Back in 2018, I was approached by a production company in LA who were keen to adapt Unexplained as a kind of docudrama/reenactment type TV show, similar to Amazon’s adaptation of Lore, if you caught that.
There was a lot going for the proposal. They had good connections to Amazon and other streamers, and were confident that, provided we packaged it all in the right way, it would be an easy sell. Trust me, I’ve head this a million times and didn’t for a second think this was necessarily true but on balance, I think we had a good shot.
The only problem was that, before Unexplained even existed my ambition was to be a TV drama writer, and still is in many ways.
I was plugging away at this with some minor success before Unexplained took off. Naturally as it grew in popularity I began to wonder if THAT could finally be my chance to get a TV show made.
In order for the docudrama to happen, I would have to sell the rights for the podcast to the documentary company. If I sold the rights to them, that meant saying goodbye to any possible fictional adaptation for the foreseeable future.
When you sell ‘the rights’ more often than not a company actually just ‘options’ the show - or whatever is being adapted - instead of buying the rights outright. The ‘option’ is a period of time in which the company owns the rights. Typically this might be a year or two. If the company fails to get the project off the ground, the rights go back to you, or the company might renew them if they feel they just need more time to make it happen.
So in the end I said no to a genuine chance of an adaptation of the podcast making it onto TV, I said no to my first genuine foot in the door as a TV writer, and no to a possible life in LA supervising and writing this show being made. All because I wasn’t convinced by the project and I really hoped someone might want to adapt it they way I wanted to adapt it.
And sure enough they did.
And not just anyone but Bad Wolf. You might not have heard of them but you may have heard of their shows: Industry, His Dark Materials. A Discovery of Witches and my favourite, The Night Of. The company heads, Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner are absolute forces in the industry and both equally brilliant, although I’ve only ever spoken to Jane as Julie is based in the US (And a big shoutout to Ryan Rasmussen too for seeing the potential in Unexplained in the first place).
They weren’t the only company interested but if I could choose one to adapt Unexplained they would be at the top of the list. It was an easy decision for me.
Again, I’ve had too many near misses and disappointments with similar situations throughout my career and wasn’t naive enough to think this would be a sure fire thing. Quite the opposite. I very much incline to the pessimist side of the scale when it involves anything of this nature (I really should learn to manifest better, and maybe believe in myself a bit more, maybe that’s the same thing…).
Anyhow, they liked the show, they wanted to adapt it for TV, they wanted to option it. It was all great.
I think this all happened around 2019 - needless to say, it’s 2026 now and the fact you’ve never seen this show, tells you all you need to know.
As you quickly come to understand in the TV ecosystem, most well-established companies have about 20-30 projects simmering at any one time in various stages of development. A company’s doing well if 1-2 of them actually make it onto the screen.
In the end we developed it very slowly over the course of about four years. It went through multiple iterations, involving multiple teams of people (never a good sign…) , and was re-optioned about three times. It wasn’t huge sums of money, but I won’t lie, it certainly came in handy.
A major sticking point was just what kind of show should it be - episodic, like The X-Files where we take a single story and have our main characters investigate it each week or more seasonal like a more strange True Detective or Sharp Objects. My heart has always been set on the latter, adapting the tone of Unexplained rather than any particular story but finding ways to weave in all the many stories that have featured on it. But fundamentally, Unexplained the TV series would be its own stand alone, original story. This is by far the harder version of the show to create but in fairness to Bad Wolf they were equally on board with this idea.
We got it to script stage but it never went further than that. No broadcaster ever saw it, no one outside the company effectively knew it existed. And, despite the money a few re-options was ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
This is a common trial of the aspiring TV writer - being both legitimate and ‘in the room’ while appearing completely ineffective to anyone outside his world, until something actually makes it onto TV (not great for parents disappointed in career choices!).
