Rogan Scotland will produce two-parter on Harry Potter creator

The BBC’s network and Scotland teams have co-commissioned a documentary series examining the career and works of JK Rowling and her controversial public profile. 

The 2 x 60-minute JK Rowling (w/t) will be produced by Rogan Scotland (Becoming Frida Kahlo) for BBC2 and BBC Scotland.  

Tracking Rowling’s influence over the past three decades, it will follow her path from being a struggling single mother to finding global success as the author of the Harry Potter books and latterly her role as a polarising public figure around the culture wars and issues of gender identity. 

The series will draw on archive, Rowling’s own words and interviews with people who worked with her.  

Episode one charts Rowling’s bookish childhood and time spent writing in Edinburgh cafés. When Harry Potter was published it transformed children’s publishing, revitalised reading and burnished Britain’s cultural identity. It also created a universe with an economic legacy worth billions. 

The second episode focuses on her increasingly political public persona, as someone admired by supporters as a staunch defender of women’s rights and condemned by critics who call her an opponent of trans equality. 

The doc series was commissioned by head of specialist factual Jack Bootle and BBC Scotland’s head of multi-platform commissioning Louise Thornton with commissioning editors, head of history Simon Young and BBC Scotland’s David Harron.  

The executive producers are James Rogan and Mark Hedgecoe. 

Young said: “Thirty years after the publication of the first Harry Potter book, there feels like no better time for the BBC to explore one of the towering figures of British literature. No cultural history of Britain in the 21st century would be complete without the story of the boy wizard that J.K. Rowling created, the publishing and film-making phenomenon that she spawned, or the polarising public figure she has become.” 

Harron said: “JK Rowling is arguably one of the most influential figures in the literary and wider media worlds. Through the extraordinary story of her life and work, this series explores not only the creation of a global phenomenon, but also how Britain’s culture has been shaped by significant social and technological changes in recent years.” 

Rogan added: “JK Rowling has achieved extraordinary literary success, with her influence spanning a generation of fans, crossing into cinema and the online world. Rogan Scotland explores her unique story from her early days as a writer to the present moment and how her unflinching personal beliefs have sparked a fraught and divisive dialogue that continues to this day.” 

BBC Studios is the distributor.