5 TV Pilot Scripts to Study

Writing a TV pilot is all about pitching the potential for a full series pickup. You want to create a world big enough to sustain years of character arcs, escalating drama and emotion, and evolving conflict to keep audiences invested, engaged, and tuning in each week. 

While every series has its own aesthetic and voice, the pilots that break through by gripping script readers, and making network and streamer executives champions enough of the work to get the series made, almost always excel at three essential television pilot elements.

1. Compelling World - Not just a unique setting we haven’t seen. But also an atmosphere, tone, and culture. A world where the present conflict, rules, scenarios, and characters feel specific to this show only.
2. Compelling Protagonists - Lead characters not defined by exposition, but by behavior, skeletons in the closet, faults, strengths, beliefs, and both inner and outer struggles.
3. Clear and Consistent Themes - The show’s underlying “big idea” matched with consistent emotional truth or philosophical questions that is evident in each and every episode. The theme shapes every decision, conflict, and character dynamic introduced in the pilot. 

When a television pilot script establishes these three core elements in harmony, that is what gets a series greenlit. 

Here are five exceptional pilots - plus two bonus picks - that demonstrate how these elements come together with precision and purpose. 

1980s small-town nostalgia collides with government conspiracies when a young boy vanishes, prompting his friends, family, and a mysterious girl with psychokinetic abilities to uncover and defeat a supernatural threat.

Stranger Things Pilot Written by The Duffer Brothers

The pilot’s opening instantly establishes perfect tonal duality of a compelling and sinister government experimental mystery against a warm, Spielbergian suburban childhood. The world is pure 1980s nostalgia with bikes, basement sleepovers, Dungeons & Dragons, and small-town atmosphere to create a world that seems relatable and safe. That safety is ripped apart with a creature attack and the introduction of Eleven and the strange and mysterious world she came from.

Rather than lean on one hero, the pilot script introduces multiple compelling emotional entry points. To name a few:

• The best friends coming of age and their loyalty to one another
• Joyce’s desperation to find her son
• Hopper’s grief of losing his daughter and life
• Eleven’s mystery and trauma

This is an ensemble piece. But each of these protagonists are compelling. Their motivations emerge through their actions and reactions to the strange events going on around them, as opposed to reliance on exposition and backstory. When these individuals come together, they create a multi-pronged protagonist dealing with the conflict at hand. 

Stranger Things has a consistent theme of innocence versus evil - light versus darkness. All of the inner and outer conflicts of the characters, as well as the narrative itself, stem from this theme of how innocent people deal with the unimaginable stranger things they come across.

• Do the conflicts drive them apart or bring them together?
• If driven apart, how do they come back together to face the evil?
• If driven together, how do they sustain those relationships amidst grave danger?  

An overly optimistic American football coach is hired to manage a struggling English Premier League soccer team, despite knowing nothing about the sport.

Ted Lasso Pilot Written by Jason Sudeikis and Bill Lawrence

The pilot script establishes AFC Richmond and the world of Premier League soccer - a world American audiences aren’t as familiar with, which brilliantly matches the concept of the series that brings an American football coach into unfamiliar territory. It’s a classic fish out of water world. 

British sports culture, tabloid pressure, player egos, skeptical fans, and locker room politics present a world that is eventually grounded in relatable human emotion. It’s instantly comedic with the clashing dynamics of the characters once Ted Lasso takes control of the team. Richmond itself feels like a real club, with real history, hierarchy, and dysfunction. 

Ted Lasso stands out the moment he arrives. Not because he’s the most qualified of coaching candidates, but because he’s the most kind - despite clearly standing out as one that doesn’t belong. He’s an uber-optimist. But his optimism isn’t naive - it’s a worldview created by emotional depth, personal pain, and a conscious choice to lead with sincerity and empathy. 

The story brilliantly introduces his coaching (and life) philosophy through active and consistent behavior. 

• Patience
• Humor
• Emotional Intelligence
• Genuine desire to connect
• An undying smile

Ted’s positivity becomes a driving force of conflict, comedy, irony, and heart. These dynamics made the character of Ted Lasso one of the greatest protagonists in television history.

The Ted Lasso pilot - as well as the rest of the show - explores how belief in yourself, others, and the possibility of change can eradicate cynicism and fear. 

Every character that Ted encounters represents a form of doubt. From Rebecca’s bitterness and hopelessness amidst a costly (emotionally) divorce to the fan’s hostility, Roy’s burnout, Jamie’s lack of belief team dynamics, and Nate’s insecurity. 

The theme of Ted Lasso is the story engine of the series. 

Employees at Lumon Industries undergo a procedure that surgically separates work memories from personal memories - forcing one man to confront the emotional cost of compartmentalization and corporate control.

Severance Pilot Written by Dan Erickson

Lumon Industries is a masterpiece of visual worldbuilding with the sterile maze-like hallways, sterile office rooms, retro-modern tech, etc. Add that to the ritualistic corporate routines that make the world feel oppressive, uncanny, yet oddly familiar. It’s a brilliant and unique blend of science fiction and drama. 

