The Stage

Keating promises major investment in BBC2 drama

Published Tuesday 26 April 2005 at 14:15 by Liz Thomas

BBC2 controller Roly Keating is to increase the channel’s investment in drama, promising a greater amount and a wider variety in the next two years, after acknowledging he has so far failed to meet audience expectations for the genre.

Speaking at a conference organised by influential lobby group, Voice of the Listener and Viewer, Keating said it would be his priority and promised drama would benefit from a major investment. Although he did not specify any amount, his comments are significant as they come after pledges by director-general Mark Thompson last week that the Corporation as a whole is to increase its spending on programming in the next year.

Said Keating: “The volume of drama on BBC2 is far too small. There is just not as much of it as there should be and I don’t think we are capturing the range of programmes we need to.”

Pointing to the channel’s past success with shows such as nineties hits Our Friends in the North and This Life, he acknowledged it is missing a similar style of contemporary, original and imaginative drama.

Keating added that he hoped a key legacy of his time as controller would be the development of the channel’s distinctive drama profile with new writers and series but conceded his plans would take time to filter through to screens.

He said there would be more single dramas such as Bafta-nominee The Long Firm and was looking to commission adaptations of 20th century literature. William Golding’s trilogy To The Ends of the Earth has been adapted for television and will be broadcast later this year. There are also plans for a dramatisation - entitled Riots at the Rite - about Vaslav Nijinsky’s controversial performance of his ballet The Rites of Spring in 1913, which provoked uproar at its premiere.

Keating’s comments came after the BBC announced it is to spend an extra £21 million on television programming over the next year, underlining its commitment to original drama and comedy. Last month Channel 4 also announced an extra investment of £13.5 million in drama, with single productions such as The Deal and Sex Traffic to be broadcast monthly from 2006.