The golden age of TV drama is... now?

The golden age of TV drama is... now? Discuss...

Grim, gritty realism was all the rage in TV drama in the 90s - think Cracker, Prime Suspect, Between The Lines, Cardiac Arrest, NYPD Blue, ER. But the noughties (terrible phrase - does anyone have anything better?) is more about high concept, glossy escapism, fantasy, adventure , fancy camerawork and effects, flashbacks and other non-linear narrative techniques - last night's final episode of BBC1's Life on Mars being a prime example.

Join the debate with Hason Deans on The Guardian's Organ Grinder blog.

Rob Long's Martini Shot podcast

Former Cheers writer Rob Long is producing weekly podcasts about life in Hollywood, Martini Shot.

Thanks to Patrick Goldstein in The LA Times for the link.

My Name Is Rachel Corrie postponed Off Broadway

A potential Off Broadway production of "My Name Is Rachel Corrie," an acclaimed solo show about an American demonstrator killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to stop the destruction of a Palestinian home, has been postponed because of concerns about the show's political content.

The production, a hit at the Royal Court Theater in London last year, had been tentatively scheduled to start performances at the New York Theater Workshop in the East Village on March 22. But yesterday, James C. Nicola, the artistic director of the workshop, said he had decided to postpone the show after polling local Jewish religious and community leaders as to their feelings about the work.

More from Jesse McKinley The New York Times.

Update: In The Guardian, Katherine Viner, one of the people who adapted Rachel Corrie's writing for the stage, attacks the Theater Workshop's decision.

It makes you wonder. If a young, middle-class, scrupulously fair-minded, and dead, American woman, whose superb writing about her job as a mental health worker, ex-boyfriends, troublesome parents, struggle to find out who she wanted to be, and how she found that by travelling to Gaza and discovering the shocking conditions under which the Palestinians live - if a voice like this cannot be heard on a New York stage, what hope is there for anyone else? The non-American, the non-white, the non-dead, the oppressed?

Further update: New York Theatre Workshop's Artistic Director, James Nicola, denies the allagations, on the company's website.

When we found that there was a very strong possibility that a number of factions, on all sides of a political conflict, would use the play as a platform to promote their own agendas, we asked a rather routine question, or so we thought, to our London colleagues about altering the time frame. Our intent in asking for the postponement was to allow us enough time to contextualize the work so Rachel Corrie’s powerful voice could best be heard above the din of others shouting for their own purposes.

Thanks to Mark Shenton for the link.

Update: the rebuttal of the rebuttal (if you're interested).

Science in plays

In The Financial Times, Chris Wilkinson looks at how playwrights tackle science and maths.

The best example of how a play can communicate a particular scientific idea is London's Soho Theatre's recent production On Ego. Born of a collaboration between its director Mick Gordon and the neuropsychologist Paul Brok, it seeks to explain "bundle theory". This is Francis Crick's "astonishing hypothesis" that we are "nothing but a pack of neurones". Or as Alex, a character in the play puts it, our consciousness is made up of "nothing but material substance: flesh and blood, bone and brain. . . There's no one there, no essence, no ego, no 'I'." The play works, not simply because it explains these ideas, but rather because, in the relationship between Alex and his brain-damaged wife, the huge implications of this theory are graphically demonstrated for us. The very structure of the play reflects the emotional and psychological dilemma that such an apparently counterintuitive theory poses for us as human beings.

Glorification of terrorism

This afternoon the Lords have to decide whether to defy the Commons and vote to remove the glorification clause from the terrorism bill for a second time. Artists - particularly in the arts which involve representation - will be hoping they'll do so.

More from Guild member David Edgar in The Guardian.

David Chase and James Gandolfini

With the final series of The Sopranos due to air in America next month, Bill Carter in The New York Times talks to creator David Chase and star actor, James Gandolfini.

Mr. Gandolfini and his imposing physical presence influenced Mr. Chase's understanding of the character from the very first days of filming. Mr. Chase recalled that in the pilot script, originally written in the late 1990's for the Fox network (one of the great misses in TV history), he had conceived a scene where Tony's nephew, Christopher, reveals that he is thinking of selling his story to Hollywood. In the script, Tony responded by cuffing Christopher behind the ear.

