Writing Television Drama

by Nicholas Gibbs

  NG: Is there a possibility for unsolicited scripts to be taken up? BBC has the Writersroom but ITV doesn’t have an equivalent really, does it?

  FH: In a way, the agents are the first point of entry for us. It’s not that we don’t feel we have an obligation to the undiscovered talent out there. It is really just because we couldn’t cope if we had a load of scripts pouring in. The BBC does have a structure to deal with that.

  NG: Agents can act as quality filters for you in the first instance?

  FH: The agent’s raw material is writers, so in a way that’s the way they’ve got to go. Agents will filter them. Some of the agents will help train them in many ways but the agents are the first way in.

  NG: Do you have a preferred set of agents whose judgement you trust more than others?

  FH: There are certain agents I trust more than others. With the top agencies, when you get a script from them you’ll think you’ll drop everything to read it or just think it’s going to be better.

  NG: Agents have suggested that the BBC and ITV want A-list writers?

  FH: The problem with A-list writers is that they are very busy. Some of them are arguably taking on too much and probably need a break. I certainly think, and I’m sure the BBC feels this, that the pool needs to be widened. We got to the situation two or three years ago where Channel 4, ITV and BBC were all chasing the same writers, but I think some of the work wasn’t that great. I think everyone accepts and knows that we’ve got to find more writers. There are certain writers who become A-list; certain writers who do quite a lot of work on series and then they do something outstanding and they become A-list. I think it would be very destructive if there was just a set list of people we only worked from. We’ve got to widen that pool.

  NG: What judgements do you make on whose projects you choose to pursue? What are the criteria once you’ve got those ideas in front of you?

  FH: You’re just looking for an interesting idea. It’s the idea that appeals to you. That literally is all it is. You have to ask yourself the question: Can the writer deliver? Which is why a lot of people turn to the A-list because they have done it before, but more and more you talk to the writer about the idea and see what they want to do with it. You get a sense of their ambition. Essentially, you’re looking at the idea that could be interesting. The first question is: Would I want to see this? And then you think: Can I sell it?

  NG: You’ve got to pick things that people want to watch for ITV?

  FH: One of things I’ve always liked about working for ITV is that it is quite straightforward. If people don’t watch your show, you have failed. What critics say doesn’t really matter. What people are tweeting or blogging doesn’t really matter. People have to watch your show. The difference between a hit and miss is very clear.

  NG: What is the process once you’ve commissioned someone, say, for a six-part series?

  FH: Each time differs. Normally, if you were commissioning a six-parter, you would normally get the lead writer to write as much of that series as you could. Six hours might have six months before you go into pre-production. That is quite a lot for a lead writer so you probably give the lead writer half or four of those. It’s a sort of impossible question to answer.

  NG: Do you look to try and get all the scripts ready before you go into production?

  FH: That’s a luxury and it would be great if you could do that. I have done that and I have to say it has always worked very well, but it doesn’t happen very often. If the team gets the commission for a three-parter, you’d have all three scripts but for a six-parter you rarely do. On Cops, which was eight parts, we had all the scripts before we started and it made a huge difference. It’s great if that happens, but it happens very rarely when you get a commission; it is usually after two scripts. So that’s when you try and catch up with yourself.

  NG: Is that down to late commissioning decisions?

  FH: I think it is but I also think there are a lot of companies whose livelihoods are dependent on knowing quickly. They can’t sit around and get more scripts commissioned. They need to get things into production. I think it is possibly late decisions. It is also very difficult to motivate writers if they don’t think it is going to get made. Often you need the finishing line in front of you to get everyone to go. So it would be great to have more time, but at the same time it is not good to have more time. Deadlines are good.

  NG: Do you do co-productions with smaller companies if they come to you with an idea?

  FH: We can do. With the margins of drama so small, it has to be a pretty sensational idea to do it or with big talent, big off-screen or on-screen talent, to make it worth our while.

  NG: Do you look at casting at early stage? If someone says this is the part for so-and-so, do you look on it more favourably? Certainly, a few years ago there were handcuff deals with certain actors.

  FH: You do look at casting. It helps. I try to have a cast in my mind when I send in a script to ITV because I think it helps visualize it. It’s always useful to say to writers: Who do you have in mind for that?

  NG: Are you looking for a named star that the audience will recognize for those key roles? Very few ITV things come in with actors that are not known.

  FH: It certainly helps but there aren’t that many of those people. A bit like the writers, the audience will quickly become tired of someone who would guarantee you a commission. I think there are very few actors who are absolutely guaranteed to get you a certain amount of viewers. Good casting is more important: a good actor in a surprising role or a surprising actor in a good role. It worked for us with Ken Branagh in Wallander. He hadn’t been on television for quite some time. It was a surprising thing for him to do. He loved the books so he wanted to do it. I think the audience were very intrigued by that. It could have had a more familiar face but I don’t think they would have been as intrigued by it.

  NG: ITV have 13 cop series either in development, on screen or about to hit the screens, but they say they are trying to get away from being seen as the crime channel. Does that colour the way you look at the projects that come into you?

