International Schooled — Series Pitch
A half-hour comedy series · Working title

International
Schooled.

Smart people. A broken system.
Competence is punished here.

FormatHalf-hour comedy
SettingAn elite international school
LocationGermany
International SchooledSeries pitch
01 / Logline

The last smart
American standing.

Feeling like the last smart American standing, an expat flees the US and winds up teaching at an elite international school in Europe, only to find she must navigate a Kafkaesque administration, bizarre colleagues, and a student body so well-behaved it’s terrifying.

Allied International Metropolitan High. AIM High.

International Schooled02 / 17
02 / The premise

Highly competent.
On paper, unqualified.

JANE is an incredibly sharp, highly competent teacher who runs a classroom with respect and empathy.

She is also, on paper, unqualified.

With a master’s degree in Comparative Mythology but no official teaching qualification, Jane has built a comfortable life teaching at an elite international school in Europe.

She disclosed her lack of teaching credentials when they hired her. They hired her anyway.

The students are highly functional, extremely polite, hilariously competent, tiny adults who operate in this bizarre international school bubble.

If the teachers don’t do their jobs, the students will take over the lessons themselves.

Jane just wants to do her job, not everyone else’s.

International Schooled03 / 17
03 / The primary antagonist

The school.

A “Brussels Model” of permanent gridlock. Ever-changing rules. No leadership. Nobody owns the consequences.

This Kafkaesque institution is a collision of cultures that ends in no one ever understanding anything. Policy changes make little sense.

Though it seems good on the outside, monetary resources mean nothing because the internal infrastructure is completely broken.

You always have to log in three times and the internet is forever down.

The old building makes ordinary things difficult. Its forgotten rooms and old passageways occasionally make themselves useful.

The broken system constantly tries to offload its responsibilities onto Jane.

She knows better than to accept them. Unfortunately, she also knows how to get things done.

International Schooled04 / 17
04 / The personal stakes

4,400 miles.
Six time zones.
Still not quite far enough.

Teaching wasn’t exactly what Jane set out to do. It turned out to be what she was meant to do.

That it also keeps her 4,400 miles and six time zones away from her toxic family back in the USA is an enormous additional benefit.

She grew up with a single selfish mother and a feral pack of drag queens at the helm.

Her mother named her Jane Mary as a marijuana joke and has been waiting for her to lighten up about it ever since.

By eleven, Jane was already the adult in the room.

Her daily existence is a defensive game of survival against broken people who would weaponise her competence and her empathy, if she let them.

International Schooled05 / 17
05 / Tone & theme

Frasier meets Fisk.

Unsentimental, biting, and darkly absurd.

The tone

The characters are flawed, stressed, highly articulate, and navigating an institution that makes everything harder than it needs to be.

Smart people in a broken system, lots of punchlines, and genuine affection between the few people who make it bearable.

The theme

Dysfunction follows the same patterns everywhere: families, institutions, countries.

This is a story of a woman who refuses to take on the narratives people hand to her.

International Schooled06 / 17
06 / Main characters

Three ways to survive.

The realist

Jane

American · 40s

Fierce, stubborn integrity. She loves teaching and loves the kids, but refuses to participate in the fake bureaucratic theatre the school uses to cover up its own dysfunction.

Her main goal is to escape or deflect attention away from herself. Competence is punished here and she knows it.

She stays likeable even when she doesn’t behave admirably, mostly because she is good at making people laugh.

The rationalizer

Kate

English · 30s

She knows the institution is a mess, but tries to find logic in it to preserve her own sanity.

She tries to force Jane to accept the awful events because if Jane rejects them, it exposes how meaningless everything is.

Bakes her way out of the pain, which is not her only diplomatic skill.

The true believer

Sue

Australian · New English teacher

She genuinely notices possibilities and pleasures other people have stopped noticing. When things get tough, Sue volunteers.

Jane eventually finds her optimism as admirable as it is exhausting.

Shaping young minds is a peaceful sanctuary compared to modern dating. Like the dead, she cannot bring herself to speak ill of the school.

International Schooled07 / 17
07 / The ensemble

People around her.

Ms Lotte

The interim director

From a nonspecific Eastern European country, a terrifyingly intense post-Soviet administrator who embodies toxic positivity. She loves Tony Robbins and self-help books about “breaking patterns.”

Logic is lost on her, as are all human feelings. She needs employees to validate her brilliance. She believes there is nothing a good handout can’t cure.

Milo

The bombastic sports teacher who believes himself a hero. He will do literally anything to be liked. Always there when you don’t need or want him to be. Slimy and not to be trusted with secrets.

