Licence to Bore?

No this is not the name of the next Bond film. Neither have I forgotten our look at successful British movies over the past 18 months. I'll get to that. But there have been a couple of other things on my mind and I'd like to share them with anyone kind enough to read this blog!

In my previous entry I blogged about the panel at the BFI. I didn't mention it myself but it's been widely reported elsewhere that Jimmy McGovern said theatre writers should carry a card in their pockets that said 'licence to bore.' It got a good round of laughter, which suggested there weren't many playwrights in the room! Turns out this is not the first time Jimmy has said this. In this interview in 2007 he says something very similar, although the emphasis seems to be to backtrack on this. (Maybe he's seen some really bad plays and read some really bad screenplays by playwrights between now and then that has led to another reversal!?)

I don't go to the theatre very much, and when I do, it's usually to see something by the best of the best, Mr Will Shakespeare. But here's what Jimmy went on to say: "I get lots of approaches from theatre writers who want to write for The Street or whatever and I’m telling you, a lot of theatre writers are crap. It’s boring. You don’t learn story structure writing in the theatre. Stay away from the theatre, it’s the worst thing you can do if you want to write for TV. Fight to get on a soap, get on Corrie, get on Emmerdale. That’s where you’ll learn." (Quote from Michelle Lipton's transcript.)

And I agree with Jimmy. I don't understand the obsession of people in the film and television industry of searching for new writing talent... In. Other. Mediums. It was not without a certain irony that days before Jimmy's comment, Joe Oppenheimer (BBC Films) said he tends to look at people with a track record in TV or theatre and thinks theatre is the best source for finding new writers. Meanwhile Charlotte Knight from The Rod Hall Agency said Theatre is where you can see writing in its purest form, there’s nothing to hide behind. (Sourced from Dave Melkevik's Serious Screenwriting write up - so any mistakes are down to him!)

First of all, no Charlotte, it's not. The novel is. I think King Lear is the greatest play ever written, but if someone was daft enough to cast me in the lead, the play would not get very good overnights. Playwrights are at the mercy of actors just as much as screenwriters. More so, because you can't re-shoot. But this notion of finding screenwriters from already established novelists and playwrights drives me crazy. I'm not saying everything in the screenwriting garden is rosy. And we'll come back to this in an upcoming blog post. But there are writers and scripts out there of high quality. And if people backed them instead, helped them develop their work, even if they had no credits or track record in something else, that is where you would find your screenwriters of the future. SCREENwriters. The clue is in the name.

A few years ago The Script Factory ran a course specifically designed to encourage and introduce successful novelists into screenwriting. I found the whole concept nauseating. This is the problem with writing. Screenwriters, novelists and playwrights all put words on a page for a living. Surely it's interchangeable? If you can do it in one form why not another? But would you use a property lawyer for a matter of criminal law and vice versa? Why not? They both studied Law. What about a tax accountant for corporate finance issues? They are both accountants. Or an ear, nose and throat doctor for heart surgery? They both studied medicine. I think you get my point.

And it works both ways. All we screenwriters seem to hear from Julian Friedmann these days, be it on Twelvepoint or at SWF is that we should be writing novels. (And by the way that is not meant to disrespect Julian, who I respect, like and has done me more than one favour.) But Julian, I don't want to write novels. I want to write screenplays. And I want the gatekeepers in my industry to be looking for me, not going to the theatre. Read scripts, not what's on the New York Times bestseller list.

Now all this of course comes with a caveat. You can of obviously do what you want. It's a free country and if someone wants to write novels, plays, screenplays, radio scripts, whatever, they are free to do so. And if they are talented in everything then good luck to them. But that is not what I'm talking about. You should have to prove yourself in each medium. Not success in one means you get a leg up in the other. Nick Hornby is one of my favourite novelists and he started his screenwriting career by adapting his own book. Fair play to him. But now he's an Oscar nominated screenwriter. And all credit to him for the fantastic script An Education is Debbie Moggach is another novelist who made a successful transition to screen. And I'm sure there are others and playwrights too. But, if Jimmy McGovern is right, these are the exceptions that prove the rule (whatever that means - I've never quite understood the expression! But the other irony of course is that Jimmy himself has used those with a playwriting track record, but not a screenwriting one, in both The Street and Moving On.)

But my overall point is that it's no good senior industry folk complaining about the lack of new writing talent coming through, if you keep looking for it in the wrong places. I've been hearing how great a place theatre is to find new talent for as long as I've been screenwriting. And I've been hearing the complaint about the lack of new talent for just as long. So you do the math.

BBC nurtures new and young writing voices?

