BAFTA Success for TCD PhD Student

Posted on: 09 December 2010

Irish director Neasa Hardiman who is currently doing a PhD in film studies at Trinity  won a BAFTA for Best Children’s Drama for ‘Tracy Beaker Returns’  at the recent awards in  London . Hardiman is lead director on both series of the BBC drama, developed from the novels by Jacqueline Wilson. 

‘Tracy Beaker Returns’ is Neasa Hardiman’s first drama for children. “My intention was to take on serious subjects, to make a kind of ‘Play for Today’ for children, leavened with some humour”, Neasa explains. “In the end, I think Neil Gaiman got it right when he said ‘There are no such things as children’s stories, there are only good stories and bad stories’.”

The Tracy Beaker Returns Production Team with actors Richard Wisker and Dani Harmer

In the drama series,  the character, Tracy Beaker is twenty years old. She’s impulsive, angry, but also strong, funny and loyal. She reluctantly takes a job as a care assistant at the same care home where she spent her own troubled childhood. There she meets other young people struggling like her, each with their own problems and grief. Each episode focuses on one of the home’s denizens as they come to terms with their own past and try to map a better future.

Neasa’s other recent credits include ‘School Run’ (IFTA nominated feature drama for TV3), ‘An Gaeilgeoir Nocht’ (IFTA nominated feature drama for TG4) and drama series ‘Totally Frank’ for Channel 4. Neasa is a former Producer Director with RTE, where she made numerous documentaries and directed ‘Fair City’ as well as designing the RTE logo.

Neasa is currently  pursuing a PhD in Film Studies under Paula Quigley. Her interest is in new iterations of genre cinema in relation to selected films by Katheryn Bigelow, Ang Lee and Jane Campion.

Series Two of ‘Tracy Beaker Returns’ screens on BBC1, BBCHD and CBBC next January.