Time for a new column! Because in television series we mainly see actors on our screen. But who actually works behind the scenes to make our favorite series possible? Who writes the scripts, composes the music, or designs sets and costumes? And wouldn't it be nice to find out what such people do in their careers? In Behind the Camera, we focus our gaze on someone who may not be in the picture, but who is important for making a series. In the first edition, we turn our gaze behind the camera to Jack Thorne.
The third and final season of the fantasy series His Dark Materials will start again soon. The colorful characters, unimaginable worlds, and the special story all came from the pen of Philip Pullman in the nineties. In 2007, New Line Cinema tried to film the first book in Pullman's trilogy, but that resulted in the somewhat flopped film The Golden Compass. The BBC and HBO tried again – with more success – and hired Jack Thorne to adapt Pullman's story into a television script.
Born in Bristol in 1978, Thorne began his career as a writer of plays, film scripts, and television programs after studying in Cambridge. His first work was the 2004 play Fanny and Fagot and over the years he has written dozens of plays. His best-known theater works are probably Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and a stage version of the Swedish film Let the Right One In (which is now also shown in a series on Showtime).
Thorne first came into contact with television in 2007 when he wrote an episode for the British version of Shameless. At that time he also contributed to the series Skins and in 2009 he came up with his first own series: Cast Offs. This Channel 4 comedy-drama series was about a fictional reality show in which six people with disabilities had to survive on a deserted island.
Thorne became better known in television land when he worked on the This Is England series. In 2006, director and writer Shane Meadows made the film This Is England, about the skinhead culture in England in the 1980s, starring Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire), Vicky McClure (Line of Duty), and Joe Gilgun (Misfits). Between 2010 and 2015, a series of the same name appeared on Channel 4 as a sequel to the film. Thorne co-wrote the scripts for the series with Meadows. In 2019, Thorne and Meadows teamed up again when they created the drama series The Virtues.
In that period, Thorne began to invent and write more and more of his own series, such as The Fades from 2011. This series, starring Iain de Caestecker (Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Daniel Kaluuya (Black Mirror) in the lead roles, was a mix between supernatural horror and teen drama. Although the BBC canceled The Fades after only one season (a shame if you ask me), Thorne did win a BAFTA (the most important British television award) for best drama series. His other series include 2014's Glue, a teen drama-murder mystery, 2015's The Last Panthers, a diamond heist crime series, and 2020's The Eddy, a jazz club musical drama.
In 2019, Thorne became the showrunner of His Dark Materials. Given his previous experience with fantasy stories and young protagonists, he seemed the right person for this task. Where Thorne wrote the first season on his own, in season two he gathered guest writers around him in order to process more diverse perspectives in the series. Hopefully, the adaptation of Philip Pullman's trilogy will get a proper conclusion with season three.
In addition to television and stage, Thorne also sometimes writes film scripts. His first film was 2009's The Scouting Book for Boys. His most recent films include 2019's The Aeronauts (shown on Prime Video) and the two 2020 and 2022 Enola Holmes movies (both on Netflix ).