Peter Jukes

Peter Jukes (born 13 October 1960) is an English author, screenwriter, playwright, literary critic and journalist. He is the co-founder and executive editor of ''Byline Times''.

Early life

Jukes was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, England, and attended Queens' College, Cambridge. His mother was an Armenian and the daughter of a man fleeing the Armenian genocide; she was later adopted by his grandfather.

Television

Jukes' television writing has mainly been in the genre of prime time thrillers or TV detective fiction, with 90-minute or two-hour long stories being broadcast by the BBC.

Jukes devised and wrote most of the three seasons of the BBC One prime time undercover thriller '' In Deep'' starring Nick Berry and Stephen Tompkinson; two 90-minute film length episodes of the BBC One series ''The Inspector Lynley Mysteries'';. ''Burn Out'', the two-hour first episode of the first season of the Emmy Award winning cold case series '' Waking the Dead''; achieved 8.4m viewers and a 38% share. He and Ed Whitmore wrote the second series of the paranormal/science thriller ''Sea of Souls'' which won the 2005 BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Drama. Jukes' opening episode of the third season of ''Holby City'' was described by ''The Guardian'' as the "televisual equivalent of Crack Cocaine."

In October 2009, Jukes wrote a critical piece for ''Prospect'' magazine, contrasting the standards of UK television drama negatively with the standard of television dramas in America. In the essay ''Why Can't Britain Do the Wire'' he argued that high-quality drama in the UK had suffered from a concentration of commissioning power, the dominance of soaps (such as the twelfth series of ''Holby City''), and the lack of show runners or writer producers that characterise US TV drama production.

Radio

His radio credits include the original BBC Radio ''Soul Motel'' (2008) (a drama taking place entirely in social networking space similar to Bebo or Facebook) and, with the comedian and actor Lenny Henry, the plays ''Bad Faith'' and ''Slavery: The Making of''. The latter formed part of the BBC's 2007 programming series to commemorate 200 years since Britain abolished the slave trade, "managed to extract maximum humour from the grimmest of subject matters", by using the form of a semi-comic mockumentary. As ''The Spectator'' magazine explained: "Greg Wise plays the harassed producer trying to put together a drama for which Lenny Henry has provided sheafs of research printouts from the internet – but no script... 'Whose story is this?' demands Adrian Lester in an angry exchange with Brian Blessed. Were they in character? Or were they arguing for real?"

In 2008, Henry starred in another "dark comedy" by Jukes called ''Bad Faith'': "Imagine the movie ''Bad Lieutenant'' transplanted to Birmingham, with Harvey Keitel's morally bankrupt copper replaced by Lenny Henry as a police chaplain who has lost his faith, and you have Peter Jukes's black comedy". Paul Donovan of ''The Sunday Times'' called ''Bad Faith'' "the best radio drama I have heard in ages, and clearly destined to become a series".The Sunday Times