Sam South, MA
Sam's experience as a writer started on the stand up comedy circuit.
No, wait - Sam's been writing a diary every single day since 1st January 1970!
A keen motorcyclist, very keen traveller and a professional actor (under another name) originating from Margate,
Sam is a member of Shooting People, the New Producer's Alliance.
PlayerPlaywrights and ScriptTank, two London based professional writer's groups,
also count Sam as an active member and contributor. Then there's Facebook.
In September 2000 Sam was part of the first ever intake of students of the brand new MA in Television Scriptwriting,
which was set up by TV Producer Chris Walker and Agent Julian Friedmann.
PRODUCED THEATRE PLAYS
A GOOD SUB STORY
This play was produced by Act Provocateur International for a 3 week run in November 2007 at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre, Kentish Town, London.
A story about our secret lives, our deep-seated desires and fantasies, and the very different faces we show to our friends and the outside world,
A Good Sub Story is about people who have the courage to live these lives openly with one another.
Following Andrew through 28 years of his life, we follow his journey from being a young two-timed boyfriend, to being confident submissive husband of a
Dominant woman, Dawn. He is now an MP and she is a Teacher. Together they have a son, Edward, who Andrew never really wanted.
The story is about love, following your instincts, the pressures of society when the two worlds come crashing together, and the fragile relationship between a son and his father. As with all my scripts, this is copyrighted and can not be reproduced or produced without permission.
THE GOOD DR AINSCOUGH
A psychological drama play for theatre, our good doctor, Joyce, is a psychic remote viewer for Mark, a policeman who is her ex and whom she never got over. She has made friends with his new wife Anna which Mark finds suspicious as they have nothing in common. Mark comes to Joyce to “find” another missing girl. But this time it's personal.
This play was produced at the Battersea Arts Centre.
PRODUCED FILM SCRIPTS
FACE IT
A Woman takes her make up off before going to bed. She has had a bad day having been fired by her boss in exchange for a younger woman, and insulted about her looks. While her loving husband patiently waits for her, she studies her face in close-up magnified detail.
This 9 minute film was produced and directed by Humaira Shah in 2005. A DVD can be sent for viewing on request as the Director has chosen to take it off YouTube.
PUBLISHED MAGAZINE ARTICLES
She Magazine
Short article about being childfree.
The Road Magazine
3,000 word article the writer's two month motorcycle ride around New Zealand over the Millennium.
Either:
2) Read it via the Motorcycle Action Group's own website for The Road, here.
Thanks to Ian Mutch at MAG for permission to reproduce the article.
FEATURE FILM SCRIPTS
PIER 90
A road trip set in 1962, about a 60 year old Welsh lady, Mam, who visits her estranged daughter Gwen in New York and finds herself taking part in an unexpected road trip west to hunt for Gwen's missing fiancé.
MY MATE DIANE
A teenage asthmatic girl trapped in a dysfunctional family in Margate becomes a stand up comedian.
TELEVISION
HOUSE ON THE HILL (SITCOM) Received a full rehearsed reading at PlayerPlaywrights 30 March 2009
House On The Hill is about five very different characters who live in House, itself a very nervous character. Christine is a very gifted medium but has absolutely no tact or diplomacy; Magda is a basement dwelling agoraphobic jam-making alternative therapist who - out of jam making season - earns money as a Dominatrix. She dismisses Christine's real talent for the fights that inevitably break out after Christine's gigs. Saul is a shy UFOlogist who lives in the attic and can physically only ever look up, and who brings out the rival protective nature of both lead women. Shelley and Dave could actually appear quite normal, but for the fact they are laid back “have a go at anything” structural engineers from New Zealand. Christine also has a belligerent crystal ball called Kevin, and only Christine can hear House and Kevin speak, though they are usually rowing. None of the characters have documentation except the Kiwis, which hardly counts, and the series' main questions relate to - who are all these people and where did they come from, and what is the relationship between Kevin and House? And is the owner really an alien test pilot? And do they need to be paying rent?
I have written the series arcs of this high concept sitcom to cover about ten series. Outlines of the six episodes of the first series, however, are all written, with episodes one and five written in full.
PRECIOUS (ANIMATED CARTOON SERIES)
A series of ten minute cartoons about two tough inner city TV addicted cats Georgy and Mikey living on a small inner city council estate, and their neighbour, a soft country cat called Precious who claims to have seen some of the animals they have only dreamed about.
