Donna Sharpe

CUR­RENT PROJECTS:

DROPS OF GOD S3  – Apple TV+ – Dynam­ic Tele­vi­sion – Writers Room for S3 of the suc­cess­ful glob­al hit French-Japan­ese drama, inspired by the best­selling Manga book series of the same name.

SWANN – Writer / Cre­at­or / Exec Prod – con­tem­por­ary 6×45 return­ing series. Blue-sky, female-cent­ric crime show: a trio of aven­ging angel moth­er-daugh­ter-grand­daugh­ter detect­ives are determ­ined to restore justice, no mat­ter what. Scripts com­mis­sioned by Black Camel Films UK and Britbox.

THE GOOD SER­VANT – 3x60 female-led peri­od drama about the first Roy­al ser­vant ever to sell her story of life behind palace doors. Adap­ted from the nov­el by Fern Brit­ton. For Love Monday / 53 Degrees Global.

THE EIGHTH LIFE – In Writers Room led by Showrun­ner Sarah Lam­bert for Ink Fact­ory Lon­don / Amuse­ment Park Ber­lin – series adapt­a­tion of Nino Haratischwilli’s best­selling epic nov­el, a multi-gen­er­a­tion­al female-focused fam­ily jour­ney through the ‘Red Cen­tury’ in the USSR and Georgia.

FUKUSHI­MA – Head Writer – 6×45 drama series based on an inspir­ing and hope­ful real life story of human cour­age and cooper­a­tion in the battle to save the world in the wake of nuc­le­ar dis­aster. In devel­op­ment with Superbe Films, Par­is / London.

LOU AND FREDDI – HBO Max / Warner – Co-Cre­at­or/Showrun­ner – 6×30 female-led his­tor­ic­al dram­edy, full sea­son script order com­mis­sioned. For Ready Made Films Berlin.

PRO­DUC­TION CREDITS:

TROM – Viaplay / BBC / ZDF-ARTE / AMC / SBS – co-wrote all 6×40 epis­odes of this Scand­inavi­an political/​crime thrill­er, pro­duced by Rein­vent Stu­di­os Denmark

**** “Scandi noir comes to the Faroe Islands, and it’s beau­ti­ful… Bold, strik­ing and some­thing dif­fer­ent. It’s grip­ping stuff and will pro­voke thought long after the clos­ing cred­its. Trom looks dif­fer­ent because it is dif­fer­ent. It’s well worth a watch.”The Telegraph.

****“Trom is your juicy new Scandi-noir obses­sion,” The Guard­i­an. “…fant­ast­ic­ally atmo­spher­ic, full of sweep­ing shots of snow-capped moun­tains, fore­bod­ing seas and gun-met­al skies. The main story allows the ten­sion and men­ace to build up, lets view­ers famil­i­ar­ise them­selves with the ways of this dis­tinct­ive part of the world, a place where the tough, long-stand­ing cus­toms and tra­di­tions of its people could be at the root of the viol­ence and ten­sions.” – The Times. Also Pick of the Day in The Daily Mail, The Inde­pend­ent, the Fin­an­cial Times.

Win­ner of the Jury Spe­cial Prize in Fic­tion, and Best Act­or award at the Monte-Carlo TV Fest­iv­al 2022; nom­in­ated for Best Drama Series and the Audi­ence Favour­ite Award at the Dan­ish TV Series Awards, Best Crime Series at the Scand­inavi­an Aar­hus Series Awards, and Series of the Year at this year’s Iceland­ic TV awards.

MAPA – S1 6×30 – ARD/RBB/JOYN, up on HBO MAX sum­mer 2023 tbc – wrote sea­son 1 finale epis­ode, and in the writers room through­out for award-win­ning Ger­man sad-com. “Like a sad pop song you want to hear again and again… beau­ti­fully played out grief, a a great story that revolves around sur­viv­al in dif­fi­cult times and shows how you can do this on many dif­fer­ent levels with the help of suc­cess­ful gal­lows humour…surrender to the bewitch­ing, mel­an­chol­ic tone..” – Sued­deutsche Zeitung.

