tv

2009 has begun with an idea for a tv drama series. At the moment it’s just me and my computer screen, plus occasional calls to my agent. This feels perfectly normal as I’ve just spent six months writing a novel. But if the idea sells, instead of working in isolation I’ll be back to the joys of teamwork. It’s a very different process; demanding, occasionally infuriating, and hugely energising.

I want to tell stories about real people’s fears, stupidities, inconsistencies, idiosyncrasies and triumphs, revealing the everyday as well as the extreme. A tv drama needs inner logic and resonance, a crafted structure and pace. It also needs humour and warmth, even – maybe especially - if the subject matter’s dark.

As it happens, my current idea’s not dark at all. It’s a London-based, feelgood survival story for the recession. (As I’ve said before on this website, whatever a story’s setting or period, it ought to say something about the society its audience lives in.)

For all tv writers the challenge of the unknown is thundering down the track, when analogue switchoff and convergence sweep away boundaries between delivery methods, and television as a concept will become history. If we’re going to meet that challenge the current boundaries between media, between art-forms, and between creators, producers and broadcasters, have to be re-examined. It’s a creative debate that so far, inevitably, seems to be throwing up as many questions as answers.