"There has never been a better time for new and young drama writers to get work onto our TV screens thanks to a number of BBC initiatives.

By targeting the very best new writers from fringe, theatre and radio, the Writers Academy alone, with its 90% success rate, has pumped a whole new generation of talent into continuing drama and now into the wider industry. But this is just a small part of the corporation’s growing commitment to new writing.

BBC Writersroom offers an extraordinary range of outreach schemes, partnerships with regional theatres and development projects for writers getting their first foot on the drama ladder. Its success has meant there are now more new voices than ever bringing their work and their vision to our screens.

In the last year alone, young and first-time writers have worked across all BBC channels on new pieces, as well as returning dramas such as Spooks and Being Human. Of particular note are BBC1’s Fiona’s Story, BBC3’s Personal Affairs and BBC4’s Long Walk to Finchley and Consuming Passions - original drama from the very best new talent in the industry, who sit alongside dozens more with original pieces in development.

New commissions from upcoming writers include Simon Stephens’ Dive, co-written with Dominic Savage, Tony Saint’s Syntax Era, Tom Butterworth and Chris Hurford’s Money, Joshua St Johnston’s Material Girl, Lindsay Shapiro’s Enid, Peter Harness’ Forgotten Fallen and Neil Cross’ Luther. With the Comedy College in its second year and the Writers Academy in its fifth, patronage of new writing has never been greater. And it is impossible to complete any overview without acknowledging the many voices Jimmy McGovern and his extraordinary team have nurtured on The Street.

Far from “spurning new talent for the tried and tested”, the BBC does more than any other broadcaster to support them. We take our responsibility in this area extremely seriously, are proud of their achievements and believe there will be many more to come."

John Yorke, controller, BBC Drama Production and New Talent

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Over to you people - do you agree with John Yorke, or Lisa Campbell, who wrote "More worrying is the opposite of ageism - youthism? - which sees the BBC spurning new talent for the tried and tested. One drama producer trying to champion a young writer was told the BBC, as the only broadcaster really commissioning drama at the moment, was inundated with writers, and why should they go for young unknowns? Er, because they are the future?"

Moving On (Part Five)

Moving On concluded with Butterfly Effect by Esther Wilson. (To my knowledge this is her first screen credit although she appears to be an experienced playwright.) To be honest, this story had a weird title (yes I know what it means) for a confused story. Initially it had the biggest cast, and that contributed in making the opening far more confusing than the previous episodes, which had been characterised by a very clear ‘this is our theme today.’

Essentially the story was about Sylvie, who works at a youth home shelter type thing (I really wasn’t sure) and one night, lets in a young man who lives there who is being chased home by a gang of youths. The twist is that this guy is in a heightened state and wielding a gun. However Sylvie is the only one who sees the gun (or so we are led to believe, although later it’s revealed a colleague did but kept quite to either protect herself or the boy, something that is never followed up on,) so the police are powerless.

Sylvie though is traumatised by the incident, doesn’t want to leave the house any more, keeps texting and checking up on her son at uni, and goes as far as handing in her resignation at work. The trouble is, I didn’t believe any of this. I don’t mean to be glib. I’m sure anyone who has been in proximity to a gun wielding man can be very badly affected. But Sylvie wasn’t really threatened, like she says she was. Jacko, the boy, yells at her to open the locked door so he can escape the youths (let’s ignore the fact that he had a gun so surely had the upper hand.) I don’t think that at any point he actually threatens to harm Sylvie. So her reaction seems completely over the top. Life goes on, right? Again, I don’t mean to be flippant, but I found it interesting that Sylvie’s mate, Barbara, basically says as much in the script. I seriously wonder whether this was included to flag up and pre-empt what everyone assumed the audience would be thinking. This can sometimes be clever writing, as long as there is a pay off as to the real reason for Sylvie’s reaction (like she’d been the victim of a bad attack when younger or something and it evoked repressed memories.) But nothing was forthcoming.

Then all of a sudden another witness to the gun comes forward, offscreen and who we never meet, but now it means the police can prosecute. This could’ve been really interesting. It’s something that we could all relate to and a theme that I have always found fascinating. What motivates have a go heroes? What would I do if I had to testify against someone dangerous? Is it better to turn a blind eye and protect myself and my family or should I do the ‘right’ thing? If the Butterfly Effect had been about this, we could’ve been in for a cracking drama. As it was, this was all handled very quickly, and essentially resolved by a bizarre confrontation between Sylvie and Jacko.