After HBO finally agreed to shoot the script, that moment remained in the pilot. When they got to the scene, Mr. Chase, who was directing, called "Action," and instead of that affectionate little cuff, he remembered: "Jim picks the guy up and just throws him. I can still see Michael Imperioli. He was just sitting there with a beer bottle in his hand and the next thing I know there's like this blur of movement and the beer bottle is rolling along the ground and Michael is up off his feet." Mr. Chase laughed, remembering the impression Mr. Gandolfini's move left on him. "Of course, this is how you lead people," he said.

That one gesture changed the show. "He was always going to be a tough, hard person for most people to love," Mr. Chase said. "But that is what a gangster is. "

Thanks to Alex Epstein for the link.

Da Vinci Code copy case begins

A claim that Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code copied the ideas of two other authors is going before London's High Court.

Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh claim Mr Brown stole the idea that Jesus had a child from their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

They are suing publisher Random House, which also published their book. Random House denies the allegation.

More from BBC News.

Poetry collections

In The Independent, Hugo Williams reveals the secrets behind publishing poetry books.

When putting a book together I always think of what Philip Larkin told his publisher when asked if there might be another book in the offing. "In the past I've always had 10 good ones and the rest were fillers. Well, I've got the fillers.'' Not all of us are so rigorous. We go ahead and publish our fillers and are damned. Larkin said he always liked to put a good one at the beginning and at the end of a book. I always look there before buying anyone's new book. If the last poem's no good they're in trouble. Another consideration might be to sprinkle your "good ones'' throughout the book, to give an impression of quality, or at least to spread out your "fillers'' so they don't gang up on you.

Danny Stack's spec script challenge

Guild member Danny Stack was aiming to write a spec script over the weekend. Find out how he got on.

[Saturday:]I'm on page 32. I thought I'd get drunk tonight and plough my way through twenty more pages but I've had my drinks and am now too tired, so I'm going to bed.

Small publishers

The UK's small publishers are making a comeback, reports Tara Mulholland in The Herald International Tribune, thanks to people like Alessandro Gallenzi, founder of Alma Books.

...for now things look hopeful. Asked about the future of the British independent publisher, Gallenzi resorts to the image of Medusa: "You kill an independent publisher and the next day there will be five coming back again - good publishing comes down to independent thinking."

Venues for new plays

The nominees for this Sunday's Olivier Award for Best New Play comprise three plays premiered in the last year at the National, and one at the Royal Court: while it's a particular accomplishment that the National has managed to put itself at the centre of new writing, as well as much else, now (and a pity that the Royal Court, which styles itself as a writers' theatre, above all, should be lagging so far behind), the eternal quest (and question) for new plays remains what opportunities there are to develop them elsewhere.

Mark Shenton on The Stage Newsblog says that, with several prominent new-writing theatres struggling, competitions are becoming an increasingly important source of opportunity for playwrights.

Jean-Claude Carrière

Screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (who has worked with directors including Milos Forman and Luis Buñuel) has just completed a book, Please Mr Einstein, that brings the famous physicist back to life. He talks to Peter Forbes in The Independent.

Carrière's Einstein project has fulfilled several goals. It has ensured that he won't (on his own reckoning) die an idiot, and a conscious purpose was "to seduce young people into science".

Richard Price and Len Blum

Two new writer interviews from the Writers Guild of America, west. With Richard Price (who has just finished adapating his novel Freedomland for the screen

People have this illusion that, If I write the script I can control the movie, and that's not true. It makes it even worse that you have that illusion. I think it's much more difficult to adapt your own stuff because you don't have the distance to be as ruthless as you need to be to make this thing work at a hundred and twenty pages. It's not even a hundred and twenty pages of prose; it's like a singing telegram. You've gotta throw so much stuff overboard. If you own every sentence of a book and you're in charge of gutting it, that doesn't make it easy. Just because you're a dentist, doesn't mean you should do your own root canal.

and Len Blum (one of the writers of the new Pink Panther remake).

My primary goal at this point [when a script is first submitted] is to give the reader a really good read and then have them reach for their checkbook saying, “I want to commit $60 million to making this picture.” If I wanted to make a really good movie, I might be specific about all kinds of other things, but that's not my goal. The reader who's going to commit $60 million just wants to have an excellent time reading. He's not going to make the movie; other people are going to make the movie. He just wants to have a good time, so I'm not too worried at this point about translating it to the screen.

BBC and Film Council announce new partnership

The BBC and the UK Film Council, two of the biggest stakeholders in British film, have joined forces to put film and broadcasting at the centre of a brand new partnership.

