By Dominique Moloney

Jude Tindall, the much-loved writer and creator of The Sister Boniface Mysteries, has sadly passed away. She will also be remembered for co-creating Shakespeare and Hathaway: Private Investigators and her brilliant episodes of Father Brown.

Jude penned many episodes of Sister Boniface, including the upcoming Christmas Special. She was passionate about her shows, and prolific in her writing – as well as countless scripts for Father Brown, she wrote for Doctors, Land Girls, Casualty and, more recently, an adaptation of The Canterville Ghost for BBC Studios.

Her many friends and colleagues owe Jude a huge debt of gratitude. She was generous in her teaching of newer writers about cosy crime, the genre she loved and very much helped to shape. Both personally and through her dealings with the WGGB, Jude fought fiercely for her fellow writers to have better and more equal pay. We were lucky to work alongside her, and those of us who knew her well will miss her mischievous humour, her contagious sense of fun, and delightful gossip over long, lazy lunches. Jude was larger than life, and we’ll miss her terribly.

WGGB Deputy Chair Katharine Way adds: “This is terribly sad news, a real shock. I met Jude in 2008 at a very grand BBC party held in the Royal Courts of Justice (those were the days). She was actually quite shy, knew no one there and seemed glad of a fellow Doctors writer to talk to. Of course, she went on to do many other things besides Doctors.

“I had great admiration for her and loved her writing. I think she actually was Sister Boniface, her brilliant and successful creation – just without the wimple. Like the character she created, Jude was smart, funny, focused, incisive, fierce in the pursuit of what was right, and scathing about fools and ne’er-do-wells – especially the ones in our industry.

“When the pandemic hit in April 2020 and everything went into lockdown, her immediate response was to give a generous personal donation to the WGGB Welfare Fund to help out other writers who were suffering hardship.”