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Inside 195 Piccadilly & Reviews
MORRELL’S
JOHN
“baftalk”
BOOKREVIEWS
duly recorded. The consequent neglect of television drama is ignored. Similarly BBC founding father John Reith commands space but John Birt is not mentioned. Fin de siecle decline is implicitly accepted as a consequence of economics and the multipli- cation of channels. A complete veil is drawn over the Birtist managerialism which so dis- membered the BBC drama department and tradition that its few surviving in house practitioners looked longingly towards the comparative freedom of cinema.
The recent Greg Dyke statements of intent, establishing that the BBC exists to make and show programmes not to provide careers for managers, suggested a better future. That was until he commanded that BBC Films should match FilmFour, so pass- ing over the claims of television drama.
As Alan Parker said, when taking over the chair at the British Film Institute, most films made by our broadcasting organisa- tions are at best blown up television drama. This is an all important argument over which Professor Caughie glides unsee- ingly. It recognises that at their best cinema and television drama are different, the lat- ter having its own strengths of close up immediacy and the primacy of the word.
In my recent book about television dramatists, Talk Of Drama, I had the advan- tage of Jimmy McGovern’s frankness and in particular his experience with Priest. This was commissioned and written for the BBC as a four-part serial but eventually appeared as a 35mm cinema movie whose authorship was credited to its director Antonia Bird.
In the cinema it appeared as, in McGovern’s words, “ a lacklustre film”. In places the camera took over and vital dia- logue virtually disappeared. What might have been great television became indiffer- ent cinema. If there is ever to be a second “golden age” of television drama such dif- ferences have to be recognised by the likes of Greg Dyke, and John Caughie. ■
bleak indeed,” he notes. The author agrees that this is a whoppingly priced memoir and promises a less expensive paperback version “in due course.” ■ Quentin Falk
Idon’t know about you, but little e and little i and three little www’s have left me somewhat stranded of late. It’s the sheer speed of it all. In early May, Carlton Television launched its Revolutionary Interactive Services called Carlton Active. “For the first time ever, viewers will be able to interact with a commercial or programme while staying within the channel they are watching,” they told us. “Television is able to take revenue from addition-
al markets such as classified, sales promo- tion and direct mail - £200m additional”, smiled Carlton Active’s chairman, Martin Bowler.
Two thousand six hundred guests have been invited. The event will be telecast live on SET Asia in the UK and Sony Max in India. In all, 122 countries are in the foot- print. Details on www.setindia.com.
Oh, and WAP is on the way.
The latest generation of mobile phones hiding behind the unlikely title “wireless application protocol” not only brings you internet banking, on-line
Meanwhile across
town, the Interactive
Motion Picture
Corporation launched
Running Time – the
world’s first interactive
motion picture. This
too, they say, is a revo-
lution. “Visual story-
telling which marries
the internet’s extraordi-
nary interactivity with
new digital methods of movie-making.” No longer are we safe in passivity. It is us, the audience, who decide the plot.
Stephen Bayly at the NFTS is never one to be far behind the pack. With colleagues from the Australian Film & TV School and the UCLA Film, Theatre & TV School in California, he took over the Imax theatre at Waterloo to launch the online Global Film School. They were staggered to get 400,000 hits overnight from around the world. Stephen summed it up: “Digital film-making and the use of the web as a means of person- al expression is as significant as the spread of printing and literacy during the Industrial Revolution.” So no passing fancy this! They talked of “chasing the sun” productions, film- making 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year in year out. Pass the Nurofen, please.
Incidentally, you can read more about these initiatives elsewhere in this issue on page 17. It’s 63 years since talkies were invented. Imagine 63 years from now!
If you are browsing, here’s yet another one to try: www.catchuslive.com. Here you will find fascinating background to IIFA - the International Indian Film Awards. (PIC). Bollywood, the second largest film industry in the world, celebrates the role of Asians in the global world of film by taking over Skyscape at the Millennium Dome on June 24.
A limited number of tickets are avail- able for BAFTA members. Please let me
know if you would like to be considered.
services galore and e- mail, but also televi- sion. As e and i guru Bob Egginton has said: “The old orthodoxies have gone. We’re going to be in flux and severely challenged for ever more.” Count me in, severely chal- lenged.com.
Which is all a rather roundabout way of getting to the point – to draw mem- bers’ attention to The BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards to be held at the Lancaster House
SEAN DAY-LEWIS
DETECTS A CRISIS
IN THE DRAMA
TELEVISION DRAMA:
REALISM, MODERNISM AND
BRITISH CULTURE
BY JOHN CAUGHIE (Oxford University Press, £14.99)
As his tortuous sub-title tells, Professor Caughie is less con- cerned to interest television prac- titioners than to construct heavy- weight formulations for his Glasgow media studies pupils.
Toilers in television drama who have patience to penetrate his academic fog will nevertheless find worthwhile reflections on some “golden age” productions from the Sixties and Seventies. What disap- points is Caughie’s relative failure to con- sider the last 20 years or to assess how far decline has resulted from moves towards would-be cinema.
The Jeremy Isaacs insistence on stimu- lating cinema production from Channel 4 is
BRITISH TELEVISION: AN INSIDER’S HISTORY
BY PETER GRAHAM SCOTT
(MCFARLAND & CO, VIA SHELWING LTD, TEL. 01303 850501, £33.75)
The producer-director of top-rated TV like The Troubleshooters, The Avengers and The Onedin Line, not to mention more than 40 original live dramas, reflects often fascinatingly on five decades in the industry. From joining the BBC as a young pro- ducer-trainee in 1952 to becoming a man for all channels, this tire- less programme-maker has, even at 76, still firm views on the medi- um. “The immediate future, seen from the chilling present, looks
John Morrell Executive Director BAFTA
Hotel on October 26. There are 19 cate- gories and two special awards ranging from Interactive Arts through Enhancement of Linear Media to Online Learning and Games – Mobile or Networked. Thanks to Helen Wood who, sadly for BAFTA, moved on to a new chal- lenge recently, interest has been terrific. Close of entries is Friday, August 25 and Dan Boothby here at the Academy will be delighted to send details. You can get him at dboothby@BAFTA.org. We’re sure it’s going to be a bumper year for BAFTA IE.
Re-winding for a moment, the BAFTA Spring Quartet of Awards has played to capacity houses in Leicester Square, Cardiff, Park Lane and here at 195 Piccadilly. Overall, the Film, Television, Craft and Cymru ceremonies attracted just short of 5000 members, guests and stars. The teams behind these successes have worked extraordinarily hard and the Academy owes a huge vote of thanks to each one of them. And so does the bank manager who is currently smiling upon us.
And finally, a personal word of thanks to Chairman Tim Angel. He has poured unstinting energy and a high degree of business acumen into the Academy over the past three years. Like many people associated with
BAFTA, I have admired his tireless, almost obsessive drive to take the Academy back into the black. On
behalf of the staff, I’d like to send
our very best wishes to Tim,
Eleanor and Shelley as they return
to the regular day job of running
Angels The Costumiers. ■
Photo left: Amitabh Bachchan, Indian cinema icon and advisory board member with Yukta Mookhey, the reigning Miss World and compere for IIFA, with PY Gerbeau, CEO Millennium Dome
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