The Stage

Shameless writer Abbott again blasts ‘gutless’ TV chiefs

Published Tuesday 6 March 2007 at 14:40 by Liz Thomas

Award-winning writer Paul Abbott has again lambasted TV commissioners, branding them “gutless” and claiming they are still reluctant to take risks.

The outspoken creator of Channel 4’s hit series Shameless, which follows the lives of the dysfunctional Gallagher family on a sink estate in Manchester and has won popular and critical acclaim, added that drama executives need to be bolder and show more confidence in new programmes.

He explained: “The way the system works at the moment [means that] commissioners give you three or six episodes at first and it is two years before they’ll commit to ten. The commissioners are gutless, because it is expensive to make TV drama and they won’t take the risk. But I think it’s important for us to learn to tell audiences that we have got something good, and if we commissioned 16 episodes straight away then the audience will appreciate that investment, and they’ll feel well looked after.”

Equity welcomed the writer’s comments, saying that executives should sometimes go out on a limb. A spokesman for the union said: “Paul’s absolutely right. There needs to be a bit more confidence in television drama commissioning. Looking back over the years, some of TV drama’s most memorable moments have been when there has been the courage to take a risk.”

It is not the first time Abbott, who was speaking at an industry information day set up by Media Training North West, has expressed his frustration about the genre and the commissioning process.

In 2005, he launched a broadside against television drama in the UK arguing that it was “predictable and needlessly boring”. He also went on to accuse executives of patronising viewers.

He said then: “The commonest excuse for drama being bland or inoffensive or just crap is that the audience just cannot assimilate complex storytelling. That is just patronising. Audiences today can handle as much as you throw at them.

“Audiences deserve, and I believe crave, much more protein in their diet. Only by giving the viewer a workout, making them join the dots, use their own imagination, can we reclaim TV drama as the challenging, exciting and life-changing medium that I and many others have known it to be. We need more drama that unpeels society, that roots through the cubbyholes to fetch us nuggets of human behaviour that opens our eyes a bit.”

A spokeswoman for Channel 4 declined to comment on Abbott’s criticisms.