British novelist and scriptwriter
Neil Claude Cross (né Gadd; born 9 February 1969) is a British novelist and scriptwriter, best known as the creator of the drama series Luther and Hard Sun. He is also the showrunner for the TV adaptation of The Mosquito Coast, which began airing in 2021.
Life and career
Neil Claude Gadd was born in Bristol on 9 February 1969, to unhappily married parents, Alan and Edna (née Noyes) Gadd. He was the youngest of their four children.
[1] His mother ran away when he was five, returned two years later and took him to Edinburgh with Derek Cross, a White South African who was to become his stepfather and whose surname he would adopt.[2]
Neil Cross graduated from the University of Leeds in 1994 with a degree in English and Theology, and received his Masters in English in the year following.[3] His initial career was solely as a novelist, beginning with Mr In-Between, which was published in 1998 (and adapted into a film in 2001).[citation needed]
He later worked into television, writing an episode of the spy drama Spooks in 2006 before becoming lead writer on the sixth and seventh series of the show. He has written for The Fixer and Doctor Who ("The Rings of Akhaten" and "Hide"). In 2010 he wrote a new adaptation of Whistle and I'll Come to You, from the story by M. R. James.[citation needed]
He has created three television series: BBC crime thrillers Luther and Hard Sun (for which he wrote all the episodes); and Crossbones, an action adventure pirate series for NBC (co-created with James V. Hart and Amanda Welles). Cross co-wrote the screenplay for the 2013 film Mama.[4]
He has continued to write novels, including Always the Sun, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize,[5] Burial and Captured; and has written a memoir Heartland, which was short-listed for the PEN/Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography of excellence. His most recent novel, Luther: The Calling, was published in 2011. In 2019 it was announced he was adapting Burial into what became the ITV series The Sister.[6]
In 2011, Cross was included in Variety magazine's list of "10 Screenwriters to Watch".[7]
