Daily Archives: January 1, 2016

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BBC TV Series

Ex Producer: Tony Garnett,
Producer: Peter Norris,
Director: Various,
Writers: Various

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Movie
(Paramount)

Producer: Tony Garnett,
Director: Roland Joffe,
Writers: Roland Joffe, Bruce Robinson

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Movie
(De Laurentis Entertainment Group/Kestrel Films)

Producer: Tony Garnett,
Director: Julien Temple,
Writers: Julie Brown, Charlie Coffey, Terence McNally

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Movie
(Warner/World Film Services/Children’s Television Workshop)

Producer: Tony Garnett,
Director: Ken Kwapis,
Writers: Tony Geiss, Judy Freudberg

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Movie
AKA Deep in the Heart
(Warner)

Producer: Tony Garnett,
Director: Tony Garnett,
Writer: Tony Garnett

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Movie
(Kestrel Films)

Producer: Tony Garnett,
Director: Ken Loach,
Writer: Ken Loach

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Deserted by her husband, Pauline struggles to look after her four children, including one with Down’s syndrome, on state benefits. But with the Queen’s Silver Jubilee approaching, things are about to get even tougher.

Producer: Tony Garnett,
Director: Roland Joffe,
Writer: Jim Allen

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Movie
(World Productions/Channel 4)

Executive Producer: Tony Garnett,
Producer: Bill Shapter,
Director: Hettie MacDonald,
Writer: Jonathon Harvey

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Movie
(Kestrel Films)

Producer: Tony Garnett,
Director: Tony Garnett,
Writer: Tony Garnett

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Off-Cut: Attachments

As the internet gained momentum I made plans to work on it, thinking everyone would be as excited as I was. The only way to learn to do it, is to do it.

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Off-Cut: Beautiful Thing

One evening I went to The Bush to check up on a new play by Jonathan Harvey, Beautiful Thing. I’d not been to the theatre for a while and wasn’t looking forward to a couple of hours on their hard seats being shouted at. I knew I’d be hungry for dinner. But I was entranced. This story of two teenage boys coming out as gay, first to each other and then to others, was delicate,

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Off-Cut: The Producing MA

I had known Susanna Capon for decades and had been the main speaker at her wedding to Barry Hanson, called upon at the last minute because the appointed speaker, David Mercer, was dead drunk on the floor. After a lifetime in television she had become an academic in the Media Arts Department at Royal Holloway College, London University. All her life she had been a highly organised, competent doer, full of energy and optimism with an admirable capacity to cut to the core of a problem.

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Off-Cut: Ballykissangel

Financial insecurity is the predicament of every small production company. I needed a banker show, which would pay the house nut for some years. That’s the elusive gold everyone is looking for.

Ballykissangel was the answer. It was aimed at the 8pm Sunday BBC1 slot. I knew that a hit there would be the answer to our financial problems, at least for a while. It’s so important to the BBC that it would also earn goodwill.

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Off-Cut: Between The Lines

John Wilshire and Tim Vaughan came to see me and asked if I was interested in a cop show. I wasn’t. I’d been personally interested in the police since I’d been a little boy, but television was all formulaic celebration, whatever the surface pretensions of tough realism. I had said what I wanted to say in the mini series Law and Order, written by GF (Gordon) Newman, in the Seventies. But out of courtesy I asked them to tell me about it.

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Off-Cut: Cardiac Arrest

Margaret Matheson and I talked about a medical show. We had just done a cop show and the next television banker was a doc show. There was a long history of medical doctors who were writers, Chekov being the most well known, so we advertised in the medical press. Over a hundred sent us samples. Some of them were good. We picked Jed Mercurio.

With the possible exception of Casualty’s early episodes, all medical series had been the drama of reassurance.

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Off-Cut: The Ones That Got Away

This glancing look at some of the productions over the decades gives the impression that every idea was easily green lit. If only. I still mourn the ones that were shot down at the last moment. It would be too painful to rehearse more than a few examples.

Neville Smith wrote a sharp, warm comedy set in Liverpool about the take over of a local firm by the Japanese. The Scouse workers were obliged to do keep fit and sing the company song each morning.

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