COURSE OVERVIEW
Get the professional training you need to kickstart your career in a world-leading UK Industry.
The UK remains a global powerhouse for unscripted content, creating formats and factual entertainment series that travel, entertain and shape our culture. From global hits such as The Traitors and The 1% Club to standout factual series like Clarkson’s Farm and Beckham, the appetite for innovative, engaging unscripted storytelling remains strong. And every successful show starts in the same place: development.
Content Tabs
The Unscripted Development Diploma is a year-long, part-time course designed to help you develop bold, original ideas and turn them into compelling, commissionable unscripted content. You will learn how great ideas are generated, shaped, packaged and pitched, while building the creative confidence, practical skills and industry knowledge to forge a career in unscripted development.
You will learn directly from leading commissioners, producers and development executives working at top production companies and major broadcasters and streamers, including Netflix, Prime Video, BBC, ITV, WBD, Channel 4 and Channel 5. With a small cohort, students benefit from regular access to these working professionals, individual feedback and the opportunity to build a valuable industry network.
Across the year, your coursework will help you build a body of distinctive ideas and professionally presented development materials that demonstrate your creative voice and growing skillset.
Teaching takes place predominantly online via Zoom on Thursday evenings, making the course accessible to students across the UK. This is complemented by at least five intensive, in-person workshop days at the NFTS campus in Beaconsfield.
The year culminates in a graduation pitch to a panel of commissioners and senior creatives, with a £1,000 prize awarded to the strongest pitch. Graduates join a growing network of NFTS alumni working successfully across the industry.
Development sits at the intersection of creativity, strategy and audience insight. Across the year, you will learn how to take an idea from an initial instinct to a compelling, market-ready proposition.
The course combines creative development, practical assignments, industry insight and direct access to working professionals. Areas of study include:
- Understanding audiences and the marketplace: Exploring broadcasters, streamers and digital platforms, how commissioning works, what different buyers are looking for and how audience behaviour is changing.
- Finding, researching and developing great ideas: Generating original concepts, identifying strong propositions, finding compelling stories, contributors and worlds, and using research to test and strengthen what makes an idea distinctive, timely and returnable.
- Writing treatments and creating pitch decks: Learning how to articulate an idea clearly, structure a persuasive proposal and create visually compelling materials that communicate your creative vision.
- Sizzles and visual pitching: Understanding how trailers, tasters and sizzle reels can demonstrate tone, characters, access and the potential of an idea.
- Talent and casting: Learning how to identify compelling contributors and on-screen talent, assess what makes someone work on camera, and cast distinctive characters who can bring an unscripted idea to life.
- The art of the pitch: Developing the confidence and communication skills to pitch ideas effectively, respond to questions and adapt your presentation for different buyers.
- Digital, social and emerging platforms: Exploring how unscripted storytelling is evolving across YouTube, creator-led content, podcasting and other digital platforms.
- AI and the future of development: Examining how emerging tools can support research, ideation, development and creative workflows, alongside the creative and ethical questions they raise.
- Practical skills: Building greater technical literacy through hands-on workshops, including a two-day broadcast camera course and Adobe Premiere Pro training.
You do not need previous television experience or a formal qualification to apply for this Diploma.
We welcome applicants from a wide range of backgrounds, whether you are looking to begin a career in unscripted television, move across from another creative industry, or build on existing experience in TV, film, digital, advertising, marketing, gaming, journalism or related fields.
What matters most is a genuine passion for unscripted storytelling. Strong applicants will be culturally engaged, watch and listen widely, have opinions about what is working in the market and be excited by the challenge of finding the next great idea.
We are looking for applicants who can demonstrate creativity, curiosity, strong ideas and a clear enthusiasm for developing original unscripted content. Strong communication, collaboration and an openness to feedback are also central to getting the most from the course.
If you have any questions, please email info@nfts.co.uk
The following item(s) should accompany your online application:
- An idea for an unscripted television programme/series. 500 words max.
- A review of an unscripted programme that you recently watched and enjoyed. Explain why you think it was a success. 500 words max.
Applications will close at 23:59 on the day of the deadline, shown at the top of this page.
Tutors
Graduate Success
Course graduates go on to work for a wide range of leading companies in diverse roles, with some co-founding their own businesses.
Recent credits include...
Miners' Strike 1984: The Battle For Britain
Series Producer Zora Kuttner
Graduate Success
Course graduates go on to work for a wide range of leading companies in diverse roles, with some co-founding their own businesses.
Recent credits include...
Fight The Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World
Development Producer Stefan Mattison
Graduate Success
Course graduates go on to work for a wide range of leading companies in diverse roles, with some co-founding their own businesses.
Graduates include...
Katherine Fish
Development Producer at HiddenLight Productions
Graduate Success
Course graduates go on to work for a wide range of leading companies in diverse roles, with some co-founding their own businesses.
Graduates include...
Jack Browne
Senior Development Producer at MultiStory Media
Jack was named as one of Broadcast's Hot Shots 2022.