The concept of the severance procedure - as well as the ramifications to the “innies” and “outies” - is a perfect example of outstanding worldbuilding. 

While Mark S. is the perfect embodiment of the show’s world and concept, we also get an excellent ensemble cast of characters dealing with the same conflicts, albeit in different ways because of their compelling personalities and struggles. Their “innies” exist only to work while their “outies” can enjoy the freedom of the real world outside of Lumon Industries as they deal with their various issues that led them to the program. 

It’s compelling because of the core concept of living two different lives, with the “innies” never given the chance to decide if they wanted their office life to endure indefinitely. 

The pilot asks a haunting question - “If you sever your suffering, do you sever your humanity?”

This theme lives in every single scene, every line of dialogue, and every character arc throughout the series. 

A mild-mannered chemistry teacher diagnosed with inoperable cancer turns to cooking meth to secure his family’s future - igniting a dangerous criminal transformation.

Breaking Bad Pilot Written by Vince Gilligan

The true brilliance of the pilot (and the series as a whole) is the contrast. Walt’s initial suffocating and mundane ordinary world feels hopeless. However, the meth world is chaotic, liberating, and lethal. The moment Walt begins to delve into that dark world, the show’s identity locks into place. 

Walter White stands out because his transformation is shocking and oddly understandable. Humiliation, illness, and financial ruin push him to act. He goes from powerless to powerful in a very short amount of time - to the point where it’s compelling to see how far he’ll truly go. 

The pilot and series explore how desperation can morph into empowerment - and then how dangerous that empowerment can be. Walter was so desperate that once he started to feel some control and empowerment, things began to spiral. Audiences get caught in that spiral and are engaged by wanting to see how far he’ll go, and what the ramifications will be. 

Passionate but under-resourced teachers at a Philadelphia public school fight to give their students the education they deserve despite systemic challenges.

Abbott Elementary Pilot Written by Quinta Brunson

The underfunded inner-city school is chaotic, heartfelt, and authentic. It’s a world not everyone can understand or comprehend, as far as how underfunded these schools can be, creating a blend of comedy and critique of the school system. The mockumentary style also creates a unique perspective into this compelling world. 

Janine stands out much like Ted Lasso, as far as her undying optimism. However, Janine’s optimism can come from a certain degree of naivete, which drives a lot of the hilarious humor. But also like Ted Lasso, her optimism is also genuine. She’s just facing a lot of cynical outlooks from the supporting cast, which, again, leads to even more humor. Her worldview shapes the entire series. 

Sometimes hope isn’t enough. When the system is working against you, hope can be soulcrushing. But those who can rise above that and force changes to be made can actually change the system. It just takes a lot of work to do that. It’s belief versus reality in many ways. The characters want to do good, but they are hampered by the broken system. This is a theme that everyone can identify with in their work and personal lives. 

We couldn’t leave you with just five! Here are two more standout bonus TV pilots you can learn from. 

After a plane crashes on a mysterious island, survivors band together as strange forces challenge their sanity and survival.

Lost TV Pilot Written By J.J. Abrams and David Lindelof

Lost was unique because the world itself - the island - is also a compelling character full of mystery and intrigue. After the plane crash, the core group of survivors offer an ensemble of compelling characters, each with their own demons and past that they are battling. The themes are aplenty, including redemption, destiny versus free will, good versus evil, faith versus science, and the idea that people can be transformed by those around them. 

A world-class chef returns home to run his family’s failing Chicago sandwich shop as he struggles with grief, anxiety, dysfunction, and perfectionism.

The Bear TV Pilot Written by Christopher Storer

The Bear throws us into the world of the restaurant kitchen, along with the conflicting sub-worlds of a sandwich shop kitchen and world-class cuisine kitchen. When these two worlds collide, we’re given a compelling world that leads to chaos, hilarity, more chaos, and family dynamics. The compelling protagonist is Carmy. He’s brilliant, yet broken. His grief, anxiety, and perfectionism fuel every scene. On top of that, the ensemble cast of characters each have their own compelling arc as well, especially co-protagonist Sydney, who is forced to deal with Carmy’s chaos while trying to learn what she can from him while trying to find and perfect her own brilliance. The driving themes are grief, anxiety, and embracing family, even amidst chaotic relationships between flawed individuals. 

Now that you’ve studied these pilots you should have a sense of what kind of TV pilot you want to write. Once you develop the story and characters, and are ready to write the pilot script, you’re going to need to make sure to put that pilot into the right template. 

Final Draft software can do that for you!

Follow these steps in Final Draft:

• Open Final Draft
• Click on File
• Click New From Template
• Select a Template That Matches Your Type of Show - One-Hour Drama Pilot, Half-Hour Single-Cam Comedy, Half-Hour Multi-Cam Comedy, Animation Pilot, etc.
• Check the Act Structure (Teaser plus Four Acts, Three-Act Comedies, etc.)
• Study the Sample Pages
• Save As Your Personal Template for Future Revisions or Episodes

Then take what you’ve studied in these seven TV pilots and write your own stellar series!