Sally Wainwright Biography

Sally Wainwright (born 1963) is a British television writer and playwright. She won the 2009 Writer of the Year Award given by the RTS in 2009 for Unforgiven. She is known for work on the BBC dramas Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax. Both have won BAFTA's award for best series, and Wainwright was voted best writer.

Early life

Wainwright was born in Huddersfield in 1963 to mother Dorothy Wainwright. Wainwright was brought up in Sowerby Bridge where she attended Triangle C of E Primary School and Sowerby Bridge Grammar School. She attended York University, reading English and Related Literature.

Career

After university she took a play to the Edinburgh Festival and found an agent for her writing in the process. Meanwhile, she worked as a bus driver. She left the driving job after she started writing for the Radio 4 series The Archers. One of her contributions was to write an atypical story for the long running radio soap in which the village shop was robbed. After that she wrote for Coronation Street, developing her writing skills, from 1994 to 1999. She has since said that working on continuing drama was a great education in discipline and a lesson that great stories are hard work. She was mentored by Kay Mellor who encouraged her to stop writing for soaps and to concentrate instead on original work. She created the TV series At Home with the Braithwaites about a woman who had secretly won the lottery. The programme was nominated for many awards. She won the 2009 Writer of the Year Award given by the RTS in 2009 for Unforgiven which took several awards including best TV series.

Wainwright says that her strong female flawed characters are almost real to her and arrive fully formed in her imagination. She likes to control the television that is created and has done some directing and production of her own work partly to ensure the scenery and dialogue reflects Yorkshire. In 2011 she wrote Scott and Bailey, a series about two female police officers. The idea for the series came from the leading actresses and former Detective Inspector Diane Taylor, who assisted with bringing the series to the air.

Wainwright based the plot of her series Last Tango in Halifax on the story of her mother who was widowed in 2001. Her mother, Dorothy, moved to Oxfordshire to live with her daughter and rediscovered a lost love, Alec Walker, via Friends Reunited. With her mother's permission, Wainwright developed the story of how she remarried so rapidly, publishing series extracts to her mother before broadcast.

When she told the story to Nicola Shindler, she suggested she turn her mother's experience into a television series. Shindler became the series' executive producer. Both Last Tango in Halifax and her crime series Scott and Bailey were turned down by both the BBC and ITV before both were accepted respectively. The former was voted by BAFTA to be best series in 2012 and Wainwright was given the award for best writer.

Happy Valley, which was shot in Yorkshire's picturesque upper Upper Calder Valley and Hebden Bridge, stars Sarah Lancashire, whom Wainwright had in mind as she wrote the role. Wainwright made her directorial debut with episode 4 of the first series.

In May 2015, it was announced that Wainwright would be writing and directing a two-hour drama special for BBC One entitled To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters. It subject is the Bront family, particularly the relationship the three sisters, Anne, Emily and Charlotte, had with their brother, Branwell. On the drama, Wainwright said that "I am thrilled beyond measure that I've been asked by the BBC to bring to life these three fascinating, talented, ingenious Yorkshire women."

Personal life

Wainwright lives in Oxfordshire. She is married with two children and owns two Maine Coon cats.

Filmography

Original television productions

Her original television productions include:

• Happy Valley (2014 - 2016)
• Last Tango in Halifax (2012 - 2017)
• Scott & Bailey (2011 - 2016)
• Unforgiven (2009)
• Bonkers (2007)
• Dead Clever (2007)
• The Amazing Mrs Pritchard (October 2006)
• ShakespeaRe-Told: The Taming of the Shrew (2005)
• Jane Hall (2005) (for which she drew on her own experiences as a bus driver in the 1980s
• The Canterbury Tales 'The Wife of Bath' (2003)
• Sparkhouse (2002)
• At Home with the Braithwaites (2000)

Soap operas

She has also written for the following soap operas:

• Children's Ward
• Coronation Street
• Emmerdale
• The Archers