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Durlacher. “The other side to it is, because there’s no moving pic- ture or sound archive of him, we could create an Orwell for our- selves and then give him his own words. This gave us freedom.”
Durlacher is adamant that lit- erature and TV make cosy bed- fellows. “Writers have interesting lives. Even if they don’t have as adventurous lives as Orwell, they undergo personal, emotional and intellectual journeys,” he says.
“They have strong ideas and a lot of those are played out in their lives. I would be quite confident of being able to make an interest- ing film about a number of writers.
“What I try and do is not just tell the story but somehow reveal the world in which the story takes place. Writers, in fact a lot of artists, have a lot of potential for that because they inhabit inter- esting worlds, both their real lives and their imaginary lives.”
Philip Larkin – surely the kind of controversial writer literary TV was made for – has been the subject of two recent programmes: the BBC’s film, Love Again, starring Hugh Bonneville and the C4 doc- umentary Love and Death in Hull.
Janice Hadlow says the latter was a “return to the great days of Bookmark”, in that it pulled together the poet’s life and work and exam- ined the links between the two.
“When that’s done well, it’s fantastic,” she says, adding that television has to “bring an added value to literature and do some- thing beyond saying here’s another good book.”
In Love and Death in Hull, she continues, “you got to see and hear Larkin, which is the added value television can bring. You should never underestimate that – that’s what you can’t get from any other medium.”
In a bumper year for literature on TV, South Bank Show profiles of Albert Camus and Robert Harris and BBC2 programmes on Byron and Pepys are still to come.
But will TV’s infatuation with writers continue? Mark Harrison, for one, thinks so. “I think it’s here to stay. It’s criminal that books have been so poorly conveyed on tele- vision in the past. They are such an important part of our lives. Did you know that 95 per cent of the pop- ulation read at least one book for pleasure every year?”
The Fun Factory: A Life In The BBC By Will Wyatt
(Aurum Press, £20)
This is a
revealing,
fascinat-
ing and fre-
quently sur-
prising
account of
life in the
fast lane at
the Beeb.
It’s written
by a dyed-in-the-wool Corporation man who started in the radio newsroom as a trainee in 1965 and then rose through the TV ranks via the early days of Holiday, Crimewatch and 40 Minutes. He eventually succeed- ed Desmond Wilcox as Head of Documentary Features (Editor Tim Slessor’s opinion: “I think he’ll be all right, he wears black lace ups”), to become Chief Executive Broadcast.
He paints colourful thumb-nail pictures of top management: Michael Grade’s “very un-BBC... a sunny and optimistic presence”; Bill Cotton, “the BBC’s Mr Entertainment... could be as ruth- less as they come but he inspired huge affection”; Alan Yentob, “the most exhilarating of all col- leagues I worked with in the BBC”.
Wyatt also reveals his thoughts on the ambushing of Director- General Alasdair Milne – “tough way for a lifer to go, tough way for anyone to go.” On the restruc- turing of the Corporation under John Birt – “Was it the right thing to do?... it was certainly logical” – and the introduction of Producer Choice, deeply unpopular with Production and Resources Departments alike but, “it gave a harder financial edge.”
Of the BBC’s relationship with the Palace, he writes, “similar to any institutions we filmed save that the stakes were higher and the tendency to cringe greater.”
He also packs in amusing anecdotes such as Bill Cotton mistakenly sacking his Senior Personnel Officer. Nor does he spare himself describing how at the BAFTA awards, he greets an astonished Helena Bonham Carter “with a broad grin and a kiss on both cheeks” firmly believ- ing her to be Julia Sawalha.
As an ex BBC staffer I found it riveting. I couldn’t put it down. But it will appeal to anyone inter- ested in the media or the politics of Auntie at the highest level. David Crichton
Helen Mirren
By Ivan Waterman (Metro, £16.99)
This hard- back biog- raphy went to press long before it could record the recent elevation of Helen Mirren to DBE in
the
Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
So it was clearly a rather pre- scient critic, the Daily Mail’s Michael Coveney who told the author on the penultimate page
of his well-researched, jauntily- written memoir, “I think we will have Dame Helen very soon...”
The recurring motif is the actress’s sexiness and her lack of inhibition, demonstrated yet again even at 58 in her latest film, Calendar Girls, about the Yorkshire WI ladies who disrobed for charity.
Despite appearing on the stage and big screen for more than 30 years, Mirren is probably best known for her mould-break- ing stint as top cop Jane Tennison in the Prime Suspect telefilms which earned her a hat-trick of BAFTA performance awards.
Perhaps the best section of the book is an in-depth look at the revealing life and times of Jackie Malton, the real-life policewoman who inspired the creation of Tennison, soon to return in yet another TV two- parter. Quentin Falk
book reviews
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