The Stage

Screenwriter Abbott resumes assault on broadcasters with call for more TV films

Published Tuesday 27 March 2007 at 14:55 by Liz Thomas

Award-winning writer Paul Abbott has continued his pressure on broadcasters, with a demand they commission more single films on television.

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, said that the reluctance to make screenplays was a problem for the UK.

He warned: “If someone has a brilliant idea for a 90-minute film, they go to the UK Film Council, get funding and release it as a cinema-release film, instead of as TV film. The BBC rarely pays for TV films anymore.”

Abbott added that when he was creating Corporation drama Clocking Off, he originally planned to make six single films but ended up setting them all in a factory in the style of a series, in order to ensure the programmes got to screen and a mass audience.

The corporation’s head of fiction, Jane Tranter, dismissed Abbott’s concerns, saying that the BBC offered a range of one-off dramas across its four channels and pointed to hits such as Shoot the Messenger, Soundproof, Fantabulosa! and Gideon’s Daughter, as well as forthcoming films including Stuart: A Life Backwards, Einstein and Edison, and BBC2’s season of 30 films covering the past three decades.

She told The Stage: “There are single films in abundance but there are issues - a lot of them are factually or biographically based. The truth is that it is not that broadcasters are not wanting to do, or not doing, TV plays. Sometimes writers would rather make them for theatrical release and work with the UK Film Council. I would say that it is our job to highlight TV as a viable option.”

Abbott’s comments come after Channel 4 revealed it would not be making 12 single dramas a year as originally pledged. The figure has been cut down to eight because of a budget reduction.