“Often the simple is the dif­fi­cult. The rep­res­ent­a­tion of “real” life in films and tele­vi­sion, for example. MaPa is a big and glor­i­ous excep­tion… It is strik­ing how each sen­tence and each pic­ture are cor­rect, how they feel as if eaves­dropped on by a real­ity that is known. Maybe that’s why MaPa brings tears to the eyes. The series is grand because grief and pain are not dram­at­ur­gized away. You can laugh any­way, because the makers of indi­vidu­al scenes gain a com­ic absurdity.” – Der Spiegel.

“This series – unusu­ally for Ger­man stand­ards – shares tone with “Bet­ter Things”, “Work in Pro­gress” or “Fleabag”. Humour is omni­present, but it’s a humour that mostly feeds on des­pair and bit­ter­ness, some­times absurdity. And because, des­pite the focus on being a fath­er, grief is also very ser­i­ously told, a lump in the throat is the least that is triggered by emo­tions here…. the dia­logue is impress­ively authen­t­ic and unaf­fected, in the funny moments as well as in the sad ones… draws a pic­ture of fath­er­li­ness and mas­culin­ity that you can hardly get enough of,” – Taz​.de.

MAPA was nom­in­ated for the Ger­man Tele­vi­sion Prize Best Drama Series, the Grimme Prize Best Fic­tion Series, and the Best Com­edy Series Ber­lin TV Festival.

WEST OF LIBERTY – ZDF / SVT / ITV Stu­di­os – co-wrote all 6×45 epis­odes of this Ger­man / Swedish espi­on­age drama, pro­duced by Net­work Movie and Ana­gram, TX 2019. Selec­ted for Ber­linale Series 2019.

THE TEAM S2 – ZDF / DR / VRT – later shown on C4 Wal­ter Presents, and Net­flix DACH – Staff Writer for all 8×60 epis­odes of crime/​intelligence thrill­er, pro­duced by Net­work Movie and Nor­d­isk Film Den­mark. TX 2018.

PAST SUC­CESSES:

Donna’s first stage play ADAM AND EVA AT THE GATES OF HEAV­EN AND HELL was work­shopped at the Nation­al Theatre Stu­dio, Lon­don. Pri­or to writ­ing drama, Donna wrote, dir­ec­ted and pro­duced over a dozen doc­u­ment­ary films for the BBC and researched over twenty more, spe­cial­ising in his­tory, polit­ics and eco­nom­ics. Series cred­its include the BAF­TA-nom­in­ated and Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Award-win­ning WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? the EMMY award-win­ning and BAF­TA-nom­in­ated PEOPLE’S CEN­TURY, the BAF­TA award-win­ning TROUBLE AT THE TOP, and crit­ic­ally acclaimed THE MAJOR YEARS. Single full-length docs include MARK THATCH­ER AND THE DOGS OF WAR (an ill-fated coup-for-oil attempt in West Africa), MURDER MOST ROY­AL (the mas­sacre of the Nepalese roy­als by their own Crown Prince) and MORT­GAGED TO THE YANKS (US/UK post-war fin­an­cial double-deal­ing). She has run shoots in loc­a­tions as diverse as Equat­ori­al Guinea, Nepal, South Africa, Argen­tina, India and Iraq, as well as extens­ively in the USA.

Donna holds an MA in Cre­at­ive Writ­ing from UEA, and a BA in His­tory from UCL. She was selec­ted for the 2018 Series Mania Writers Cam­pus show­cas­ing the twenty best emer­ging TV Drama Series writers in Europe, for the Guard­i­an News­pa­per TV-25 Fast-track show­case at the Edin­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Tele­vi­sion Fest­iv­al, for the European Writers Club 2022, and the Cannes Series Writers Club 2023. She also coaches pro­fes­sion­al writers via the industry devel­op­ment pro­grams at Le Groupe Ouest / EWC Den­mark, Seri­al Eyes Ber­lin, Cre­at­ive Europe Series Lab, and the Series Mania Insti­tute France. Ori­gin­ally from the UK, Donna holds dual Brit­ish / Ger­man citizenship.