Jane Featherstone: Television Lecture 2017

Delivering BAFTA’s annual television lecture for 2017, television producer Jane Featherstone expressed that while the nature of television is changing, it is important that audiences can continue to connect to and learn from each other through the medium.

Over the course of her career, Featherstone has worked on many acclaimed drama series including BAFTA-winning Broadchurch, Spooks, Humans and Life on Mars. Formally chief executive of Kudos and co-chair of Shine UK, in 2015 Featherstone co-founded Sister Pictures, an independent production company specialising in scripted stories such as the BAFTA-nominated series Flowers.

In her lecture titled ‘The Urgency of the Long Game and Other Stories’, Featherstone stressed the importance of investing in the future workforce of the television industry and “meaningfully support, train and develop a new generation of inspiring, great writers.” She argued that in the changing landscape with the rise of streaming services, championing new talent and telling stories that represent the world we live in are crucial to upholding creative excellence on mainstream broadcast television.

• Read the full transcript of Featherstone’s Lecture

Opening her lecture by recalling the experience of watching television as a child with her family, Featherstone reflected: “it was integral to our cultural landscape. It was a shared experience and my parents loved watching TV with us. From Blake’s 7  to  Only Fools and Horses, from Doctor Who to Morecambe and Wise.”

She described television as her “most enduring love, due in a large part to its accessibility. Its presence at home. Its currency at school, a font of watercooler moments long before I’d heard of watercoolers. The connection it created with family and friends.”

Featherstone argued television’s power to connect us is crucial, “for unity and shared conversations we have.” However, she warned that today “shared stories told on mainstream television is at risk. If storytelling breeds empathy, which I emphatically believe it does, I hope you can see why I say now we need it more than ever today.” Her lecture reframed this risk as a challenge and outlined how to rise to this challenge, to “make a better future” for mainstream television.

Featherstone also reflected on how audiences are drawn to television programmes that are not only entertaining but explore current issues. “We have to engage with the popular mood, and investigate it, to tell relevant and compelling stories. Just as Cracker discussed Hillsborough in front of millions, just as Spooks discussed radicalisation, just as Humans looked at AI taking people’s jobs. We need big shows that deal with inequality, representation, abuses of power, Britain’s identity crisis, the NHS, our political system, the crisis of masculinity, the new battles over race and gender.”

Featherstone shared that research from UK commissioners has shown television audiences want to see stories and characters who represent the world around them. “I believe that viewers want and need to see their own contemporary world represented. Relevant domestic stories, that look at Britain but also our place in the world, and it’s our responsibility to deliver them.”

To create a series with a world that is authentic to the story it’s telling, Featherstone argued it’s important to bring in new and diverse voices. “That means more women. Oh yes. We might like to think we’ve got that covered with female leads in Doctor Who and Doctor Foster, with Sharon Horgan and Phoebe Waller-Bridge blazing trails, but really, we haven’t. It’s also a class issue and it’s an issue of ethnic diversity. It’s an out-of-London issue. How can we hope to talk to the British people about their lives if no one who creates the nation’s most popular stories has lived their experiences? We have to engage with the popular mood, and investigate it, to tell relevant and compelling stories.”

She urged production companies to invest in future talent and “put a junior writer on every series by a single author – to learn, help, proof, listen, maybe write a little, but above all to be mentored.” She also spoke about how her production company, Sister, has established “a writer-in-residence programme” to bring emerging writers into mainstream television. “I strongly believe in giving back. I wouldn’t be here today, where I am, without the opportunities the others presented me with. Without the investment others put in me. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without them. And nor would you.”

As well as supporting emerging storytellers, Featherstone stressed the importance for the whole television industry to nurture the next generations of creative talent across the industry, as early in their education or career as possible. She closed her lecture by urging her peers to come together to support the proliferation of creative excellence in mainstream television. “Because if you’re like me, you understand that creative excellence doesn’t live in a vacuum. It is not an individual achievement. It is the consequence of a thousand decisions made by many people… Creativity isn’t yours or mine. It’s ours. It’s shared. It’s in the connections between us. Because we are connected. We’re human beings. We exist in relation to each other. If stories and storytellers teach us anything, it’s surely that.”

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