Age: 63
female
Sally Anne Wainwright OBE (born 1963) is an English television writer, producer, and director. She is known for her dramas, which are often set in West Yorkshire, where she originates from, and feature "strong female characters". Wainwright has been praised for the quality of her dialogue. Wainwright began her career as a scriptwriter on the long-running radio serial drama The Archers, and worked on the television soap operas Emmerdale and Coronation Street in the 1990s. Her first original drama, At Home with the Braithwaites, aired between 2000 and 2003. After two self-described "flops" in the mid-2000s, Wainwright found success with Unforgiven (2009), for which she won the Royal Television Society's Writer of the Year Award. Her work since includes Scott & Bailey (2011–2016), Last Tango in Halifax (2012–2020), Happy Valley (2014–2023), and Gentleman Jack (2019–2022). Last Tango in Halifax won the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series in 2013, and Happy Valley won the same award in both 2015 and 2017.
In the windswept moors of 19th-century Yorkshire, three sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë—pushed against the constraints of a rigid and repressive society to create some of the most beloved novels in English literature. The Brontë Legacy takes us inside the Brontë household, unraveling the complex dynamics between the sisters, their father Patrick, and the shadows of loss that loomed over them. The series will explore the intimate lives of the Brontë sisters—each one a strikingly different personality, each with her creative voice, but all bound together by a shared love for writing and an unyielding desire to escape the limitations placed upon them. From Charlotte's determination to succeed in a world that would dismiss her as merely a "gentlewoman writer," to Emily’s passionate isolation and creation of Wuthering Heights, to Anne’s quieter yet profound impact with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the series will highlight their creative process, the challenges they faced as women in a male-dominated literary world, and their deep bond of sisterhood.
