A FREELANCE screenwriter from Lampeter has written an episode for a Channel 4 prison drama.

Roanne Bardsley, 33, currently lives in Liverpool but is originally from Lampeter.

As a writer for Hollyoaks for several years, having written 63 episodes, Channel 4 were already aware of Roanne’s work when she sent a spec script to the creator of prison drama Screw, Rob Williams.

“Screw is set in a men’s prison and focuses on the lives and experiences of the prison officers,” Roanne explained, “it was inspired by the show’s creator Rob Williams’ experiences working as a teacher and later volunteering in prisons.

“There are serial stories that run across the whole series, centring around the two protagonists - Leigh and Rose - played by Nina Sosanya and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell respectively - and that’s something Rob was very much in charge of. But each episode also has a theme and a story of the week that explores a different issue facing prison officers, which resolves by the end of that episode.

“Rob wanted episode 5 - the episode I wrote - to tackle the mental health crisis in prisons. So my first job was to come up with a story and guest characters that we could explore that theme with.”

While this is Roanne’s first “high-end credit”, as a freelance screenwriter for television drama she has written for many other shows previously: “I divide my time between developing original drama projects with production companies and broadcasters, in the hope of one day getting an original series made, and also writing episodes of high-end drama series.

“Screw is my first high-end credit, and I’ve also written two episodes of a supernatural thriller called The Rising, which will start on Sky Max and Now on March 11th. Currently, I’m writing an episode of a drama called The F*ck-it Bucket for Netflix, and a few other series that I can’t really talk about.”

Roanne conducted extensive research for the Screw episode: “I worked closely with the script editor - Saffia Sage - and we did a lot of research into the statistics and reality of mental health in prisons - both for the inmates and the prison officers. We spoke to charities, real life prison officers and other people working in the prison service. I also watched a lot of documentaries about both life in prisons and also acute mental health problems.

“What we learned was that a huge proportion of inmates suffer from mental health problems, some very severe.

“Prison officers receive some mental health awareness training, but that’s it. They aren’t doctors or psychologists or medical professionals, yet they are dealing with people who are self-harming, attempting suicide, experiencing depression, anxiety and psychosis every day.

“It has an inevitable impact on the prison officers’ own mental health.

“The next challenge I had was to find a way to feed all the research we’d done into a story and characters that would thrill and surprise the audience.”

Screw is available as a complete boxset on All 4, and the final episode will be broadcast on Thursday.