Short Version: I read at least one script every day and have done since late 2017. Once a year I go back through and pick out my favourites to enthuse at you about.<\/p>\n
But.<\/p>\n
They are always scripts I\u2019ve read in this year, yet that almost never means they were actually made or written in the preceding 12 months. I read them as I find them, or as they\u2019re sent to me, and I read them usually because I just fancy it. Sometimes I\u2019m involved in awards reading, though not this year.<\/p>\n
All of which means a) my short version is turning out pretty long and 2) there is absolutely not one single statistical or other calculable benefit you can conceivably get from reading my list.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What you may get \u2014 what I hope you\u2019ll get \u2014 is a list of ten scripts that are just glorious reads. I\u2019d say I envy you if you haven\u2019t read these yet, but that brings me to the Slightly Longer Version.<\/p>\n
Slightly Longer Version: for some reason this year, I have been re-reading an enormous number of old favourites. I do this all the time, I have no qualms about re-reading something great, but this did somehow overwhelm 2025. And I know why. I know whose fault it is.<\/p>\n
Well, mine, clearly, but also very specifically Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I tell you, do not ever recommend one script from this show and then foolishly re-read it. Because twice \u2014 once now in 2025 but also back in 2023 \u2014 I have proven incapable of reading only one of the scripts. I keep reading the entire seven years of the show. As I write this, that\u2019s yet again what I\u2019m reading and today\u2019s script, my 473rd of the year, is my 88th DS9 of 2025.<\/p>\n
It is such a good series on the page, maybe even more so than it is on the screen. But since DS9 now represents some 18.6% of all the scripts I\u2019ve read this year, I\u2019m allowing myself only one in my top ten.<\/p>\n
Although I would fully understand by here you\u2019d forgotten that this was about a top ten. Let me get on with it.<\/p>\n
10. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In the Pale Moonlight<\/a><\/p>\n One thing to note about this and several other scripts that you can read on the TV Writing website. There\u2019s something up with the site that means you may get a \u201cyou have been blocked\u201d message if you try to follow a link directly a particular script. If that happens, go to the front page of tvwriting.co.uk<\/a> and do a search.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the Pale Moonlight\u201d (story by Peter Allan Fields, teleplay by Michael Taylor), takes that idea you have of Star Trek really being about American boy scouts in space and smashes it up. Good people do bad things. This is actually a recurring thing in Deep Space Nine, the idea that the paradise all the other Star Trek shows seem to live in comes at a price.<\/p>\n I now do a weekly script club on YouTube \u2013 it\u2019s a book club, but it\u2019s about scripts \u2014 and I recommended this on an edition of that a few weeks ago<\/a>. Hence my subsequent reading of 80 more, and the certainty that I will now read up to the end of the 176th and final script.\u00a0<\/p>\n 9. Edge of Darkness: Compassionate Leave<\/a><\/p>\n The link in the title takes you to a copy of the published scripts on the Internet Archive, which is where I read the whole series because I cannot find my copy. But do search out the paperback on Amazon UK<\/a> or Amazon US<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back in the 1980s, I took a day off revising for my exams in order to watch all six episodes of this in a cinema \u2014 with writer Troy Kennedy Martin there to talk about it.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a writer, this is a fascinating tale because exactly the same story was told in this BBC television series and then a 2010 film. Both were directed by the same man, too. But where the film is a simple, even simplistic thriller, the series throbs with an undertow about grief, world politics, nuclear terror \u2014 and the Knights Templar.<\/p>\n Let me tell you, if you didn\u2019t already know, that the film version starred Mel Gibson. Now, take a guess whether it\u2019s the TV or the movie that was originally intended to see its star character end up by becoming a tree.<\/p>\n 8. Sense and Sensibility (Emma Thompson)<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve admired Emma Thompson since she starred in \u201cFortunes of War\u201d and, practically simultaneously, \u201cTutti Frutti\u201d and it was impossible to accept that this was the same woman. Then she went and wrote this, which is a perfect dramatisation of Jane Austen\u2019s novel.<\/p>\n This is another case where you could click the link in the title to read the script online, but there\u2019s a published version that \u2014 if you can find the one with Emma Thompson\u2019s diaries in it \u2014 is better. Amazon UK. <\/a>Amazon US<\/a><\/p>\n 7. The Simpsons: So It\u2019s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show<\/a><\/p>\n There are now something like 40 scripts from The Simpsons available online, and the majority appeared this year. I\u2019ve read them all, and practically every one of them is superb, but I particularly enjoyed this by Jon Vitti.<\/p>\n Just to pick one joke, Lisa Simpson begins telling a story and we cut to the events she\u2019s describing. Then we come out of that story, but it\u2019s Homer telling it. Simply mucking about with your expectations of television storytelling, it\u2019s a treat.<\/p>\n 6. Before (aka Winston): Pilot<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019ve really got to watch this Apple TV series because I keep hearing criticisms of it, yet this pilot script by Sarah Thorp is an excellent read. Billy Crystal stars in a serious role as a child psychiatrist who is recently widowed and now faces a mysterious new patient.<\/p>\n 5. Rev: Series 1, episode 6<\/a><\/p>\n Really any episode of this series by James Wood is good. It\u2019s a comedy about a vicar, but instead of the 1970s-style of whoops-where\u2019s-my-trousers kind of sitcom, in its small way, this is actually dramatic. Very funny, and considering that I am entirely without faith, I found it surprisingly moving.