Who is Cat Jones and is The Jetty a true story?
BRAND new BBC drama The Jetty stars a host of top UK talent and promises to have viewers gripped.
Read on to find out more about the show’s writer, and what inspired the twists and turns of the new thriller.
What is The Jetty?
The Jetty is a brand new drama series from the BBC.
It stars actress Jenna Coleman amongst a host of famous faces.
The show sees a fire tear through a property in a scenic Lancashire lake town.
Detective Ember Manning must work out how it connects to a podcast journalist investigating a missing person cold case, and an illicit relationship between a man in his twenties and two underage girls.
But as Ember gets close to the truth, it threatens to destroy her life.
Who is Cat Jones?
Cat Jones is an award-winning writer who’s created and written the new BBC drama The Jetty.
She’s previously worked on a host of other BBC shows, including as writer on a number of episodes of long-running soaps EastEnders and Doctors.
In 2021 she wrote two episodes of the Sky Original drama Wolfe, which starred Babou Ceesay as a crime scene investigator.
Cat was also the lead writer on BBC Three‘s Five by Five, which gave her the opportunity to work with heart-throb and acting royalty Idris Elba.
Her big break came when she won the BBC Radio Drama Alfred Bradley Bursary Award.
This was a scheme set up to give opportunities for Northern writers, and it led to Cat having her drama Hangdog broadcast on Radio 4.
Is The Jetty based on a true story?
The Jetty is a fictional drama, however writer Cat Jones says it’s loosely based on her own experiences growing up.
She says some of her friends got involved in relationships with older men, which at the time they thought was exciting.
As she’s grown older, Cat says she’s realised just how illegal and abusive the relationships were.
She wanted to explore the idea of looking back at previous life experiences and – with hindsight – thinking about whether they were acceptable or not.
The writer describes the show as being about the relationship between men and women in a post “Me Too” world.
She says: “It’s about looking at the relationship between a sexist remark in the pub against violence towards women and girls, and the fact that one can be an incubator for the other.
“We don’t live in a world where women and girls are safe and secure.”
It’s a detective thriller so the tone is thrilling, exciting, propulsive and intriguing.”
Cat Jones
Across its four-episode run, The Jetty explores themes such as consent, memory and identity.
How to watch The Jetty
The Jetty is on BBC One each Monday for four weeks from July 15.
It starts at 9pm, and the post-watershed slot suggests it’s going to be a dark and twisted thriller.
Episodes will also be available on BBC iPlayer after they’ve aired.