A more experienced writer was brought in to write the pilot episode - Nina Metivier who is awesome and did a fantastic job. But after four years of teasing it this way and that, it steadily moved further and further away from what I hoped it would be. And as a ‘new’ writer in these situations you’re pretty powerless when it comes to making demands.
You could go in guns blazing and hope that your supreme self confidence is enough to convince people to go along with your vision. Or, if you’re like me you might second guess everything that comes out of your mouth because this is the single most important, precious moment of your entire life and you’re petrified that if you come across in any way like an arsehole, the team of people with years of built up trust and awareness between each other, to which you’re very much an outsider, who hold this dream of yours in their hands, might collectively decide they actually don’t enjoy working with you at all and will simply call the whole thing off , or just stop answering your calls which is far more likely.
So in the end you tread lightly, you contribute as much as anyone else but you don’t press. You let your emails that haven’t been answered for weeks, remain unanswered. You don’t pester and absolutely do not rock the boat - whatever the boat is.
Partly because, as I mentioned, you don’t want to risk becoming some kind of new writer pariah when you’ve barely just got into the room but also because, you can live with an unanswered email. You can live with the uncertainty of not knowing if anyone at the company really cares about this project or not, because not knowing means this precious dream of yours is still some how alive. It’s Schrödinger's script. It’s all still potential, and potential is great. Potential is much better than the email that will in all probability eventually come one day to let you know that yes, actually, the project is no longer happening.
Which in my case, or at least in the case of Unexplained, did eventually come.
It’s not that I hadn’t been expecting it. I think when producers would rather take calls to discuss other projects when they’re in the middle of a meeting with you, for a project that is two years into development without a single word being committed to paper, it’s a bit of a giveaway.
But what sucked was just the wasted time. It was the other companies that I turned down who might have prioritised it. It was the docudrama that I said no to, that who knows might have led to its own fiction adaptation. Or maybe it too would have gone nowhere. It’s senseless ruminating on such things. But also hard not too…
Anyway, you’ve heard the sob story.
What was left at the end of it was a script for a show that wasn’t quite what I wanted that wasn’t written by me (which I don’t mean as a slight to Nina in any way, who really was lovely and is a phenomenal writer), and didn’t go anywhere anyway.
So I went back to the drawing board and started again…
Here for the first time, is my pitch for UNEXPLAINED the TV adaptation.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments, I’d love to know what you think or to hear any suggestions about what you’d love to see in an Unexplained TV adaptation…
I would share my pilot script too but I might hold off as something to share with future subscribers. We’ll see…
I cannot begin to imagine the crushing disappointment of being so close, yet so far from having your TV show dreams come to fruition. But hopefully one day soon the stars will align. I love the story pitch (wouldn't it be great to have a UK "x-files" - especially with that show's reboot on the horizon - with all our history, myths and legends to draw upon), and it put me in mind a little of The Nightmare Man and Quatermass. Have you considered working on it with another writer before taking it to a producer? Given the undertones in the story, I was reminded of the work of Steven Volk (Ghostwatch, Midwinter of the Spirit etc). I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.
Ok. Here is the thing, you got something and that is for sure, and it could be something greater than it already is, in the right hands. At risk of sounding "woo-woo" (as my sister calls it), work on your manifestation skills. You are an amazing storyteller and project imagery that is both intriguing and haunting in equal measures. If your writing and storytelling does all that from a podcast, I am beyond exicted at the thought of a TV show. But, just like book to movie adaptations, at what cost is the success? I think of Stephen King and how his adaptations don't always translate well (I'm looking at you, Langoliers). I can't imagine having to allow creative liberties from others on my own work. Torturous comes to mind...but I digress. I don't really have anything helpful to add, but I wanted to say something because I don't think you should measure your success on a TV show that might have been great. Because, maybe it wouldn't have translated well. But I do know the pain of hope dashed. I will do my best to help you manifest success and notoriety in the realm of television. You deserve it! Don't forget us little people when you at the top. 😉