Surviving in Babylon is a television drama set on a council estate in Birmingham in the 1990s, leading up to the year 2000. Its writer, Courtney Sharpe, has completed the first season, ten episodes of scripts, without a studio, a commissioner or a writers’ room, and has made a proof-of-concept trailer to show producers what the series might look like on screen. The story follows a character called Dwayne. By Sharpe’s own account, Dwayne is a version of Sharpe.
We put six questions to Sharpe in writing. The answers are below, lightly edited for length, and the quotations are Sharpe’s own.
A life story with the names changed
Where does Dwayne come from? Not from research or invention, Sharpe says, but from experience. “Dwayne’s story comes directly from my own life experiences. Surviving in Babylon is essentially my life story, brought to the screen through the character of Dwayne.” The aim was never to invent a different life for the character. It was to tell “the story of things I actually went through and the way those experiences affected me.”
The names are fictional. The people are not. “The people they represent are real individuals who played a part in my life,” Sharpe explains. “Some influenced my decisions, some were part of difficult experiences, and others were simply there during important moments.” Writing it as drama has meant going back through different stages of life and looking at how they connect.
There is a deliberate step back built into the form. Even though audiences are watching Dwayne rather than Sharpe, the hope is that viewers “will recognise something in his experiences that they can relate to.” That gap between the person and the character is where a personal story can become a shared one, and it is the usual bargain of autobiographical drama.
Why the 1990s
A present-day setting would have been easier to dress and, perhaps, easier to sell. Sharpe chose the other route for a reason that has little to do with nostalgia. “Surviving in Babylon is fundamentally about transformation,” Sharpe says. “It explores how what happens to us, the people we encounter and the decisions we make can change the direction of our lives.”
That transformation began in the 1990s, so the series begins there. “It isn’t just a case of choosing the 1990s because they look different from today. Those were the years in which the experiences behind the story actually took place, and I wanted to begin at the beginning rather than jump ahead to the person I eventually became.”
The council estate matters, but it is not the reason for the setting. “The council estate was part of the environment in which those events unfolded, but the main reason for setting the series there and then is to remain true to the origins of the journey.” A story set now, Sharpe argues, would lose that connection to Sharpe’s own timeline.
Birmingham without the postcard
Birmingham is the setting, and Sharpe is careful about what that means. “I wouldn’t describe Surviving in Babylon as a series intended to explain or showcase Birmingham life. It is my story, and that story happens to be set in Birmingham. I think there is a difference between those two things.”
Still, the city shows up in the details. Sharpe wants to capture, “to a degree, the way people spoke at the time, including the expressions and lingo I remember”, so that the dialogue belongs to its period and not to the present day. The locations are meant to reflect real places from those years, though that is harder than it sounds. “Some of those places have physically changed over the years. The surroundings I remember from growing up don’t always look the same today.” Recreating them matters, Sharpe says, “because the appearance and feeling of a place can be part of how you remember an event.”
One of those places is Centenary Square, beside the International Convention Centre, where Sharpe worked at the age of 17. It connects directly to the experiences behind the series.
Centenary Square, Birmingham, near the International Convention Centre, where Courtney Sharpe worked at the age of 17. Photograph: Brian Lewicki / Unsplash
On music, Sharpe is cautious. Sound can add to the atmosphere, but “I don’t want to claim a particular soundtrack before those creative decisions are made.” What counts, Sharpe says, is that “the voices, locations and overall mood support Dwayne’s journey without turning Birmingham itself into the main subject.”
Ten episodes, learned on the job
The most practical answer concerns how a first season gets finished by one person with no industry training. Sharpe is open about starting from nothing. “When I started writing Surviving in Babylon, I didn’t know how to write television scripts. My first draft was actually intended as a feature film.”
The next step was outside help. “I paid a freelancer to convert that draft into screenplay format, and that gave me a reference point for how the material could be presented.” Later Sharpe decided the story suited a television drama series, and used the feature screenplay as a starting point for adapting and expanding it into individual episodes. At that stage Sharpe began “using ChatGPT to guide me through the screenwriting process”, which helped with approaching scenes and episodes, while WriterDuet was used to put the scripts into the proper format.
Sharpe is clear about where the work came from. “The experiences, characters and direction of the story came from me, but I had to learn the practical side of turning them into television scripts as I went along.” Finishing ten episodes, Sharpe says, “took patience and a willingness to keep learning rather than waiting until I knew everything beforehand.”
Asked what would change on a second attempt, Sharpe is specific. “I would begin with a stronger understanding of how a television series is structured. I would also approach the planning and organisation of the episodes differently, because I now know much more about the process than I did when I started.” There is no regret in the answer. “I don’t regret learning through the work itself.”
What a trailer is for
Sharpe also made a proof-of-concept trailer, and admits that its purpose was not obvious at first. “Before going through the process, I didn’t fully understand what a proof-of-concept trailer was for or why it could be valuable alongside a screenplay.”
The lesson came in two parts. The first was about tone. “The trailer had to capture the atmosphere of Surviving in Babylon. It wasn’t enough just to show images related to the story. I wanted the mood and feeling of the trailer to give people a sense of what the series is about.”
The second was about the audience. A trailer may be the first thing a stranger sees. “Whether that person is a producer or someone else who might take an interest, those first impressions matter. The trailer needs to make them curious enough to look further into the story and the scripts.”
Put simply, each piece does a different job. “The script communicates the story on paper, while the trailer helps people picture the atmosphere and potential screen presentation.” The trailer gave Sharpe, in their words, “another way to introduce Surviving in Babylon and explain the kind of drama I want to make.”
Where it goes next
The ambition is plain: to see Surviving in Babylon brought to the screen. After a great deal of time spent developing the story, completing the first season of scripts and preparing materials, Sharpe wants “to move from writing and development towards making it an actual television production.”
There is some encouragement. “A film producer has already expressed an interest in working with me,” Sharpe says, “although there is still work to do to secure the funding and arrangements needed to move forward.” The hope is to build on that interest and to work “with people who understand what I’m trying to achieve with the series.”
Sharpe is realistic about the end of the road. “Ultimately, I would love to see it reach viewers through a streaming platform such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. That is an ambition, not something that has already been arranged.”
For now, then, Surviving in Babylon is a finished set of scripts, a trailer and an author who learned the form by doing it. The reason it exists is the one Sharpe gives last: “Because the story comes from my own life, seeing it brought to the screen would mean a lot to me.”
Photographs: portrait by Courtney Sharpe; Centenary Square, Birmingham, by Brian Lewicki / Unsplash.