This received rave reviews (and some preliminary drawings of the Cats) from an animation company who were ultimately unable to find financing. However, the Cartoonist and TV Editor Angela Bailey has created more pictures of the cast of cats and dogs, and scripts are available for perusal here.
LETTING GO @ SOPHIE'S
A six part non-PC post feminist post-watershed series about four very different characters in different parts of the country: Julie, a working class single Mum; Christine, a Security Manager at a supermarket; Ian, a lawyer in a small village, and Paul, an IT expert, who all discover the need to explore their Dominant/submissive natures, meeting via “sophie's”, an internet chatroom. Sophie herself, a wheelchair user, manipulates their friendships, putting people together and exerting her own form of control. This series evolved into the play A Good Sub Story.
MR BAKEWELL
A six x 60 minute series, co-written with Gary Orchard and Tom Lindsay who had the original idea. Based in Canterbury and the villages of East Kent, Mr Bakewell is a Supply teacher who after 20 years has to leave his job. He puts a hobby to good use and becomes a private detective, using his many contacts through the region including the many kids he has remained friends with and have now grown up and entered other professions. This series idea is now the sole property of Tom Lindsay, who can be contacted through Sam South.
JANICE AND JOHN
A six part series of half hour TV dramas based around an Janice, an accountant and John, a Mercedes mechanic, along with Cheryl the neighbour, the Doctor, and others.
THE BILL
It's a Fair Medium, Cop A spec episode of The Bill, written for college, about a race between the unorthodox methods of Delilah, a Medium, and DCI Meadows, to catch a kidnapper (who Delilah refuses to believe is her ex), and find the hostage before it is too late!
DOCTORS
A spec episode of Doctors, written for college, which piles both medical and ethical pressure on two of the regular Doctors as they come to terms with their inabilities to help two sets of people. An elderly lady is on an 18 month waiting list for one cataract operation to be done, but her granddaughter she has never seen is coming over from Australia in only 6 months. Meanwhile, a married couple, friends of Brendan's, come and live in the area with their own problems which make him appreciate what he has.
THEATRE
REMOTE CONTROL (Not yet produced)
A Man is accused of slapping a Nurse, and the story of his “crime” is splashed all over the tabloids. On a tacky daytime TV chat show he is invited to state his case. The same “smacking” scene is shown from four perspectives to discover whether he did it or not, whether she deserved it, whether we all would have done it in his circumstances, and how other witnesses claim to have seen the event. The main story is interspersed with scenes depicting how individuals in society has become remote from their surroundings, their communities, and explores the nature of our ability to truly care for each other.
RADIO
CHASE'S FACE
A 50 minute drama, or 3 x 15 minute version. A guy with looks to die for, is on his way home to the Nebraska cornfields from New York, where he has lived life to the full for ten years. He is escaping his wild life to find the girl of his dreams he's met on an internet chatroom. In the first gas station he gets to on his journey to his dream girl, he comes face to face with a robber who approaches his beautiful face with a very big knife. A CD has been produced starring Tom Frederic, and will be available shortly.
SHORT FILMS
TWENTY FOUR CIGARS
Based on a true story about an insurance scam. A soon-to-be-retired insurance man mistakenly insures a box of 24 phenomenally expensive cigars, belonging to a loud young lawyer, against fire. This film is in pre-production.
BLUE LIPS AND FINGERTIPS
A young girl living in Margate has her life saved yet again from an acute asthma attack but keeps seeing the ghost of a mysterious female motorcyclist.
THE FLOWER BED
From a fixed camera position in a cupboard behind louvre doors, we constantly hear loud music and a couple rowing, and we are occasionally fed their leftovers.
When the door is opened by a visiting heating engineer, our world is changed forever when he decides to call the RSPCA. Now what are we going to do?
THE DEEP END
A Woman, alone in a bedsit, slits her wrists and writes her suicide note with the blood on the wall explaining why she's done it and what led up to it. This "script" becomes the voiceover and is all we hear. A Policeman reads it next to the open balcony door on the seventeenth floor. His artist son died similarly before his exhibition which is due to open soon, and as he reads the suicide note, he notices the whole wallpaper is coming away from the wall.
OK so I get dark, sometimes!