The Brit List: Tianna Johnson’s ‘Obeah’ Tops U.K. Screenplay Showcase

Naman Ramachandran
·7 min read

“Obeah” by Tianna Johnson has topped The Brit List, an annual showcase of unproduced screenplays out of the U.K.

The list was compiled from recommendations by British production companies, talent agencies, sales companies, financiers, distributors and broadcasters.

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Johnson, represented by Curtis Brown, received 15 recommendations for urban fantasy drama TV show “Obeah.” “Maps,” a sci-fi TV show by as yet unrepresented writer Jessi Drewett received 13 recommendations. TV comedy drama “Animals,” by Laurence Coriat, who is represented by the Independent Talent Group, has Warp Films and Haut et Court attached as producers and received 12 recommendations.

Scripts need a minimum of seven recommendations for inclusion. Of some 300 scripts put forward, 18 have made it onto this year’s list. Nearly a third of the scripts are feature scripts and 65% are written by female writers, the highest proportion so far.

With the success of last year’s list being a mix of both TV and feature projects, going forward The Brit List will continue to present screenwriters working in each form in a single list.

The Brit List was established in 2007 to help discover outstanding writing talent from the U.K. and is compiled by Alexandra Arlango.

Since inception, more than 70 of the screenplays to have appeared on The Brit List have been produced, including “The Favourite,” which appeared on the list in 2009, and “Lion,” (pictured) on the list in 2014.

The initiative is sponsored by Kinetic Content, Final Draft, the Film Distributors’ Association and ScreenSkills. There will be a program of events to help the selected writers establish their careers and navigate the film and television industries, both in the U.K. and globally and a summer event will be held for participating companies to meet this year’s cohort.

2021 BRIT LIST

FIFTEEN RECOMMENDATIONS

“Obeah” by Tianna Johnson (Curtis Brown)
Producers: Available
Form: TV Genre: Urban Fantasy Drama
Summary: When the bodies of young people start showing up across the country, an angsty woman finds herself on the hunt for a serial killer acting out a very ancient revenge. Set in present-day North-West London, Obeah is inspired by the indigenous spiritual practices from the Caribbean and its clash with the descendants of practitioners.

THIRTEEN RECOMMENDATIONS

“Maps” by Jessi Drewett (Unrepresented)
Producers: Available
Form: TV Genre: Sci-fi
Summary: A portrait of love, loneliness and loss, MAPS is a soulful sci-fi about a woman who secretly assumes a false identity working in the interstellar mines of the Kuiper Belt to save her family from ruinous debt.

TWELVE RECOMMENDATIONS

“Animals” by Laurence Coriat (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Warp Films and Haut et Court
Form: TV Genre: Comedy Drama
Summary: How far will Liv – wife, mother, daughter and overlooked scientist – be willing to go in order for her ground-breaking research into chimpanzees behaviour to be heard? Seeking her independence she challenges the status quo of 1970’s British, male-dominated academia, stealing her (Alpha-male-of-primate-research) husband’s spotlight, and throwing her family, reputation and self into an upheaval that quickly spirals out of her control.

“The Last Man in Europe” by James Roblin (Unrepresented)
Producers: The Lighthouse Film and TV
Form: Feature Genre: Drama
Summary: On the isle of Jura, George Orwell fights a losing battle with time & tuberculosis as he wrestles with the dark dystopian visions of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

ELEVEN RECOMMENDATIONS

“Aphra” by Jessica Lambert (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Origin Pictures
Form: TV Genre: Drama
Summary: The outrageous true story of Britain’s first female playwright – a bisexual libertine who lived an incredible double life as a 17th century spy. A Restoration thriller told with the same iconoclastic mischief with which Aphra Behn lived her life.

“Fool’s Gold” by Ryden & Rowe (Curtis Brown & Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Company Pictures
Form: TV Genre: Darkly Comic Crime Drama
Summary: Manchester Firearms Officer Sonny Gilbride trades the hazardous life of counter-terrorism for the rural tranquillity of the West Country, only to find himself embroiled in a personal odyssey of love, murder and international crime in the illegal eel trade.

