The Good Ancestor
A TV series by Narrative ark
The Good Ancestor was born out of our conviction that the current world crisis is a failure of the imagination
It is easier to imagine the extinction of the entire human race than it is to imagine a different way of being.
But that can change. We can change it.
The Good Ancestor is Narrative Ark’s near-future TV thriller. The action starts where we are, setting an intense drama of politics, survival and revenge in our world of tribalism, scarcity and inequality. But the world is changing and the old rules don’t work any more. Slowly, over time, the narrative leads us all towards the world we need to become so that, long before the final episode of the final season, we all have a vision of what a regenerative world looks like what it feels like – and how we might get there in ways that feel good.
We have:
– A Pitch Deck
– A Pilot Episode Script
– A First Season outline for 10 episodes
– A broad meta-outline for 10 seasons – knowing that these must evolve with time.
If you’re interested in reading more,
contact us at studio@narrativeark.net
The Good Ancestor is a thriller
February 2023: Opening in a world of food shortages, rationing and riots, the show begins as one man’s quest for redemption.
A soldier, betrayed and broken, returns home a fugitive. His homeland has become enemy territory, his moral compass is adrift. To whom can he pledge allegiance, if not Queen and Country?
Lost, he finds hope in a community that is his polar opposite. Tragedy tears him open – but it also gives his compass a new north: he will destroy all those responsible. He revels in being the best of himself – until realisation dawns that the old rules no longer apply, that murder and mayhem are not the answer, that he will need to find new ways to live if he is going to protect those he loves – and given them space to create a way of life that leads to genuine hope.
food shortages, rationing and a crumbling system desperately clinging onto control
Episode 1 – pitches us into a world of food shortages, rationing and a crumbling system desperately clinging onto control. In true thriller style, SAS major NICK AINSLEY is ordered to break into a Russian lab and steal the DNA technology that will feed the UK. But politicians are political, and the mission is called off just a little bit too late. Nick is caught. His team are shot. Only he survives.
Nine months later, Nick slides back into the UK, seeking answers. He finds his wife has remarried, his colleagues believe him dead, and the father who was his rock and role model, has died of grief. With nothing left to live for, Nick seeks a private and peaceful way out.
But he has reckoned without LUCY, leader of a regenerative community in the west of Scotland. Lucy doesn’t give up easily on the people she’s just met, even if they’re a tramp she’s pulled out of a bin who turns out to have a neat line in inter-personal violence when the local Mafia are pulling heavy. Joining him in his loch-side vigil, Lucy lays her life alongside his. Thus, in the heart-breaking beauty of a Scottish winter landscape, Nick’s broken heart is offered redemption. But now his old bosses know he’s back, and as the security structures gear up to manage the food crisis and confront radical protest, they’re also hunting Nick.
As challenging as it is inspiring, The Good Ancestor steps beyond tribalism. It gives voice to the many tribes so that they will find common cause as it uncovers new paths, amplifies new voices, empowers new ideas, explores new ways of being in the world.
a riot so violent that the police have the moral cover to start firing live rounds
The remaining nine episodes are a storm of tension and confrontation. Nick doesn’t buy into the pacifist, regenerative, micro-dairy-in-the-polytunnel, polyamorous, non-binary lifestyle of Lucy’s Highland community. Everything here is as foreign as any he’s encountered in his years undercover.
But when the community plans a protest against the biotech giant that owns the Russian gene-tech, Nick is dragged into action. Because some of the
‘non-violent activists’ showing up to lead the protests are people he knows from his past, and for sure they don’t believe in calf-on-cow dairies or home-baked organic sourdough.
What they’re best at is taking a peaceful march and turning it into a riot so violent that the police have the moral cover to start firing live rounds. They’ve done it in Estonia, Portland, Palestine — and now they’re doing it here…
His homeland has become enemy territory, and he is a lone hunter facing enormous odds. This is his comfort zone: here, he is the best of the best; unstoppable.
Which is how, in a climactic high-intensity episode midseason, Lucy ends up dead, posthumously smeared by a State that knows exactly how to destroy an enemy’s reputation.
Nick is devastated, but at least he has a mission now: he will take out every single member of the command chain that caused Lucy’s death – right to the top. His homeland has become enemy territory, and he is a lone hunter facing enormous odds. This is his comfort zone: here, he is the best of the best; unstoppable. Alongside revenge, though, he has to take care of Lucy’s late-teens daughter, Finn, and her high-tech hacker partner, Alyz. And these two have very different ideas of how the world should be, and their role in it. They’re not going to wait around to be victims, or even let Nick martyr himself for his new cause.
nothing is as it seems
Set against him is the entire weight of the security services. Nick is hunted by his oldest friend, leading all the overt and covert apparatus of a desperate state, for which Nick is a dangerous irritation in a much more complex crisis. The hunt for Nick uncovers new truths, and we begin to doubt his motives. How did he get out of Russia? Who is pulling his strings? Nothing is as it seems and my enemy’s enemy can sometimes be my friend. What matters? What are we fighting for? What’s possible in a world hurtling towards chaos?
killing solves nothing
Nick is good at what he does. But as his ruthless revenge reaches its explosive climax and the helicopter containing the Prime Minister and the pioneering biotech CEO goes up in flames, he sees at last how little he has achieved and how far the world has to go. Lucy was right. Killing solves nothing and ‘winning’ is not the answer if it means half the world loses. So what can he do to stay alive in a world where the security forces of several nations are on his tail? How can he protect Finn and Alyz who are now on the target list…and yet who have answers he has never dreamed of?
