Peter Bowker (born 5 January 1959) is a British playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for the television serialsBlackpool (2004), a musical drama about a shadycasino owner in thenorth of England;Occupation (2009), which follows three military servicemen adjusting to civilian life aftera tour of duty in Iraq;Capital (2015), anEmmy award-winning drama aboutreal-estate bubbles inSouth London; andThe A Word (2016), an adaptation of Keren Margalit'sIsraeli dramaYellow Peppers about a family raising anautistic child. In 2007, he adaptedBlackpool forCBS asViva Laughlin.

Born and raised inHazel Grove,Stockport, England.^[2][3] Bowker was educated atMarple Hall School and read Philosophy and English at theUniversity of Leeds.^[4] He taught for twelve years in aLeeds hospital unit for the intellectually disabled,^[4] and went on to study for anM.A. in creative writing at theUniversity of East Anglia, where his tutors were novelistsMalcolm Bradbury andRose Tremain. He switched to the screenwriting course after realising he preferred writing dialogue.^[3][4]

Bowker began his career writing for the long-runningBBC medical dramaCasualty in 1992. He wrote seven episodes of the series, including the 1993 episode "Boiling Point", in which the emergency department is burnt down by rioters. "Boiling Point" attracted 17 million viewers and hundreds of complaints, and led to Bowker writing forMedics andPeak Practice.^[5]

Bowker later began to write his own works for television, and in 2002 contributed the playFlesh and Blood to theBBC Two season on sex and disability. It was hailed as a breakthrough in the representation of learning disability.^[6] He has also contributed updated versions of"The Miller's Tale" andA Midsummer Night's Dream for the BBC'sThe Canterbury Tales andShakespeare ReTold series (2003 and 2005, respectively).

In 2009, Bowker rose back to prominence with a series of high profile and sometimes critically well-received serial dramas.Occupation, based upon the backdrop of theIraq War and starringJames Nesbitt andStephen Graham, ran for three consecutive nights onBBC One. It averaged approximately 4 million viewers across the three nights and was described byThe Independent as a "masterly production",^[7] as well as gaining praise across the wider media. Bowker followed this with another BBC drama,Desperate Romantics, which received mixed reviews, and an adaptation ofEmily Brontë's classic novelWuthering Heights forITV.

Bowkerexecutive produced bothViva Laughlin andWuthering Heights.^[8][9] He won theRoyal Television Society Award for Best Writer for both 2002, forFlesh and Blood, and 2009, forOccupation.^[10][11]

Bowker's projects have included an adaptation ofMark Haddon's novel,A Spot of Bother, a medical drama series calledMonroe forITV1, and the biographical BBC filmEric and Ernie aboutMorecambe and Wise, broadcast on 1 January 2011.^[3][12][13] In 2015, he wrote the three-part BBC series Capital based on John Lanchester'snovel of the same name.^[14] In 2019, he wrote the Second World War dramaWorld on Fire.^[15] It was renewed for a second series, which was broadcast in 2023.

• Peter Bowker atIMDb

• 1959 births
• Living people
• 20th-century British screenwriters
• 21st-century British screenwriters
• People educated at Marple Hall School
• Alumni of the University of Leeds
• Alumni of the University of East Anglia
• British male television writers
• English television writers
• English screenwriters
• English male screenwriters
• English soap opera writers
• English dramatists and playwrights
• English male dramatists and playwrights
• People from Hazel Grove

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