The Calling Card Script

by Paul Ashton

  simply a measure of how many people watched a programme, they are also

  used to examine the proportion of different demographics watching it, how

  the figure rose or fell as compared with the last or a comparable instal -

  ment, and how it compares to what the broadcaster expected and hoped for.

  Set against this is the AI – the Appreciation Index. This explains how

  much the audience that watched a programme actually enjoyed it. Dis -

  appointing viewing figures can be assuaged by a higher AI – and vice versa.

  For some, the AI is as important (if not more so) than simple audience

  numbers.

  The truth is that the future of, for example, a series that has return -

  able potential may be decided early on in the season. Commissioner and

  network controllers don’t necessarily wait until the end of the series to book

  the next season if the figures are chiming in with their own feelings about

  a show.

  34 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  Commissioner and controllers want programmes that ‘punch through’

  the schedule, that might have ‘staying power’, and that can become a

  ‘brand’. Let’s say that again without the jargon. They want programmes

  that truly stand out in a crowded array of channel schedules as the thing to

  watch, that might have the potential to return or spin-off (as Torchwood

  and the Sarah-Jane Adventures did from Doctor Who), and that will become

  more important in their own right and in the mind of their audience than

  the broadcaster that makes them (increasingly, younger audiences don’t

  necessarily make as much connection between brand – say, EastEnders –

  and the channel it is on – BBC1).

  The other thing to remember about shows deemed not to be performing

  in the overnights is that they can be shifted to another slot and effectively

  buried in the schedule. So even eventual transmission isn’t a guarantee

  that your show will reach an audience in the way that it might or should.

  THE COLD LIGHT OF DAY

  The reality is that TV drama generally needs to perform instantly. The idea

  of a slow-burner that garners an audience through word of mouth is a

  retreating memory. Gone are the days when broadcasters would make a

  programme primarily because an in-house producer believed in it – now,

  their belief must have a demonstrable demand from an audience.

  This doesn’t mean that risks aren’t taken. Every commission, green

  light and transmission is potentially an extremely expensive risk. But if your

  idea and writing is extremely ponderous, extremely niche, extremely expen -

  sive, extremely dense or extremely disrespectful of an audience’s desire to

  be engaged and entertained then the chances of it being developed (never

  mind made) are extremely slim.

  Why should anyone take a risk on you if your idea disregards what’s

  essential about the medium? TV storytelling is more relentless than it’s

  ever been. TV is not the place to indulge your creative peccadilloes. It is the

  place where you either engage an audience, or you fail.

  Again, this doesn’t mean inspired risks aren’t being taken all the time

  and especially in the first series of a show: the manic world of Shameless;

  the youthful POV of Skins; the genre-bending of Being Human; the dark

  grubbiness of Funland; the scheduling over five consecutive nights of

  Criminal Justice; a soap-structured adaptation of Bleak House; the intense

  THE MEDIUM 35

  glare on the ‘womb’ of a hospital in Bodies; the unadulterated truth of Sex

  Traffic; the anthologised storytelling of The Street – each and every one a brave leap forward. Each relentless in the storytelling. Each clearly, bril -

  liantly formatted.

  THE SCHEDULE

  In this dawning age of online viewing and TV on demand, the question

  being asked is: will the traditional schedule disappear altogether? Reports

  of its demise are perhaps exaggerated. Times are indeed changing, tech -

  nology has advanced rapidly, and the habits of newer audiences are emerg -

  ing. But it will take some time yet before the experience of selecting a

  channel to watch a programme dies out – not least because the older audi -

  ence that tends to watch TV in the traditional manner is living longer.

  New habits always emerge with new technology. With the growth of

  digital TV storage comes the problem of ‘entertainment debt’ – of deferring

  watching by storing episodes or programmes for later. The more you store,

  the greater the debt, and the less likely it is that you can find the time for

  everything you think you want to watch. So the technology of ‘convenience’

  doesn’t always make life easier.

  People will increasingly catch what they miss online or ‘stack’ it for

  later, and some will do this much more than others. But I don’t see the

  schedules dying out for some time yet, because when they do the whole

  industry and medium will need to reinvent itself – and I question how ready

  we all are to stomach this level of change.

  AUDIENCE IS GOD

  A lot of time is spent measuring, analysing, understanding, serving, mani -

  pulating and second-guessing the audience’s habits. The audience is god in

  every medium – without it, the story means nothing. But in TV, it is not just

  audience figures that rule. The audience has become extremely knowledge -

  able and savvy about the formats, genres, styles and techniques of TV

  storytelling (for example, thriller, detective and forensic drama). Surprising

  a TV audience convincingly gets harder and harder. It’s also sometimes true

  that a hard core of the audience may know a long-running soap and its

  history even better than the people making it.