I’m not sure witnesses are allowed to approach defendants on the street, shout at them for ruining their life, pretend to have either a gun or a mobile phone in their bag, and then hit them round the head with the phone. I think it would probably jeopardise the case. But this is exactly what happened. And it concluded with Sylvie retracting her resignation and turning up in court to testify against Jacko. Well and truly ‘moved on.’ So all she needed to get over her massive emotional trauma was to yell at him. I don’t mean to be pedantic, but the whole thing seemed to be a missed opportunity with a potentially cracking theme, but just turned out to be rather ill conceived.

Which was a shame, because I think the series as a whole was very worthwhile, with some good writing and hey, it’s better than watching repeats of Diagnosis Murder. Jimmy McGovern must be applauded for, along with The Street, his one-man crusade to surreptitiously bring back the play for today. It’s pie in the sky of course because the world has run out of money, but wouldn’t it be nice if the BBC could do more of these, along with Doctors, and the recent Missing, and have three home grown daytime dramas to offer opportunities to new writers?

Moving On (Part Four)

There was an interesting change of pace with the fourth instalment of the Moving On series. Previously, plots have evolved quickly, arguably too quickly at times. But Dress to Impress by Arthur Ellison was much more of a slow burner. And a pretty effective one too. It established almost immediately that today’s issue was going to be cross dressing – mixing it up a bit with the fact that Daniel, the man in question, was a teenager. So you were waiting right from the word go for his parents to discover this, and normally you’d expect it to occur early as the inciting incident. But the writer does something clever in holding it back and holding it back, all the time cranking up the tension for the explosive reveal that you know has to come at some point.

So in actual fact the story was more an exploration of the state of the marriage of his parents, Laura and Jake. When Jake discovers sexy underwear et al, he assumes they are his wife’s birthday present to him. So when she doesn’t deliver, as it were, he is not a happy bunny. Having already seeded the idea that another man, Les, is after his wife, it was pretty clear where this was going. I don’t mean that in a bad way. There is nothing wrong with good set ups and pay offs, as long as they are used correctly. Here, everything was done to increase the tension and drama.

So when Daniel’s revelation came, it was to stop his parents tearing lumps out of each other. What worked really well is that Daniel didn’t just decide he’d had enough of living a lie and blurt it out. How many times does that happen in real life? More likely, we hold onto our secrets until we have absolutely no choice but to reveal them. This story reached a point where Daniel’s motivation was born out of having absolutely no alternative. Forcing your characters to (plausibly) do the thing they least want to do is always a good start when looking for a dramatic story.

But for some reason the Moving On series does seem to have a bit of trouble closing their stories out. This time we are led to believe that Daniel moves out (but he’s a teenager – where does he go and with what money??) Only for the next scene to have him return home for a visit during for his mother’s birthday lunch, during which there’s an indication that his father has come to terms with his wardrobe choices. Surely this scene would have sufficed and the whole moving out thing seemed unnecessary and made little logical sense. But that’s a really small gripe of what was a very good script, that produced three strong performances from its leads. I don’t know Arthur Ellison but he clearly likes exploring marriage as a theme. And having written two of my favourite The Street episodes, (the one where David Thewlis steals his dead twin’s identity, and the one where the sisters bury the abusive husband under their mother’s coffin,) he is clearly a talent to watch.

Moving On (Part Three)

The third installment of the Moving On anthology came from the least experienced writer on the series. So I was even happier that Drowning Not Waving, by Sarah Deane, was the strongest story so far. Ellie (played by Christine Tremarco) has money problems. This is quickly established with a series of visuals culminating in putting her house up for sale. There's been a lot of that in Moving On - did no one hear about the property slump! But actually I am being facetious because the script uses this to its advantage. Ellie is desperate, so when former school bad boy John Mulligan re-enters her life and offers to buy her house and rent it back to her, even though there are better property deals to be had for him, she finds it hard to refuse.

Although she is wary at first about what he is really after, and declares she is not for sell too, he won't take no for an answer. And after he turns up on her doorstep with a takeaway and an apology, they end up in bed. There's a slight misunderstanding when she answers his mobile to someone called Tracy, but later he tells her that she's his sister, and that he's not playing around cos he really fancies her. But when Ellie's friend, Maria, hears she is seeing John, she reacts badly. She tells Ellie that if she continues seeing John and sells him her house, she never wants to see her again. At first I thought Maria's explosion was another one of these Moving On escalations in drama that seems out of pace and proportion. But the difference this time was that it became clear where this had come from and what motivated it. It turns out that Maria also knew John from school and says everyone knows he's made his money from drug deals not property deals. This I could understand. No one would want their mate getting involved with anything like that and it worked as an effective midpoint.

