Yashna Malhotra, Writer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2020, Screenwriting Award, UCLA 

Project Type: TV Pilot 

Genre: Period Drama, Mystery, Thriller 

Length: 59 pages 

Field of Science: Dream Theory, Dream Psychophysiology 

Stage: Development 

Synopsis 

The Sleep Watchers is a period drama about Nathaniel Kleitman, Eugene Aserinsky and William Dement—the pioneering scientists who discovered REM sleep and fought tirelessly to put the world of sleep research on the map for scientific scholarship. The series, in the vein of Mindhunter meets Masters of Sex, focuses on how science changed sleep forever. It features the story of the pioneering scientists who worked and fought tirelessly to put the world of sleep and dreams on the map for scientific research, giving sleep and dreams a physiological basis, as opposed to merely a psychological basis. It is a series about the world’s first ever sleep laboratory set up at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. One can tell everything about a person by what keeps them up at night. This series is an exploration of this, through the most universal human physiological phenomenon—sleep.