Career Background

• 2022-Present Writer/Producer EIRSAT-1, Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) funded Radio Documentary, Newstalk FM (Currently in Production)
• 2021-2022 Writer/Producer A Sea of Sound, BAI funded Radio Documentary, Newstalk FM (broadcast March 2022)
• 2019-2021: Producer/Co-Director/Writer The Shape of History, Documentary, RTÉ One, Moondance Productions
• 2014-2021: Producer, Co-Director/Writer The Zoo, Season 6-10 and Christmas Specials, Documentary series, RTÉ One, Moondance Productions
• 2014- 2016 Producer/Co-Director/Writer Peacekeepers, RTÉ One, Moondance Productions
• 2014-2015 Producer/Co-Director/Script Editor, Recruits, 2-part Documentary series, RTÉ One, Moondance Productions
• 2011-2015 Producer, Firefighters, Season 1-3, RTÉ One, Moondance Productions
• 2011-2014 Writer, Producer The Zoo, Season 3-5, Documentary series, RTÉ One, Moondance Productions
• 2008-2010 Researcher/Assistant Producer The Zoo, Season 1-2, Documentary series, RTÉ One, Moondance Productions
• 2006 Researcher So you want to be Taoiseach, TV series, RTÉ One, Midas Productions

Biography

John has over fifteen years’ experience working in the Irish television industry. He was the Writer, Co-Director and Producer for 6-10 of RTÉ’s critically acclaimed The Zoo TV series, which was nominated four times for an IFTA award and was broadcast in several territories worldwide, including on TVR and Animal Planet amongst others.

John has produced and directed wildlife filming on location in some of the world’s most remote areas, including in the rainforests of the Republic of the Congo, Borneo, Sulawesi, India and Brazil, the semi-arid bush of Zimbabwe and the Sahara desert in Tunisia.

John co-directed and produced numerous documentaries and television series for Moondance Productions, including the two-part documentary series Recruits (RTÉ), a finalist at the New York Film Festival 2017, Peacekeepers: The Irish in South Lebanon (RTÉ), winner at the Scandinavian Film Festival 2017, and The Shape of History (RTÉ), semi-finalist at the Film Arte Festival Madrid 2019.

His BAI funded radio documentary A Sea of Sound about the catastrophic effect of man-made noise on the whales and dolphins in our seas was broadcast on Newstalk FM in March and April of this year and again over the May bank holiday weekend. Writing in the Irish Independent Darragh MacManus said “A Sea of Sound is a quite beautiful thing. Beautifully crafted, for one… But it’s also beautiful in how it reveals the natural world, or part of it, in all its poetic wonder.”

John is currently producing 3 other BAI funded radio documentaries to be broadcast on Newstalk fm in 2023.

He recently acted as a consultant on storytelling for the curators of the exhibition Oh My Demigod at Temple Bar Gallery, an exhibition that revisits key scenes from Ireland’s national epic, the Táin Bó Cuailnge, and re-situates them in today’s cultural landscape.
The launch of the exhibition was marked by a panel discussion on storytelling amongst John, the curators and artists where John told the story of Táin Bó Cauilgne to the audience.

John received an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature from UCD and an MA in Journalism from DIT before moving from journalism into television in 2006.

John recently completed a screenwriting course with the National Film and Television School in the UK