Scriptwriter for hire and Script Consultant UK

Hello and welcome to my website.

My name is Matthew Cooper and I’m a BAFTA shortlisted, Royal Television Society nominated, scriptwriter for hire, script consultant, script doctor, and director  from Leeds in the UK.  Through this website you can hire me as a scriptwriter, or script consultant to help your scripted project. 

Script Writer for hire UK

As a script writer I’ve written for EastEnders, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks and Family Affairs – I’ve sold feature film scripts to Hollywood majors and done all kinds of rewrite work on produced and released feature films . I was the youngest ever writer on the core scriptwriting team at ITV soap Emmerdale, where I was also BAFTA shortlisted for my work on the show.

I and was the winner of the first ever Lloyds Bank Film Challenge and the Oscar Moore Screenwriting Award, in the past I was runner up in BBC Double Exposure Script Competition – and was a finalist in the BBC Writersroom Open Call back in the early 2000s.

Here’s a partial list of some of my credits on the IMDb.  Those credits don’t include under the table and off the radar rewrites and fixes on various projects (some backed by streaming giant Netflix).

My first short film ‘Family Style’ was made for Channel Four in 1993 and starred a then unknown actor called Ewan McGregor and was directed by Justin Chadwick (The Long Walk to Freedom).

After selling a feature film script age 21 to a Miramax, I went onto write for the soaps – including the iconic episode of EastEnders where ‘Alfie’ told ‘Kat’ he loved her for the first time (17 million viewers on BBC One). 

I wrote EastEnders for a year, was also the youngest writer on Emmerdale (at 27) where I delivered 11 episodes in my first 12 months on the writing team (the equivalent to three feature films, written shot and released in under 12 months – a real learning experience as a scriptwriter).

I worked for CH5 on ‘Family Affairs’ then in 2006/07 I storylined over 200 episodes of Hollyoaks during the shows most successful ever period – which included introducing the ‘McQueen Family’ and gangster Warren Fox.

I was personally responsible for Warren Fox storylines and the now iconic love story between ‘John Paul and Craig’ which broke fresh ground at the time…

UK Script consultant 

In 2006, while writing Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks I was bitten by the YouTube bug and created one of the first ever web serials for YouTube. ‘Dylan Ogden’ as the series was called was produced by Martyn Smith (Dragons Den) and directed by Ian Bevitt (Coronation Street).

The series was about to be sold to MySpace before the platform collapsed, and ultimately the series proved too ‘early’ to find an online audience.

Script Doctor and Script Consultant Services

I started this website UK script consultant website in 2012, so clients could hire me directly, and it’s been a huge success.

I work with producers, directors, production companies, brands, broadcasters and content creators and marketing companies from across the globe on all manner of film, TV and creative content which requires scriptwriting, script editing or story lining.

If you have a project that requires scenes with actors playing roles, and speaking dialogue – that’s my bag – I can write it, fix it, edit it, improve it, or help by creating the characters and scenes and the whole story from scratch – to your specifications and needs, be it film, tv, online content or any sort or scripted comedy or drama.

I’ve also, through this website turned player/coach, offered my services to new and experienced writers in the form of script reports or script coverage service– where new writers can get the opinion, help and advice of a BAFTA shortlisted scriptwriter, and script consultant with tons of real world experience, at an affordable price – My script reports for new writers are the most in-depth on the market I’m told and are great value for money (£120 for a full feature film script report with a page by page help and actionable advice from a true pro scriptwriter) 40 pages of useful and helpful advice isn’t unusual. 

HERE IS MY SCRIPTWRITING SHOWREEL – how many scriptwriters and script consultants online can show this level of experience???

Director and producer

As well as being busy with scriptwriting and script consultancy work I’ve also started a career as a director.

In 2020, my first feature film as a writer / director ‘Markham‘ was released to good reviews.  Markham is a dark psychological horror which mixes H.P. Lovecraft and the new trend for ‘rubber reality’ cinema, the film was shot on a microbudget and is pretty unique in that the whole plot and every scene was improvised by the actors on set – Markham became the first film in a trilogy that was shot during the pandemic.

My second film as a writer/ director ‘At The Mountains of Madness‘ was released in July 2021 – and forms the second part of the trilogy.   At The Mountains of Madness was a direct adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story which many have described as ‘an unfilmable novel‘ – well, we filmed it.

The final film in the Trilogy is ‘When the Earth Gives Up The Dead‘ which was released in 2022.

All three films in the trilogy were shot in black and white and use old school VFX and SFX techniques (as well as featuring sequences shot on Super 8mm cine film). You can find out more about how the films are made on the Warehouse Transmedia website, but my biggest project (so far) as a writer director followed in 2025… with SOBER…

Matthew Cooper – Writer and Director

Since completing the low budget horror trilogy I’ve gone onto direct a bigger budget comedy feature film called Sober – which stars Dean Smith (Waterloo Road, Last Tango In Halifax, Still Open All Hours) and Tom Gibbons (The Archers, Funny Cow).

Sober was released in April 2025 and turned into an online sensation with 10,000 views on YouTube on its first weekend.