TEN RECOMMENDATIONS

“Malfeasance” by Jon Baker (The Agency)
Producers: Artis Pictures, in development with the BBC
Form: TV Genre: Thriller
Summary: A dark, funny, completely untrue, Northern Irish, crime story…

“Let’s Go Get Your F***ing Dog Back” by Poppy Damon (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Joi Productions
Form: Feature Genre: Gangster Thriller
Summary: A mobster’s daughter is trying to arrange a secret abortion, a pair of women hide a stolen dog, and a grandmother sells ketamine for her granddaughter’s college fund. All these stories connect in a tale of theft, murder and betrayal in New York City.

“White Stork” by Chris Dunlop (Independent Talent Group)
Producers: Eleven Film
Form: TV Genre: Thriller
Summary: WHITE STORK is a tightly choreographed political thriller about finding and burying truth in this post-truth world.

EIGHT RECOMMENDATIONS

“Misguided” by Charlotte Alexander (Unrepresented)
Producers: Available
Form: TV Genre: Drama Comedy
Summary: A darkly comic, high-stakes, domestic family drama. When a young and out of work actress is forced to join her parent’s Robin Hood-esque, white-collar crime consultancy business, the last thing she expects is for it to be the key to her wildest dreams, as well as liberation from toxic co-dependency with her mother. But at what cost does freedom and success come?

“Misadventure” by Leanne Davis (The Haworth Agency)
Producers: Heyday TV
Form: TV Genre: Drama with Comedy
Summary: Jess has always been a ‘good’ girl. But when she discovers a secret – that her 55-year-old mother has early onset Alzheimer’s – it suddenly dawns on her that if ‘being good’ doesn’t stop the bad things happening in life, then ‘being good’ can fuck right off.

SEVEN RECOMMENDATIONS

“A True Crime Story” by Joseph Baker & Lydia Rynne (Independent Talent & Curtis Brown)
Producers: Various Artists Ltd
Form: TV Genre: Comedy Drama
Summary: A lonely true crime junkie teams up with her former high school bully to fake a disappearance that will catapult them both to stardom. But their audacious plan is thrown into chaos by a much grislier real-life crime.

“Learning To Breathe Under Water” by Richard Brabin (Unrepresented)
Producers: Shudder Films
Form: Feature Genre: Family Drama
Summary: Leo, 8, lives alone with his grieving father, Peter, and his only friend is a thirty-foot metal shark. Anya, a Polish au pair, enters this broken family unit and breathes new life and new hope into both Peter and Leo.

“Write Offs” by Lela London (Casarotto)
Producers: Bad Wolf
Form: TV Genre: Drama Comedy
Summary: A young American journalist is thrust into personal and professional chaos after arriving in London to start her dream job at the country’s most successful newspaper.

“Birdsong” by Sheila Nortley (Knight Hall)
Producers: BBC Film and Parkville Pictures
Form: Feature Genre: Drama
Summary: When British-born Danielle returns to Ghana to visit her dying grandfather, she unearths a past love and the tumultuous family secret that alienated her from her ancestral home, embarking on a journey coloured by memory and magic on Africa’s west coast. Based on a True Story.

“Easy Out” by Melissa Osborne (Casarotto)
Producers: Available
Form: Feature Genre: Coming of age, comedy drama
Summary: Benny, a terminally ill teen, asks his life-long friend Clover to help him die, but as Clover wrestles with the heart-breaking decision, life throws her a curveball that sets her previously ordered world spiralling out of control.

“Ursula” by Kat Rose-Martin (United Agents)
Producers: RED Production Company
Form: TV Genre: Grounded fantasy comedy-drama
Summary: Humorous grounded genre. A Yorkshire country bumpkin falls pregnant and, by the power of Oestrogen, is able to predict the future. Her skint sister shoves her into the spotlight to cash in.

“Confinement” by Lydia Yeoman (Casarotto)
Producers: Available
Form: TV Genre: Psychological Thriller
Summary: After a strange encounter with a patient goes horribly wrong, an arrogant Doctor is imprisoned for manslaughter. There she discovers she is pregnant and must experience pregnancy and childbirth in an environment in which she has no privacy or control.

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