Equal roles: Fat Friends writer Kay Mellor is penning a new drama for ITV featuring a group of women over the age of 50, as the broadcaster looks to broaden its output in the genre and enhance its appeal to female audiences.
Laura Mackie, the director of drama at ITV, revealed Mellor’s new drama was called Women of a Certain Age, and added that it featured three roles for older actresses. Mackie said she wanted ITV to move away from crime dramas and do more drama featuring roles that better reflect women’s lives.
Speaking at Sphinx Theatre Company’s conference into the portrayal of women in theatre and television, Mackie said there were “reasons to be cheerful” about the state of drama on television and its use of older female performers.
But she admitted there was still “a lot of work to do”, and said that a strong drama slate on ITV depended on attracting female audiences.
“The bulk of the audience for drama is female. I know from bitter experience that if we provide dramas that exclude the broad female audience, we will not get the kinds of volume of audience we need on ITV1. ITV1 is a big commercial channel and we are under a lot of pressure at the moment. I want to keep flying the flag for drama and want as many hours of drama as possible, but I can only achieve that if the quality of drama is really good and attracts a big percentage of the viewing public - and that means women,” she said.
Mackie claimed female audiences want to see “strong, complex and interesting” female roles and urged writers to present her with more ideas featuring these kind of parts.
“We need more and I would love to get more scripts across my desk that don’t have a flashing blue light in them. I would love more scripts that have strong varied roles that reflect women’s lives - every facet of their lives, and I would say nothing is off-limits,” she said.
However, Mackie warned that writers have to think about the long-term sustainability of any idea they present to her, and should consider whether a story could run for multiple episodes or into a second series.
Speaking on the same panel, BBC executive producer Hilary Salmon, whose credits include Criminal Justice and Moses Jones, insisted the TV industry had a better representation of women both on and off the screen than it did 20 years ago, when she first joined the Corporation.
Salmon said a break-down of the casting for shows the BBC was currently working on highlighted how healthy opportunities for actresses currently are, with a second run of Criminal Justice to feature a female lead and shows such as Cranford featuring older performers.
She added: “I don’t think we should be gloomy about the prospects for actresses in our dramas, as there are plenty of roles.”
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