Gwyneth Hughes: In Conversation

Award-winning television screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes discusses the ‘public’ art of television drama writing with Dr Helen Piper (University of Bristol).

Gwyneth's extensive and varied writing credits include the critically acclaimed series Mr Bates Vs. The Post Office, about the miscarriage of justice in which hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted. The series sparked such widespread outcry it prompted the government to announce plans to compensate and exonerate victims, introduce new legislation and launch a criminal investigation into the Post Office.

As we approach the centenary of television’s invention, the Autumn Art Lecture series will reflect on its distinctive possibility as a very public art. This term was coined in the last century on the premise that such arts rightfully ‘belong’ to the people and has tended to underpin judgements about television’s failures as well as its achievements. Today, the loss of a shared, national audience and the transformation of the TV industry into a crowded, global marketplace seems to have left little space for debate about what television could or should be, but these are precisely the questions to which this year’s lecture series will give room. The series will host prominent speakers from the worlds of both academic research and television production, including Gwyneth Hughes, writer of the RTS and BAFTA winning drama, Mr Bates Vs. The Post Office (ITV, 2024).

The Autumn Art Lecture series is hosted by the University of Bristol's Faculty of Arts, Law & Social Sciences.

Find out more about the other events in the Autumn Art Lectures 2025 series, Television: A Very Public Art. If you have any questions about this event or the series as a whole, please contact [email protected].

Screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes’ most recent work is the Bafta award winning ITV drama serial Mr Bates vs The Post Office. 

Gwyn was born in London, the daughter of a police constable from North Wales. She studied Russian at Sussex University, before moving to the north of England to train as a newspaper reporter on the Sheffield Morning Telegraph. Her first job in broadcasting was on the Yorkshire Television regional newsdesk. From there she became a Bafta-nominated documentary director specializing in history and true crime and began her move from factual TV into drama on cop shows like The Bill and Silent Witness.  Her original thriller miniseries Five Days, and her Tippi Hedren biopic The Girl, were both nominated for the Baftas and the Golden Globes. Her classic dramatizations include The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Vanity Fair and Miss Austen Regrets.  Gwyn lives in North Yorkshire. 

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Host or Publisher Faculty of Arts, University of Bristol