Ellie confronts John who insists he dealt for a few months when he was sixteen, he's not proud of it and doesn't now. Moreover, he and Maria had a brief affair a year ago and he left her, so now this is her jealousy motivated revenge. When Ellie confronts Maria, she admits to the affair but maintains she was the one who ended it, because she learnt about his current drug dealing. Next Maria confronts John to warn him to stay away from her friend. This was a really cool scene because although John came across as someone maybe a little bit dangerous, it was done in such a way that either of them could've been telling the truth. It kept up the suspense nicely and you didn't know who to root for.

As Ellie and John prepare to go away to New York for a few days, he suddenly has to stay behind on business and will join her later. So she sets off to the airport on her own and during the car ride we get one of the now familiar Moving On flashbacks where we get a recap on some of the key scenes and dialouge from the story. The major difference this time is that it really felt Ellie was replaying the incidents in her head, and all of them now had new significance. Has he been playing her all this time? Sure enough, as she checks her luggage, she finds drugs hidden away. He was using her as a mule. It was really well written and actually reminiscent of that famous ending in The Usual Suspects!

In the next scene we find out John got sent down for five years and then rather bizarrely Ellie goes to see him in jail. He shows his true colours and tries to equate his drug dealing with her excessive debt inducing buying and makes her feel bad because he paid for her house with drug money. For her part, Ellie says she came to see him to see if she would feel anything, and the look on her face suggests she doesn't. There's a moment where John's bravado seems to falter as he realises he has failed. The story ends with Ellie moving out of the house and riding off with Maria, moving on...

I'm not sure the final couple of scenes worked for me and whether they were really necessary. In fact, it might have been cool to end it as Ellie discovers the drugs in her car and then gets arrested herself. But I'm not naive enough to think that this darker ending would've necessarily been appropriate in the middle of the afternoon. However generally speaking this was a well plotted, taut drama with excellent performances from the two leads. I've enjoyed watching Tremarco since her barnstorming performance in the excellent Faith a few years ago and feel she is better actress than the material she gets sometimes suggests. And Richard Armitage, in between trying to catch Russian spies and killing Robin Hood, is still the go to guy for dark brooding leads, and he gave a performance both charming and dangerous.

We often read and hear about people trumpeting new writers, only to find that the 'new' writers they are referring to have loads of soap or radio credits. Nothing wrong with that. Fair play to them. But it was really refreshing to see something from a writer, who although has other commissions on the go (according to her CV) this was still her first screen credit. I certainly look forward to seeing more of Sarah Deane's work.

Moving On (Part Two)

Next came Bully, written by Marc Pye. (You can read an interview with the writer about the inception of his episode and the series as a whole over at Lucy's place.)

Briefly, two neighbouring families go on holiday together and we are led to believe that something went down between the two young sons, Andrew and Ryan. So much so that Andrew's father tells him that if anything similar happens again, hit him. This was essentially the pre-credit sequence so no messing about. Scene and title laying the theme right out there in no uncertain terms. And sure enough, not too long elapsed before Andrew was punching Ryan in a playground scrap, and leading him into a lamppost in a game of blind man's bluff.

The respective parents are a little puzzled by the turn in Andrew's behavior, until his mother tells Ryan's that his dad, Colin, is trying to toughen him up to stop him getting teased about his weight. (In actual fact Andrew wasn't really overweight, just a lot taller than Ryan, which would surely be a reason not to tease him. But never mind.) The main problem was that apart from the pre-credit scene, we'd seen nothing of Colin and Andrew's relationship. So this sudden increase in violence, when Andrew did not appear to have been the victim of bullying of any kind, felt a bit odd to say the least.

In probably the most touching and interesting moment, Colin admits to his wife that he was teased when he was younger and doesn't want Andrew to suffer the same fate. I thought this was an excellent idea and gave empathetic motivation to an otherwise repugnant character. But it was never followed up on. There was no catharsis for Colin, no coming to terms with his past, not even a genuine acknowledgment that violence was not the answer, which was a shame. Instead the subplot involving Colin was about him having an affair, and getting his mate Les (Ryan's father,) to cover for him. But even this wasn't used to its full potential. Once the families were at war, the fact Les had enormous dirt on Colin didn't seem to occur to either. If some neighbour's kid was beating up my son, and I knew he was having an affair, I would use it, grass or otherwise. So it might have been more interesting if Les had found out about the affair a little later, and then suddenly Colin would have to change tack, make nice, in order to protect himself. The whole thing got wasted and basically forgotten by the end of the story.

