Writer

Television is getting better at disability representation. Shows like Patience and Code of Silence are doing something genuinely new: disabled protagonists whose disability is part of who they are, not what the show is about. That matters. Progress is happening.

But most disabled representation on screen is still written from a non-disabled point of view. However well-intentioned, the result is characters who feel like props in someone else’s storyline rather than the storyline itself. The stories are imagined from the outside. And it shows.

Neil Ben writes great characters in great stories. Some of them happen to be disabled. Like all his characters, they are funny, flawed, smart, damaged, sexual and complicated. Their disability affects who they are and how the world sees them. It is never the point. It is just the truth.

The job is to draw an audience in with storytelling they cannot stop watching. And once they are in, to show them something through character that they have never experienced or thought about before. By the time their perception shifts, they never saw it coming.

BIO

Neil Ben was selected for the BBC Writers’ Access Group 2023-25 and is a writer and director with over thirty years of experience across television, stage and screen. He is a contributing member of the TV Access Project, working to drive authentic disabled representation on both sides of the camera across the British television industry.

Projects in Development

THE RETREAT

 Alongside the TV series, a trilogy of novels has been written. Book One mirrors the first series, while Books Two and Three extend the characters’ journeys to a satisfying, circular resolution.

3 x 60-minute psychological drama series

Logline: A failed actress, trapped on a remote island retreat, is forced to improvise as a guru. Inventing processes on the spot, she is shocked when they begin transforming lives. But under the manipulative gaze of the retreat’s enigmatic host, it becomes increasingly unclear whether the retreat is healing people or quietly breaking them apart.

Tone: The White Lotus meets Apple Tree Yard, with the raw psychological honesty of This Way Up.

D-MOB: The Rose and Crown Affair

D-MOB are a crew of underestimated outsiders who weaponise their invisibility and society’s misconceptions to beat the system at its own game. Opening Arc: The Rose and Crown Affair – A two episode story launching the wider D-MOB series. Following the opening arc, each episode presents a new case where the D-Mob step in to help those who society has failed.

6 x 60-minute returning crime drama series

Logline: When beloved pub landlady Sam is forced back into the world of high-end cons and criminal deception to save the community she loves, she must hide the truth about who she really is from the only man who has ever truly loved her. As he works undercover to uncover the criminal mastermind behind a series of audacious heists, he has no idea she is the one orchestrating them all.

Tone: Happy Valley meets Hustle.

HAPPY ENDING

In development with a Channel 4 bursary.

6 x 60-minute psychological thriller

Logline: A disabled maths teacher, resigned to a life without passion, is reawakened by an affair with a beautiful woman, unaware she is a serial killer who has spent years granting disabled men what she believes is the perfect happy ending. As he begins uncovering the truth about her, and she falls for the first man she cannot bear to lose, their relationship becomes a dangerous collision between the killer who can’t let him go and the man who discovers what she is but still can’t walk away.

Tone: The Fall meets Killing Eve, with a nod toward You.

SMALL PEOPLE

6 x 30-minute family comedy-drama series

Logline: When his wife abruptly leaves and he finds himself raising two teenage children alone, 4’5″ animation producer Leo must navigate single parenthood in a world where everyone, including his own kids, literally towers over him.

Tone: The heart of Outnumbered with the emotional truth of Somebody Somewhere.

DARLING HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN

6 x 60-minute drama series

Logline: When a struggling actor with a physical disability returns to volunteer at the children’s hospital where he was once a patient, he discovers that making sick children laugh might be his true calling. If he can first confront the trauma he has spent his life trying to outrun.

Tone: Call the Midwife meets Patch Adams in 1980s Britain.

SLOWLY MOVING

105-minute comedy drama feature

Logline: After the death of his wife, Eddie, a widowed countryside vlogger whose gentle videos have quietly built a devoted following, is followed to a Welsh hillside by Alessia, a lonely Italian ex-ballerina who fell in love not only with the British landscapes he filmed, but with the warmth and companionship he and his late wife once shared. A slow-burn romance told in what is withheld, not what is spoken.

Tone: Still Moving sits somewhere between The Straight Story, Perfect Days and Nomadland with the gentle observational rhythm of Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing.

Selected Broadcast Credits

Alongside his authored drama work, Neil has written and directed across a wide range of broadcast genres, including comedy, children’s television, animation, education, and training films. 

B@IT & Nasty Neighbours – Mother’s Best Child
Comedy shorts for Channel 4’s online offerings, with one sketch having over 6 million views on Facebook

Just So Darwin – CBeebies & BBC Learning
Script edited and wrote one of the 13 BAFTA nominated episodes.

Megamaths – BBC Schools
Co-wrote two series of ten x 20 min studio based maths programmes for 7 – 9 year olds. Japan Prize nominated and RTS award winning first series. 

The Friday Show – BBC Children’s
Sketch writer for Dick and Dom on this weekly children’s comedy series.

Square One Television – BBC Schools
Wrote mini-drama and comedy scetches. Co-production with Children’s Television Workshop, New York and the BBC.