In Gethsemane

For this weekend, my favourite novella free to the Kindle.

Find it here

Eleventh Hour Sizzle

Tidying up my hard drive, I found this. Because the CBS show was already under way when I joined, it was my first sight of what the team were doing.

Sandbagging

I picked up the 3-season DVD boxed set and watched all of The Sandbaggers a while back, to find that it holds up brilliantly. If only all vintage TV could so well match our memories of it... the episodes are mastered from decently preserved tape, not telerecordings, and while the production values are standard for 70s studio-based drama, it's the writing and performances that give it real enduring quality.

My first agent was the Transworld editor responsible for dealing with writer/creator Ian Mackintosh over the series' novelisations, and he'd told her that he himself was a former Sandbagger. In a business filled with bullshitters, this seemed to chime with stories I was hearing of scripts being sent for vetting by some shady government department before production. Personally I'm inclined not to disbelieve it; Mackintosh's depiction of a credible bureaucracy, and the way in which he invests it with urgent dramatic life, hardly seems like a fantasist's first choice of material.

Long before the DVDs were available, I was in contact with a researcher from Kudos who was trying to track down VHS copies of Sandbaggers episodes. They served as part of the groundwork for the show that would become Spooks (MI5 in the US).

Still available from Network DVD.

OUT OF BEDLAM and THE PLOT

A short story twofer, free to Kindle now and over this weekend.

Find it here

Science Drama Awards

Just got the pix from Lisbon. This is me being...

I have no idea what I'm being.

But I'm thanking Sharon Bloom, Chris Farrer, Philippa Giles, David Richards, and the Silent Witness cast and crew.

The First Kingdom of Bones

The Kingdom of Bones was the title I gave to my script for BBC Films' Murder Rooms series, the one I was discussing in my previous post. Writing about its parallels with the Ripper Street cancellation prompted me to dig out this showreel clip.



I didn't know it at the time, but piecemeal funding of development meant that by delivering early I jumped the queue and got my story onto the production train before the whistle blew. They were buying scripts without knowing how many they'd actually get to make. Not the best way to run a business and the producers didn't like it, but we were all dealing with the system as we found it.

I was able to deliver a relatively well-finished first draft for one reason; I had a head start in Victoriana because I'd been working on Victorian Gothic, a period epic of my own devising that had become a long-term passion project. Zenith had optioned screen rights on it for a couple of years before going out of business. Jane Tranter picked it up and developed it further for the BBC, only to find her persuasive energies wasted on a channel controller whose background was in sport.

When the novel sold to Shaye Areheart's Random House imprint, Shaye didn't like Victorian Gothic for a title and picked The Kingdom of Bones from my list, where it still lurked. I didn't protest.

Victorian Gothic, Edwardian Style

Last week's post on the cancellation of the BBC's Ripper Street sparked a surge in blog traffic, retweets, and general indications of agreement. It seems I'm not alone in my view that the BBC is letting down its subscribers by running its programming in imitation of an ad-funded broadcaster. This Den of Geek piece is saying much the same thing, and I'm seeing the arguments repeated elsewhere. It's not the usual spectacle of fans rallying to a doomed show; it's a very British response to an open display of unfairness. Give all the good toys to the kids with the most toys, then watch as they break them.

I'm not of the opinion that only idiots watch those live contests and shiny-floor shows. All kinds of people watch them to unwind. But it's not the only kind of thing they ever want to see.

This comes at a time when the BBC Trust has instructed Director General Tony Hall to “re-examine the creative culture in TV management and commissioning to consider how to achieve new peaks of distinctiveness across all services”. Does distinctiveness mean ratings? It would be a perverse interpretation to act as if it does. The subtext here is about quality, not numbers.

And sometimes it's not about quality or numbers, but politics or prejudice. It's attitudes that are at the heart of the 'creative culture' referred to by the Trust. Anyone who's worked in TV for any length of time has their stories of politics or prejudice, real or imagined. Since we're talking Victorian crime let me refer you back to the case of the BBC's Murder Rooms, historical mysteries with production values to die for. Charles Edwards played the young Conan Doyle and Ian Richardson his mentor and model for Sherlock Holmes, Joseph Bell.  I wrote here of the against-the-odds process by which it was put together, and also the manner of its cancellation:

I was told some time after the event that this was most likely the outcome of a silent turf war between BBC Drama and BBC Films. The word went around that the show had been "too successful for the wrong department". Co-producers The Television Company offered to take it over and finance it themselves, but were turned down.

