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.
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