A NOTE IN TIME
Mini-Series
This engaging historical mini-series centers on the profound love between Isabella Berlusconi and Molly Doyle, set against the backdrop of the late 19th century. As societal norms dictate Isabella's future through an arranged marriage, she grapples with her burgeoning feelings for Molly, embodying the series' exploration of LGBTQ+ themes. Amidst the tide of social reform and industrial evolution, the narrative delves into issues of empowerment, equality, and the courage to embrace one's true identity. Experience a world where love defies convention, and personal bonds are as transformative as the era's most significant movements.
Writer’s Statement
Why This Story Matters to Me
I wrote A Note in Time because too many love stories like Isabella and Molly's have been erased from history. The late 19th century saw both the rise of the women's suffrage movement and intense persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals—two realities that rarely occupy the same narrative space in period dramas. I wanted to illuminate that intersection.
This story is personal. I understand the weight of choosing between who I am and who the world expected me to be. Like Isabella and Molly, I know what it means to love someone in a world that tells you that love is wrong. Their tragedy isn't just historical—it echoes in every person today who still faces impossible choices between authenticity and survival.
The Power of Memory
The supernatural element—Antoinette's connection to Isabella across time—isn't just a framing device. It's a statement of belief: that love this profound doesn't simply disappear. The LGBTQ+ community has always found ways to pass down our stories, even when they were forbidden. Sometimes through whispers, sometimes through dreams, sometimes through an inexplicable feeling that we've loved like this before.
What I Hope Audiences Take Away
I want viewers to feel the full weight of what was stolen from Isabella and Molly—not just their lives, but their future. The marriage they couldn't have. The ordinary days together they were denied. The old age they should have shared.
But I also want audiences to feel hope. The final scene suggests that some loves are strong enough to transcend death itself, that perhaps Isabella and Molly find each other again in Antoinette's world—a world where their love would be celebrated, not criminalized.
Honoring the Forgotten
This screenplay is dedicated to every queer person who couldn't live their truth, every woman who sacrificed her happiness for duty, and every love story that history tried to erase.
Their silence will not be our silence. Their erasure will not be our erasure.
Isabella and Molly's story matters because it's not just theirs—it belongs to all of us who came after, who inherited both their trauma and their resilience. In telling their story, I'm honoring every queer ancestor who loved in secret, who died unnamed, who never got their happy ending.
If this script makes even one person feel seen, feel validated in their own impossible choices, or feel connected to the long line of LGBTQ+ people who came before them—then I've done what I set out to do.
A Final Note
Period dramas have historically centered heterosexual romance while relegating queer stories to subtext or tragedy. While A Note in Time doesn't have a conventional happy ending, it refuses to let Isabella and Molly be forgotten. Their love reverberates through time itself.
That, I believe, is its own form of victory.