The BBC and the UK Film Council will work in tandem with a range of collaborative projects designed to give audiences more choice, develop and support creativity and skills across the industry and encourage public participation in film.

A key element of the BBC’s renewed commitment to film is a new BBC film strategy for broadcast across all its channels and platforms, supported by a minimum 50% increase in the BBC’s budget for film from £10 million a year to £15 million a year and an increase in the proportion of the BBC’s acquisition budget allocated to British films with a guaranteed £50 million over the next charter period subject to the outcome of the licence fee settlement.

More from the UK Film Council.

RTS nominations

Dramas by Guild members Paul Abbott and Andrew Davies lead the field in nominations for the Royal Television Society Awards 2005.

Shameless (Abbott) and Bleak House (adapted from Dickens by Davies) have both received four nominations.

The awards will be presented on 14 March.

Playwrights and war

In The Guardian, Adam Thorpe asks if contemporary playwrights are shying away from depicting violence on stage.

If anything, modern theatre prefers the bleak emptiness of the post-nuclear warscape to the chaotic fury of conventional battle.

Charley Says

BBC News is featuring classic public information films including the fabulous Charley Says animations. (I've been trying to see who is credited for these but can't find any names - does anyone know?)

Users are also invited to make and submit their own public information film.

More on digital books

Following the launch of the Sony Reader, here's more on why some people see a bright future for digital books, from Business Week.

Portable devices are becoming lighter and more appealing. Books are being scanned into digital form by the thousands. The most important step forward may be in "digital ink," the technology used for displaying letters on a screen. A small company called E Ink has created a method for arranging tiny black and white capsules into words and images with an electronic charge. Because no power is used unless the reader changes the page, devices with the technology could go as long as 20 books between battery charges. The text also looks just as sharp as ink on a printed page, since each capsule is the size and pigment of a grain of laser-jet toner.

Save Peep Show

Peep Show (written by Guild members Jess Armstrong and Sam Bain)is one of the funniest and most original sitcoms of recent years. That must be why Channel 4 are, apparently, considering axing it.

If you'd like to campaign for its survival you can sign an online petition.

Thanks to The Guardian's Culture Vulture blog for the link.

Coronation Street cleared by Ofcom

Ofcom, the independent media regular has ruled that Coronation Street was not in breach of the Broadcasting Code for an episoide on 16 January. 502 viewers complained about a character using the phrase "poor white trash." Here's the full text of the Ofcom decision(pdf file).

ITV 1, 16 January 2006, 20:30

Introduction

In this episode, single mum Sunita is struggling to keep her head above water with her new-born twins. Her brother Jayesh suggests the possibility of her going back to live with their parents. In the course of the conversation, he suggests that such a move would be preferable to living like “…poor white trash”. 502 viewers complained that the expression was unacceptable and racist.

Decision

In drama it is often the case that characters will say challenging things in order to propel storylines and, indeed, raise issues - sometimes of a controversial nature. Such characterisation, in terms of freedom of expression for writers, producers and actors, is an important right. It is important that modern day dramas are able to
reflect the society they seek to portray. Coronation Street often handles controversial issues, including race, from different angles.

Against this has to be balanced the possibility of offence. Rule 2.3 of the Broadcasting Code requires broadcasters to justify the inclusion of potentially offensive material through the context in which it is broadcast. Relevant contextual elements in this particular scene were that:

• the character of Jayesh has been established in previous episodes, when, it is clear, he is unhappy with the life and the life-partners Sunita has chosen. He is not necessarily a sympathetic character;
• Jayesh, although a man with traditional views, does not necessarily represent any one particular group or community;
  
• Sunita’s response to her brother clearly showed that his comments were unacceptable. She retorted “… some of my best friends are what you would call poor white trash”.
• Very soon afterwards, because Jayesh persisted in his attitude, Sunita threw him out telling him never to come back.
  

While the term “white trash” has obvious racist overtones, it can also be used in context to describe those from a low socio-economic group. It was clear throughout the dialogue and characterisation that the programme was not condoning the attitudes displayed by Jayesh. However, it is also clear that the programme, dwelling as it often does on contemporary social issues, has a right to reflect the fact that some people do hold such attitudes. By portraying them in dramatic form, in our view, the programme took a legitimate approach to exploring such matters.

Not in breach