  FH: I think the bedrock of ITV, of all television, is crime drama. Everyone goes on about American television but it is actually mostly procedural crime. Everyone keeps going on about Mad Men but that is one series in among 50. I do think you can make more of an impact if you find something fresh. It could be a crime drama like Sherlock or a costume drama like Downton Abbey. I think television channels have to be a fairly rich banquet. The argument for doing drama on Channel 4 was that the schedule looked a bit more exciting. If you just do crime drama, it gets harder and harder. There is the law of diminishing returns. There always comes a point when people go: ‘I don’t want to see another crime drama.’ But we are looking at crime dramas but we are thinking about how to make them different and we’re definitely looking at other things.

  NG: Do you find you get derivative crime dramas in the wake of The Killing or costume dramas that try to mimic Downton Abbey sent to you?

  FH: No. There’s only room for a couple of shows like Downton on the channel and the truth is that, while there were a lot of people who talked about watching The Killing, it wasn’t a big audience or an ITV audience. There are people looking at longer-form crime dramas which are quite interesting. So people talk about a ten-part crime drama rather than a three-part crime drama, which is good. There are certainly lots of shows which are coming out now which are sort of in the Downton era. Certainly, I thought people didn’t want period drama before Downton Abbey. I thought it would be interesting to see if Downton worked. It worked so well it told us something about the audience, which is that the audience wanted something different from contemporary drama.

  NG: What was it about Downton Abbey that made it such a massive hit?

  FH: Downton Abbey does what I think ITV drama does at its best, which is very popular storytelling; it was beautifully made; it felt like a reward when you watched it. Beautifully made, well cast, beautif
ully acted, great direction. I remember the first episode was brilliantly directed. It took you into that world. It’s very well scheduled on a Sunday evening – you really feel it’s a treat. ITV drama was always, at its best, very high production values plus a bit of a treat. Upstairs, Downstairs, which is obviously an inspiration for Downton Abbey, was an ITV show. I think it was in the DNA of ITV. I think that is what you should always be aiming to do.

  NG: What don’t you like about the approaches made to you or the type of ideas brought to you?

  FH: What I really don’t like is television that feels like television. I really don’t like something that feels like someone has written television stereotypes. I don’t like when it is written by someone who only seems to have watched television rather than getting out. There has to be a knowing a little bit about the world. Where it just feels like a television format, written in television clichés without anything to say about the world, that’s what I really don’t like.

  NG: Do you gauge that when you meet writers where you’ve been intrigued by an idea and then learn the writer has been holed up in his room for ten years writing this thing?

  FH: Not at all, because it is about the writer’s imagination. I suppose it is about curiosity. I remember a writer – I think it was Tony Marchant but I can never quite remember – and it was a talk and the writer said: ‘I write to explore my relationship with the world.’ I still think that is the best definition of writing. What you’re looking for is a writer’s voice even in cop dramas that is exploring the world in some way. I don’t want derivative. I don’t want cliché. I want something with truth and surprises in it. So when I meet a writer I’m interested in what the writer wants to write about as opposed to what he thinks you want him to write about.

  NG: What don’t you like seeing in a script?

  FH: Rarely do I read a script that infuriates me. I have a pet hate which is clichés in a script or something I’ve seen on television many times before. Sometimes I think the writers have inadvertently plagiarized. I particularly don’t like scripts which have a pun on the characters’ names. There was one called Church’s Law and the detective was called Church. That annoys me. I don’t know why. Taggart and Inspector Morse are fine but if it was called Morse Code… Lack of research is one of the things that really annoy me. When you read a cop script, for example, and it bears no relation to how the police behave. If the writer can’t be bothered to research, why on earth should we watch it? When we did The Cops the reason it was fresh and good was we spent weeks speaking to the actual police. So we saw a lot of things which we then wrote about through interest in real characters. I remember hearing a writer say he’d done loads of research for another police series which was going out. His research was watching loads of episodes of Z-Cars! Again, it’s that researching a world as it’s seen on television.

  NG: Is it that some writers find research too much effort?

  FH: It is difficult to research the police but you can do it even if it’s hanging out by the police station or finding a way in. Ring up and ask; try and find out something. You will normally find someone who is willing to talk. It could be through a friend of a friend who is a policeman. He might give you half an hour. Anything like that. Just do a bit of research. If writers are writing about a newspaper office, go and visit a newspaper office. I remember Stephen Butchard saying to me on the medical series Always and Everyone that whenever he’d get stuck he would go down and sit in a hospital and get stories. Don’t be shy about doing it. A really well-researched script about a world I don’t know will be immediately riveting. Finally, what really annoys me is when they send me a script addressed to Ms Frances Hopkinson! You haven’t even bothered to find out who I am.

  NG: What was the big difference between working for a small independent – is there a different outlook as to what you’re looking for?

  FH: I find it oddly easier to have the focus of ITV. It really has to be a good idea. The focus of ITV is that we broadly know what we’re looking for. What I found hard at an independent was you’d hear an idea and then you would have to think: ‘Where can that idea fit?’

  NG: Do you think there is an advantage to writing to ad breaks?

