Significant Other: Q&A with the team behind the series

Sam’s (Youssef Kerkour) waiting to die, after swallowing a cabinet full of pills, when he’s interrupted by his neighbour, Anna (Katherine Parkinson) - she’s having a heart attack and needs to wait with him until help arrives. From this ill-fated first encounter, these two lonely neighbours, who have lost all faith in love, embark on a hilarious, obstacle filled relationship, and on the way discover that even when life seems to have passed them by, there are still surprises to be had…

Join WFTV for a conversation with some of the creatives behind Significant Other.

Writers Dana Fainaru and Hamish Wright along with lead talent, Katherine Parkinson and Youssef Kerkour, and Quay Street Productions Script Executive, Fiona McAllister will be offering a behind the scenes look at the making of the new comedy drama.

Adapted from yes Studios’ award-winning Israeli series of the same name, our panellists will be discussing their process for adapting the story to be rooted in Manchester and working with Katherine and Youssef to bring the characters of Anna and Sam from script to screen.

Event Schedule:

17:55: Please join the webinar waiting room

18:00-18:45:  Host led discussion with panel

18:45: Audience Q&A

19:00: Finish

Katherine Parkinson

Katherine Parkinson is an English actress who appeared in Channel 4's The IT Crowd comedy series as Jen Barber, for which she received a British Comedy Best TV Actress Award in 2009 and 2014 and was nominated twice for the BAFTA Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance, winning in 2014. Katherine has appeared on stage in the plays The Seagull (2007), Cock (2009) and Home, I’m Darling (2018), for which she was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Play.

Katherine co-starred in all three series of Humans, a science-fiction drama on AMC/Channel 4, which aired from 2015 until 2018 as well as BBC One comedy series The Kennedys. Other recent TV credits include Here We Go (BBC One), Hitmen (Sky Comedy) and Defending the Guilty (BBC Two). She has also appeared in the films The Boat That Rocked (2009) and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018). Katherine will co-star in Rivals, a new series based on the celebrated novel by Jilly Cooper, coming soon to Disney+.

Youssef Kerkour

BAFTA nominated actor and veteran stage performer, Youssef was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for 5 years and has worked prolifically on both sides of the Atlantic and across three continents. Named a BAFTA Breakthrough honouree for 2020, he is most well-known for portraying Sami in the Channel 4 series HOME for which he received a Royal Television Society award for Best Actor in a Comedy as well as numerous nominations, including a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy, a second RTS nomination and many others. Various on-screen credits include the leading role of Sam in Significant Other for ITVX and Quay Street Productions. Alfonso Cuaron’s Augustus, Megalodon in Man Like Mobeen 4, Karl in Channel 4’s Baghdad Central, Dracula for Netflix/BBC, Gavin and Stacey Xmas Special. Criminal UK, Cursed and Stay Close, all for Netflix. Film credits include Reggie Yates' Pirates, Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, and his upcoming Napoleon, A Bit of Light for Stephen Moyer and The Actor for Duke Johnson.

Originally from Morocco he is a graduate of Bard College in upstate New York and of LAMDA in London.

Hamish Wright

Hamish began his career in his Australia working on the acclaimed relationship drama The Secret Life of Us. Since moving to the UK he’s had original TV shows in development with ITV Studios, Element, Hat Trick, Noho, Matchbox Productions, Two Brothers Pictures, Red Productions, and Quay Street, and had two film screenplays funded by Screen Northern Ireland. In 2018 Hamish won a place on the BBC Writersroom TV Drama Writer’s Program.

Fiona McAllister

Fiona is a seasoned script executive, working on some of the UKs best loved shows. Having made the leap from ITV Scheduling to the Emmerdale Script department, Fiona worked her way up to Series Script Editor before crossing the Pennines to Coronation Street.

She then fulfilled a lifelong dream by script editing Doctor Who, on Chris Chibnall’s first two series with the first female Doctor, Jodie Whittaker. Prior to joining Quay Street Productions, she was Development Executive for Kudos North.

Despite working in TV for well over a decade, she still feels like a competition winner for getting to work with writers, read scripts and talk about stories all day, even if it means occasionally having to write about herself in the third person.

Dana Fainaru

Dana is a prolific television and film writer with more than a hundred broadcast hours under her belt.   She trained at the Drama Centre London and started her career as a theatre director and dramaturg, working extensively in rep and as staff director at the RNT. She wrote her first play - You Hang Up First - when she was Associate Director at The Contact Theatre, Manchester. After winning the Manchester Evening News' Best New Play Award, she was offered a writer's attachment at the RNT STUDIO, and a place on the BBC Writers' Academy.   Since graduating from the BBC Writers' Academy in 2004, Dana has written extensively for all of the BBC's continuing dramas - most notably as a core writer on Holby City and as Lead Writer of Casualty. She has won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Episode of Continuing Drama, and the MIND Mental Health in the Media Award for her standalone special episode "Place of Safety". Dana was one of the three Casualty writers to win a BAFTA for the show in 2021, and she has also been nominated for a Broadcast Award, a Rose D'Or Award, and an RNT Award.

Working with Hamish Wright, Dana Fainaru recently co-wrote and executive produced Significant Other (Quay Street Productions) - an adaptation of the award-winning Israeli show of the same name. The comedy-drama series will debut on ITV's new streaming platform ITVX in 2023.

Dana's other work includes the latest series of Vikings: Valhalla (MGM/Netflix), The Last Tsars (Netflix), Death in Paradise (BBC), and Riviera (Archery/Sky - writers room). Additionally, Dana's original script Boomerang (with Hamish Wright) is under option with Red Production Company.

How will the online event work?

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