“What happens to those of us who are currently on staff contracts?” enquired veteran producer Donald Mountjoy politely. Peter looked to Morag to take over.
“As a matter of fact there aren’t all that many, and you will be spoken to individually by Personnel. There will be retirement and redundancy packages available.” A dozen or more older producers stiffened. No-one had ever been asked to retire before. They had always been able to carry on until overwhelmed by ill health or the lure of their rose gardens. “Actually,” continued Morag, “that process has been underway for some time.”
Donald nodded slowly. He had of course noticed that quite a few producers had moved on lately, but he had put it down to their dislike of the new regime at the BBC. Stalwart producers of the old school, whom he would never have expected to quit, had jumped ship to ITV and various independent production companies. Evidently they had decided to leap before they were pushed. Perhaps he would have to think about doing the same.
Stewart Walker lit a cigarette. No-one felt inclined to remind him of the no smoking rule, but a woman by the window opened it ostentatiously. He inhaled, exhaled, and frowned.
“Are we to know what this fee for developing ‘approved projects’ is?”
Morag sighed. “It will be in the region of three thousand pounds.”
“In total?”
“Yes.”
“Regardless of how many months – or years – it takes?”
“Yes.”
“Regardless of how long the controller cares to sit on the project, failing to make a decision? Regardless of how many times he changes his mind about the format, the script, and the writer?”
“Yes.”
“Well that’s marvellous,” said Stewart cheerfully. “Isn’t that good news, everyone?” He looked around the room. “Thanks, Peter and Morag, for negotiating us such a terrifically good deal.” He scowled at them in disgust.
Peter had feared this. “Come on Stewart, don’t blame us. You know perfectly well there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.”
Stewart’s lip curled, but he said nothing. He got up and stalked out of the room.
Peter blinked hopelessly. “It goes without saying that I’m terribly, terribly sorry to see this happening. Of course I argued against it.”
“We realise that, Peter,” said Gillian Makin, a middle aged woman from Pebble Mill. “We know you’ve done your best to stop the department falling apart.”
“It isn’t falling apart,” replied Peter. “It’s being streamlined. We’re simply too expensive, and the number of slots is being reduced. We have to be more efficient, more competitive.”
“Is there anything else we should know?” asked Basil shrewdly. “Will we be supplying our own stationery, I wonder?”
Peter flinched and exchanged a worried look with Morag. “I doubt if it will come to that, Basil, but there will be further economies in the office. I can’t say more than that at the moment. It’s under discussion.”
A ripple of disbelief spread through the room.
“More staff cutbacks?” suggested Sonia Longbow.
“It’s a possibility, we hope not.”
Sally Farquar-Binns decided to look on the bright side. “Well I think we should be positive. We learned to live with Producer Choice and it turned out to be quite useful in many ways – ”
“Extremely useful,” cut in Jeremy Simon, a senior producer. “So useful we no longer have a design department, a props department, a costume department – need I go on?”
“But we can still use most of the people who used to work there, and at a much cheaper rate!” exclaimed Sally. Jeremy shook his head. There were tuts and sighs, but no-one could be bothered to argue with Sally over the value of forty years’ accumulated skill and experience, which the in-house resource departments represented. Most of them ignored her. She was something of an interloper in any case, since she was a ‘development producer’ and had no project commissioned yet.
A despondent silence fell on the room, and Peter drew the meeting to a close. “I’m afraid we must knuckle down and make the best of it,” he said, trying to inject a tone of encouragement into his voice. “Market forces have to be reckoned with nowadays. We’re too big, too unwieldy. To be absolutely honest I could fill the schedule requirements on my own with just a handful of producers. We have to think about making less drama but making it count more. We no longer have the right to fail, so we can’t take so many risks. We don’t have a monopoly, we have a lot of lean, hungry competitors, and the controllers aren’t interested in favouring us. But we do have a huge amount of talent, experience, and guts, between us. Let’s pull together and show them we can still make the best programmes! Thank you very much, everybody.”
Peter left briskly, followed by Morag, glad to escape this roomful of angry, depressed talent.
It was Jonathan’s first producers’ meeting, and ironically enough he’d looked forward to it, like a sixth-former allowed the privilege of entering the staff room. Now he felt as if he’d won his pilot’s wings on the day the RAF was disbanded. Something akin to war survivor’s guilt hung over him: his serial The Medical Miracle had been accepted for BBC2, and was about to go into pre-production. Thrilled as he was by this, it was dreadful to see his elders and betters brought low around him, particularly Basil of course. He had been Basil’s script editor for four years, and had come to regard him as a father-substitute.
Jon’s early career hadn’t been entirely easy. After leaving Cambridge University he had put on a few plays and then become an assistant literary manager at the National Theatre, developing the work of the most talented new writers he could find. Some of them he had recommended to producers at the BBC, making contacts on his own behalf at the same time, and in this way he had got to know Basil, who invited him to come and be his script editor. Working with him had sanded off the veneer of superiority which he had grown up with and reinforced during his tenure of a post which was relatively powerful in the small world of intellectual theatre. Basil never behaved as if he was better than anyone else. He had proved to Jonathan that great writers didn’t necessarily have O-levels, never mind first class degrees from Cambridge.
