Niall Leonard, the new ‘Fifty Shades’ screenwriter, has a history writing brutal, violent BDSM

After Sam Taylor-Johnson checked the hell out of the Fifty Shades production after the hassle of having to deal with series author E.L. James, you’d figure it might be hard recruiting new, big name talent. But the next film, Fifty Shades Darker, won’t have any problems, ‘cos E.L. James just hired her husband to write it.

Niall Leonard is also an author and screenwriter and was announced today as Fifty Shades’ new scribe, but this won’t be the first time he’s brought chains and whips to the screen. During his work on the British cop show Wire in the Blood, he scripted the two-part episode “Unnatural VIces”. And here’s what the Telegraph’s Patricia Wynn Davies thinks of Leonard’s writing:

Tonight’s first episode of Unnatural Vices could have been told in one, so the proceedings are filled out with shock and gore, all of it delivered with rather unseemly relish.

It’s best not taken while consuming a TV dinner. The predilections on display cover crazed serial killings in which victims are tied up and force-fed before having their limbs severed.

In case we can’t grasp the full horror, as Dr Hill reconstructs the torture that the killer’s prey endured, the details are repeatedly flashed up on screen.

The same goes for a sub-plot featuring S&M, the latter being a fetish in which a temporary addition to the police team (Cristian Solimeno) takes a keen interest.

For the avoidance of doubt, he is seen handcuffing a lover (an otherwise respectable middle-aged teacher) then rutting away furiously.

Welp, that should put him in great shape for writing Christian Grey’s further descent into violent madness.

Words by Jake Cleland