viv young Young
I am a writer, journalist and, after completing a Masters in screenwriting - and a lot of hard work - a screenwriter! My feature length script A DARK REFLECTION was produced and I currently have several TV pilot scripts, including COME OUT TO PLAY and BLOOD RELATIONS, with my lovely agent. Last year my short play RELATIVE VALUES was produced on stage at the Chiswick Playhouse. A short film commission FINDING WILSON is now in post. After the publication of a non-fiction work in a 'previous lifetime' I have digitally published HUNGRY FOR LIFE, a finalist in the Page Turner Book Awards. It is the first in a series of books following an Irish family from Victorian times to the present. Currently I am working on the second book in the Irish, and with an LA-based producer on a high concept TV drama series called JACKALs . I have a passion for history, and for telling stories from unique or underrepresented perspectives - especially the older woman, so often overlooked and undervalued by society. Whether exploring these character's lives, loves and flaws in long-form television drama, or the magical big screen, my goal is to fascinate and engage viewers with a fresh voice and a light touch.
See PDF for first 10 pages
The pilot in brief:
For fifteen years mild-mannered, legal clerk Jackie, late fifties, has been tormented by injuries - both physical and mental - sustained when the family car plunged into a river, killing her husband and sweeping her five-year-old son out to sea.
When Jackie succumbs to an unorthodox medicine given to her by a mysterious oriental apothecary, it miraculously assuages her physical pain. But the deep sleep it induces is punctuated by nightmares of retribution and rough justice. In the light of day they become all too real and a bloody trail of purging the guilty seems to lead to her door. She begins to catch unexpected glimpses of a willowy, younger woman – reflected in a car window, in the eyes of a friend. Horrified at who she is becoming, she destroys the jar of medication. But then fragmented memories of the car crash begin to hit her – and the recollection of her son being lifted alive from the wreckage, instead of swept out to sea by the river.
Torn between finding her son and quelling her vigilante alter-ego, she phones her life-long friend Detective Inspector Arthur Shaw. When the operator asks for her name, she replies…
“Jacqueline…. Jacqueline Hyde”. (Jekyll & Hyde.)
With her back to a mirror, we see the willowy, younger woman’s reflection looking out and over her shoulder. The devilish smile promises so much more as we – and Jackie – begin to realise that more than fate has shaped her life.