Getting Jim Johnson’s scripts green-lit meant that Jonathan’s first show would receive a lot of attention. It was a controversial issue and he hoped it hit the zeitgeist. It was a great way to start his producing career, even though he had been told he must do it on his current salary. That had been a blow, but Morag had made it clear that he was fortunate to get the opportunity to produce at all. He had agreed without putting up much of a fight, and Selina hadn’t been at all impressed.
They’d been going out for three years now, and were getting engaged soon. Her family was wealthy and well-connected and they liked him so he didn’t mind going along with whatever Selina said was necessary. There was to be a grand engagement party at their country mansion in the new year. He would need to buy a proper diamond ring. He’d tried to drop hints that he wouldn’t be able to afford a big one, and Selina always laughed. He wasn’t sure whether she minded or not – or whether she thought he was joking. His own parents had a lovely house but they weren’t as well-off as they appeared. He didn’t think Selina had any idea about money really, for all her educated social skills. He sometimes wondered whether she was as intelligent as she looked, but she was very beautiful, elegant and charming, and he loved her.
The privilege of attending the producers’ meetings now seemed like a ticket for the Titanic. In the aftermath he looked round gloomily at those who were furiously discussing the issue in twos and threes, and slipped out of the room; he had a great deal of work to get on with, and wasn’t in the mood for the producers’ favourite activity of debating the hidden agenda.
Jonathan’s small grey third-floor office overlooked the new foyer which had been built onto Television Centre. This was a grand glass structure accommodating a lot of marble and an area for studio audiences to assemble in – an improvemen
t which was long overdue. Jonathan had often wondered at the submissive obedience of the general public who for decades had queued up outside, whatever the weather, in order to spend four unbroken hours on a hard chair watching the recordings of countless light entertainment shows. Above the foyer were the new bi-media newsrooms, which were empty as the radio journalists were still fighting tooth and nail against their removal from Broadcasting House. Jonathan didn’t blame them – for a start, they would be on view through the huge windows to anyone exiting from White City tube station. He wouldn’t like that at all.
He settled at his computer to write a blurb for the Drama Brochure, a glossy catalogue of the forthcoming year’s productions. As none of the cast or crew had yet been appointed it was tricky; he was supposed to supply a photo as well, but would have to make do with a library shot.
THE MEDICAL MIRACLE is Jim Johnson’s first drama serial for the BBC. He is best known for his critically acclaimed novel THE END OF THE ROAD, winner of the Horlicks book prize.
Dewi Griffiths is a 38-year-old GP in mid-Wales: he saves the life of a local farmer who attempts suicide because of mounting debt. Dewi wishes he could help the plight of the farmers, whose centuries-old lifestyle is now unsustainable in the modern world of supermarkets and worldwide agri-business. Dewi suffers from multiple sclerosis, and takes cannabis to relieve his symptoms despite the fact that it’s illegal. He would like to prescribe it for his patients but of course he can’t. It occurs to him that he could solve two problems at once, and he decides it’s worth risking prosecution. He proposes to the farmer that he grows cannabis and makes it into tea bags, and then he sends his patients to buy the medicinal herbal tea. It works a treat, and word spreads. The ‘miracle tea-bags’ as they’re known become very popular. Eventually however, some kids work out what they are and begin smoking them; the secret is out, and the farmer is arrested. Dewi turns himself in and they are both charged without bail. Their customers unexpectedly rally in their support, and crowds gather outside the Old Bailey when the case comes to trial. The story ends when the jury returns to deliver its verdict to the court.
THE MEDICAL MIRACLE is a funny and powerful drama which challenges society to address its attitude towards drugs, and to reconsider the relationship we have with farming and the environment. The open ending provides the opportunity for audience participation in a phone-in vote or a television debate following transmission.
Jonathan fiddled with his synopsis until he was satisfied with it and then took it to Sonia Longbow, whose office was a few doors away. He found her on her knees gazing distractedly at several piles of paper arranged on the floor, with a box of bulldog clips in her hand. She looked up as he knocked and entered.
“Oh God, not another one.”
“Hi Sonia. How’s it going?”
“Don’t ask. Can you hang on a minute? I’ve got to get these in the right order or I’ll lose track of it all again.”
Jonathan loitered by the door, casually reading Sonia’s pinboard which was filled with a complicated chart listing over a hundred productions which were all to appear in the brochure. At least seventy had been crossed out and replaced with something else. He found his own, and felt a tingle of satisfaction.
Sonia clipped her piles of paper together and numbered them with a red pen, then stood up. “Sorry, Jonathan. Is that your entry?”
“Yes.” He handed it over and she glanced through it.
“That’s fine. I might have to cut it down a bit. You’ve got a week to find a photo.”
“Okay,” said Jonathan, turning to leave.
“Since you ask, it’s not going very well. It’s the worst job I’ve ever taken on, and I wish to God I hadn’t.”
Jonathan sympathised. Editing the brochure was a rotten job but someone had to do it. It traditionally fell to a script editor, but Sonia had taken it on rather than lose her post altogether.
