BBC Drama Series Writers Academy

That my friends, is an incredibly good deal. Not many UK writers get guarantees apart from the most experienced, and NONE get a salary.

Those four commissions are worth around £30K to a new writer. About $50K of your Yankee dollars.

Personally, I'm a little concerned that we'll end up with a lot of BBC writing clones. It is an incredible amout of work so you'll have little time for letting your imagination flow. Each of those shows is very different. And - can change in tone and writer expectation very quickly depending on how long the Exec producer lasts.

So it's good for a writer trying to break in as it is very difficult to get on these shows otherwise. [doctors excluded]

Long term ? I'm not so sure it's a good thing. To my mind trying to train people to write for four different shows en bloc? There's just something about it that doesn't sit right with me.

'Doctors' has long been a sort of experimental army proving ground where the BBC test out new writers, producers directors, cast and crew. The fact that it's a recurring daily drama is really just a technicality. I can totally understand why someone would want to get into writing the show if they're into the money and aren't really interested in developing their own spec work - gotta pay the bills, right? But personally I can't imagine a more bland show to write for. I just don't think I have it in me to write about an old woman who falls down the stairs after being told repeatedly to get a stair-lift, set against the background of some nothing sub-plot surrounding Mac, his mad wife and doing things a 'certain way' at the office.

Incidentally, I believe in order to get on this writers' academy you need to have a broadcast credit so it's not like it's even open to unknowns.

English Dave said:

That my friends, is an incredibly good deal. Not many UK writers get guarantees apart from the most experienced, and NONE get a salary.

Those four commissions are worth around £30K to a new writer. About $50K of your Yankee dollars.

Personally, I'm a little concerned that we'll end up with a lot of BBC writing clones. It is an incredible amout of work so you'll have little time for letting your imagination flow. Each of those shows is very different. And - can change in tone and writer expectation very quickly depending on how long the Exec producer lasts.

So it's good for a writer trying to break in as it is very difficult to get on these shows otherwise. [doctors excluded]

Long term ? I'm not so sure it's a good thing. To my mind trying to train people to write for four different shows en bloc? There's just something about it that doesn't sit right with me.

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We already have BBC clones - and some of the scripts in the new Dr Who series from the BBC are so bad as to be laughable. The BBC has spent so long producing nothing but Soaps, they seem to be unable to do anything else.

Flapdoodle said:

We already have BBC clones - and some of the scripts in the new Dr Who series from the BBC are so bad as to be laughable. The BBC has spent so long producing nothing but Soaps, they seem to be unable to do anything else.

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I hear ya.

Even Spooks and Hustle descend into soap on too many occasions. But to be honest this is the fault of the producers and script editors more than the writers. A 'more of the same' attitude is pervasive. No one ever got sacked for conforming to the stereotype.

I find much of the drama on the BBC nauseating in it's banality. And this from the broadcaster with the most ability to take risks?

Casualty and Holby are two of their biggest rating shows - Casualty is on it's 21st series!!!! It is easy for the Execs to sit back and say hey Casualty gets 9 million viewers it's a huge success.

Well....no. You have something running 21 years and you keep an audience out of habit not quality. Something actually fresh and good that got 12 million viewers, now that would be a success.

The Beeb is positively blind-sighted by ratings, as though they matter in the same way that they do to a channel that needs to attract advertisers. Their shows are desperate to appeal to the broadest audience possible which means stripping them bare of anything resembling good drama or edgy comedy. They've been doing it so long, they don't realise how good they are at it, I mean, the Beeb could water down a bottle of Evian.

Kudos productions for the BBC (Spooks, Hustle, Life on Mars) are largely the exception though the length of time the two have worked together is starting to show as storylines become deliberately controversial (without actually being controversial) or at the other end of it all, so vapid and pedestrian as to make me question why they were comissioned at all. Did anyone see Mayo? I find myself tuning into that show just to see how much worse it's going to get. Bah!

Clock you could go through the whole list Mayo, Murphy's Law, Mersey Beat,

and that's just the M's !

Who the hell decided we needed another pedestrian cop show with nothing much in the way of an attempt at a gimmick except he has to work with his ex wife?

John Birt introduced a climate of fear at the BBC from which it has never recovered.

John Yorke is now over them like a rash. His soap background will no doubt go down well.

My own personal theory about all these friggin' cop shows is that British broadcasters (and let's not forget ITV is as much to blame for this pandemic) assume that it's what audiences want. They get good ratings, nobody complains so let's make more. But I honestly feel that if the Beeb were to have some kind of psychotic episode and commision a British West Wing or Lost or Housewives or any other superior US show and put that on, British audiences would watch it because I truly believe that audiences over here are quite happy to watch anything. As long as it's on TV and it's fairly-well made, we'll watch it with little complaint. They need to take more chances with our money and no, that doesn't mean commissioning some bizarre sitcom and then burying it on BBC Three at one in the morning.

Whatever happened to aspirational drama? That's what makes US shows so successful (amongst other things) the characters are people we admire and would want to be like. Most of the characters on our screens are down-and-outs, working class stiffs, criminals, druggies or just plain boring. The idea being, again, my theory, that British broadcasters believe people tune into shows not to watch people they wish they could be like but to remind themselves that in comparison to the degenerates in Albert Square, their lives aren't so bad after all.

