An established theatrical playwright, Shearman has worked with
Alan Ayckbourn, had a play produced by
Francis Ford Coppola, and has received several international awards for his work in
theatre. Award-winning plays include
Fool to Yourself, which premiered at the
Stephen Joseph Theatre in 1997, and which won the inaugural Sophie Winter Memorial Trust Award,
Easy Laughter, (Sunday Times Playwriting Award),
Coupling, (World Drama Trust Award),
Binary Dreamers, (Guinness Award for Theatre Ingenuity, in association with the
Royal National Theatre). In 1993 he was made resident dramatist at the
Northcott Theatre in Exeter, the youngest playwright to be honoured by the Arts Council in this way, and for them he wrote a series of plays, including his controversial comic fable about God living in suburbia,
Breaking Bread Together, which later was revived in London. His association with his mentor, Alan Ayckbourn, has been particularly fruitful, with
White Lies,
About Colin, and
Knights in Plastic Armour proving especially popular. At this time Shearman was also encouraged to become a director for the theatre, largely reviving productions of his work abroad; in the 1990s he had a recurring engagement with the Teatro Agora in Rome, and, in 2007, the revival he directed of his comedy
Shaw Cornered, was the stand-out hit as international guest at the
Old World Theatre Festival in
Delhi, India. In 2010, Big Finish published seven of his better known stage plays as
Caustic Comedies. His first television work was episodes of the 1950s-set rural drama
Born and Bred, broadcast on
BBC One. Shearman also provided the initial script for the second series of the
BBC 7 programme
The Chain Gang:
Picture This. The series was awarded a Bronze in the Sony Radio Academy Awards' "The Competition Award" category. A further series of
The Chain Gang, this time called
Paper, Scissors, Stone, was a thirteen-part drama series, in which Shearman worked weekly from listeners' suggestions in shaping the story; this won a Silver at the Sony Radio Awards. He worked as a story consultant on the 2024
Apple TV+ series
Constellation created by
Peter Harness.
Doctor Who His association with
Doctor Who began with a play written for
BBV Audios,
Punchline, in which
Sylvester McCoy played the Dominie, a disguised version of the
Seventh Doctor. This was penned under the pseudonym "Jeremy Leadbetter" (the name of a character from the popular BBC sitcom
The Good Life). Several
audio plays for
Big Finish followed,
The Holy Terror,
The Chimes of Midnight and
Jubilee all winning best audio drama in the
Doctor Who Magazine polls of their respective years. He has also had
Doctor Who short stories published - his most recent being a chapter in the BBC Books novel
The Story of Martha, which was released in December 2008. Shearman wrote the television episode "
Dalek" for the 2005 series of
Doctor Who produced by
Russell T Davies for the
BBC. This was, at Davies' request, a re-working of the themes introduced in Shearman's earlier Big Finish audio play
Jubilee. "Dalek" was nominated for the
Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form in 2006, and came in second in terms of votes for its category. Shearman provided an
audio commentary for the episode on the
Doctor Who – Complete First Series DVD box set. In a 2021 interview, Shearman revealed he had been involved in development for
Series 5, but later departed. Head writer
Steven Moffat kept up an open invitation to return, but Shearman declined, citing changes in his career and the higher profile of writers on the series.
Prose writing His first book, a collection of short stories called
Tiny Deaths, was published by
Comma Press in November 2007. It was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and made the longlist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. In November 2008, it was named Best Collection at the annual World Fantasy Awards. In 2009, one of the stories from the book, "No Looking Back", was selected by the National Library of Singapore for the Read! Singapore campaign, ensuring the story was published separately as a mini-book and distributed all over the country in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil; the author was flown over to Singapore to give talks and interviews. His second collection,
Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, was published in late 2009. An odder, darker book than the first, it won the
British Fantasy Award, the Edge Hill Short Story Reader's Prize - making Shearman the first writer ever to be nominated twice for this award - and the
Shirley Jackson Award. A special collector's edition contained "The Hidden Story"; a tale about letters found within books, each copy was handwritten by the author, and contained in envelopes within envelopes in a Russian doll effect. In the same year,
Mad Norwegian Press published
Wanting to Believe, a book by Shearman that examines
The X-Files and its spin-off series (
Millennium and
The Lone Gunmen) in a critical fashion. Also in 2009, Shearman collaborated with comedian
Toby Hadoke to watch and comment on every episode of
Doctor Who from the programme's debut in 1963 to
David Tennant's final story. The resulting discussions are being published by Mad Norwegian Press in three volumes as ''Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who''. The first volume, covering the 1960s, was published in 2010; the second volume, covering the 1970s, was published in 2016. His third collection, "half short stories, half novel", was published in June 2011, called ''Everyone's Just So So Special''. ==Selected works==