tv

Working as part of a team on continuing series presents particular challenges and constraints. So does creating and selling original tv drama. I find both hugely interesting, occasionally frustrating, and always compelling.

I want to tell stories about real people’s fears, stupidities, inconsistencies, idiosyncrasies and triumphs, revealing the everyday as well as the extreme. Whatever a story’s setting or period, it ought to say something about the society its audience lives in. A television drama needs resonance, inner logic, a crafted structure and pace. It also needs humour and warmth, even – maybe especially - if the subject matter’s dark.

The real creative challenges are coming with analogue switchoff and convergence, when the current boundaries between delivery methods disappear, and television as a concept will become history. If the possibilities this offers are really to be explored, the boundaries between media, art-forms, and between creators, producers and broadcasters, also have to be re-examined. It’s an exciting process.