How To Develop a TV Pitch That Actually Sells

I sold my first TV show in the US to Netflix in late 2018. The sale was the easy part. Everything that came before it — the weeks of work, the pressure, the sheer amount riding on one meeting — was not. I was a producer on an original horror series — I gave my client the concept and he created it.

He walked into the Netflix offices and delivered it picture-perfect. Every line landed — all of it exactly where it needed to be. But here’s the thing most people would never have guessed — it was rehearsed over and over within an inch of its life. Every word, every beat. We had worked that pitch over and over and over, honing every moment until there was nothing loose left in it. And the way he delivered it was like a natural conversation with a close friend. And yet — it didn’t sound rehearsed at all.

We sold the show a few days later. One meeting; some follow up questions over email. Deals closed. My client was paid to write the pilot and the show bible. And while the series was never green lit, it remains one of the most successful TV pitching experiences of my career.

That’s the paradox at the heart of a great pitch, and I want you to sit with it before we go any further: the best pitches are rehearsed until they sound completely unrehearsed. The polish is invisible precisely because of how much work went into it. Writers who “wing it” to keep things natural almost always ramble, lose the thread, and watch the room’s eyes glaze. Writers who read their pitch off the page sound like a hostage reading a statement. And with pitches mostly over Zoom these days, that is a brutal reality to witness.

Your job is to know your show and characters inside out that everything arrives like conversation. Effortless because of the effort, not instead of it.

So let’s talk about how you actually build it because everything about a great pitch is formulaic.

Now quickly, I did publish The Art of the Pitch some weeks ago which I encourage you to read alongside this, where I went deep on delivering the pitch — the room, the Zoom, the energy, how to survive the general meeting that comes before it. This is about the pitch itself: what actually goes into it, beat by beat.

Okay. Here’s how I build a pitch with my clients.

Before you get into the meat and potatoes of your story, there are two rules that govern everything.