The Stage

The Young one - Mal Young

Published Thursday 6 January 2005 at 11:00 by Maggie Brown

The new year saw Mal Young, one of British television’s most prolific and successful producers, join Simon Fuller’s 19 company as its first director of drama. Maggie Brown gets the low-down on the deal

Simon Fuller, the shrewd entrepreneur whose Battersea-based company is best known for Pop Idol and creating the Spice Girls, at the beginning of this year managed to woo Mal Young away after seven years at the BBC by giving him carte blanche to build up a new independent drama company. Accordingly, Young, now 48, has taken with him his former BBC head of development Serena Cullen, a key figure in starting up some of the 14 successful strands he bequeaths to the BBC, most recently the Afternoon Plays.

Young says that he was phoned by Fuller last summer, out of the blue: “The only connection I’d had with him was a year before when an agent came to see me about an actor and he said, ‘Have you ever thought of leaving the BBC. If you ever do, I think we should set you up with Simon Fuller. We’d like to broker a deal between you and Simon, it’s a good fit’.

“I thought it was a good deal because we are both populist, we love big audiences and big projects and we like to entertain in big ways. I had always admired what he has done. I thought one day I might go and meet him. I admire anyone who does popular.”

During the telephone call Fuller invited Young, his wife and step daughter to France for a weekend and Young duly flew back with a three-year deal. Fuller, boosted with the massive hit of American Idol, was looking at what to do next for a big network there and had hit on popular drama.

“He was fascinated by my kind of dramas, especially the success of Holby City. He said he had been developing a drama with [acclaimed scriptwriter] Tony Jordan. Simon is the sort of person that if he wants to do something, he goes out and gets the best people. He is an entrepreneur, an initiator.”

Jordan had developed a treatment for a peak-time American network, Fuller wanted Young to executive produce it.

“We are developing it now,” says Young. “Tony has come up with a fantastic treatment.

“It is a stripped drama, akin to EastEnders, based in Chicago, and focused on working class lives, unlike the staple American sitcoms.

“I’d been thinking, that’s what is missing in America - character-driven, gritty drama. Simon again saw a gap in the market and pitched it. He’s huge out there.”

But for Young, one drama in development was not enough, after overseeing EastEnders and turning Casualty and Holby into year round strands.

“I get bored very quickly. I wouldn’t leave the BBC for one show that might not happen.”

On the other hand, the former producer of Brookside and Family Affairs was looking for a change outside of the BBC, where he had been close to Greg Dyke.

“I was at a crossroads. I’d had a feeling that we had been on the journey, we’d done it, that we’d have to do it all over again because we were levelling out.”

He says of joining the BBC that he felt they were almost ashamed of hiring him, “as if they thought, ‘we need Mal’s shows, we just don’t shout about them’”. He remembers that on his arrival he had a message from John Birt’s office saying he had used the word popular too much in an interview. Dyke, he says, changed all that (and also gave the green light to a fourth episode of EastEnders).

“The minute Mark [Thompson] got there, he sent me a message, ‘love your shows’. He was very complimentary.”

But Young also knew the climate was changing. In house BBC production accounts for 71% of drama output. Any big new strands are likely to be made by independent producers. The former Brookside producer had also seen his life mellow, with marriage to Mari Wilson, the singer, a cosy new home life in Crouch End, north London and a stepdaughter.

In the last two years he had turned down offers to take over the running of Mersey Television, join Carlton and run a top American cable channel. But both Dyke and Alan Yentob had encouraged him to spread his wings by adapting some of his titles in the US, headed by a pilot of Judge John Deed for NBC.

“I am ambitious but I love making, I don’t want to commission and then let everyone else have the fun. People have said to me in the past if Nick Elliott [drama controller] leaves ITV, would you go for it? And I wouldn’t. It’s a great job but not one I want. I think Nick and I are very similar in our tastes but I don’t want to sit in an office and get pissed off when they deliver you a show you don’t recognise.

“I’m an interferer. I love the casting, the writing. I’m a show runner, in the American style - someone who runs an amount of output and gets their hands dirty.”

He thinks his move into the independent sector is perfect timing.

“There is no other indie that would specialise in what I want to do. My brand can go from Doctors to Waking the Dead to low budget films.

“Here I will be able to take an idea to four or five different outlets. Jane Tranter, BBC drama controller, has said she wants me to develop shows for her. I know what BBC1 needs.

“Out in the USA they’re queuing up to meet drama producers who have had hits, who can bring in big ideas. Everyone has got to the pilot stage. I’d love to be the one to pull it off. I would like to get rich, I have to start thinking about a pension. I get an equity stake in the shows I develop. I own rights with Simon. That’s the way forward.

“We don’t need to buy other indies, we just want to start small. I want to be judged by shows I pull off, to get three or four away.”

Young has signed a three-year deal but fully expects the partnership to go on for longer if it works. His final thoughts on troubled EastEnders?

“It was our turn to be kicked. You have to be so strong. It made Louise [Berridge], the producer, ill. I was thinking, I don’t want someone being ill because the press is being nasty to them. They were vicious and personal. I think we put Louise’s name up there too much, all those press releases, it was all sold on the producer announcing this or doing that. They’re now trying to protect the new team, its a lonely job.”

Will Barbara Windsor return, after a two-year absence?

“She’s nervous of commitment. You have to be fit. You can’t do a part time job in a soap, you end up as an overpaid extra in a bar. We have to be honest. I said, ‘Barbara, you can only come back when you feel you can handle it’. She’s always said the show is the star. I think EastEnders should concentrate on new characters, not rely on the past. Look how Dirty Den backfired.”