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strictly for real
RDF’s Stephen Lambert explains to Matthew Bell the thinking behind TV hits like Faking It and Wife Swap
behind tv
Few TV independents can boast an output that’s as var- ied as The Century of the Self, a highfalutin’ BBC2 series about the influence of Freud, and Sky One’s boobs and bumfest, Bikini Heaven. And few are as successful.
RDF Media recently picked up its second BAFTA in two years for Channel 4’s Faking It, the show where ordinary people have to pass themselves off as experts in, say, cookery or horse riding.
The series’ creator, Stephen Lambert, expected Faking It to win the award for Best Features programme last year, but this year’s success came as a sur- prise. “We weren’t expecting it. The competition, particularly Jamie’s Kitchen, was very strong. It was a great compliment to the whole production team,” he says.
Lambert should know what he’s talking about having spent his working life making documen- taries. Before joining RDF in 1998, Lambert beavered away for 16 years at the BBC, cutting his teeth on documentary strands like Forty Minutes and Inside Story, before launching the groundbreaking Modern Times.
“The opportunities at the BBC documentary department were fantastic. I travelled the world; to a large extent making films on sub- jects that I would just decide and, by and large, people would say ‘fine, go and make it’ – that was an amazing privilege,” he says.
By the fag end of the 1990s, however, Lambert was becoming frustrated by budget cuts and enmeshed in the BBC’s bureau- cracy. “The BBC departmental system was quite rigid and we were forever suggesting ideas only to be told ‘no, current affairs has to do that or the arts depart- ment has to do that’,” he says.
The idea of working for an independent had always attract- ed him; since Lambert’s father had run a commercials company it was a case of following in the family tradition.
“I always had a feeling that I’d end up being an independent and it was really a question of when to go,” he says. “I met David Frank, who’d started RDF, and we got on well. We felt we could really take the company somewhere.”
On joining RDF Lambert imme- diately felt at home. “There’s a strong creative culture here where people feel a great sense of loyalty to the company and share their ideas. The most striking thing about coming to RDF after leaving the BBC was the pleasure that people took in each other’s successes. That wasn’t always the case at the BBC,” he says.
RDF is an ambitious company and one that’s growing fast. Founded in 1993 by its current chief executive Frank, its revenues have risen from £300,000 to £33m last year, making RDF the eighth largest TV producer in Britain.
Although it began as a factual TV-maker, RDF has moved into other genres. “We’re trying to avoid putting all our eggs in one basket,” says Lambert. RDF recently opened a daytime department and has already won an ITV1 commission for a property show format, Moving Day.
Drama is another growth area, with RDF currently making a Greek Island-set thriller, Clara, for ITV1. The independent is also increasingly strong in the enter- tainment genre. Banzai, made by RDF backed company Radar, won the award for best multi- channel programme at this year’s Indie Awards.
But it’s the reality formats like Wife Swap and The Montreux- winning Faking It, which return to C4 in the autumn, that are the money-earners.
“We’re particularly keen on coming up with formats because they have big commercial value,” admits Lambert, who says that RDF is currently making a pilot of Wife Swap for the US net- work ABC. Another reality format
makes its debut this year: ITV1’s Holiday Showdown, in which fam- ilies with very different ideas on their ideal holiday spend two weeks together.
They can sound a little trashy, but Lambert maintains RDF’s real- ity formats have documentary qualities. Wife Swap’s series opener which featured white, racist Dee moving in with black, sexist Lance, received a mauling, but Lambert reckons the critical tide turned.
“At first people thought ‘Oh God, this is some kind of Jerry Springer type show’. As it went on people realised it was a format that was able to deliver a lot of content. That first programme said an awful lot about racial attitudes.”
One of the secrets of Faking It’s success was the quality of documentary-makers working on it, reckons Lambert. “They were excited by the opportunity to use their skills, immerse themselves in a world and develop relation- ships with characters.
“The appeal of a lightly for- matted programme like Faking It or Wife Swap is that you can still say lots of things about the world
and its people, but you are able to do it within the context of a guaranteed narrative.”
As RDF director of pro- grammes, Lambert works behind the scenes, not the camera. He hasn’t made a programme since he updated his documentary on child abuse, Hilary in Hiding, for Modern Times in 1996, and he admits he misses “meeting real people” making docs.
“Now I spend my life meeting people in television – that’s the downside,” he laughs. “The upside is that I love being involved in lots of things at once. There’s a permanence I like at RDF that I didn’t have making a documentary.
“That might have made a big noise when it went out but once it’s made that noise is forever dissipat- ing. I get more excitement develop- ing a strand like Faking It because it comes back year after year.”
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