believe writing soaps is a pile of junk. And you just think, ‘[They] don’t know anything’.” Wainwright left Corrie when her first original series, ITV lottery comedy- drama At Home with the Braithwaites, starring Amanda Redman, took off. “It was a fantastic experience, but it kind of spoiled me,” she admitted. Her follow-up, BBC One’s Sparkhouse, a modern retelling of Wuthering Heights, brought Wainwright back to earth: “I was really pleased with it, but nobody watched it and it got not very good reviews. I was really shocked. “We’ve all written turkeys, but it is hard because you put just as much effort into things that people don’t get. People say, don’t take it personally, but writing is personal – you can’t not take it personally.” Until she penned Scott & Bailey,
