Coming later in life to comedy writing Karen Laws came to the attention of the BBC after winning the BBC Northern Exposure ‘Falling About’ competition. In spite of a subsequent commission called ‘Angels of the North’ which followed two working class women living on a housing estate in the North East, the piece proved difficult to cast and was not taken further.
Her work falls into two main categories, sitcom and theatre. In both areas her style is darkly comic, exploring characters who inhabit the scruffy underbelly of society, of working class characters who struggle to fit in and who often break their own rules of existence and then are forced to face the consequences.
In 2004 she had her first full length play performed at Live Theatre Newcastle. Titled ‘Dirty Nets’. The play, a dark comedy about two brothers who break into the house of an alcoholic with a grim secret, attracted a new type of audience and was sold out after its opening night.
Karen was commissioned by Live Theatre exploring the relationships between women in an office and the impact threatened unemployment has on them as a group. Karen continues to write across several BBC long running series as well as having had an original series, 32 BRINKBURN STREET produced for BBC1 in 2010. Karen was also the Writer in Residence at BBC 3’s Free Thinking Festival and was shortlisted for the Broadcast Awards 2011 for her writing for Eastenders.