Makes good bread though.

The Irish Seamuses

Two Irish teachers who were once a trio. Fergal died and they mourn him still.

Kind to each other but mean to everyone else, a tiny cartel controlling secret photocopiers, hidden rules they make up and covert keys forgotten by everyone else.

Very handsome. Big fans of musicals. Never discuss their personal lives, because there is nothing to discuss. Would never snitch.

Joe

Jane’s British boyfriend and one of the few adults in her life she doesn’t have to manage. He is not immune to her sharpness, nor especially intimidated by it.

International Schooled08 / 17
08 / The wider school

A very particular bubble.

The Polyglot Sidekicks

Incredibly talented language teachers who annoy Jane because they effortlessly switch between languages. Not just English and Italian. Finnish and Greek.

A rebel, a nitpicker, and a sex bomb are among this crew.

The Postcolonial Teachers

Teachers from non-European, non-white backgrounds who maintain their composure and professional smiles despite the elite privilege of students who unknowingly needle them with ignorance or naiveté.

The Cleaning Staff

Among the brightest problem solvers in the room. Former doctors, lawyers and librarians in their home countries.

The Students

Bright, hard-working and naïve to the world at large. They treat teachers like rock stars and cannot be more excited about school.

If the teachers don’t do their jobs, the students will take over the lessons themselves.

International Schooled09 / 17
09 / The season-one throughline

The looming inspection
Can she survive it?

The same systemic chaos Jane battles also protects her. Nobody follows up on the qualifications they knew she didn’t have when they hired her.

Jane takes refuge in her few sane friends at school and tries to keep teaching without giving anyone a reason to look too closely at her paperwork.

But an official end-of-year inspection hangs over the first season.

What she could lose

If the school’s decision to employ her suddenly becomes her problem, she could lose her job and even her visa.

Leaving her to face the family and country she fled.

International Schooled10 / 17
10 / The simple season story arc

The institution persists.

01

The starting line

Pilot

The old Director is arrested before he can finish firing Jane.

She hopes her qualification problem is buried with his departure. Lotte takes over as Interim Director.

02

The middle

Episodes 2–6

Nobody follows up on the file. Jane, Kate and Sue clash with the school’s constant dysfunction.

Jane wants to keep teaching without attracting attention to her paperwork.

03

The finish line

Finale

The Inspector arrives. Jane expects to get fired.

But he is so lazy and incompetent that he fakes the entire report, and no one is the wiser.

Reset for season two.

International Schooled11 / 17
11 / Season-one episode ideas

Ordinary school days.

Sick Day

Something is spreading around the school, but Jane refuses to leave because she likes having human rights but not using them.

Training Day

The staff is subjected to the worst safety training you can imagine. It is completely clear that they might all die.

Teacher of the Year

They keep trying to give Jane a prize, and she keeps desperately dodging it, fearing the attention will make parents look too closely at her qualifications.

International Schooled12 / 17
12 / Pilot · The Key to Education

Flirting and firing her
at the same time.

The setup

It is a teacher planning day before the start of term. An upcoming whole-school inspection has prompted Director Leclerc to audit the staff files.

He discovers that Jane doesn’t hold an official teaching qualification. Jane points out that he knew this when he hired her seven years ago. A flashback confirms that he did.

Her competence has never been the problem. His paperwork apparently is.

Leclerc is flirting and firing her at the same time when a police officer arrives and escorts him out for reasons unknown but clearly not good. Assistant Director Lotte watches, barely concealing her glee.

Act one

In the staff room, Kate wants to know why there is a police van in the car park. Jane starts explaining, but Sue interrupts. The eager new English teacher has been told Jane is her mentor and will help her get a classroom key. Jane has agreed to neither.

Jane’s priority is getting home for her beloved customised teacher planner: leather-bound, embossed, colour-coded, and the only system in her life that actually works.

Trying to leave, she receives a call from her mother about Christmas and a gym membership, if she is still fat. She hangs up, hears Milo’s approaching whistle and ducks into the bathroom.

Alone, she processes the possible collapse of her professional life. She didn’t lie. They knew. Then she remembers her visa, and her tinnitus starts soaring.

International Schooled13 / 17
13 / Pilot · The Key to Education

Jane needs a key to get out.
Sue needs a key to get in.

Act two / A new interim director

A distorted announcement summons everyone to the aula. Lotte introduces herself as Interim Director while retaining her position as Assistant Director.

The inspection will proceed exactly as planned. Nothing has changed.

