Donna Sharpe

Writer (UK, Germany)

Donna Sharpe is co-writ­ing TROM, a Dan­ish political/​crime thrill­er series (6 x 54 for Viaplay Nor­d­ic, ZDF and the BBC, sched­uled to shoot sum­mer 2020). Pri­or to his, she co-wrote all six epis­odes of Ber­lin-set espi­on­age drama WEST OF LIBERTY (6 x 45 for ZDF and SVT, 2019), as well as the pilot for Sea­son 2 (in devel­op­ment). She was staff writer on all eight epis­odes of inter­na­tion­al crime/​intelligence thrill­er THE TEAM S2 (8 x 60 for ZDF and DR Den­mark, also screened on Net­flix and C4’s Wal­ter Presents, 2018–19). Donna has also writ­ten the sea­son finale for con­tem­por­ary Ger­man sad-com MAPA (8 x 30 for JOYN/RBB, shot autumn 2019, broad­cast date tbc).

She is devel­op­ing THE REVENGE TRI­LOGY of nov­els by best­selling South Afric­an crime writer Mike Nich­ol for the screen with Nad­con Films/​ZDFE. She was awar­ded fund­ing by the HAUS AM SEE Found­a­tion and the FFA/​German Fed­er­al Film Board (2018)  for her fea­ture film dram­edy inspired by a real-life beauty pageant, MISS HOLO­CAUST SUR­VIV­OR, with co-writer Raquel Stern and Lupa Film. She was also awar­ded Medi­en­board Ber­lin-Branden­burg High-End Drama Series Script Devel­op­ment Fund­ing for her own ori­gin­al series (female-led con­tem­por­ary sad-com) in devel­op­ment with UFA Fic­tion THE NEW JER­U­S­ALEM (2019). She was selec­ted for the 2018 Series Mania Writers Cam­pus, show­cas­ing the twenty best emer­ging TV Drama Series writers in Europe, and for the Guard­i­an News­pa­per TV-25 Fast-track show­case at the Inter­na­tion­al Edin­burgh Tele­vi­sion Festival.

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 high-end doc­u­ment­ary films for the BBC and researched over twenty more, spe­cial­ising in his­tory, polit­ics and eco­nom­ics. Her 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 SIR 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 filmed in loc­a­tions as diverse as Equat­ori­al Guinea, Nepal, South Africa, Argen­tina, India, Colom­bia and Iraq, as well as extens­ively in the USA, par­tic­u­larly in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

Donna holds an MA in Cre­at­ive Writ­ing from UEA, and a BA in His­tory from UCL. Ori­gin­ally from the UK, she now lives in Ber­lin, where she is rais­ing her daugh­ter and holds dual British/​German cit­izen­ship. Donna is rep­res­en­ted by the Knight Hall Agency, London.