There are rumours of a similar proposal for Ripper Street to be funded and carried by Amazon-owned download distributor Lovefilm, either pushing the BBC into a secondary market position or even eliminating the Corporation altogether. The mould was broken some time ago, when FX cancelled legal thriller Damages after three seasons, and satellite carrier DirecTV underwrote and broadcast two further series. Ripper Street is made by an independent production company, Tiger Aspect. I've no idea whether their deal allows them to sell it elsewhere, but an indie may not be so quick to turn down a lifeline.

While waiting to see how that pans out, you may care to consider this handsome pair as a stocking-filler for the fan of Victorian crime now pining away there in the corner. I've seen a surprise surge in the Amazon sales over the past few days, with new stock on the way. Don't let that deter you from supporting your local bookshop, if you have one, and if they stock the titles. A third Becker book is well in hand, and there's an upcoming story in Subterranean Magazine that picks up the chronology from the end of The Bedlam Detective.

You Can Buy Them Here

And from our Colonial cousins, this handsome pair:

Buy Them Or Weep

Yep, in the end it's always gonna be about me.

Ripper Street, Not Resting in Peace

Every show's cancellation hits the people who love it, and every show has a core group of people who love it lots. But the wider dismay over the BBC's cancellation of Victorian-era police drama Ripper Street seems to have an unusual edge to it.

I'm not a fan. By which I don't mean that I have a low opinion of it, simply that I don't follow the show. And if anything I ought to welcome its cancellation, because with Ripper Street and Copper out of the way, development execs are willing to look seriously at the Becker books again.

But it's worrying that once again the BBC has killed a series that it claims to be proud of, citing a fall in viewing figures as the reason. For an advertising-driven broadcaster like ITV, viewing figures are crucial because their business is one of selling eyeballs to advertisers. The viewer is not the client, but the product. The programmes are bait, to draw a crowd and serve it up to the client's sales force. Regulation imposed a quality threshold on commercial television from the very beginning. With relaxed regulation you get Babestation.

The BBC isn't ITV. With its one-off yearly license fee funding, the BBC's model is more like that of a cable company - and it's the biggest bargain of its kind in the business, whatever the bottom half of the internet may say. Sky charges you more, produces less, and still shows you ads.

Subscription-funded companies like HBO or Showtime don't have to worry about the figures for any one programme. Their brand image is defined by the quality of some of their least-watched product. Hence The Sopranos, Deadwood, Mad Men, Breaking Bad - bar-raisers for an entire industry. AMC's Mad Men made its debut to less than a million viewers. The episode average never rose above three million, but it was deemed worthy of six seasons.

The BBC's there for all of us. Because of the compulsory license fee, we're all subscribers. Yet the BBC chooses to ape ITV's methods and compete for ratings in time slots, as if courting imaginary ad buyers. Which wouldn't be so bad if they didn't then use those ratings as the measure of a programme's worth, when simply moving the material around the schedule can have a drastic effect on its numbers.

(I speak here as someone who once saw his big-budget one-off BBC drama scheduled against live football on ITV, Manchester United v AC Milan. They knew what the outcome would be and didn't even bother making any trails for the show.)

I've heard it suggested that the real reason for Ripper Street's cancellation is that it's too 'blokeish' for some executives' tastes, and the numbers only provide a handy excuse. So presumably the blokes will now go off and watch The Paradise instead. Or maybe Mr Selfridge.

That's about a bloke, isn't it?

The London Film School

I'm heading down to London to give the LFS Returning Drama masterclass that I wrote about here. Stop laughing. Yes, you. It's real and they've said there'll be biscuits.

I've always been wary of the whole masterclass idea because the longer I go on, the less I'm convinced I know. But putting together a little showreel to start the thing off, I realise that I've kicked around enough, and in a sufficiently diverse number of places and situations, to at least bring back a few travellers' tales.

