Screenplays
Susan Bounty
TV Series
Holland turned his 200 page novel into a 4-part TV drama, set largely in London and Devon, at a time when adultery, heresy and sedition were punishable by death.
Parliament passed morality laws after the Civil War to make the country more godly, but at a terrible cost. Susan Bounty, along with men calling for greater political rights and religious freedom faced paying a heavy price.
Theatres were closed for spreading immorality, prostitutes exiled to servitude. This wasn’t the Taliban, it was England ruled by a Puritan Parliament in the 1650s.
Benjamin Squirrell and the Hadleigh Workhouse
Feature Film
Holland’s novel set in a small Suffolk town is recreated as a two hour feature film. The parish poor were housed inside the Hadleigh Guildhall for more than 200 years.
In 1793, inmates Amy, Ben, Daisy and Sarah were dependent on the master, Daniel Ward, for their welfare. Like workhouse inmates across England, they were set to work to pay their way, rope picking, bone crushing, working for local farmers, sold as indentured apprentices.
But what if the workhouse master was greedy and cruel, or worse…
Barbary Slave
TV Series
Holland’s first two novels have been adapted to produce seven action-packed episodes.
Said and Khaled, two boys in Algiers, aspire to fame and fortune as corsairs sailing the seas hunting for a valuable commodity.
More than 1.25 million Europeans were seized and sold into slavery in the Ottoman Empire in the period 1500-1800. English and Irish captives were amongst them.
The first half of the series is set in the period 1609-31, the second half 25 years later in 1656.
Unlived Lives
TV Series
Holland worked closely with Elizabeth Wilde McCormick to adapt her brilliant trilogy of novels to a 9-part TV series.
Unlived Lives is the story of psychotherapist, Dr Max Maxwell, over a period of fifteen years.
Scores of patients enter his pale green room and soldiers’ clinic, but Unlived Lives focuses on four patients, Saskia, Vera, Frank, and Agnes.
Throughout the series, Max struggles with his own personal life; primarily his marriage to Emily and her struggle with mental illness.
Max also has to face up to the trauma and guilt of his own past.
Unlived Lives is about people who feel broken, but there is hope and healing
Falling Soldiers
TV Series
Neil Davies, former Parachute Regiment and award-winning director/producer, wrote his urban thriller about veterans returning from Afghanistan struggling on civvy street.
Former Sergeant Eddie Conway struggles with the demons of his own past, as well as trying to look after the troubled and traumatised members of his old unit, his mob.
Holland was delighted to help Davies transpose his action page turner into a fast-moving 6-part TV drama. The pair studied screenplay together, writing the first draft over a four-month period in the second half of 2022.
Miss Adventures
Feature Film
Holland is currently working with Nancy Pearce to adapt her fun memoir about a woman’s thirst for travel and adventure.
With the most accident-prone personality you can imagine, Miss Adventures retells some of her most mortifying stories from around the globe.
There are plenty of laughs (at her expense), after all, laughter is one of the greatest gifts you can give!