Sarah Slater
An Irish writer has scooped a coveted international award for his latest work.
John Morton’s already seen huge success for penning the RTÉ series Dead Still.
Now, the show’s earned him the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Television Episode Teleplay. Mr Morton, who lives in Kilkenny said it is a huge honour to be ranked so highly in the industry.
“It’s quite a prestigious award in a lot of ways, and I wouldn’t consider myself a mystery writer by any means, but you can see the calibre of a lot of the writers and novelists that are involved here.
“So I got wise pretty quick to the fact that this award is considered a big deal, so it was a tremendous honour,” he said.
Mr Morton added that it is a “really nice acknowledgement for the show”, considering that they were up against behemoths such as Amazon and Netflix.
“I was really just delighted to be considered or nominated, so it was genuinely unexpected and a real surprise to win it. It is nice exposure for the show, and hopefully it’ll lead more people to seek it out and watch it.”
While the show’s success, with viewers and critics alike, seems to keep growing, Mr Morton said his hopes of a second season are still somewhat up in the air.
“I’m not sure if there’s going to be another series of the show. We’ll just see how that goes” he said. “More than anything, I just hope [this award] builds more awareness for the show and gets more eyes on it, that’s really the main thing,” he added.