  36 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  THE PHENOMENON

  TV has the unique ability to seemingly hook a whole nation with its

  storylines – from ‘Who shot JR?’ in Dallas to ‘Who is the father of Michelle

  Fowler’s baby?’ in EastEnders. Every now and then a storyline becomes a

  phenomenon. In no other medium will such a volume of people simul

  -

  taneously watch the same story. With so many channels available and

  different ways of watching emerging, that volume is reducing considerably

  over time – but it’s still the mass medium for the mass audience. East-

  Enders can regularly pull in 8 million viewers on the first airing. That is a

  meaningful proportion of a nation of 65 million people. And fittingly, you

  tend to need big storylines and big hooks to grab them.

  JUMPING THE SHARK

  The big danger of this big need is when a show runs out of ideas and all

  there is left to do is ‘jump the shark’. When Happy Days really had

  exhausted the format, all they could think of to up the ante was for the Fonz

  to literally make a water-ski jump over a shark to safety (or, God forbid, to

  certain death – which, in a way, it ultimately was for the show). It wasn’t a

  story line driven by the show, by character, by relationship, by situation, by

  format – by anything other than sensation. The greatest danger in TV

  drama, especially soaps, is the sensation. The shark. The siege. The flood.

  The serial killer. The
mockney gangster. The plane crash. Some would say

  Brookside simply went through one too many sensational happenings for

  such a small, new-build cul-de-sac in suburban Liverpool.

  At its best Dallas kept the audience hooked by waiting to reveal the

  identity of the person who shot the show’s charming but ruthless villain

  J.R. Ewing. At its worst, Bobby Ewing stepped out of the shower and we

  were asked to believe that everything we’d seen since his apparent death was

  all a dream. It was the death of the show. Ask yourself this: does my idea/

  world really have a long enough potential life on TV? If it does, how long

  might it be? There’s nothing worse than a melodramatic, unbelievable,

  dragged-out death rattle from an idea desperately clinging on to a life that

  is barely worth living any more.

  THE MEDIUM 37

  THE SINGLE EXCEPTION

  The one exception to much of what I have said (and will go on to say) about

  format is the single drama. The single remains, as a form, pretty much the

  same as films for the big screen. Singles for TV are not usually cinematic or

  filmic in visual scope and storytelling; they are still commis sioned because

  it is believed an idea is bold enough or explored interestingly enough to

  punch through the schedule. It is a dwindling form – there will never again

  be as many TV singles as there once were, a fact bemoaned by some. The

  reason being that it is expensive to make any TV drama, so the potential

  ‘return’ on an investment in an idea, world, characters will be greater the

  more long-running it is. It is also felt that the audience for one-offs is

  dwindling (which it is) because TV audiences want a brand to which they

  can continue to relate and return. It’s normally only a very big-name writer

  who will get a TV single commissioned.

  Some celebrated examples from the annals include Cathy Come Home,

  Culloden, The Naked Civil Servant, Abigail’s Party, Scum, Made in Britain, The War Game, Tumbledown, Hillsborough, Blue Remembered Hills, My Beautiful Launderette. Some recent examples include stories about soldier

  abuse in the Iraq war ( The Mark of Cain); a young girl’s faith in a ghetto -

  ised community ( White Girl); the rehabilitation of child killer who is now a

  young adult ( Boy A); a black man deciding he hates black people ( Shoot the

  Messenger); Churchill’s convictions about the danger of fascism ( The Gath -

  ering Storm); and a range of small but thematically linked pieces about TV

  celebrities ( Fear of Fanny, The Curse of Steptoe). They all say something big or explore something in the popular consciousness. Probably the only exception to the rule – cinematic scope on the small screen – is the recent work

  of Stephen Poliakoff. We can all aspire to this freedom. But don’t be fooled

  that it might actually happen. Because it simply won’t.

  FORMAT NOT FORMULA

  A format is a recognisable place in TV scheduling from which and through

  which the best writers can tell stories that engage, delight and challenge an

  audience. A formula is a closed, unbending and usually simplistic shape

  into which stories are forced and through which the audience is served up

  the same old fodder they’ve seen a million times before. A format has

  38 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  infinite potential; a formula has only limits. Don’t mistake the one for the

  other. You need to master format – and avoid formula.

  BASIC DISTINCTIONS

  A series is a run of episodes that have the ability either to continue ad

  infinitum or to return for a new season, with the primary focus on telling

  episode stories that have varying degrees of serialisation from what pre -

  cedes and into what follows.

