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45 min x 8 live action premiere detective/drama series (development)
Inspired by a real Belfast woman; a bold, brazen, foulmouthed policewoman. Not here to take your shit but to nail you on yours.
Present day Belfast. Gillian Godley has been off the Historical Enquiries Team, a group set up to investigate Troubles-related murders, violence and crime, when the group was disbanded in 2014 after a staggeringly high rate of cost and low rate of arrests and convictions. Gillian is back on detective duties in serious crimes with a younger male partner, an overt flirt that Gillian chooses to indulge.
Gillian, daughter to a father with autism and an alcoholic-depressive mother who died under suspicious circumstances when Gillian was a young girl. Sister to two brothers, niece to one. Mother to none. Born in Belfast to a family of cops and always wanted to be a cop. But in the 80s all she saw was female officers wearing skirts and carrying purses. That was not the force she wanted to get in to. No fucking way. But the 2000s came round, things changed and so could she. Seeing the harm befalling the women around her Gillian did a 180: left her string of dead-end jobs, divorced her husband and joined the force. Gillian speaks to God, even though she can’t be bothered with religion. Gillian's God is a hybrid of a Smokey and the Bandit era Burt Reynolds, John Wayne and Indiana Jones (she wanted to be a cowboy truck driver before wanting to be a cop, obvs.).
Gillian has unsolved business with the HET. She is driven to reveal the identities of the Broomhill Gang, a notorious organized crime group that operated during the 1970 and 80s trafficking black market goods from the east across the Atlantic to Canada for the US market - guns, drugs, boys, girls. The gang did anything to keep people quiet and working for them. They were brutal, barbaric, sadistic. There were a handful of leaders, they have to be people high up, have to be. Any time Gillian got close to bringing victims to justice the department's work got crushed, hushed, thrown away. Gillian's mother Sylvie got swept up in the 70s/80s madness and Gillian believes that was the catalyst to the mental breakdown that saw Sylvie become a shell of her former self.
At the same time Gillian has to make the tough decision of setting her father up in a care home as his dementia symptoms solidify. With the help of her ex-husband Sammy and the kind support of her father's younger boyfriend, and with no thanks to her two brothers, they are able to get Gillian's father settled. But there is something not right with the home - and it isn't just because her mother had died in that same care home when Gillian was a kid. More people than normal have been dying and Gillian begins to suspect one of the nurses.
Mash-up and shakeup of the detective drama serial by blending the mood and off-beat mystery, strangeness and dark humor of Fargo with the Scandi-noir tone and air of Forbrydelsen mixed with the family lineage drama of Six Feet Under (remember Six Feet Under!?). A character-driven show that takes place in the heart of Belfast.
International co-development Canada/Northern Ireland.
Co-developers Ashley Matt and Paul Kennedy of Village Films.
Inspired by a real Belfast woman; a bold, brazen, foulmouthed policewoman. Not here to take your shit but to nail you on yours.
Present day Belfast. Gillian Godley has been off the Historical Enquiries Team, a group set up to investigate Troubles-related murders, violence and crime, when the group was disbanded in 2014 after a staggeringly high rate of cost and low rate of arrests and convictions. Gillian is back on detective duties in serious crimes with a younger male partner, an overt flirt that Gillian chooses to indulge.
Gillian, daughter to a father with autism and an alcoholic-depressive mother who died under suspicious circumstances when Gillian was a young girl. Sister to two brothers, niece to one. Mother to none. Born in Belfast to a family of cops and always wanted to be a cop. But in the 80s all she saw was female officers wearing skirts and carrying purses. That was not the force she wanted to get in to. No fucking way. But the 2000s came round, things changed and so could she. Seeing the harm befalling the women around her Gillian did a 180: left her string of dead-end jobs, divorced her husband and joined the force. Gillian speaks to God, even though she can’t be bothered with religion. Gillian's God is a hybrid of a Smokey and the Bandit era Burt Reynolds, John Wayne and Indiana Jones (she wanted to be a cowboy truck driver before wanting to be a cop, obvs.).
Gillian has unsolved business with the HET. She is driven to reveal the identities of the Broomhill Gang, a notorious organized crime group that operated during the 1970 and 80s trafficking black market goods from the east across the Atlantic to Canada for the US market - guns, drugs, boys, girls. The gang did anything to keep people quiet and working for them. They were brutal, barbaric, sadistic. There were a handful of leaders, they have to be people high up, have to be. Any time Gillian got close to bringing victims to justice the department's work got crushed, hushed, thrown away. Gillian's mother Sylvie got swept up in the 70s/80s madness and Gillian believes that was the catalyst to the mental breakdown that saw Sylvie become a shell of her former self.
At the same time Gillian has to make the tough decision of setting her father up in a care home as his dementia symptoms solidify. With the help of her ex-husband Sammy and the kind support of her father's younger boyfriend, and with no thanks to her two brothers, they are able to get Gillian's father settled. But there is something not right with the home - and it isn't just because her mother had died in that same care home when Gillian was a kid. More people than normal have been dying and Gillian begins to suspect one of the nurses.
Mash-up and shakeup of the detective drama serial by blending the mood and off-beat mystery, strangeness and dark humor of Fargo with the Scandi-noir tone and air of Forbrydelsen mixed with the family lineage drama of Six Feet Under (remember Six Feet Under!?). A character-driven show that takes place in the heart of Belfast.
International co-development Canada/Northern Ireland.
Co-developers Ashley Matt and Paul Kennedy of Village Films.
