Sally Wainwright

Sally Anne Wainwright (born 1963) is an English television writer, producer, and director. She is known for her dramas, which are often set in her native West Yorkshire, and feature "strong female characters". Wainwright has been praised for the quality of her dialogue.

Wainwright began her career as a scriptwriter on the long-running radio serial drama The Archers, and worked on the television soap operas Emmerdale and Coronation Street in the 1990s. Her first original drama, At Home with the Braithwaites, aired between 2000 and 2003. After two self-described "flops" in the mid-2000s, Wainwright found success with Unforgiven (2009), for which she won the Royal Television Society's Writer of the Year Award. Her work since includes Scott & Bailey (2011–2016), Last Tango in Halifax (2012–2020), Happy Valley (2014–2023), and Gentleman Jack (2019–2022). Last Tango in Halifax won the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series in 2013, and Happy Valley won the same award in both 2015 and 2017.

Early life
Wainwright was born in 1963 in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, to Harry Wainwright and Dorothy Wainwright (née Crowther). Wainwright was brought up in Sowerby Bridge, where she attended Triangle Church of England Primary School and Sowerby Bridge High School. She attended the University of York, reading English and Related Literature. She has one sister.

Wainwright said that she had always wanted to write, had started writing from the time she was nine years old, and wanted to write for Coronation Street. She said that when she was 16 years old, she saw a play called Bastard Angel by playwright Barrie Keeffe at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and was impressed by its short sentences and naturalistic approach to dialogue.

Career
While at the University of York, Wainwright took an original play called Hanging On to the Edinburgh Festival and in the process found an agent, Meg Davis, for her writing. Meanwhile, she worked as a bus driver. When she was 24, she left the driving job after she started writing for the Radio 4 series The Archers. One of her contributions was to write an atypical story for the long-running radio soap in which the village shop was robbed. After that she wrote for Coronation Street, developing her writing skills, from 1994 to 1999. She has since said that working on continuing drama was "a great education in discipline and a lesson that great stories are hard work". She was mentored by Kay Mellor, who encouraged her to stop writing for soaps and to concentrate instead on original work. She created the TV series At Home with the Braithwaites about a woman who had secretly won the lottery. The programme was nominated for multiple awards. In 2006, she wrote the drama series Jane Hall, which depicts the life of a female bus driver in London. Wainwright drew on her own experiences in scripting the series.

She won the 2009 Writer of the Year Award given by the RTS in 2009 for Unforgiven, which took several awards including best TV series.

Wainwright says that her strong yet flawed female characters are "almost real" to her and arrive "fully formed" in her imagination. She likes to control the television that is created and has done some directing and producing of her own work, partly to ensure the scenery and dialogue reflects Yorkshire.

In 2011, she wrote Scott & Bailey, a series about two female police officers. The idea for the series came from the actresses Suranne Jones and Sally Lindsay and former Detective Inspector Diane Taylor, who assisted with bringing the series to air.

Wainwright based the plot of her series Last Tango in Halifax on the story of her mother, who was widowed in 2001. Her mother, Dorothy, moved to Oxfordshire to live with her daughter and rediscovered a lost love via Friends Reunited. With her mother's permission, Wainwright developed the story of how she remarried so rapidly, showing extracts from the series to her mother before broadcast.

When she told the story to Nicola Shindler, she suggested she turn her mother's experience into a television series. Shindler became the series' executive producer. Both Last Tango in Halifax and her crime series Scott & Bailey were turned down by both the BBC and ITV before being accepted retrospectively. The former was voted by BAFTA to be best series in 2012 and Wainwright was given the award for best writer.

Happy Valley, which was shot in Yorkshire's upper Upper Calder Valley and Hebden Bridge, stars Sarah Lancashire, whom Wainwright had in mind as she wrote the role. Wainwright made her directorial debut with episode 4 of the first series. Wainwright had previously said that she was willing to write a third series of Happy Valley, but had commitments to work on other projects, and in 2016 producer Nicola Shindler indicated that the third series would not air until 2018 at the earliest. In 2022 it was announced that a third series would debut on 1 January 2023. The final episode was broadcast on 5 February 2023.

In 2016, Wainwright was made a Fellow of the Royal Television Society.

Wainwright wrote and directed a two-hour drama special for BBC One entitled To Walk Invisible, which aired on BBC One in 2016 and in the US in 2017. Its subject is the Brontë family, particularly the relationship the three sisters, Anne, Emily and Charlotte, had with their brother, Branwell. While working on the drama, Wainwright said "I am thrilled beyond measure that I've been asked by the BBC to bring to life these three fascinating, talented, ingenious Yorkshire women."

In 2019, Wainwright's Gentleman Jack, a drama about the 19th-century Yorkshire landowner, diarist, and open lesbian, Anne Lister, played by Suranne Jones, and Lister's courtship of Ann Walker, played by Sophie Rundle, premiered on both BBC One in the UK and HBO in the US.

Her female-led highwaywoman epic Renegade Nell streamed on Disney+ from 29 March 2024. In 2024, filming began on her series Riot Women, about a collection of women who form a band in Yorkshire.

Personal life
Wainwright, who lives in Oxfordshire, is married to Ralph "Austin" Sherlaw-Johnson, an antiquarian sheet music dealer, son of the composer, pianist, and music scholar Robert Sherlaw Johnson. They have two sons and,, a Maine Coon cat Wainwright claims is the largest in the world.

Wainwright was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to writing and television.

Wainwright has said that she has "decided that [she is] slightly autistic" and that social interaction is quite painful for her.

Other

 * 1986–1988: The Archers (Radio show: BBC Radio 4) − Writer (2 years)
 * 2000: Emily Brontë's Lover (Radio show: BBC Radio 4) − Writer
 * Hanging On (play)

Honours

 * 2003: Best Short Drama Banff Festival for The Wife of Bath's Tale
 * 2009: RTS Awards, Best Drama Serial for Unforgiven
 * 2011: RTS North West Awards, Best Writer for Scott & Bailey
 * 2013: Sky WFTV Awards, Technicolor Writing Award
 * 2013: BAFTA TV Craft Awards, Best Drama Writer
 * 2013: BAFTA TV Craft Awards, Best Drama Series for Last Tango in Halifax
 * 2014: Broadcast Awards, Best Drama Series for Happy Valley
 * 2014: British Screenwriters’ Awards, Best British TV Drama Writing for Happy Valley
 * 2014: Crime Thriller Awards, Best TV Series for Happy Valley
 * 2014: TV Choice Awards, Best New Drama for Happy Valley
 * 2015: Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, Best Drama Writer
 * 2015: BAFTA TV Craft Awards, Best Drama Writer
 * 2015: Edgar Allan Poe Awards, Best Television Episode for Happy Valley (episode 1)
 * 2015: WGGB Awards, Best Long Form TV Drama for Happy Valley
 * 2015: Edinburgh TV Awards, Best Programme of the year for Happy Valley
 * 2015: BAFTA Awards, Best Drama Series for Happy Valley
 * 2017: RTS Programme Awards, Best Drama Writer for Happy Valley
 * 2017: RTS Programme Awards, Judges' Award
 * 2017:BAFTA Awards, Best Drama Series for Happy Valley
 * 2017: BAFTA TV Craft Awards, Best Drama Writer for 'Happy Valley'
 * 2020: Royal Television Society Awards, Best Drama Series Winner for 'Gentleman Jack'
 * 2020: Freedom of The Borough of Calderdale
 * 2020: Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to Writing and Television.