  A serial is a run of episodes that has a definite, finite ending, with the

  primary episode focus being a serialisation of events, with varying levels of

  completeness for episode story.

  It’s an obvious distinction, but one that very often gets very muddied

  in the minds of inexperienced writers.

  The more sophisticated TV writers become in their craft, the more the

  basic format can be challenged. In the BBC’s most recent version of Bleak

  House – adapted from Dickens by Andrew Davies, and told in twice-weekly

  half-hour episodes – the serial took on the feel of a soap, or rather, the feel

  of a major storyline in a soap that culminates in a major climax. Series

  one of Shameless could conceivably have ended in the final episode and

  remained in our minds as a one-off serial, such was the exquisite structure

  of the show. Five Days was absolutely a finite serial, uniquely structured –

  but the central police detectives earned themselves a new life in a very

  different spin-off drama later.

  These are examples where format is developed, manipulated, sub verted,

  challenged – yet where format essentially remains recognisable and firm.

  SERIAL

  A serial has a finite ending and each episode (and everything therein)

  should be key in reaching that ending. As a format, therefore, there is a

  reliance on an audience’s ability and willingness to tune in for each episode,

  lest they miss what should be crucial stages of the journey. The drive and

  need, then, is for a powerful ending and powerful hooks at the beginning

  and end of each episode to keep the audience constantly engaged. The mys -

  teries deepen, the drama develops, the characters continue to journey and

  the surprises keep on coming.

  THE MEDIUM 39

  Serial is a word with conflicting connotations. We expect a serial killer

  to keep on killing, a serial offender to keep offending – unless or until, of

  course, something stops them. In drama, a serial is reliant on the momen -

  tum reaching a powerful climax. Without that climax to work towards, your

  serial is already failing.

  Adaptations of classic (and modern classic) novels form a large propor -

  tion of TV serials, from Defoe to Jane Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Hardy,

  right through to Tom Sharpe, Zadie Smith et al. Original serials tend to be

  either uniquely imagined and/or big, state of the nation pieces that often

  capture a particular world and place in time – The Singing Detective, The

  Lost Prince, The Edge of Darkness, Boys from the Blackstuff, Our Friends in the North, State of Play. Recently, some serials have had a more distinct feeling of an ‘event’ about them – for example, Criminal Justice and Five

  Day s stripping across five consecutive nights, or Bleak House adapted into bi-weekly half-hour instalments.

  The serial format is usually very much about and dependent on the

  scale, ambition, boldness, imagination, politics and scope of an idea. Think

  small, safe and ‘soapy’ and you misunderstand this format for the medium.

  CONTINUING SERIES

  Continuing drama series (CDS), otherwise known somewhat dispar agingly

  as ‘soaps’, do exactly what it says on the tin. A CDS show can run and run

  and run. As time has gone on, the big shows – EastEnders, Coronation

  Street, Emmerdale – now transmit more frequently. The volume of story

  and stories needed is mind-boggling. These shows are truly for the mass,

  loyal audience who structure their evening around them on a regular basis.

 
These shows are part of the fabric and tapestry of millions of TV viewers’

  lives. This format is utterly, intrinsically relentless. These shows and the

  infrastructures that keep them going must be well-oiled machines to

  continue so unstoppably.

  The world of a soap loosely mirrors that of an ‘average’ audience in

  that they are usually a combination of residential, work and communal set -

  tings – a square, street or village where characters’ lives can interact, over -

  lap, intersect, but also find a private space.

  For the writer, this means the complex art of multi-stranded story -

  telling. Episode by episode, you usually balance between three A, B and C

  40 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  strands. It won’t look as neat and tidy as the diagram below and the best

  episodes tend to overlap and combine the three strands towards a climax

  that impacts all of them, rather than simply interweaving them. But they

  might look something like this:

  A

  A

  A

  A

  A

  A

  B

  B

  B

  B

  B

  C

  C

  C

  C

  You will need to tell an episode story while developing the longer-term

  serial arcs of characters and strands, which in turn will serve the super-

  serial arcs that span over months. You also need to set up and hook the

  audience for the coming episodes that you don’t necessarily write. Each

  episode will build to a main climax. Each weekly block of episodes will build

  towards a weekly climax (watch the omnibus and you’ll see this in action).

  And months’ worth of weekly blocks will constitute overlapping major story

  lines and arcs.

  At its best this will feel like ever-arriving waves. As one wave breaks

  and climaxes a major strand, below it will be other waves at varying stages

  of build towards their own staggered breakers. Sometimes you will get a

  huge wave – a rip curl, a ‘Who shot JR?’ – that builds so long and crashes