Swipe Right

Grounded in reality, Swipe Right is a female-led, northern-based romcom, inspired by the recent explosion of talented female comedy writers in the UK. These glorious goddesses are responsible for Starstruck, We Are Lady Parts, This Way Up, Chewing Gum, and Fleabag.

Speculative British comedies, like Swipe Right, however, are rare—Ghosts being one notable example—and speculative romcoms are even rarer. Yet the popularity of American shows such as The Good Place and Upload prove there is a clear gap in the market.

It is not just the speculative elements of Swipe Right that help it stand out in this burgeoning smorgasbord of female comedy, however. Its location in the North of England—as I know it, not the tired, old “gritty north” stereotype—gives Swipe Right a unique identity too.

Swipe Right’s time-travel element is influenced by films such as About Time and Back to the Future, where the smallest changes have massive repercussions. In Swipe Right, it’s the death of an ordinary housefly that potentially derails Nancy’s love story. This is because it’s through Nancy swatting the fly away, and accidentally swiping her true-love George right in the face, that she finds the courage to ask him out.

The fly’s untimely demise is indirectly caused by Nancy’s time-travelling future self. Future Nancy is taking a literal trip down memory lane—while wearing a contact-lens camera—to cheer up her family at George’s funeral fifty years in the future.

At first, it works. The previously distraught family even order popcorn while enjoying the live version of the love story they’ve heard a thousand times before.

But Future Nancy’s presence in the past sends the story off track. Nancy is railroaded by her mother into asking someone else to her cousin’s wedding, and George is friend-zoned.

Things go from bad to worse when Future Nancy suffers a heart attack and becomes trapped, unconscious, in the past. The family at George’s funeral disappear, and their partners’ memories are rewritten. Except that is for Sky, whose unwavering love for Nancy’s granddaughter sends her on a parallel mission to find a way to put everything right.

As an award-winning female scriptwriter from a medical background who required the assistance of a fly to tell my now husband that I love him, I can feed my wealth of expertise into scripting the series.

And with comedy and sci-fi experiencing a surge in popularity—especially with female leads at the fore—there is no better time to blend the genres. I am confident that Swipe Right will have crossover appeal with both audiences.