a stranger comes to call...
A houseful of twenty-something professionals,
absorbed in their hectic jobs and buzzing social
lives, are expecting the arrival of Tom's cousin
Richard. Since they've never met him, and since
Tom is away for three months, they have no way of
knowing that the handsome young man who turns
up on their doorstep and who they welcome in is in
fact not the person they think.

By the time they're starting to have second
thoughts, it's too late: the visitor has consolidated
his position in their house and in their lives, and he
doesn't want to leave...
what the critics said
'This wonderfully taut piece of writing... was like a Pinter play in which the unknown intruder was a
cross between Iago and Vinnie Jones... Wow.' Stephen Pile, The Daily Telegraph

'This is a cracker... death watch beetle would be preferable to the infestation 'Richard' represents' The
Sunday Times

'A taut chiller that winds itself up into a crescendo of fear' Radio Times

'This Life crossed with Shallow Grave... The Visitor may make you think twice before opening your
front door tonight' Time Out
credits
'Richard' : Daniel Craig
Louise : Miranda Pleasence
Matt : Shaun Parkes
Terri : Claire Rushbrook

Music : Nick Bicat
Film Editor : Victoria Boydell

Script editor : Beccy de Souza
Costume designer : Jayne Gregory
Production designer : Gillian Miles
Executive producers : Greg Brenman & Julia Ouston

Producer : Amanda Davis
Director : Audrey Cooke

A Tiger Aspect production
author commentary
The Visitor was the first TV drama I wrote. It was transmitted on Channel 4 on the 26th October
1999, about ten months after I'd first pitched the idea for one of Channel 4's 'Shockers' season
slots. (There were three one-hour films aired for this first season of 'Shockers', and The Visitor was
the second transmitted.)

This was the project that really taught me how to write screenplays. My previous attempts had all
been adaptations of my own novels and I was keen to try something original, but I'd never written
for TV before so this was inevitably going to be something of a learning process. Over the ten
months or so that elapsed between the first pitch (which is when you try to convince the
production company to commission a script or a 'treatment') and the start of shooting, the
production team at Tiger Aspect led me step by step through the pacing of the script, the structure
of the acts, everything I needed to know. They were incredibly patient. By the time we were
finished, the script had far outgrown my initial idea: it was much more sinister and dramatic. And, for
me most importantly of all, I now had a good working knowledge of how to write an effective drama
script. (Beccy and Amanda deserve endless thanks for this!)

Seeing the whole process through, from seedling concept to hanging about on set, was
tremendously good fun and very rewarding. We had innumerable script meetings in which I learnt
such invaluable details as how to write descriptions of sex scenes (the answer? Don't bother -
leave it to the director and actors to sort out. If you do describe all the intimate details and write
each lustful moan out in the dialogue, everyone just gets the giggles) and how to lead in to a
commercial break with a suitable cliff-hanger.

It was once the writing was finished and my job was effectively over that things were most
interesting for me, though. This was when the film started to take shape. I went along and hung
around on-set for a day, eating catering lunch and watching the same four lines of dialogue being
filmed over and over again from different angles. Then I got to see the 'rushes' - video tapes of the
day's film (the same four lines over and over, only this time from the camera's point of view). I saw
the whole film, edited and assembled, and was taken aback that it somehow didn't seem as
punchy or dramatic as I'd expected. The missing ingredient was sound: once the music was
layered on and the sound effects heightened at the post-production stage, it suddenly clicked
into focus and everything was right. The greatest lesson I learnt here was just how important all the
different factors of a film are to the audience's reaction. Even though something like the sound of
a door closing may seem an utterly irrelevant detail, it has a subconscious, emotional impact on the
viewer - especially if it sounds wrong to them. The sound of a stage bottle breaking doesn't sound
like real glass, so real glass smashing has to be dubbed over. The lighting of consecutive scenes
shot on different days may not match, so has to be evened up in the editing suite. All of these tiny
details are meticulously dealt with, and the funny thing is that they would only ever stand out to the
viewer if they were forgotten: if they're done right, you don't really notice them at all.

I received my completed tape of the film quite a while before the actual transmission date, but
deliberately didn't watch it until it came out 'for real' on television. It was far more fun to see the
thing with commercial ad breaks, and to know that other people around the country were watching
it at the same time as me. (That, incidentally, is a little thrill you don't really get with a book: you can
never be sure whether anyone is reading it at all! Whereas, as it turned out, over four million
people were tuned in to The Visitor at the same time as I was.)

In the end, the film was almost unnervingly close to how I'd imagined it while writing. (For more on
this topic, see the frequently asked questions page, where I cover it in greater detail.) It was
thrilling to watch the scenes I'd written months before coming alive stage by stage, and being
polished and developed by the rest of the team - an experience very unlike the usual lonely life of
a novelist!
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