Pete Jackson

(He/Him)

Pete’s breakthrough credit is scripted television series Somewhere Boy.

Is writer Pete Jackson a classic case of triumph over adversity? This is perhaps an oversimplification, but his journey to creating and writing hit television drama Somewhere Boy (2022) is certainly one of someone who has faced his share of demons and made it successfully to the other side.

Despite being a creative child, voracious reader and obsessive film fan, Pete never thought that he could possibly forge a career in the industry. He has been candid with the press about his past as an alcoholic, and the mental health problems this elicited, revealing how more than a decade ago he managed to sober up and use writing to express himself instead. The most recent realisation of this is Somewhere Boy (2022), an impactful dark comedy drama that has already earned Pete a BAFTA for Emerging Talent: Fiction, as well as two further nominations in 2023.

Not long after he started jotting ideas down on a bit of paper, these evolved into his first broadcasted work: three seasons of Love in Recovery (2015-2018) created and written for BBC Radio 4. More radio and a few television one-offs followed, before Somewhere Boy emerged from his imagination and, as he says, “changed everything”.

In their own words…

“My goal is to keep making work that challenges me, that I find difficult to do and that challenges an audience. I don’t want to do work that’s easy to produce and easy to consume. It has to mean something and has to matter. I think that only happens as a writer if you leave something of yourself on the page, which is what I aspire to keep doing.”

“Writing is a weird part of the business. You often feel distant and it can feel quite fractured. So it’s great to feel part of a community and an establishment that is so revered and does so much good stuff. It’s a mark of quality.”

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