--- name: "Toby Whithouse" canonical: "https://film.one/person/toby-whithouse" roles: ["Creator","Writer"] born: "1 September 1970" reviewed_on_fi1m: 5 average_fi1m_score: 74 updated: "2026-09-17T04:28:24.849108+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Toby Whithouse Creator and writer. Born 1 September 1970 in Southend-on-Sea. ## Details - **Work:** Creator, Writer - **Born:** 1 September 1970, Southend-on-Sea - **Active:** 1993–present - **Works often with:** Alice Troughton, Ashley Way, Catherine Tregenna, Chris Chibnall, Colin Teague, Euros Lyn ## Fi1m on Toby Whithouse > Toby Whithouse writes monsters who worry about the washing-up. He puts the supernatural in a shared house or a hotel corridor and spends the money on people talking, and at its best, in *Being Human*, that is enough. A vampire, a werewolf and a ghost share a house, and the first thing you notice is not the teeth but the kitchen. That is the Toby Whithouse habit. He takes a premise that sounds like a joke, writes it as if it were a drama about flatmates or nurses or an office, and keeps the monster out of frame for as long as he can. He has said that “character is the one thing that is free”, which is a principle and also a budget note. *Being Human* began in 2008 with not much money, and you can see the sum in every scene set at the table. He came to writing sideways, from acting, and turned to scripts in the late 1990s out of frustration with the ones he was being sent. *No Angels* (2004), a comedy-drama about nurses, was the first series he created and it ran for three; it already had the shape he kept, a group at work, jokes with something worse underneath. From 2006 he wrote for *Doctor Who* and *Torchwood* under Russell T Davies, and then a run of five episodes for Steven Moffat. *School Reunion* (2006), which brought back Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, and *The God Complex* (2011), a contained thriller in a hotel that will not hold still, are the ones people remember. *Being Human* ran five series to 2013. *The Game* (2014), a Cold War espionage thriller, ran one. He wrote *Doctor Who* until 2017 and has since turned up on *The Red King* (2024) and the *Bergerac* revival (2025). The two programmes of his we have reviewed show the method from either end. In *Torchwood*, Naoko Mori's Toshiko Sato is the member of the team the scripts keep forgetting until Whithouse writes her an episode, and it is the point at which she stops being furniture. The Boston *Being Human* (2011) keeps his arrangement and stretches it to thirteen episodes a season, and we sat down to it expecting a copy nobody had asked for. Once Witwer, Rath and Huntington had settled into the house, we believed in three monsters splitting the bills more readily than we believe in most dramas about ordinary flatmates. The premise travels because it is three people in a house, and three people can be recast. The weakness is the other face of that. When the relationships are not yet in place, as in the first two hours of the Boston version, there is nothing to watch but plot, and the plot creaks. The lightness of touch he admires in Davies has earned him comparisons to *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*, and they have followed him for most of his career. *The Game* was the one time he tried a thriller without the joke, and it did not take. *Bergerac* is someone else's detective in someone else's house, which may suit him: the walls are already up, and he can go straight to the kitchen. ## Biography Toby Whithouse is an English screenwriter, playwright and actor. He created and wrote the BBC supernatural series *Being Human* (2008–2013) and has written episodes of *Doctor Who* (2005) and *Torchwood* (2006). He trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama after initially studying art. Whithouse began his career as an actor, appearing in series such as *The House of Eliott* and the film *Bridget Jones's Diary* (2001). He later turned to writing, creating the Channel 4 series *No Angels* (2004–2006) and the BBC drama *The Game* (2014). Whithouse has also written for *Hotel Babylon* and contributed multiple scripts to *Doctor Who* across several seasons. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (5) - *Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy* (2025), Fi1m 70, as Alistair — [page](https://film.one/film/bridget-jones-mad-about-the-boy.md) - *Being Human* (2011), Fi1m 70, Creator, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/being-human.md) - *Torchwood* (2006), Fi1m 73, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/torchwood.md) - *Bridget Jones's Diary* (2001), Fi1m 80, as Alastair — [page](https://film.one/film/bridget-joness-diary.md) - *Shadowlands* (1993), Fi1m 79, as Frith — [page](https://film.one/film/shadowlands.md) ## Also credited on (not yet reviewed) - *Doctor Who* (2005), Writer ## Also known for - *Being Human* (2009), Writer - *The Game* (2014), Writer - *Hotel Babylon* (2006), Writer --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/toby-whithouse