Kate Harwood at work in the BBC Drama office
This week in TwelvePoint we have Kate Harwood’s interview: I think that despite the slap on the wrist (that is all I think it was) from James Murdoch (SKY) the BBC seems to be in rude health. Perhaps that is why so many people attack it: competitors for audiences and those who have their submissions rejected by the BBC in particular.
I am not a fan of everything the BBC does in drama. Thankfully, since my tastes are certainly not a benchmark and anyway they must appeal to a wide audience, as Kate makes clear.
So should they simply expect a bad press because they have as near a monopoly as any broadcaster could have. They are like Royal game: the licence fee gives them a margin of comfort their competitors simply do not have.
Kate, Controller of Serials and Series at the BBC, makes no bones about the difficulties new writers have in accessing her department: there are other access points for newer writers. She tends to use experience, which for her are writers who have learned by seeing their work produced. She says:
‘It’s hard for people to get what I call ‘flying hours’ because in the end, as a writer you can do a tremendous amount on your own but if you can’t get beyond a certain stage, you don’t participate in the process. If you want to be a professional television writer you need to see your work produced because that is the only way you really learn.’
How do writers out in the wilderness, even those with agents, get to meet Kate and Ben Stephenson and other luminaries of the broadcasters: easy – many will be (as they are every year) at the Cheltenham Screenwriters’ Festival at the end of October.
There is so much happening at the BBC that we all need to understand it (which is why the interview with Kate is very long and will appear over three weeks). It is not ‘our’ BBC as is sometimes said, but it commissions more hours of drama than anyone else. How Kate’s department relates to the Writer’s Academy and the Writersroom at the BBC is also interesting, as is her relationship with Manda Levin and the powerful John Yorke.
Knowledge of the personalities and power structures in the major broadcasters is as vital as understanding the three-act structure, beats, sequences and whatever other craft skills are deemed necessary. But reading the trades is seldom demonstrated by writers as a priority (hence the Buzz provided in TwelvePoint to provide that kind of industry information about who is commissioning what and what the trends are).
I would not recommend treating the BBC as one-stop shopping for drama writers, but I would suggest that they are the most important place to get to know well if working in the UK as a drama writer is what you want to do.
Making drama at the BBC: an interview with Kate Harwood – part 1
Tags: BBC, Ben Stephenson, Cheltenham, drama, James Murdoch, Kate Harwood, Manda Levin, Screenwriters’ Festival, SKY, the Writers’ Academy, TV