Mike Bullen
| Mike Bullen | |
|---|---|
| Born | Michael J. Bullen 13 January 1960 Bramhall, Cheshire, England, UK |
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
| Period | 1994–present |
| Genre | Comedy, drama |
| Notable works | Cold Feet (1997–2003, 2016-), Life Begins (2004–2006) |
| Notable awards |
|
Michael J. "Mike" Bullen (born 13 January 1960) is an English screenwriter. Bullen grew up in the West Midlands of England, attending the Solihull School and later Magdalene College, Cambridge. He left with a degree in history of art and became a radio producer for the BBC World Service. Unhappy with the quality of British television targeted at people his age, Bullen took a course in screenwriting and developed a one-off comedy drama for Granada Television. This led to the commissioning of Cold Feet, a multiple-award-winning comedy drama that aired on the ITV network from 1998 to 2003. The series won Bullen the Writer of the Year award at the 2003 British Comedy Awards. He wrote two more series for Granada; Life Begins, which ran for three years, and All About George, which ran for only one. His works have been described as being "about the intricacies of interpersonal relationships and what happens when they break down".
Bullen moved with his wife and two children to Australia in 2002. Two years later he directed his first short film, Amorality Tale. He co-created the Australian/UK television series Tripping Over in 2006 and the writer and director of the Australian television pilot Make or Break in 2007. He returned to producing work for British television in 2010 with the BBC pilot Reunited, and moved back to the UK in 2011.
Bullen recently wrote a sixth series of Cold Feet, with the same central characters and actors, which was broadcast on ITV in the UK in 2016.
Bullen was born in Bramhall, Cheshire. Bullen's father, Alex, was a chemical engineer, and his mother, Joan, was a housewife. Mike and his sister Jane were raised in Solihull, where he attended Solihull School. At the age of 18 he was accepted to Magdalene College, Cambridge, to read economics. He did not enjoy the subject, so switched to history of art. Despite his public school background, Bullen felt out of place at Cambridge among students who did not come from the urban West Midlands, later stating that "Half the students were debutantes who spent a lot of time brushing their hair; the other half ended up working in Sotheby's." His first experiences of writing came when he was a child and wrote a newspaper for his neighbours. At Cambridge, he dramatised a Johann Wolfgang von Goethe novel.
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