While searching for the legendary Amber Room, Sotheby’s Head of Antiquities and her team take on spies, thieves, cutthroat competitors and personal demons, as they confront the question of who owns history.
PRICELESS is a one-hour episodic thriller that show combines the gripping treasure hunt of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK with the twisty thrills and flawed heroine of KILLING EVE and the new week/new locale/new mystery procedural of POKER FACE.
To become Head of Antiquities, Eleanor Black has had to be twice as brilliant and daring as any man. And she is, which we see when we meet her in a penthouse in Rio, where she outmaneuvers her rival from Christie’s (and sometimes lover) George Featherstone to secure the right to auction a set of dazzling gold figurines. But she succeeds by promising the gang leader who has kidnapped the owner’s husband that she can get him more at auction than Christie’s’ offer — far more, her headstrong protegée Celine Rivaux reminds her, than what the figurines are worth. Back in New York, Eleanor’s always-eager assistant Vincent Tang is excited by the acquisition, her principled colleague Hector Lopez-Portillo is frustrated that, yet again, such a treasure will go to some rich bastard rather than back to its country of origin, and her boss Matthias DeVries is apoplectic that she has raised the asking price. Eleanor acts confident for all of them, but that night, she calls her best friend in London, not-always-law-abiding Interpol officer Janice Adeyemi, and reveals she’s terrified she’s risking a man’s life on the outcome of a sale. Sure enough, at the auction, Eleanor can’t get the price she promised, until a mysterious man saves the day with an extraordinary bid. Then he appears in Eleanor’s office that night to tell her that he wants to hire her to find the Amber Room, a lost treasure that has obsessed seekers for decades. Despite warnings from Matthias about the history of death attached to the room, and advice from her truth-telling mother, Anne Sterling, about the danger of following in her archaeologist father’s reckless footsteps, Eleanor decides to take on the search. But the peril of her new mission becomes clear when Janice brings her from Heathrow, not to a meeting with the Amber Room expert she’s been looking for, but to his funeral.
Betsy is an award-winning Brooklyn-based writer and director. Since receiving her MFA from NYU, she has criss-crossed the country producing and directing documentaries (FLAT DADDY, about the impact of the war in Iraq on four military families from around the U.S., premiered at DOC NYC in 2011), produced and directed for hire on projects ranging from pieces for the Working Families Party and the Code Liberation Foundation, to those animal videos for The Dodo, to video letters for Nickelodeonʼs BLUE'S CLUES. Her editing credits include voter education videos in five languages and fund- and awareness-raising work for Family Equality, Brick Education, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and Swing Left. Her most recent doc, THE HALLOWEEN HOUSE (2021), about how one man's (Tony Award-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire) obsession with scariness brings together his diverse neighborhood, will play at Lincoln Center's Diversity and Inclusion Film Festival in November 2024. Her episodic experience comes from 25+ years miking everyone from Carrie Bradshaw to Elmo as a location sound person on shows that include ELEMENTARY, THE SOPRANOS, THE MARVELOUS MRS MAISEL, and POSE. As a screenwriter, she writes thrillers and comedies with a dark side centered around women who won't take no for an answer. Her one-hour thriller pilot PRICELESS was selected in 2023 for the Stowe Narrative Lab & the Writers Lab NYC, and in 2024 for the Nostos Screenwriting retreats and The Women’s List. Her comedy-thriller screenplay SHE DONE IT was a semi-finalist for the 2024 Screencraft Screenwriting Fellowship and was selected for the 2024 Cinestory Feature Retreat.
The Writers Lab (NYC) 2023 - Selected Participant
Stowe Narrative Lab 2023 - Selected Participant
writersXwriters 2023 - Finalist
Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition 2023 - semifinalist
The Women's List 2024 - Official Selection
