JACK THORNE

SELECTED SCREEN CREDITS: Skins (2007-09), This is England (2010-15), National Treasure (2016), His Dark Materials (2019-22), Enola Holmes (2020), Help (2021), Toxic Town (2025), Adolescence (2025), The Hack (2025)

J ack Thorne works like clockwork: 10am to 7pm, every day, from a little office at the bottom of his garden. The discipline has paid off. It’s made the 46-year-old BAFTA, Emmy, and Tony winner one of Britain’s most in-demand dramatists. This year alone, he’s scripted two of TV’s biggest hits, dropping on Netflix just a fortnight apart. They’re Toxic Town, a four-part drama based on the true story of the Corby poisonings in the 1980s and 1990s, and Adolescence (co-written with its star, Stephen Graham), about a 13-year-old boy (played by breakout Owen Cooper) accused of stabbing a female classmate to death.

The response to both has been seismic. Toxic Town, starring Jodie, debuted as UK Netflix’s most-watched show. Then Adolescence went nuclear: 145 million views in its first four months, a word-of-mouth phenomenon that leapfrogged Stranger Things’ fourth season to become Netflix’s second-biggest English-language series ever (only Wednesday Season One sits higher). It also made history as the first streaming show to top the UK’s weekly TV ratings. “It’s all utterly ridiculous,” says Jack, when I question how he even begins to process numbers like that.

“We’re still reeling from it. We don’t believe it happened.”

Awards recognition followed. Adolescence snagged 13 Emmy nominations, including one for Outstanding Writing. BAFTA nods seem inevitable. For Toxic Town, too. The Guardian called Jodie’s turn as Susan McIntyre – the real-life mother who led the fight against Corby Borough Council after toxic waste from the town’s former steelworks caused dozens of babies to be born with disabilities – “perfectly performed by an obviously award-worthy Whittaker”.