Ben Schiffer
Ben Schiffer (born 12 July 1983) is a British television screenwriter and playwright. He is married to actress Emily Taaffe since 2016. Born in Amsterdam to Jewish American immigrants, he moved to London at age two. He studied at University College School and then Trinity College Dublin, where he earned a First-Class Honours BA in English and History in 2006.
His first screen credit was the short film Hot Or Not, shown on BBC One in 2006. He wrote his first play, Paper Tigers, while at university, and it sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe. His theatre work includes His Ghostly Heart and 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, produced at The Bush Theatre and at the Edinburgh Fringe. He has also been part of the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Scheme, and his plays have been staged in London, Dublin, Edinburgh and at Latitude.
On TV, he wrote for Brief Encounters and Spooks: Code 9. He then worked on Skins, writing five episodes for the first four series and contributing a story for Abbud in 2011. In 2013 he wrote and co-executive produced Dates for Channel 4. He wrote a pilot, Goths, with Jack Thorne for Shine Media, and his comedy Not Safe For Work won an RTS Student Award in 2010.
Later credits include episodes for Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, Netflix’s Young Wallander, Sky’s Intergalactic and Ransom, where he was also a co-producer. He created and served as showrunner for The Turkish Detective, a Paramount+ adaptation of Barbara Nadel’s DI Ikmen novels. He was named one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow in 2009, and his screenplay Cheerleaders 3D finished second in the 2010 Brit List.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:56 (CET).