TV SERIES OUTLINES
From Bestselling Author to Award-Winning Storyteller
Every story has an unexpected beginning.
For Joan Barrett, it began with an extraordinary conversation inspired by the late comedian Joan Rivers. While researching a book on senior dating, Joan Rivers learned of Joan Barrett’s firsthand experiences navigating the emerging world of mature online dating. Those experiences proved so compelling that they helped redirect the focus of Rivers’ own project—and inspired Joan Barrett to tell her own story.
The result was Candyland S.I.N.S. – Mature Online Dating: Your Insider’s Guide, which became an international bestseller and established Joan as a respected voice on mature relationships. The book led to appearances on television, radio, and digital media throughout Canada and the United States, but it also sparked something even greater—a passion for visual storytelling.
That passion gave birth to CANDYLAND, Joan’s first television pilot screenplay. The project has since earned more than thirty international screenplay and film festival awards, launching an expanding catalogue of original award-winning scripted and unscripted television concepts.
Today, Joan Barrett, through her production company, ZigDot Productions Inc., develops compelling stories across crime, dramedy, comedy, lifestyle, cooking, property, children’s programming, dating, and reality television. Her projects explore universal themes of resilience, reinvention, family, ambition, and the unexpected turns that shape our lives—always with memorable characters and distinctive settings at their heart.
Joan’s growing catalogue includes prize-winning and award-recognized television series and original reality concepts, with detailed treatments, pitch decks, and selected scripts available to qualified entertainment industry professionals upon request.
She invites you to explore the projects below.
BROWSE THE ZIGDOT CATALOGUE SYNOPSES
Joan invites qualified media and entertainment professionals to explore her projects’ treatments, pitch decks, and/or scripts upon request. See below:
Please state your company name and title.
FORGET ME NOT ~ Hamptons
FORGET ME NOT ~ Hamptons is a female character-driven investigative hour procedural series, which generously utilizes the dazzling seascapes, mouth-watering mansions, quaint villages, and extravagant lifestyles of the Hamptons’ residents to enhance the series’ fictional celebrity crimes that mirror suspicious, sensationalized true-life celebrity deaths / crimes familiar to audiences.
MISCONDUCT
When her flamboyant mid – 30 s celebrity lawyer husband mysteriously disappears at sea, a conventional mid – life high court Judge must go on a terrifying hunt to dark places and confront shady characters to root out the truth while he tries to evade them all in his quest to solve an impossible dilemma to free himself of the high-stakes criminal world and redeem himself with the woman he loves.
TRANSPLANTED
Lovely, the quick-witted but naïve concierge, an unsung hero of every city’s condo scene, is at the centre of the pandemonium of the Shangri-La condominium’s colourful crayon box of residents while guided by well-intentioned though not always helpful advice of the phantasm of her deceased sister.
UNSCRIPTED PROPERTIES
Joan Barrett’s unscripted television concepts celebrate ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Inspired by real life, her original formats combine compelling storytelling, humour, competition, adventure, relationships, and heart to create highly engaging entertainment with broad audience appeal.
Whether families are embarking on cross-country scavenger hunt adventures in converted school buses, navigating the joys and challenges of multi-generational “kangaroo living,” chefs are transforming music into culinary masterpieces, or singles are discovering that love can flourish at any age, Joan’s concepts are designed to entertain, inspire, and spark conversation.
Spanning lifestyle, travel, cooking, family, dating, property, competition, and reality formats, Joan’s growing catalogue contains more than thirty original concepts developed for today’s global television audience.
Treatments, pitch decks, and additional concept information are available to qualified entertainment industry professionals upon request.
REQUEST TO VIEW THE CATALOGUE
Available to qualified media and entertainment professionals.
Please include your company name, position, and area of interest.