Stephen Volk is a native of South Wales. His first script that was produced was the feature film, Gothic. Directed by Ken Russell, it was a retelling of the birth of Frankenstein. He followed that with several other scripts like The Kiss, Superstition and Octane.

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Controversy!

In 1992, he proposed a six-part serial based on the supernatural to BBC on the suggestion of his agent, Linda Seifert. This six-part series was pared down to a 90 minute special called Ghostwatch. Volk wrote this drama to resemble a live broadcast of a poltergeist investigation. Aired on Halloween, it featured real-life interviewers like Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene and Mike Smith. The drama created a furor in Britain. Half the viewers thought it was real, while half realized it was fiction. Volk had tried to get as many elements of a live documentary into the show as possible. He made use of all the props used in a live broadcast, like the large screen behind the host, and writing the dialogue to feel as “live” as possible. He encouraged anchor veteran, Michael Parkinson, to “veer off the script in any way he thought was comfortable.” This added a touch of realism that added to the effects of the show on the public. After the showing, the BBC shelved the program, with the intention of never showing it again on TV. The controversy that arose from the “live” show was too much for them. (Ghostwatch is now available on DVD.)

From watching ghosts, to the life hereafter…

Stephen Volk arose like a phoenix from the ashes, however, and continued to write for both film and television. In 2005, his new series, Afterlife, premiered on British TV screens. *Afterlife *is about Alison Mundy, who has psychic abilities that she really isn’t comfortable with. She sees Dr. Robert Bridge, a psychologist who has recently lost his young son. He tries to help her, while at the same time, can’t accept that if he only believed what Alison was telling him, he could find some comfort after his loss.

The first season was a series of six episodes. Volk says that this is the usual amount that broadcasters want to commit to, and as he was planning the season, he “designed the arc of the series very much that episode six would be a big climax.” He already had the image of the last scene of the last episode clearly in his mind while he was writing the earlier episodes. He thinks of series one as a novel made up of six short stories that all build to the same climactic end. With a second series coming out after this first one, the “ending” really couldn’t be an ending after all.

He ascribes to the theory put forward by Angela Carter, who stated that all fiction is symbolic autobiography. In Afterlife, he feels a part of himself in both leading characters, from the doctor who analyzes and organizes things rationally, to Alison, who sees things that aren’t there. The first season won an RTS Award and a Golden Nymph award.

The second season consisted of eight episodes. Stephen Volk opted to write four himself, and oversee other writers to complete the season. Writing a script is very time consuming, and writing more than four episodes would have been too much. Overseeing the other writers while writing the four episodes took quite a bit of time, and he didn’t get to visit the set as often as he would have liked. He likes to see the scenes come to life… it inspires him when he goes back to his office to continue on the next script.

When writing a series like Afterlife, Stephen Volk says that “it is essential for us to keep the integrity of the development of the characters and keep that believable within the parameters of the series… I think what we always try and do is ask ourselves to make the development of the story more complex than they first appear.” In Afterlife, we see this come to pass as Robert is even more confused after the conclusion of the first series, where Alison helped his son to pass over to the other side.

When asked about supporting characters, Volk says they “support and embellish the relationship between Alison and Robert… I invented the idea of his ex-wife to represent normality and life and all those forces which Alison doesn’t represent.” This balance is what helps us to focus on the main characters in a series.