Her intensely positive welcome features super-happy children and “SYNERGY HORIZONS.” The presentation won’t load because the internet is down.

Nobody may leave before six-thirty. Every hand goes up when she asks for questions. She exits without answering, noting their excellent enthusiasm.

Act two / The way out

Jane plans to escape through the back gate, but Kate explains that the keys were reprogrammed over the summer. Jane’s no longer works.

Leclerc also had the key to the keys, so Sue still cannot get into her classroom. Both problems lead to the Irish Seamuses.

Milo stops them to recruit them for a charity project. He hasn’t decided who it will help or what it involves, but is thinking about a bake sale.

Kate claims they have to work on the book list. Jane cannot resist explaining everything wrong with Milo’s proposal. She delays herself and convinces him she would be an excellent committee member. Milo is also looking for the Seamuses.

International Schooled14 / 17
14 / Pilot · The Key to Education

Everything has a price.
Especially the spare keys.

Act three / The negotiation

The Seamuses control useful things nobody else can get: keys, timetables, photocopier codes and unofficial privileges.

Jane and Kate know asking for anything means owing something.

The negotiation over master keys becomes a negotiation over cover lessons, available whenever the Seamuses choose.

Sue’s cheerful willingness to help does not improve their bargaining position.

Act three / The escape

Then Milo’s unmistakable whistle sounds outside.

“Milo and his stupid charity muffins! If he catches us here, he will tell Lotte we were working with the Seamuses and not on the book list.”

The Seamuses hate a snitch. They hand over the keys and usher the women through the back of a supply cabinet into an old heating passage.

They emerge, dusty, into a classroom furnished for much smaller children. Kate directs Jane towards an escape staircase. Sue is delighted to discover they are in her classroom. She would, however, like to know why the tables and chairs are so small.

International Schooled15 / 17
15 / Pilot · The tag

It can’t be worse
than last year.

Jane bikes home like a madwoman, arriving just as the DHL van pulls away.

Her delivery notice says they will try again next week.

She sits on her front step. Joe arrives and asks how her first day was. Jane holds up the delivery slip and moans.

It can’t be worse than last year, he says.

Then it starts to rain.

Ruining her hair, the only thing that had been going well.

International Schooled16 / 17
16 / Beyond season one

New interim director.
Same institution.

Each season introduces a new interim director, each bringing their own flavour of incompetence.

The institution persists. Jane’s survival strategies must evolve.

Eventually, the ultimate threat emerges.

They want to make her director.

Well, interim director.

International Schooled17 / 17
International Schooled — Script Excerpt

International Schooled · Pilot

Script excerpt

INT. DIRECTOR’S OFFICE – DAY

DIRECTOR LECLERC, well-dressed and believing himself charming, sits behind his desk. His name is gold embossed and blazened on his desk. JANE enters.

DIRECTOR LECLERC

Jane, so good to see you. That colour really suits you.

JANE

I love a jewel tone.

DIRECTOR LECLERC

I have brought you in here to tell you that, unfortunately, we must separate.

JANE

Separate like divide?

DIRECTOR LECLERC

Desole, no. You must leave the school

JANE

What?! Why? The kids love me. Even the parents love me, and I am openly hostile to them.

DIRECTOR LECLERC

Oh, there’s no question. You are beloved. But, as it would turn out, you don’t have any qualifications.

JANE

Qualifications?

DIRECTOR LECLERC

Very beloved, by the way.

HE REACHES FOR HER HAND TO SOOTHE HER. SHE RECOILS, HIDING HER HANDS.

Which is why this is so hard. As you know we are being inspected this year, and Ms. Lotte insisted I start auditing all our documents. You know her – she believes in binders. I discovered last night that you don’t actually have any documents that allow you to teach here.

JANE

Emile, you knew I didn’t have any ‘official’ teaching qualifications when you hired me.

CUT TO:

INT. DIRECTOR’S OFFICE – DAY (FLASHBACK)

DIRECTOR LECLERC sits across from JANE, who looks composed and confident.

DIRECTOR LECLERC

Jane, you have no teaching qualifications. What makes you think you can work here?

JANE

I’m good at everything.

DIRECTOR LECLERC

(beguiled)

Intriguing.

JANE

Well, not like quantum physics, but pretty much everything else. Especially with telling people what to do.

DIRECTOR LECLERC

American confidence. It borders on delusional.

JANE

(really asking)

Am I being American?

DIRECTOR LECLERC

You’re hired!

