The main event - Stephen Poliakoff

Published Friday 16 September 2005 at 11:15 by Richard Brooks

Stephen Poliakoff is the king of the castle when it comes to one-off TV drama. Richard Brooks discovers why the writer believes there is something rotten with the state of the industry

Write first for the theatre and only then try TV and movies. This was the advice that Stephen Poliakoff was given as a young man and today he believes it is just as valid. “In fact, I reckon it was the best bit of advice I was ever given,” says the 53-year-old writer, even though in the past decade he is much better known and more highly praised as a television dramatist.

Today Poliakoff is the most original and feted dramatist of the single television play. Now, in a way, there is not that much competition as the genre has hardly been flavour of the month, let alone year, for a long, long time. But what Poliakoff does, about every other year, is event drama. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that his dramas are truly memorable. Just recall the last three - Shooting the Past in 1999, Perfect Strangers in 2001 (both on BBC2) and in early 2004 The Lost Prince, on BBC1. That was the extraordinary story of George V’s sick child John, who died of a fit aged just 13. But it was also a drama about the events at the end of the Second World War and the relationship between the British and the Russian royals.

Next up, probably in January 2006, are two more dramas - Friends and Crocodiles and Gideon’s Daughter. The first is set mainly in the eighties and the second in 1997, the year of Tony Blair’s first election victory. They were commissioned by Lorraine Heggessey when she ran BBC1 and will, without question, be given the big marketing push and the best time slot by her successor Peter Fincham, who has already made it clear that he sees drama as the lynchpin of BBC1.

“I’ve already got an agreement that the news will be moved for the plays,” says Poliakoff. This is not a boast. It is simply a fact. He managed it with The Lost Prince and the same will happen for the two new plays, which both run at nearly two hours in length. In fact, Poliakoff would really like the Sunday evening news to be moved much more regularly to make room for dramas.

“Why not?” he asks. “Why doesn’t the BBC have more longer dramas? ITV does. And that’s to its credit.”

Well the reason is that since 2002, BBC1 has fixed the news at 10pm on weekdays and on Sundays too, partly so Panorama can follow at 10.15pm.

Poliakoff is an exception and he will probably remain so. But his point about the lack of long-form drama on the BBC is a fair one.

“ITV was thought mad back in the eighties when it brought in Morse at two hours long. But it worked. And ITV still does it with things like Prime Suspect and Midsomer Murders. And the audience loves them.”

The writer, who has a Russian-Jewish heritage, also believes that audiences actually enjoy slower paced dramas. He might say that partly in his own defence as certainly his last three on the BBC have hardly been known for their cracking speed.

“Remember the hugely popular Darling Buds of May on ITV,” he says. “Nothing happened for hours on end and the audience loved it.”

The only slightly odd thing is that Poliakoff has not written to ITV for many years. He is probably canny enough to see the downside of the commercial channel. It is very ratings-driven and would almost certainly refuse to give Poliakoff the creative freedom he gets at the BBC.

“The other thing about ITV is that I’ve noticed from other writers that they will commission things, make them, but then quite often sit on them for years and maybe never even show them.”

Poliakoff knows he is lucky have such freedom at the BBC.

“Yes, I’ve now got total editorial control. I write, I direct, I cast, I chose the music and I edit.”

But there have been casualties on the way. He used to work regularly with John Chapman as his producer but that relationship has now finished. He quite often uses the same actors, such as Michael Gambon, Lindsay Duncan and Bill Nighy, who have all been very bankable for years. But some of his choices have raised eyebrows.

“I was thought mad to cast Tom Hollander as George V in The Lost Prince,” he says. “They thought he was too young.”

Poliakoff also reckons that he is a pretty decent director too. “I’ve learnt over the years.” But he is critical of one or two other writers who have tried their hand at directing - at least British writers. “Dennis Potter was, frankly, not a good director.”

Poliakoff is now right at the top of his tree in the way that Andrew Davies is simply the best adaptor. But it is being original that interests Poliakoff, not taking a book and making a screen version of it. Not that he believes this is not a skill in itself. He has to be careful here as his wife Sandy Welch is a regular adaptor for BBC drama. Her next will be Jane Eyre. But what really worries Poliakoff is that he might be a dying breed.

“The authored drama is on the way out. A great shame, as I really do think that the safest path is to take risks. The television audience is also more intelligent than executives think.”

And while on the subject of the big-wigs, Poliakoff is dismayed at the recent remarks made by the BBC chairman Michael Grade, who said he hoped that all repeats would be gone within a decade.

“But a repeat-free zone would be a death warrant to the BBC,” counters Poliakoff. “It is a ridiculous ambition because it treats all television genres as the same. Good work should be re-shown.”

Poliakoff was particularly surprised by Grade’s remark because he also recalls him, nearly 20 years earlier as a BBC programme executive, saying that “it never ceased to amaze him that people are willing to spend a year or more of their life on something which is forgotten the next day”.

The writer is hardly optimistic about the future of drama on television. “Too many executives simply say ‘let’s make another cop show’ or ‘let’s get James Nesbitt’.”

He also believes that 2005 has, thus far, been very fallow on both the BBC and ITV for drama. “Nothing landmark at all - except, I suppose, some people would say, well, Dr Who is back. But that’s really entertainment.”

He is also critical of the way that writers such as Paul Abbott start a series and then, as Poliakoff puts it, “farm it out to others”.

Stephen Poliakoff can be curmudgeonly. He can also be a nightmare to work with. Yet he is a genius at television drama.

* Richard Brooks is arts editor of The Sunday Times