<\/p>\n 4. Before Sunset<\/a><\/p>\n This by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke (based on characters by Linklater and Kim Krizan) may always have been among my top one films. It\u2019s one of those where you start watching or you start reading, you cannot stop.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also the second in a trilogy, following on from Before Sunrise, and I defy you to find a better \u201cpreviously on\u2026\u201d recap of a preceding film.<\/p>\n Follow. The three movies are about a couple, Celine (Delpy) and Jesse (Hawke), and the second and third are each set \u2014 and made \u2014 nine years apart. As Before Sunset opens, Jesse has written a book about the events we saw in Before Sunrise and it\u2019s perfect. He\u2019s being interviewed on a book tour, so he\u2019s naturally recounting certain key points, and we are not remotely surprised that as he talks, we see flashbacks to the first film.<\/p>\n Only, as well as being short and deftly written, the sequence lulls you into a rhythm so that you just know when we\u2019ll see the next clip from Before Sunrise. Until there\u2019s a moment when instead of a clip like we expect, there isn\u2019t one. There is a cutaway from Jesse, but it isn\u2019t another clip, isn’t another flashback, it\u2019s a cut to another part of the room he\u2019s in now \u2014 and Celine is there.<\/p>\n I tell you, on the page and on the screen, it\u2019s a little gasp. Fantastic.<\/p>\n 3. Back to Life: series 1, episode 1<\/a><\/p>\n Written by series star Daisy Haggard and the superb\u00a0Laura Solon, this is another one where I\u2019d recommend all of the scripts. There were two series with a total of 12 episodes and my only criticism is that the finale script of series 1 offers alternative endings \u2014 none of which are then how season 2 starts.<\/p>\n It\u2019s about Miri Matteson, who has served 18 years in prison for a crime the show takes its sweet time telling us about. Miri was a teenager when she was jailed and now she\u2019s returned to her home village. She\u2019s there because she has nowhere else to go, but that entire village hates her for what she\u2019s done.<\/p>\n And she did do it. There\u2019s no cop out, no happy misunderstanding. There is much more to it than we or the village first know, but she did it.<\/p>\n All of which sounds very serious, and this is very serious, but it\u2019s actually a comedy and if it had continued past its two series, I\u2019d still be reading it.<\/p>\n 2. Clare in the Community: Name Calling<\/a><\/p>\n There are twelve series of this BBC Radio 4 comedy and it is both brilliant that two of its scripts are online \u2014 but criminal that none of the rest are. I\u2019ve listened to this show a lot over the years, but a few weeks ago I bought the lot through Apple Books. (It\u2019s a radio comedy, not an audiobook, but Apple sells it the same way as if it were just one person reading. I can\u2019t complain, plenty of places list my Doctor Who radio dramas as audiobooks for some reason.)<\/p>\n Every episode is by Harry Venning and David Ramsden, and I suppose its 72 episodes all follow a pretty tight format. Claire Barker (Sally Phillips) is a social worker who is profoundly, shockingly, staggeringly self-centred and self-righteous. It\u2019s amazing how many different ways the show can convey her total self-interest, and as it happens, this particular script includes one of my favourites.<\/p>\n By this stage in the show, Claire and her downtrodden wimp of a husband, Brian (Alex Lowe), have a child. And along with baby Thomas Paine Barker, they have a nanny called Nali (Nina Conti). Cue my favourite line in the series:<\/p>\n NALI: Come along Thomas Paine Barker, bedtime. Say goodnight to Mummy. Mummy is the lady on the left.<\/em><\/p>\n 1. Nobody Wants This. Pilot<\/a><\/p>\n Considering that this romantic comedy script by series creator Erin Foster is my favourite of the year, I am still compelled to tell you that I think the final aired version is better than this draft. Just in small ways, tighter lines, a couple of smarter jokes, but better.<\/p>\n Still, the core is the same: Joanne (Kristen Bell) is an outspoken extrovert podcaster and Noah (Adam Brody) is a rabbi. Since this is a romcom, you know that they get together, and they do \u2014 plus you immediately, just immediately want them to.<\/p>\n That is damn hard to write.\u00a0<\/p>\n I suppose any one element of the show is familiar, maybe even so much so as be borderline clich\u00e9: their families and friends are against this match, for instance. They have good reasons as well as bad, though, and the mix makes the whole thing have an air of realism even as it\u2019s all heightened romance.<\/p>\n Absolutely brilliantly, you can easily make yourself believe this isn\u2019t going to work out \u2014 and toward the very end of the first season, you can genuinely believe it hasn\u2019t. No suspension of disbelief, you believe it and you care.<\/p>\n Maybe even more impressively, though, those family and friends, everyone in the entire story feels real. No one is there to set up punchlines, though they all do, and none of them are there to create obstacles for the drama, though they all do.\u00a0<\/p>\n It takes more than this first script, but not much more, and so very soon into the run you are also rooting for another couple in the run, and feeling for just about everyone.<\/p>\n I wish more of the ten episode first season scripts were available, but there are two. Once you\u2019ve read this, go straight to the other one \u2014 which is episode ten, Bat Mitzvah Crashers<\/a>, by Craig DiGregorio.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And if this isn\u2019t enough to give you a delicious time reading, or if there\u2019s still anything left in that mug of tea you\u2019re holding, do take a look at the previous years of this utterly pointless annual list I relish bringing to you.<\/p>\n 2024<\/a><\/p>\n 2023<\/a><\/p>\n 2022<\/a><\/p>\n 2021<\/a><\/p>\n 2020<\/a><\/p>\n 2019<\/a><\/p>\n And the blog post that started all of this, 2018\u2019s My 10 Lessons from Reading 620 Scripts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Short Version: I read at least one script every day and have done since late 2017. Once a year I … Continue reading