  FH: The ad breaks make a big difference. I do think writers are getting much savvier. The ad break makes a difference how you tell a story, how much story a part has. They do cater for the rhythm of a drama much more. I hadn’t made drama for the BBC for a long time and Wallander was 89 minutes, but we had to spend a lot of time in the edit suite thinking about the rhythm of the show. Whereas the ad break dictates the rhythm of the show on ITV. I think ITV drama needs a lot more story; you have to drive much more to the ad break to keep people there and indeed make sure people come back the next time. ITV drama is much more specific in its demands.

  NG: How do you handle ‘no’?

  FH: I get very frustrated and annoyed when I get a no. When a commissioner says no to you, the commissioners are all very intelligent; they’ve been hired for their brain and their judgement so you should listen. Normally, after I’ve gone through the process of being annoyed I accept it. You go back and ask yourself: What didn’t work for them in this idea? You work on it again and get a better idea. Actually, when a commissioner says no, it’s not because they’re wrong, it’s because you haven’t got it right yet. You’ve got to accept they didn’t quite get it. They haven’t quite seen what we’re trying to do. Let’s see what we’ve got here and try and make it better.

  NG: What about the reason behind the ‘no’ when something similar has been on and failed?

  FH: It is quite frustrating when something doesn’t work and the commissioner says to you: ‘We’ve just done something about a middle-aged woman. It didn’t work so we don’t want to do anything about middle-aged women.’ You want to say: it didn’t work because it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t the subject matter. So that is kind of frustrating as that does mean that people won’t come back to it again. A case in point was a series called Servants some years ago which didn’t work. So for a long time everyone said no one wants a period series because no one wants to see that sort of thing.

  NG: It’s a sort of over-reaction really?

  FH: It became sort of received wisdom and then Downton Abbey comes out and shows that it was wrong. It was right for a time. Good stuff is generally watched. My argument is: if it’s good and people aren’t watching it, then it’s not good. Your job is to get people to watch television.

  NG: What advice do you have for writers?

  FH: Write what you want to write, not to please others, because if you write to please yourself at least one person is going to be happy. Write what you want to see. The truth is even the best writers go in and out of fashion but, if they’re good, they do come back into fashion. Their skills haven’t diminished and they get to write what they want to write.

  16

  Continuing drama

  In this chapter you will learn:

  • about the major continuing dramas in the UK

  • that each has a unique voice and a unique way of operating

  • about the intensive scriptwriting process used on these shows.

  Continuing drama, aka soaps, are still by and far away the best route for many writers to get their first writing credit in the UK. These shows are high volume and the most popular on British television. BBC boasts EastEnders and daytime drama Doctors; ITV has Coronation Street and Emmerdale in its evening schedules; Channel 4 has the daily teen drama Hollyoaks. In addition, the BBC has two primetime year-round weekly medical dramas, Casualty and Holby City.

  In this chapter we look at how these shows work and the opportunities available to writers.

  Coronation Street

  Coronation Street is ITV’s flagship soap drama that screens five times a week and is consistently ITV’s most watched drama. Every year the show produces approximately 260 episodes which equates to 130 hours of scripted television drama.

  Kieran Roberts is the
executive producer on Coronation Street with almost 500 episodes of the show under his belt. He is also ITV’s Creative Director of Drama and has overseen such shows as Cold Blood, Distant Shores, Boy Meets Girl, Blue Murder and many others.

  Nicholas Gibbs: What is Coronation Street?

  Kieran Roberts: Coronation Street was created in 1960 by an extraordinary man called Tony Warren. In a nutshell it tells the stories, sometimes extraordinary stories, of a group of very ordinary, mostly working-class people living in a cobbled backstreet in a fictional part of Salford. The formula has basically not changed since day one. We tell more stories now and I think it is fair to say our stories are bigger and sometimes more explosive and more action-packed, but the essential formula is being character-driven, female-centric, dramatic but full of warmth and humour.

  NG: How many writers do you have working on Coronation Street?

  KR: It can be between 16 and 20 writers. The way we work it is that all the writing team are all involved in the major decision-making across the entire year. We don’t have an inner core of writers who make the decisions and an outer circle of writers who, for example, are just guns for hire. All our writers come to every story conference. So they are allowed to get involved with all our discussions about the stories of all our characters. I think it gives us a sense of continuity and I think it gives them a sense of ownership in all the stories and the characters.

  NG: How do you source new writers for the show?

  KR: Many of the writers on the team have been with us for a long time. We’ve got one writer who has been with us for 33 years; another writer has been with us 20-odd years; several writers who have been with us between 10 and 15 years. So there is a core of writers who know the show inside out and are absolutely steeped in Coronation Street. In terms of new writers, we are very open-minded. Some writers have joined the team with very few credits to their name but with a passion and a real ability. Now if a writer comes to us who is brand new – when I say brand new I don’t mean fresh out of college, I mean someone who is still making their mark in the world of professional television scriptwriting – we would as a minimum expect them to write us a trial episode. Quite often we do it twice to be absolutely sure that they can write for this show.