Thomas Duncan-Watt


Thomas Duncan-Watt is an Australian screenwriter and playwright. He has won three AWGIE Awards for his screenplays from five nominations. His work on UK series Dennis & Gnasher earned the series its first BAFTA nomination. In 2017, he was one of the mentors at the Arts/Screen Hackathon, along with Sarah Houbolt and others, which was organized by Australia Council for the Arts. In 2021, he won the John Hinde Award for Excellence in [Science Fiction Writing] for his work on the series Space Nova. In 2022 his original series The Eerie Chapters of Chhaya was announced as the winner of the Kindred co-production initiative between the ABC and CBC networks.

Career

TV writing

Duncan-Watt began his career as a writer on Australian comedy series Good News Week. His series credits include Dennis & Gnasher, Pirate Express, Winston Steinburger & Sir Dudley Ding-Dong, Beat Bugs, Alien TV. In 2018, Duncan-Watt was brought on as one of the writers on sci-fi action series Space Nova, for which he also wrote the pilot. The series was subsequently nominated for two AWGIE Awards, with Duncan-Watt winning the award for his episode Ghost Station. In 2019, Duncan-Watt, and collaborator, Suren Perera won Best in Show at the Asian Animation Summit in Seoul for their 'original concept', Escape from Pirate Asylum. Duncan-Watt and Perera were also the first international winners of the Ottawa Animation Festival's ‘Pitch THIS’ competition, for their original series, Owl & Cloud.

Plays

Duncan-Watt is the co-creator of two comedy plays, Thank You For Being a Friend and That Golden Girls Show: A Puppet Parody, both of which use Muppets-style puppets to parody the 1980s television series The Golden Girls. Thank You For Being a Friend toured Canada, where it won ‘Best Independent Theatre Production’ at the Broadway World Awards. That Golden Girls Show: A Puppet Parody debuted in 2016 Off-Broadway. The show commenced a US tour in 2019.

Awards and accolades