Arthur Sharpe is a BAFTA, 2x Ivor Novello and RTS Award-winning composer

… whose distinct and characterful music helps give each new project a unique identity. Often blending a traditional orchestral palette with more unusual instruments and sounds, he balances the strange with the familiar, the beautiful with the gnarly as the picture requires, creating scores that move, unsettle, intrigue and intensify in equal measure.  

Most recently he scored DIARY OF A MAD OLD MAN (2026), a Japanese-language feature film directed by Wayne Wang, starring Lily Franky and Fan Bingbing, which premièred at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, EXTRA GEOGRAPHY (2026), a feature film directed by Molly Manners, which premièred at Sundance 2026, and ALICE AND STEVE (2026), a Disney+ series directed by Tom Kingsley, starring Nicola Walker and Jermaine Clement.

Other notable works include the BBC1 & Sister Pictures series THE FOLLOWING EVENTS ARE BASED ON A PACK OF LIES (2023) for which he won the 2024 Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack. His score on the show incorporated the unnerving blend of harpsichord, piano and strings with the avant-garde percussion group Bangers & Crash, as well as the use of quartertone music and even the occasional 24-tone row.  Before that he worked on the HBO & Sky Atlantic series LANDSCAPERS (2021), a genre-distorting true crime drama about a double murder starring Olivia Colman and David Thewlis, where he merged nods to golden age Hollywood with more unconventional macabre writing and textures. His score for the show won him multiple awards including the 2022 BAFTA for Best Original Music and his first Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack. He also scored the feature film THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN (2021), a Victorian-era artist’s biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy, in which he incorporated a theremin, musical saw and mellotron with a chamber ensemble. His work on this film won him an ASCAP London Music Award, as well as being nominated for the 2023 Ivor Novello Awards and making the 2022 BAFTA Longlist for Best Original Film Score. His scores for these latter two projects also saw him nominated for an IFMCA Award for Breakthrough Composer of the Year. His work on the Apple TV series PRIME TARGET (2025) also won him another ASCAP London Music Award.

Past projects also include the Channel 4 show FLOWERS (2016–2018), a dark comedy drama about mental health within a dysfunctional family, starring Sophia Di Martino, Olivia Colman and Julian Barratt. His work on the first series won him an RTS Award for Best Original Score, while he was also nominated for an Ivor Novello for the second series. Further TV works include scoring Neil Forsyth’s multi award-winning GUILT (2019–2023), the first series of the BBC1 comedy GHOSTS (2019–2023) and WOMEN ON THE VERGE (2018), starring Kerry Condon and created by Lorna Martin and Sharon Horgan. He also recently scored the 2025 Waitrose Christmas Advert, a short film titled THE PERFECT GIFT, starring Keira Knightley and Joe Wilkinson.

His very earliest credits include writing music for the BAFTA-nominated feature film BLACK POND (2011) while still studying at university and co-scoring BIFA-nominated THE DARKEST UNIVERSE (2016) with Ralegh Long. 

Projects soon to be released include THE SCURRY, a feature film directed by Craig Roberts, starring Ella Purnell and Rhys Ifans, and PRODIGIES, an Apple TV series written and directed by Will Sharpe, who also stars alongside Ayo Edebiri.