SCREEN QUEEN:

The Split (9pm, BBC1) is just the latest drama series to spring from Abi Morgan’s fertile imagination. Here’s how she became one of the UK’s most prolific and in-demand writers…

Setting the scene: Abi was born in Cardiff in 1968; her father was a theatre director and her mother was an actress. Though her early ambition was to act, Abi changed her mind while reading drama and literature at the University of Exeter, and went on to a postgraduate writing course at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Taking off: After a successful start writing for theatre, Abi got her first TV credit in 1998 on the long-running drama Peak Practice. Two years later, she was sole writer of the well-received crime drama My Fragile Heart, starring Sarah Lancashire. More praise came in 2002 for the drama Murder, which followed the ripple effect of a brutal killing, and starred Julie Walters.

Awards and more: In 2004, Abi’s gruelling two-part drama Sex Traffic won eight Baftas, while White Girl (2008) won the Best Single Drama Bafta. In 2013, The Hour – set at the BBC during the Suez crisis – won an Emmy, while her 2015 six-part series River, starring Stellan Skarsgard and Nicola Walker, also received international acclaim. Hit scripts: Her big-screen screenplays include 2011 drama Shame, 2012 biopic The Iron Lady (starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, right), The Invisible Woman (2013)

and Suffragette (2015).