Sally Wainwright

Sally Wainwright
OBE
Wainwright in 2018
Born
Sally Anne Wainwright

1963 (age 60–61)
Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
EducationUniversity of York
Occupations
Years active1991–present
Spouse
Austin Sherlaw-Johnson
​
​
(m. 1990)​
Children2

Sally Anne Wainwright OBE (born 1963) is an English television writer, producer, and director.[1][2] She is known for her dramas, which are often set in her native West Yorkshire, and feature "strong female characters".[3][4] Wainwright has been praised for the quality of her dialogue.[3]

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.[5] Her work since includes Scott & Bailey (2011–2016), Last Tango in Halifax (2012–2020), Happy Valley (2014–2023), and Gentleman Jack (2019–2022).[6][7] 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.

  1. ^ Wainwright, Sally; Costigan, George; Holt, Judy (22 November 2015). "Sally Wainwright in conversation with George Costigan & Judy Holt" (Video interview). Square Chapel.
  2. ^ Williams, Zoe (13 August 2016). "Sally Wainwright: 'I don't set out to instruct people. I want to entertain'". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Guardian-HappyValley-S2-Titan-2016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Himelfield, Dave (10 January 2023). "Happy Valley's Sally Wainwright's life from bus driver to TV script genius". Yorkshire Live. Retrieved 24 December 2023.
  5. ^ Nicholson, Rebecca (17 May 2019). "From The Archers to HBO: how Sally Wainwright conquered TV". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 24 December 2023.
  6. ^ Gilbert, Gerard (30 April 2014). "Happy Valley, BBC1 – TV review: Homegrown, Yorkshire-set drama is better than Fargo". The Independent. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
  7. ^ DeWolf Smith, Nancy (14 August 2014). "In Yorkshire's Green but Not Pleasant Land". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 20 January 2015.