Pitching The Tent

For Radio 4 drama commissioning, pitch documents are really important. Apart from your track-record, they're all your producer has got as they try to steer your proposal through the commssioning rounds (although smaple scenes are sometimes requested).

I know it can be hard finding examples of pitch documents so here's what I submitted for The Tent.

This was my first pitch to the producer (I sent it, after an initial meeting along with two others)

The Tent

It starts as a solution to a lack of space. After the birth of his third child, with no money to move house or build an extension or even buy a shed, Gavin Lang puts up a tent in the garden.

It’s a place he can go for a few hours peace and quiet in which to work. Somewhere he can make calls without distraction. It doesn’t mean anything, he tells his wife, Fay. It’s purely practical.

She tries to believe him. But the hours he spends in the tent start to increase. And when, one night, Gavin doesn’t come back inside at all, they both realise that their relationship is in crisis.

Can they learn to love (or even like) each other again? Would a caravan provide a permanent solution? 

The Tent is a comedy about a couple overwhelmed by the everyday pressures of family life. 

Then, once we'd decided to make a formal pitch, this was the final draft.

The Tent

Gavin Lang is feeling crowded out. After the birth of his third child there is no room for his books, no space for his records and barely anywhere for him to sit.

His partner Fay is feeling overstretched. She and Gavin have always tried to be equal, to share and support each other. But it feels that only one of them is really driving family life. And it’s not him. 

The tent was up in the loft. Rather than taking chucking it out to make space, Gavin puts it up in the garden. Despite old sand on the floor and mould in the corners, it becomes a place where he can grab a few quiet moments and do some work.

Those ‘moments’ soon become hours. Then whole days pass with Gavin mostly under canvas. It’s practical, he says. But when he starts spending nights out there too, Fay knows that things are going seriously wrong.

One Friday, the house empties. The kids have been despatched to stay with Fay’s parents so that she and Gavin can spend the weekend making preparations for an event that has been 10 years in the offing: their wedding.

Amid discussions about flowers and salsa bands they are forced to question whether their relationship is now about anything more than beneficial tax arrangements. What do they really share? Why is Gavin spending so much time in the tent? Can they learn to love (or even like) each other again? Would a caravan provide a permanent solution?

Things come to a head at the zoo – a putative wedding venue. All that captivity seems to make it an ideal place to get married and they finally realise that it is not for them.

Back home, they feel their relationship has run its course. Gavin starts to pack his bags but when he looks for Fay in order to tell her that he has decided to leave, he cannot find her. She is in the tent.  Gavin crawls in too. And, as rain starts to drum on the canvas, they remember the first camping holidays they shared.

With the kids not due back until the morning, they spend the night out in the garden. Cooking together, sleeping together and falling back in love.