It's a specialised part-time course for writers who've found their footing and want to increase their expertise. It's not cheap, and this one's filled up, but there are always more. I've spoken disparagingly about courses that purport to teach non-writers to write, but this isn't one of those.

An Award! An Award!

It doesn't happen often, so what the hell, let's shout. I'll write a proper update on the event tomorrow (ish - it's very late and we've been hitting the bright lights and low dives of Lisbon) but for now, from the press release:

Lisbon, Friday November 22nd 2013 On the eve of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary celebrations, one of its former writers has picked up the European Science Drama prize. LEGACY is Stephen Gallagher's two-part story for season 16 of the BBC flagship drama SILENT WITNESS. The European Science TV and New Media Awards ceremony took place on Friday night at Lisbon's Pavilion of Knowledge, Ciência Viva.

LEGACY follows the uncovering of a major 60s nuclear accident through a forensics team's piecing together of clues from its present-day aftermath. CRUSOE showrunner Stephen Gallagher has a track record as a creator of science-themed popular drama, from 90s  bioshocker CHIMERA to CBS/Bruckheimer's ELEVENTH HOUR. Gallagher is represented by Julia Kreitman at The Agency and Josh Hornstock at UTA.

The 2013 European Science TV and New Media Festival is organised by EuroPAWS and Euroscience with the support of BASF, Janssen, the La Caixa Foundation, and NEF: The Innovation Institute and Science Foundation Ireland.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0302497/
Awards schedule and shortlist: http://europaws.org/awards/

City of Culture, 2017

Congratulations to Hull on the winning bid. No doubt there'll be the usual city-what-culture snark but my memories of Hull are all good ones, of deep history and atmospheric landscape and unique creative energy. Down River was my love letter to Humberside and the East Yorkshire coast.

For all those cities in competition, apparently the very act of getting a bid together has been proven to affect cultural life and economy; almost as if the morale of the public had a value.

Imagine that. Hope and happiness mattering. You wouldn't guess it from the way we're being driven, would you?

Who Day

Saturday's Dr Who day (Doctor Who: The Science Behind the Scenes, University of Central Lancashire) was great fun, as these things always are. When people come together for an occasion like this one, there's an air of cynicism-free joy that's completely at odds with some of the online griping you see. Which leads me to think that maybe the online griping is just the Grinch joining in with the fun.

Key to it all is the presence of the bright and very young, I think. The day was advertised as 'for ages 12 and up', which is in contrast to those BBC-backed fan affairs recommended for adults only. Dr Who is a children's show that doesn't talk down to its audience, and they rise to meet it as children will. Which makes it a canny move by UCLAN to stage the event, and not to dumb it down. It was effectively an Open Day for future undergraduates, with real lectures in a real lecture theatre, the odd quiz, and cosplay and props courtesy of Hyde Fundraisers.

(If you think that raises unrealistic expectations for student life, you've obviously forgotten Freshers' Week.)

I showed up for my bit, but I stayed all day. Even had a signing line which meant that I missed the beginning of Dr Sarita Robinson's talk on The Psychology of Dr Who - but no worries, I got to catch up with her to-camera piece for the Special Features on the Day of the Daleks DVD. This wasn't soft stuff. The point being that the imagined wonders of Who open doors to real questions of cosmology, psychology, and the nature of time itself.

I've one regret, which is that at the end of my Q&A, when asked what advice I'd give to aspiring writers, I kicked off with, "Don't go on courses, don't trust books," which is a pretty ungracious thing to hear from a guest in an educational setting. The fact is, I've friends who run courses. I've shown up and done guest spots, and I've mentored screenwriting students. What I meant to urge was an attitude of mind; don't expect to be guided, don't look for a map. Approach such things as an explorer, with an eye to what you can steal and co-opt to your purpose. If I'd been a bit less shoot-from-the-hip, I'd have had the wits to say so.

I was rubbish at the quiz, as well.

UPDATE: There's a report by David MacGowan on the full day here, complete but for mention of  Dr Ian Turner's entertaining and informative The Science of Doctor Who, which was conducted with s great sense of fun in the persona of the Doctor himself. David was watching a screening of Warriors' Gate during that hour, so I guess he's excused.