tv

2011 began with a request from a production company to pitch ideas for a series of single drama shorts. For the last month or so I’ve been juggling this with work on a book proposal, which has just been sold to Hodder & Stoughton. So for the moment the teamwork of tv development goes on the back burner and I’m back to working on my own with just a screen and an editor to bounce things off. But I’ll be back.

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.

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.