I had a meeting with Kudos just recently and they're very keen on aspirational drama - creating characters and worlds for us to look up to but they seemed to be stifled by the BBC who are terrified of offending someone. They didn't say that because they obviously have a working relationship with them but I definitely got that feeling.

Rant, rant, rant...

I had that same meeting at Kudos!

I also had it at Shed, World Productions, Sony, Talkbalk, Freemantle, ........


They all seem to be preaching the same ' we want to do.....but we have to do.....' mantra.

English Dave said:

I had that same meeting at Kudos!

I also had it at Shed, World Productions, Sony, Talkbalk, Freemantle, ........

They all seem to be preaching the same ' we want to do.....but we have to do.....' mantra.

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And there you have it. What can I say? Been listening to a lot of music lately.

clock_work9 said:

And there you have it. What can I say? Been listening to a lot of music lately.

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Yup, I come home from a meeting and stick Leonard Cohen on. Strangely uplifting.

Just asking, did you guys see Funland shown on BBC3? It's the only series I can recall in recent years that compelled me to check when the next episode was on and make sure my backside was in front of the telly from opening credits to end credits. I think my house caught fire once but damned if I was moving from the couch. The BBC sure as hell got that one wrong, totally contrary to their objectives.

-Derek
My Web Page - naked women, bestial sex, and whopping big lies.
Stop reading this and get some writing done instead.

Didn't see funland, dpat. What was it about?

Must say, I really liked Broken News (I think) which was put together like someone was channel-hopping between stations. Also quite enjoyed (again, I think) Don't Watch That, Watch This. Though I only saw the last episode.

Thought Look Around You was good but like most of these quite good shows, they do have that identifable BBC 'no sharp edges' stamp on them.

Got me beat on Funland too Dpat. Maybe the lack of marketing is indicative?

Liked 'Blackpool' Liked...........I got nothing.

Sorry you both missed it! Usually BBC3 shows are repeated weeks later on BBC1 or BBC2 as you know, but this one hasn't appeared yet. Maybe they're adopting a hardline approach, go digital or else miss the entertainment?

Funland is a disturbingly funny new thriller — the result of a collaboration between BAFTA award-winning EastEnders writer, Simon Ashdown, and Jeremy Dyson, multi-award-winning writer of The League of Gentlemen.

Set in Blackpool over one long weekend, Funland plunges you into the black heart of the resort town, bringing the saucy seaside postcard screaming into the twenty-first century.

Join the characters on a mysterious journey where nothing is quite what it seems:

Carter Krantz (Daniel Mays) arrives in Blackpool to avenge the death of his mother. Without a penny to his name and carrying only a fragment of paper containing the words Ambrose Chapel, he is sucked into the most disturbing of mysteries.

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More at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/funland/

An EastEnders writer! Who would have thought?

First ep. script is available at BBC Writersroom if anyone's interested, http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/insight/script_archive.shtml

I liked Blackpool too, to an extent, everyone seemed to be having such a good time, but the singing/miming, shudder, bad idea, bad bad idea. Wasn't it voted worst drama of the year on the BBC website? Not entirely fair, had its moments, but, like I say...

-Derek
My Web Page - naked women, bestial sex, and whopping big lies.
Stop reading this and get some writing done instead.

dpaterso said:

Sorry you both missed it! Usually BBC3 shows are repeated weeks later on BBC1 or BBC2 as you know, but this one hasn't appeared yet. Maybe they're adopting a hardline approach, go digital or else miss the entertainment?



More at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/funland/

An EastEnders writer! Who would have thought?


-Derek
My Web Page - naked women, bestial sex, and whopping big lies.
Stop reading this and get some writing done instead.

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Not another writer. Because if you can survive East Enders you can survive anything.

I suppose Blackpool was worthy for its... truly bizarre approach to things. If that can get made then surely anything can. But I suppose it was comissioned because it combined two winning elements - singing and melodrama. All it was missing was some sort of public vote sponsored by 02 and they'd have owned everyone.

clock_work9 said:

I suppose Blackpool was worthy for its... truly bizarre approach to things. If that can get made then surely anything can. But I suppose it was comissioned because it combined two winning elements - singing and melodrama. All it was missing was some sort of public vote sponsored by 02 and they'd have owned everyone.

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I'd like to think it was a writer who had proved his bollocks, so had enough juice to counteract most of the dickhead's requirements and know how to do something good.

Hey. Either complain about something or get out. You're killing the mood here.

clock_work9 said:

Hey. Either complain about something or get out. You're killing the mood here.

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Nothing fills a schedule more easily or cheaply than a soap opera that uses the same sets over and over? As opposed to a relatively expensive one-off special. Guessing.

Oh, and I thought the Beeb made a great job of Casanova the series. Really ought to mention that. That man Tennant again, and Russell T. Davies too. Shame they're making a bollocks of Doctor Who.

-Derek
My Web Page - naked women, bestial sex, and whopping big lies.
Stop reading this and get some writing done instead.

endless rewrite said:

Ok, I do have a complaint:

What I don't get is why the emphasis on soaps in the BBC Writers Academy, why not encourage writers to develop original ideas? I would feel more more like applying if that was the case. I read that last year they had over 600 applicants so they won't miss mine but still unrealistic or not that's what I want to do.

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I totally agree with you. Dross will apply and dross will get the job. And the cycle will continue.