Overall Bully was an improvement on the The Rain Has Stopped. But I did find it interesting that Pye said that the idea started off as a one hour drama for The Street. I have to say it felt like it. The pacing was really uneven. I understand the desire, and need, to escalate drama and tension, but we went from everybody being friends, to Andrew assaulting Ryan numerous times, Colin defacing Les' car, and Les threatening Andrew twice, declaring he would kill him and do time for him if he went near Ryan again. It was a shocking twist to see Les bully a cowering Andrew, but it all felt rushed and didn't ring true. This was even more bizarre considering the brief flashback sequence. Like the voiceover yesterday - did we really need to be reminded of moments from such a short script? It made me wonder whether they had the budget to actually shoot enough material?

Again like yesterday, the denouement was handled very quickly. Andrew ran away, but it turned out he was hiding in the attic. It brought father and son together, helped the two mothers make up, and reunited Colin and Les. It was a shame for the respective writers, although probably not their fault, that two consecutive stories used a child disappearing as major turning points. But unlike Liz yesterday, I was unsure who was 'moving on' in Bully. Probably a toss up between Colin and Andrew, but I'm not sure not hitting people any more constitutes 'moving on.' However, where Bully worked was a unity of theme that was missing from The Rain Has Stopped.

Come back tomorrow for a look at Drowning Not Waving by newcomer Sarah Deane.

Moving On (Part One)

As the Bank Holiday weather turned out to be remarkably nice, I took some time out. But now it's time to look at the recent Moving On series that was stripped across BBC1 last week at 2:15pm. For those who don't know, the series was produced by Colin Mckeown and Jimmy McGovern, the same illustrious team behind the sublime The Street.

The first story was called The Rain Has Stopped and was written by Karen Brown. It was about long time widow Liz (Shelia Hancock), returning from holiday with a fiance, the Nepalese former Gurkha, Damar, much to the dismay of her grown up children. Almost the first line of dialogue from the daughter is "he's black," (whereas he is in fact Asian) and the casual racism from the children was a little shocking. Then there was the whispering from mothers in the school playground when Liz picked up her grandchildren. I'm not being naive, really I'm not. Racism is still a massive problem and issue, but the way it was portrayed here felt like a throwback to the eighties. I was never convinced about where the animosity from the children came from. They were in their thirties/forties, divorced and with children themselves, and so the old 'your not good enough to replace my dad' seemed a bit over the top. Later, the neighbour suspects Damar as a burglar, because "we've had trouble with asylum seekers before." There was a lot of talk about his visa status, ability to work or not, and what rights he should or shouldn't have as a former Gurkha and British soldier.

So a lot of ideas and themes were being juggled, and personally the racism and asylum aspect felt old. Gurkha rights on the other hand would've been far more interesting and incredibly timely! But there were other, more fundamental problems with the story. I'm not a big fan of general sweeping rules, but one that is pretty solid is that no two characters should be exactly the same, i.e. have the same opinions, world view, personalities etc. What would be the point? But here, the two children were identical. Surely it would have been far more interesting, create more conflict, and therefore more drama, if one of the children would've been happy for their mother, or at least just okay with it. Other things just didn't make sense. There were technical errors with regards to visa rules and benefits (being disabled and married to an American, I know a bit about both,) and having been reported to working without the right to, Damar just lost his job, but got no visit from the police! I realise this isn't such a story telling disaster, but it did smack as sloppy research.

In the end Damar leaves because the rift between Liz and her children is destroying her relationship with her grandchildren. But Liz is distraught and her children finally realise that maybe it's okay and for the best that she has found happiness with another man. So they encourage her to go off and find him. We subsequently find out she did find him, and they went on another holiday (not sure how as they had very little money.) But the weirdest thing was that the moment Liz finds Damar, surely the scene with the most dramatic and emotional potential, happened off screen. By the time they got back from holiday, and we are led to believe married, everything is fine, they are welcomed with opened arms, and all live happily ever after. I'm not quite sure what had changed, apart from the children seeing how upset their mother was when he left. Maybe that was enough, but she'd told them enough times. Yes, actions speak louder than words, but there needed to be more of a shift in the family dynamics for us to believe it.

And before all that, during the darkest moment of the story, we got voiceover recaps of some of the key bits of dialogue. I mean really, was that necessary during one, single, forty-five minute show!? It wasn't difficult to remember what we needed to remember and it just felt so hackneyed. There was also some odd scene juxtapositions, and therefore, despite some nice, quiet moments between the leads (matched by their performances) the whole thing felt unbalanced. I couldn't help feel that for this story, one strong theme would've been more effective than throwing in three or four. So all in all a slightly inauspicious start for the series. But come back tomorrow to see how the next installment fared.