Worms in The Wall... my new (live action) series!

The pilot script is written, the bible has been beautifully transformed by Tom Roche into something divine and this week my new series goes out to woo networks in pursuit of a slot!

Worms in the Wall is an idea I've been developing with Paul Donovan of Grand Picturesand I'm really excited about it. I've wanted for decades to develop something loosely based on the B&B my Grandmother ran in Dun Laoghaire from the 1920s and the seafront hotel (the Wavecrest) she took on in 1936. I've toyed with elements of it - the permanent winter residents my mother grew up with, the friendships residents formed with their landlady, the history happening all around them... but nothing had ever worked.

Until last September.

I've also always wanted to work on something with Grand Pictures. One of their most recent successes has been as co-producer with Sky of Moone Boy, a series I love. They were interested in one of my first family features back in 2003 but I took the film in a different direction. Still, it has been at the back of my mind and this year when I met Paul at the Galway Film Fleadh and he said he was looking for TV, specifically comedy drama, my antennae went up. I sent him a couple of series ideas that were ready to go and reasonably developed but neither of them stuck.

Then I remembered my Grandmother's B&B/ hotel... I sent Paul a one page pitch called Worms in the Wall. We met for coffee, he was passionate about the potential for the idea and I got to work. One deal memo later and Worms... began to seriously evolve.

It's great working with a producer who's on the same wavelength and as keen to get a project made as you are to write it. It's actually fun. You come away from meetings not feeling stressed or bogged down by notes but itching to get into the next draft. It's been a painless and pleasurable process.

Oh and if you're wondering where the title comes from, I once stayed in this really dodgy hotel while backpacking around Oz in 1987. In this hotel - they're really B&B's but if they serve drink, they're 'hotels' - Auld Lang's Aye played constantly. When I asked why, I was told that if they stopped playing it, all the termites would stop holding hands and the place would fall down.

I'm not sure what my Grandmother would have thought of that!