CHRIS CHIBNALL

SELECTED SCREEN CREDITS: Born and Bred (2002-05), Life on Mars (2006-07), Torchwood (2006-08), Doctor Who (2007-22), Law & Order: UK (2009), Broadchurch (2013-17), The Seven Dials Mystery (2025 TBC)

T o long-time DWM readers, Chris Chibnall needs no introduction. But if you’re new: he showran Doctor Who through the Jodie Whittaker era – resetting the tone, raising the stakes, then signing off in October 2022 with volcanoes, Nitro 9, and ice creams in space.

He’d taken charge of the TARDIS in 2017 (after five previous Doctor Who scripts) as one of the few UK writers to have created and steered a bona fide TV juggernaut: Broadchurch, the grief-soaked, appointment-to-view whodunnit that turned a Dorset coastal town into a national obsession. Before that, he’d hauled Law & Order across the Atlantic and into the Old Bailey. As head writer – and, with Russell T Davies, co-showrunner – on Torchwood’s first two seasons, he’d wrangled Weevils on a BBC Three (later BBC Two) budget. Earlier still, he cut his teeth writing BBC One’s Born and Bred, the 1950s-set medical drama he co-created.

Now he’s murdering people on the page. His debut crime novel, Death at the White Hart, was published in March this year; ITV has already commissioned a television adaptation. Chris is deep into writing the follow-up when we jump on a Zoom call. I find him mid-draft, coffee cooling, delighted to park the corpses and chat. “When you’re in the middle of writing your second novel,” he smiles, “it’s quite nice to talk to someone.”