JANE

I brought a dossier of reasons why I am the best person for the job, including recommendation letters from a family I used to babysit for when I was 12, up to my peer-reviewed thesis on Feminist tropes in Athenian myth.

DIRECTOR LECLERC

Not necessary. Your predecessor sent us an email saying she had a spiritual awakening in Sevilla last weekend and refuses to come back. You start tomorrow.

CUT TO:

INT. DIRECTOR’S OFFICE – DAY (PRESENT)

JANE

I have worked here for seven great years, given everything. Proven myself beyond a shadow of a doubt. What changed?

DIRECTOR LECLERC

Nothing. Jane, you’ve been brilliant, but it seems your only degree is in Comparative Mythology?

JANE

The world runs on stories, doesn’t it? It’s not like anyone can teach you how to teach anyway. It’s a learn by doing process, and I’ve been doing it great.

DIRECTOR LECLERC

It’s just these snafus I discovered in the paperwork- if the inspector finds them, the situation could be bad for me. For all of us.

JANE

In forty-two years, I have never been called a snafu.

DIRECTOR LECLERC

Not to worry Jane. You’re a good girl. We’ll stay in touch. I have always been fond of you. Perhaps I can help you… find other work. I’m very well-connected.

A POLICE OFFICER enters. He approaches the desk where DIRECTOR LECLERC sits with JANE. From the outer office, LOTTE watches, barely concealing her glee.

POLICE OFFICER

Emile Leclerc?

DIRECTOR LECLERC

Yes, that’s—

POLICE OFFICER

(in German)

You need to come with me, Sir.

DIRECTOR LECLERC stands, confused. JANE watches, shocked.

INT. STAFF ROOM – DAY

A group of teachers look out the window in disbelief. KATE, sharp and British, runs to JANE as she enters.

KATE

Why is there a police van in the car park?

JANE

I think they just arrested Emile Leclerc.

KATE

For what!?

JANE

I have no idea. Being French?

KATE

Not illegal. Shame.

JANE

Kate, I have to tell you something. You know how I have always been a gifted storyteller?

KATE is confused. Enter SUE, Australian, 30s, bright and eager for her new job.

SUE

Good morning! I’m Sue, the new English teacher. I’m so excited to be here! You must be Jane Mary Blake. They told me you would have the best hair in the room. Like the kind they have on breakfast television. I think you are my mentor.

JANE

Is that a compliment? I genuinely hate compliments. Also, never say my middle name out loud. And no, I did not sign up to mentor anyone. Especially after last year.

SUE

Got it! No compliments. I got an e-mail from Ms. Lotte saying you were going to be my mentor and could help me locate the keys to my classroom, which I would just love so I can get everything set up for Monday. What happened last year?

JANE is not happy about any of this news.

KATE

(deflecting tension with some good news)

This is new. I just got an email from the administration wishing me a happy birthday.

JANE

Your birthday is in May.

KATE

Well… it’s the thought that counts. If I had known it was my birthday, I would have brought in a cake instead of biscuits.

KATE glances at JANE with a slight, knowing smile. Closeup to a mountain of first-day biscuits hand-made by KATE.

JANE

These people don’t deserve your baking. (to SUE) I don’t have access to any keys. And I can’t help you. I have a mountain of marking to do.

SUE

But… term hasn’t started yet?

JANE

Observant. This might not be the workplace for you. OK, Sue, the truth is my new leather-bound, embossed, colour-coded term planner is being delivered to my flat today between 13:55 and 14:50, which means I have to go meet a DHL delivery person, so I can get some actual work done. I won’t be your mentor, but here’s a tip. You can never achieve anything of value in this loud, distracting Kafakaesque room. It’s already 20 past 13:00! Fuck! If the DHL truck comes, and I am not there I might not have it in time for Monday.

SUE

You’re leaving school for a diary delivery? Can’t they just leave it at your door?

JANE

It’s not just a diary, Sue, it’s the only system in my life that actually works. It will set the tone for the entire year. I spend the entire summer customising it to my exact needs. Specific columns, coordinated to each course perfectly. And each column with my favourite colours, coded in a way only I understand. It is the one thing I can look forward to on this so-called teacher planning day, which is actually a monumental waste of our time.

KATE

I chose my palette based on this year’s Pantone releases and had it customised and imported from Japan.

SUE

I just use a digital calendar app.

JANE

(snorts)

Sue, I dare you to get a stable internet connection in this literal iron-clad building from 1850.

SUE

Well, is there someone else I can speak to? Maybe the staffroom supervisor.

JANE

Yes, you should look for the staffroom supervisor.