
Andrea Gibb
Writing
Biography
Gibb was born in Greenock, Scotland. She studied drama and sociology at Glasgow University and then did a post-graduate teaching degree at Manchester Polytechnic before going on to do an acting course at the Drama Studio London. She acted regularly in theatre and television before she started writing. Her most high-profile role was as Deirdre, Calum Buchanan's girlfriend in All Creatures Great and Small. "When I was doing All Creatures, I had absolutely no desire, no intention, no belief that I could write," recalled Gibb in 2016. "It never occurred to me, and it was never something I imagined myself doing in the future. My writing career just happened, almost accidentally, and now I don't act very much at all. Occasionally I'll do the odd short film for a friend. I did a theatre job about three years ago that I absolutely loved. I miss actors and I miss that sense of camaraderie. You become a family." "I had just moved from London up to Liverpool because my partner at the time was made the associate director of the Everyman Theatre, so I moved with him. I was doing a fair bit of acting in the North West around Liverpool, including at the Everyman, but I still had a London agent, so I was going down for auditions all the time. She rang me and asked if I'd be interested in going up for All Creatures Great and Small because they were looking for a Scottish character. At first I thought it was to play a vet and I was really excited, then I read the script and, of course, it transpired that Deirdre worked at the Ministry of Agriculture." Gibb was also a regular presenter on the children's television programme Let's Pretend.[citation needed] She was shortlisted for The Dennis Potter Award with her screenplay Lucky Bag and then went on to win a Mental Health Media Award for the film Golden Wedding, which she wrote for BBC Scotland. She then wrote the screenplays for Dear Frankie and AfterLife. Both these films were shot in her home town of Greenock at exactly the same time. She has a small cameo role in Dear Frankie. Gibb was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and the BAFTA Scotland award for best Screenwriter. She was nominated for a Scotland on Sunday/Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award and won the Scottish Screen Bowmore filmmaker of the year award in 2005. She also won the Women in Film and Television Script award for her work on these two films.[citation needed] Gibb is currently in development with several projects including high-profile adaptations of Swallows and Amazons for BBC Films, Vikram Seth's An Equal Music for Cuba Pictures, Rose Tremain's The Road Home for BBC 2 and Andrea Gillies's Keeper for BBC1.
Known For

Drama following the lives of a group of midwives working in the poverty-stricken East End of London during the 1950s, based on the best-selling memoirs of Jennifer Worth.
Call the Midwife

The trials and misadventures of the staff at a country veterinary office in Yorkshire. James Herriot, a young animal surgeon, moves to a small Yorkshire town to begin his first job.
All Creatures Great and Small

Miss Austen takes a literary mystery – Cassandra Austen notoriously burning her famous sister Jane’s letters – and reimagines it as a fascinating, witty and heart-breaking story of sisterly love, while creating in Cassandra a character as captivating as any Austen heroine.
Miss Austen

A friendship forged between James and Tully in a small Scottish town in 1986. One weekend, they make a vow to each other to go at life differently. But then, 30 years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has the worst kind of news.
Mayflies

Four children dream of escaping the tedium of a summer holiday with their mother. When finally given permission to camp on their own on an island in the middle of a vast lake, they are overjoyed. But when they get there they discover they may not be alone… The battle for ownership of a lonely island teaches them the skills of survival, the value of friendship and the importance of holding your nerve.
Swallows and Amazons

Nine-year-old Frankie and his single mum Lizzie have been on the move ever since Frankie can remember, most recently arriving in a seaside Scottish town. Wanting to protect her deaf son from the truth that they've run away from his father, Lizzie has invented a story that he is away at sea on the HMS Accra. Every few weeks, Lizzie writes Frankie a make-believe letter from his father, telling of his adventures in exotic lands. As Frankie tracks the ship's progress around the globe, he discovers that it is due to dock in his hometown. With the real HMS Accra arriving in only a fortnight, Lizzie must choose between telling Frankie the truth or finding the perfect stranger to play Frankie's father for just one day...
Dear Frankie

A feisty young woman returns to Glasgow to run her deceased father's curry house.
Nina's Heavenly Delights

Maud's best friend Elizabeth has disappeared, but as she tries to solve the mystery, dementia threatens to erase all the clues, giving the search a poignant urgency.
Elizabeth Is Missing

High-flying journalist Kenny Brogan (Kevin McKidd) is working on the story that could make his career when he is told his mother is terminally ill. With his father no longer in the picture, this means that the responsibility for looking after his Down's Syndrome sister Roberta (Paula Sage) falls to him. Conflicted by career aspirations and the difficulties in caring for his sister, Kenny at first begins to resent Roberta, until he realizes just how much she means to him.
AfterLife
A postman has to face down a dangerous dog and an ex partner.
Bite
In the wake of their mother's death, two small boys are held captive to their father's grief. But when their mother's last wish heralds the arrival of their estranged grandmother, their fierce independence sets in motion a household power struggle that threatens to confront the ghosts of the past.
Nan
Golden Wedding is the story of an elderly couple, Eddie (Cosmo) and Martha (Edith MacArthur), who live alone on the edge of a loch. Eddie's illness means that he is trapped in the past, in an age when he was fighting fit in the Greenock yards. On the day of their golden wedding, Martha is left helpless after a fall, and suddenly their roles are reversed and Eddie must find the strength to come to her aid. Part of the Two Lives series of films produced by RTE
Golden Wedding
It's Laura's first job and she is anxious to do well, but her instinctive empathy with the elderly people in her care puts her in conflict with her colleagues.
Saved
An unconventional and extraordinary love story, it is based on the relationship between John Suchet, famous in the UK as a newsreader and broadcaster, and his wife Nula. The pair met while caring for previous partners, both of whom had dementia.