Hot Shots 2025: Rebecca Manley

With a long-term career of running drama initiatives in community-support settings such as prisons and young-o ender institutions, Rebecca Manley brings lived experience to her screenwriting, and it’s already making her stand out. “I love telling honest, funny stories about messy, complicated lives,” she says.

Leaning into her niche, among her upcoming projects is The Rapture, a Mammoth Screen drama series for BBC1 set in a maximum-security facility for juveniles, for which she wrote two episodes.

Yet Manley is no one-trick pony. Transferring her empathy, experience and knowledge about the human condition, she worked on character and story development for Bafta-nominated relationship drama Ali & Ava and is now delving into detective thrillers with Berlin Noir, a six-part series for Bad Wolf/Apple TV+.

Yorkshire-born Manley’s interest in the screen began as an actor. She later combined her passion for drama and community work, earning a Sunley Prize nomination for her MA, which explored drama’s impact on women affected by the criminal justice system, and spent a decade developing drama-based training for workers in the domestic violence field.

Frustrated by the lack of stories that reflected the people around her, Manley transitioned into screenwriting in 2019 via the BBC Drama Writers’ Programme and the Women in Film and TV Mentoring Scheme. Her debut pilot, developed with Kudos North, turned the heads of the likes of Jane Tranter and Dan McCulloch of Bad Wolf.

“Becca is a skilled writer with a rare talent for blending emotional warmth with hard-edged and unexpected storytelling,” they say.

She is also writer in residence for Dancing Ledge Productions.