REBECCA ATKINSON, the writer of Coming Home, was brought up in East Anglia and wanted the landscape to be a significant and constant presence in the drama. 'It is', says Rebecca, 'an exceptionally beautiful part of England but there's also a slightly disturbing quality about the light, about its huge skies and tidal rivers'. In Coming Home, Mark immediately finds the landscape threatening and oppressive while Kate loves it. 'In a sense', says Rebecca, 'the landscape reflects the characters situations back on themselves'
Director, Louis Neethling, recalls that when Rebecca was working on the first drafts for Coming Home, 'we were keen for her to explore issues of identity. Who we are and where we come from is important to us all,' says Louis, 'but to deaf people, many of whom are brought up in entirely hearing families, establishing an independent and positive identity as a deaf person is not always easy. In Coming Home, Mark has struggled with this, and his frustrations and resentments come to a head when he discovers that his adoptive parents have deliberately lied to him about his birth mother. This is the springboard of the drama - the point from which the whole tragic story emerges.'
Producer, David Horbury, was also interested in the way Rebecca Atkinson illuminated the double-edged nature of 'truth'. 'Most of us tend to accept', says David, 'that we have the right to the truth, that knowledge is always empowering and ultimately positive. However in Coming Home, the impact on Mark of finding out the 'truth' about his background is catastrophic. Rather than liberating him - it virtually destroys him and those around him. Nobody seems to benefit and Frank's final bitter comment "Well, you've got the truth. Can someone tell me what good its done" sums up the dilemma'
Rebecca began her career as a trainee at the BBC subsequently working for the Community Programmes Unit and Children's BBC. She went on to work as a celebrity booker for BBC Online and ran the BBC's teen pop website. Rebecca also worked on the BBC's flagship deaf programme, See Hear.
Rebecca left the BBC in 2005 to become a freelance journalist and writer, quickly making a name for herself through her weekly column in the Guardian Weekend magazine called 'Loosing Sight, Still Looking' which outlined the trials and tribulations of dating while going blind. She followed that with regular journalism in the Guardian, Marie Claire and Vogue that often dealt with issues around deafness and media representations of disability.
In 2007 Rebecca - along with Deafinitely Theatre - created the much-admired 'Playing God' drama (starring Matthew Gurney) which ran for a season at London's Soho Theatre before a national tour and a run at the Edinburgh Festival.
Coming Home is Rebecca's first television drama. She lives in London with her partner and baby son.