Second Coming or Looming Apocalypse? – The Writer in Modern TV

09 June 10

With diverse dramas such as Misfits, The Unloved and Occupation taking home the big drama prizes at this year’s Philips British Academy Television Awards, we join the BFI for a special debate on the new wave of British TV writers.

Quentin Falk reports.

Second Coming or Looming Apocalypse? You might just be forgiven for thinking this shock-horror headline suggests some world-changing global event. Until, that is, you check out its rather milder subtitle: ‘The writer in modern TV.’

It’s certainly nothing if not a sensationally attention-grabbing way of signposting a major debate on 14 June, produced with support from BAFTA, which arrives some two-thirds of the way though an ambitious two-month BFI season of great British television drama from the past 10 years or so.

Among the panelists, under the chairmanship of TV critic Mark Lawson, will be writers like Tony Marchant, Jimmy McGovern and Donna Franceschild, alongside producers Gub Neal and Nicola Shindler, as well as the odd TV executive such as BBC’s Head of Drama Ben Stephenson.

According to the BFI’s Mark Duguid, who has curated the season, which, of course, includes work by the aforementioned writers, along with dramas by 11 other major British TV writers, the debate should be a useful forum, among many other things, for discussing what motivated this season in the first place.

“The purpose,” says Duguid, “is essentially to redress something of an imbalance in the discussion of TV drama in this country.” This, he notes, surfaced yet again following a widely circulated email about a year ago from the venerable Tony Garnett, one of the godfathers of British television drama.

“It was an attack on the BBC for a culture of managerialism which he felt was stifling creativity, particularly making it very difficult for writers to maintain control over projects – a sort of interfering culture.”

"Star Struck by American dramas"

The other “prong of criticism” of contemporary British TV has come, says Duguid, from those “star struck by the state of contemporary American TV, and there’s no point denying it’s been a very creative period over there, mostly coming from HBO but increasingly from elsewhere. This is often used as a sort of stick to beat the British with.”

Says William Ivory (whose Faith was shown in May): “It’s high time someone challenged the belief that we no longer produce great TV in this country.

“At our best our TV is easily the match of anything from the States and interestingly enough it is often, I believe, our work which actually (when you go beneath the surface of USA style and uber production which costs gazillions) breaks the newest and most interesting ground.

“Certainly, for those of us old enough to believe that TV is there to challenge as well as divert, there is too often the feeling that what we get from the States is a triumph of style over content.”

Rowan Joffe, whose Secret Life is showing on 18 June, feels that “British television drama is in superbly good hands with the likes of Paul Abbott, Tony Marchant and Abi Morgan – to the extent that I felt Tony Garnett’s piece somewhat inaccurate.

“On the other hand, I do worry that C4 may not, presumably for financial reasons, continue to be the rich source of one-off TV dramas that it always has been and that have made a massive contribution to the field.”

Recent BAFTA winner Guy Hibbert, whose May 33rd is showing on 19 June, explains “I am sick and tired of people yapping on about American drama being superior. It isn’t, it’s just different.

“We are different peoples and our respective writing reflects that. Our very best drama is intimately engaged in a conversation with our nation; American drama cannot address us on that level – so I could argue that, for us, American drama is escapism and can therefore rarely engage us on anything but a superficial level.”

Adds Duguid: “I think there is a sense in which British critics are, in their enthusiasm for US product, in danger of missing something quite important going on in Britain over the past 10 to 15 years.

“Whatever the problems in being a writer in Britain today, there is undoubtedly a new wave of writers who have come through. And that’s really what the season is designed to showcase.”

This event is sold out but some late tickets may be released over the coming days. Check the BFI website for more information.