The Stage

Ken Loach calls for producer backlash against reality shows

Published Tuesday 17 January 2006 at 13:55

Ken Loach, the award-winning director, has called on television’s creative community to campaign to reduce the amount of reality and lifestyle programmes currently filling the airwaves.

Speaking at a special Bafta panel discussion on Monday evening, the left wing director whose film and television work includes Kes, My Name Is Joe, Cathy Come Home and Sweet Sixteen, urged his fellow producers to join him on a “front line to reclaim television” from “wretched executive producers”.

He said: “I looked at the schedules the other day and I noticed that on three of the major channels you could see programmes in which you watched women shopping for clothes. At the same time there were programmes about buying houses and selling houses for money.

“There is so much talent for original writing and directing and producing I find it seriously painful. It is time these wretched executive producers gave creative talent more of a chance to tell their own stories. There needs to be front line to reclaim television.”

Loach added that the current furore over Bethnal Green and Bow MP George Galloway’s appearance on Channel 4’s Big Brother reflected the media’s unhealthy obsession with trivial reality programmes.

He added: “What George is doing in that house has dominated the news. And yet the story about the death of 18 civilians in a US bombing raid is relegated off the news agenda.”

Loach’s remarks came at the end of the panel discussion called Is This Story True? Is That Picture Real?, a seminar about drama documentaries co-produced by Kenith Trodd, the producer of most of Dennis Potter’s major dramas as well as landmark television such as Christabel, Leeds United! and the feature film Circle of Friends.

The panel included Kevin MacDonald, the director of the Touching the Void and the 1999 Oscar winning documentary One Day in September, the playwright David Edgar, and BBC producer Ruth Caleb.