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THE WRITE STUFF
Before ‘Action’ comes the word. How Julian Spilsbury climbed on the treadmill of television scriptwriting
W riting for the small screen is a relent-
less and frequently ruthless business. No-one knows that better than Julian Spilsbury who
swapped a 10-year career in the Army for the frequent battlegrounds of episodic television.
Spilsbury, 45, is now one of the UK’s more prolific scriptwriters whose credits encompass everything from Crossroads, Boon and Hamish Macbeth to Taggart and The Bill. Earlier this year he was also responsi- ble for Rough Treatment, a three-hour rape-revenge drama for Carlton star- ring This Life’s Daniela Nardini.
Like his Taggart contribution, Rough Treatment also had an army theme but TV writing couldn’t have been further from his mind back in 1984 when he decided to quit the infantry with the rank of Captain.
‘I had a little bit of money saved up but I was still wondering, ‘What the hell am I going to do now?’ I wasn’t qualified in any
kind of special-
ist way but I
had always
vaguely fancied
writing a novel.
“So I gave myself a year to
‘have a go.’ If, I reasoned, with-
in that year a grown-up had given me money for something
I’d written that would be an indication I was on the right lines.”
About two-thirds of the way through that year, Spilsbury spotted an article in the Daily Telegraph which indi- cated that The Archers was looking for new writers. He applied, and after “a hard apprenticeship” involving the usual round of trial scripts, he was on editor William Smethurst’s regular team.
Then when Smethurst was poached by ITV to try and perk up the flagging fortunes of Crossroads
towards the back end of the 80s, Spilsbury went with him too and saw it through to the final, first, curtain.
Apart from three novels – Captain Coranto in 1987, followed by Vision of the Hunter in 1989 and 1993’s The Night Of The Bear, co-written with Smethurst – Spilsbury has remained small-screen ever since. The original gamble seemed to pay off.
“Yes, I was properly up and run- ning. There have, as with all writers, been some lean times and even occa- sions when I thought to myself, ‘Will I have to get a proper job?’ But somehow I’ve always managed to stay with it.”
It was an old Archers’ contact which led to his eventual recruitment to The Bill, surely one of ITV’s jewels since it started broadcasting back in 1984. Spilsbury has been on The Bill team for some six years now, con- tributing more than 20 episodes in both the old three-part half-hour, and now hour-long, format.
“Certainly one of the strengths of the old format,” he reflects, “was that it was so self-contained. It did become a
problem, though. It was becom- ing a little for- mulaic – ‘a crime’s been committed, we think X did it. Then it turns out by about half- way through that it wasn’t X but Y. After the ad break we catch up with Y and
bang him away. Credits.’ – and the audi- ence figures started to dip.
“The hour-long format has allowed for more complex plots and to let us go more into the background lives of the characters, to examine how their work life can impinge on a particular officer.
“We don’t always paint The Met whiter than white – look at the recent storyline on corruption – but I think they feel that they at least get a fair
crack of the whip with The Bill. Which is why when you get in touch on a matter of research they are always ready to help out.
“Certainly The Bill has been a great thing for me, a tough training school really. The production is relentless, which is quite a dis- cipline in itself. Pace [aspiring screenwriters should note] is
vital, it has got to rattle along.
“When constructing the plot you have to be quite ruth- less with yourself in rooting out anything that doesn’t really need to be there. It’s a question of self-editing. Look at any episode and it just bang, bang, bangs through
the scenes.”
Although Spilsbury won’t
quite admit it,
the life is per-
haps something
of a treadmill.
Relentless - yes,
that word again -
enough to
deflect him from
thoughts, for the
present anyway,
of writing a feature script or, say, another novel.
“Yes, probably every TV writer would love to have a go at a film. One of the problems would be that you’d have to take more than six months off to work on it before the business of hawking it round. All that time you’re not earning an income, so you’re in a kind of trap, really.
“Take a novel. I could
spend six months on that and
make less than I would with three or four weeks writing TV. At the end of the day, I have a living to make.” May The Force – the Sun Hill sec- tion, that is - continue to be with him. ■ QUENTIN FALK
“When constructing the plot you have to be quite ruthless with yourself in rooting out anything that doesn’t really need to be there. It’s a question of self-editing.
EXPOSURE • 19
pen to paper