“Not long to go,” he said. “Doesn’t it come out soon?”
“Yes but they’re threatening to delay the launch. Which means it’ll probably all change yet again, and everyone will have finished casting and got production photos and the whole bloody thing’ll have to be updated. As it is half the sodding producers won’t get on with writing their blurb, and those that do, make mistakes – they can’t even be bothered to check the spellings of their own casts! I have to double check everything. And look at this rubbish.” She picked up a sheet of paper. “This show is ‘set on a site skirting the sea in Suffolk.’ Don’t they realise how crap that sounds? What do I do – rewrite it for them? Or ask them to do it again?” Jonathan smiled, it was certainly clumsy. “On top of that Peter keeps changing his mind about which shows are going in – there are at least twenty projects in here that haven’t had the green light, you know. They’ll probably never happen, especially given the way slots are disappearing. No-one knows what’ll vanish overnight. It’s complete bollocks, most of it, or else it’s departmental politics. I don’t know why we bother with it. And then there’s the co-productions. Which producer do you ask, and do you check it with the other lot? Naturally, Stewart bloody Walker’s the worst. Would you believe he and Jeremy Simon are bickering over whose name comes first in the credits? They’re both Executive Producers, for Christ’s sake! I can’t decide for them, can I?”
“Maybe you should ask Peter to arbitrate?”
“Actually that’s a really good idea. Thanks, Jonathan. Sorry to rant at you.”
“My pleasure,” he smiled, and made his getaway.
At three o’clock Jonathan sauntered into Peter’s outer office, where his reassuringly mature PA Vera was on the phone as usual. She looked up at him over her half-moon specs and seemed too weary to smile, although her voice was kind as ever.
“Hello Jonathan. He’s got Basil in there at the moment. Might be a few minutes yet.”
“I’ll wait, no problem. How are you, Vera?”
“Mustn’t grumble.” The phone rang again, so Jonathan moved away from her desk towards the newspaper rack. He couldn’t help overhearing Basil expressing delight at something and strained to listen in.
“Best Drama, of course!” Peter was saying.
“I didn’t know it had been entered. You must have forgotten to tell me,” Basil replied. Peter’s voice continued at a lower, apologetic level, and Jonathan picked up Broadcast and sat down to read it. Ten minutes later Basil emerged and closed Peter’s door behind him.
“Jonathan!” he hailed. “Congratulations. Our last production just won another gong.”
“Down and Up?”
“Tony will be so pleased.”
“What’s the prize?”
“Best Drama at the Banff festival.”
“Fantastic! Congratulations, Basil.” Jonathan beamed as he gathered his documents and prepared to enter Peter’s inner sanctum. He paused as Basil held his eye mysteriously, strolling behind Vera and leaning over to speak quietly into her ear.
“Tell me the truth, Vera. Who really put Down and Up in for Banff?”
Vera leaned back and pursed her lips. She patted Basil’s hand, which was resting on her shoulder.
“The American co-producers, Basil.”
Basil continued to look at Jonathan, letting him understand that the BBC had taken so little pride in the show that they hadn’t even bothered to enter it for an international festival. It was the Americans, who had put up half the money and interfered hardly at all, who believed in it. But it was not Basil's way to make a song and dance about such things. He squeezed Vera’s shoulder.
“It’s good to know someone appreciates us.”
“Take it where it’s offered, Basil.”
“Oh I do, Vera, I do,” said Basil walking out with his usual dignity, winking at Jonathan as he passed.
Jonathan raised his eyebrows at Vera, who shrugged: none of it was her doing.
“Bit of a back-handed compliment, really – something like that anyway,” said Jonathan. “Bit depressing, really.”
Jonathan was shocked. He shook his head. “Why?”
“Cut-backs, what else? He’s not in production.”
Jonathan was disgusted. It was a terrible affront to Basil’s dignity; the rest of the entertainment industry would wonder at his apparent demotion as soon as they realised he was answering his own phone and writing his own letters.
“He can’t even type, Vera!”
“Lucky I can, isn’t it?”
“You’re far too busy.”
“True,” said Vera, as the intercom buzzed. “You can go in now.”
There was a hint of whisky in the air when Jonathan approached Peter’s desk, but no sign of a bottle or a glass.
“Jonathan! Come in. Make yourself comfortable,” welcomed Peter, who seemed droopier than usual. He looked at his watch. “Three twenty. Not too early, is it – fancy a drink?”
Jonathan was embarrassed. “Not really, thanks awfully – but don’t let me stop you.”
“No no. I’ll get Vera to fetch us some teas. Vera!” he yelled. She opened the door. “Two teas please my sweet. And get one for yourself, you deserve it.”
Vera acknowledged his humour with a sarcastic smile and disappeared.
“Now then,” said Peter, throwing himself into an armchair as Jonathan leaned back on the corduroy sofa. “The Medical Miracle.” He paused and rubbed his temples; Jonathan wasn’t sure whether he was going to continue. Uncomfortable at the silence, he opened his mouth to speak just as Peter asked, “Directors. Who have you got?”
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