Losing Arthur

In Hackney, London, Zack Farmer – quirky, imaginative but bullied at school – has only one true friend in the world: Arthur. The trouble is, only Zack can see him, and one day Zack’s mum gets fed up, grabs Arthur, stuffs the handful of what she thinks is thin air into a box and posts it to Zack’s long-departed and vanished Scottish father, Stuart.

In Cape Fury, Scotland, a farmer called Stuart opens the mysterious box. It contains something only his wee eight-year old girl, Kirstie can see: a befuddled, odd-looking little creature. A shiny green chap with an extra eye in the back of his head. A streetwise, Cockney ‘lad’, calling himself Arthur. But there’s one big problem – Arthur, so far from home and Zack, is fading fast. Quick-thinking Arthur has left a valuable part of himself behind in London. A tiny, green disc – a clue to save his life. So now loner Zack, usually so timid, has to set off on a perilous journey to rescue his imaginary friend before he fades away forever. But there’s one massive problem. Someone or something out there is trying to stop Zack…

Paul A. Mendelson is a British writer known for his work on television and radio. His comedy series include the long-running, BAFTA-nominated BBC series May to December as well as So Haunt Me and My Hero. He wrote Losing It, a film for ITV starring Martin Clunes, which was nominated for the Televisual Best Writing Award and has been broadcast worldwide. Paul wrote the Radio 4 plays I am I said, Fireworks at the Villa Lucia and A Meeting In Seville. He has adapted the latter into a screenplay, which is currently in development. Recent radio dramas have included six adaptations of Joyce Porter’s crime novels about the appalling Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover and the highly-acclaimed CS Forester dramatisations, CS Forester’s London Noir. Paul created the cult series Neighbors From Hell, broadcast in the US. He has written two new US pilots and three movies with LA screenwriter Alan Moscowitz and is also developing comedy and drama projects elsewhere.