Their generation must confront players in every system with their own alternative visions of reaction or change.
If Nick can help them, perhaps he can lay all his ghosts to rest.
He will die before the end – sacrifice is the most powerful motif in our human lexicon – but he will do so knowing that the future is safe in the hands of the new generations.
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The Good Ancestor IS A THRILLER
February 2023: Opening in a world of food shortages, rationing and riots, the show begins as one man’s quest for redemption.
A soldier, betrayed and broken, returns home a fugitive. His homeland has become enemy territory, his moral compass is adrift. To whom can he pledge allegiance, if not Queen and Country?
Lost, he finds hope in a community that is his polar opposite. Tragedy tears him open – but it also gives his compass a new north: he will destroy all those responsible. He revels in being the best of himself – until realisation dawns that the old rules no longer apply, that murder and mayhem are not the answer, that he will need to find new ways to live if he is going to protect those he loves – and given them space to create a way of life that leads to genuine hope.
food shortages, rationing and a crumbling system desperately clinging onto control
Episode 1 – pitches us into a world of food shortages, rationing and a crumbling system desperately clinging onto control. In true thriller style, SAS major NICK AINSLEY is ordered to break into a Russian lab and steal the DNA technology that will feed the UK. But politicians are political, and the mission is called off just a little bit too late. His team are killed. Nick disappears into the Russian security system.
Nine months later, Nick slides back into the UK, seeking answers. He finds his wife has remarried, his colleagues believe him dead, and the father who was his rock and role model, has died of grief.
With nothing left to live for, Nick seeks a private and peaceful way out. But he has reckoned without LUCY, leader of a regenerative community in the west of Scotland.
Lucy doesn’t give up easily on the people she’s just met, even if they’re a tramp she’s pulled out of a bin who turns out to have a neat line in inter-personal violence when the local Mafia are pulling heavy.
Joining him in his loch-side vigil, Lucy lays her life alongside his. Thus, in the heart-breaking beauty of a Scottish winter landscape, Nick’s broken heart is offered redemption.
But now his old bosses know he’s back, and as the security structures gear up to manage the food crisis and confront radical protest, they’re also hunting Nick.
a riot so violent that the police have the moral cover to start firing live rounds
The remaining nine episodes are a storm of tension and confrontation. Nick doesn’t buy into the pacifist, regenerative, micro-dairy-in-the-polytunnel, polyamorous, non-binary lifestyle of Lucy’s Highland community. Everything here is as foreign as any he’s encountered in his years undercover.
But when the community plans a protest against the biotech giant that owns the Russian gene-tech, Nick is dragged into action. Because some of the ‘non-violent activists’ showing up to lead the protests are people he knows from his past, and for sure they don’t believe in calf-on-cow dairies or home-baked organic sourdough.
What they’re best at is taking a peaceful march and turning it into a riot so violent that the police have the moral cover to start firing live rounds. They’ve done it in Estonia, Portland, Palestine — and now they’re doing it here…
Which is how, in a climactic high-intensity episode midseason, Lucy ends up dead, posthumously smeared by a State that knows exactly how to destroy an enemy’s reputation.
Nick is devastated, but at least he has a mission now: he will take out every single member of the command chain that caused Lucy’s death – right to the top. His homeland has become enemy territory, and he is a lone hunter facing enormous odds. This is his comfort zone: here, he is the best of the best; unstoppable.
Alongside revenge, though, he has to take care of Lucy’s late-teens daughter, Finn, and her high-tech hacker partner, Alyz. And these two have very different ideas of how the world should be, and their role in it. They’re not going to wait around to be victims, or even let Nick martyr himself for his new cause.
His homeland has become enemy territory, and he is a lone hunter facing enormous odds. This is his comfort zone: here, he is the best of the best; unstoppable.
nothing is as it seems
Set against him is the entire weight of the security services. Nick is hunted by his oldest friend, leading all the overt and covert apparatus of a desperate state, for which Nick is a dangerous irritation in a much more complex crisis. The hunt for Nick uncovers new truths, and we begin to doubt his motives. How did he get out of Russia? Who is pulling his strings? Nothing is as it seems and my enemy’s enemy can sometimes be my friend. What matters? What are we fighting for? What’s possible in a world hurtling towards chaos?
killing solves nothing
Nick is good at what he does. But as his ruthless revenge reaches its explosive climax and the helicopter containing the Prime Minister and the pioneering biotech CEO goes up in flames he sees at last how little he has achieved and how far the world has to go. Lucy was right. Killing solves nothing and ‘winning’ is not the answer if it means half the world loses. So what can he do to stay alive in a world where the security forces of several nations are on his tail? How can he protect Finn and Alyz who are now on the target list…and yet who have answer he has never dreamed of?
Future seasons will follow Nick, Finn and Alyz through a world where synchronicity meets singularity and the only thing we can say for sure is that nothing is predictable.
Their generation must confront players in every system with their own alternative visions of reaction or change.
If Nick can help them, perhaps he can lay all his ghosts to rest. He will die before the end – sacrifice is the most powerful motif in our human lexicon – but he will do so knowing that the future is safe in the hands of the new generations.
As challenging as it is inspiring, The Good Ancestor steps beyond tribalism. It gives voice to the many tribes so that they will find common cause as it uncovers new paths, amplifies new voices, empowers new ideas, explores new ways of being in the world.