In November 2021, Joseph Tucker, a scriptwriter from Coventry, read Alex Nunns’ book The Candidate and decided that it was a huge story full of interesting characters that deserved a bigger audience. Joseph had rejoined the Labour Party to vote for Jeremy Corbyn and, like many others, had a sense that something fishy had taken place within the party.
He reached out to (DMs ››› slid into) Alex and dialogue began. A strong working title was quickly settled on and Joseph started writing A Very British Sabotage.
What followed was four years of research and development. Very much the kind of slow, unglamorous groundwork that precedes anything worth making.
“It was basically me tinkering away in my father-in-law’s spare room on evenings and weekends. I’m coming home every day covered in mud and crunching Ibuprofen and telling him with wild eyes that this thing has legs, borrowing money to buy a website name or pay for printing costs.”
By January 2022, radio drama producer and Joseph’s former tutor on his MA, Phillip Palmer, had read pitch documents and commented that the AVBS story was “extraordinary — literally beggars belief. A story that deserves to be told.” Alex Nunns agreed that the vision was shared, and opened the door to his publisher, OR Books. The research phase began in earnest with interviews arranged for many of the staff that worked with Jeremy during his tenure as Labour Party leader.
In July 2023, OR Books signed a contract granting exclusivity to develop Nunns’ books into a factual drama. Then, in December, Jeremy Corbyn confirmed he was “delighted” about the project and would be “supportive and involved if it gets commissioned.” This was all the affirmation Joseph needed to go full steam ahead.
By mid-2024, the circle of people who believed in A Very British Sabotage had grown considerably. Award-winning audio drama director Dirk Maggs, whose credits include multiple BBC Radio productions, expressed enthusiasm and offered to assist with finding directorial and sound design talent. In June, Ian Martin, writer of The Thick of It and The Death of Stalin, offered to provide notes on the pilot script. By September, Seumas Milne had agreed to assist with research.
Then, again via a process involving the sliding into of DMs, Joseph reached out to Maxine Peake, who expressed an interest in playing Karie Murphy — if the script was good enough and availability was not a factor.
In November 2025, two things happened in quick succession. OR Books agreed in principle to fold the rights to Paul Holden’s The Fraud into the existing deal, expanding the scope of what A Very British Sabotage could tell and presenting an opportunity to make future seasons of the show. And one of the UK’s leading independent news outlets approached Joseph with an offer to finance Season 1 of A Very British Sabotage — details of which will be released in the coming weeks.
In the summer of 2026 Joseph took on a production coordinator to assist with the logistics, legal and business aspects of production, while he completes the writing process alongside the director and sound designer.
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