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

DALL·E 2025-02-06 20.52.02 - A surreal wellness retreat scene in a lush tropical environment. A meditation circle of exactly five people dressed in white, sitting in a serene yet

9 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

DALL·E 2025-02-17 13.52.33 - A sleek, stylized image of a traditional British pub located on the corner of a parade of shops. The pub is three stories high with large windows, and

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.

NAKED BEAUTY

2-part stage play / 2 x 60-minute television drama

Logline: When Sophie, a confident young art student, asks her physically disabled childhood friend Stephen to pose nude for her final exhibition piece, the two are forced to confront decades of shame, desire, performance and unspoken love. Over the course of an emotionally charged week at Sophie’s family retreat, both discover that being truly seen can be as frightening as it is transformative.

Tone: The emotional honesty of Normal People meets the theatrical intimacy of Educating Rita.

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

6 x 30-minute comedy-drama series

Logline: After the death of his wife, Eddie, a widowed countryside vlogger whose gentle online videos have quietly built a devoted following, forms an unexpected connection with a lonely Italian ex-ballerina who fell in love not only with the British landscapes he filmed, but with the warmth, companionship and emotional world he and his wife created together.

Tone: The emotional intimacy of The Detectorists 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.