Frank Cottrell Boyce - writing for radio

Having shared his screenwriting rules a couple of weeks ago, Frank Cottrell Boyce, whose new series of plays One Chord Wonders is running on Radio 4, explains the appeal of writing for radio.

Writing for radio turned out to be really punk. I'm more used to writing for films. Film culture is extremely conservative. Even "indie" films follow a formula and there are executives who are employed to help you stick to that formula.

[Director] Toby [Swift] just let me do what I wanted. Although the characters in the plays overlap, they are all have different tones and different kinds of storytelling. One play is a series of internal monologues, another is a fairly straight situation comedy, another is quite a dark prison drama, and then there's a road comedy that lurches into something surprisingly sad for the last ten minutes.

If I'd been doing it for telly, say, they would have wanted me to settle on a "house style" and stick to it.