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Peter Weil, Vice President Content UK for Discovery Networks Europe
takes a break from running nine channels to
tell John Morrell about his
ambition to host a chat show called Thoroughly Weil.
Peter Weil is a clever, engag- ing, intense man with a rat- a-tat Belfast delivery and a rich fund of self-deprecating sto- ries. Like the one about the well- known UK independent producer who desperately wanted the Vice President Content job.
“This prominent executive but- ton-holed the President of Discovery International, and told him: ‘You can’t possibly appoint Weil.’
‘Why not?’ asked Don Wear. ‘Because he’s mad.’ ‘Perhaps that’s why we want
him’ said Wear.
“And,” says Weil, “ I got the
job.” Now he has responsibility for a portfolio of nine specialist chan- nels including Discovery itself, Home and Leisure, Civilisations, Travel and Adventure, Kids, Wings and Health, with an audience reach of a million a day.
Weil’s programmes range from top end documentaries such as The Nixon Tapes to the purely practical. “With Home and Leisure, we don’t gloss over the detail as they do in Changing Rooms. We are detail” says Weil.
His current pride – the series he would choose to be remem- bered by - has just, as of the end of August, launched on Discovery. Series-produced by Oscar /BAFTA winner Jon Blair, The Age of Terror, says Weil, is “up there amongst the very best. An outstanding, controversial four hours which brings fresh insights to this major world problem.”
Often a 16-hour a day man, he’s in the Great Portland Street office by 7.30am. After the day job commissioning, acquiring, budgeting, promoting, he catch- es up on his nine-channel output deep into the night.
It all started back in Belfast when little Peter (now 51) was worryingly obsessed by the BBC long before he could read. His parents, German Jews, left Germany in the 30’s and settled in Ireland to teach.
Peter recalls: “We didn’t have television but I slipped next door to Mrs Dougal’s to Watch with Mother. I had my own puppets – Andy Pandy, Sooty, Sweep. I was an avid fan of Radio Times. I made my own schedules. I put on shows and became a child actor. They always wanted me to play foreigners.”
He pauses, not for long, then recalls an early attempt at wooing.
“I remember the first time I played Postman’s Knock. I was 12 and terrified. To break the ice I told this young girl that the BBC was running comedy in the early evenings – Steptoe, Hancock etc – and asked whether she thought that would work or not.”
But if he was a touch gauche with girls of 12, he wasn’t going to be put off joining the BBC by a starchy careers officer who told him to go to Oxbridge, then come back and see her. At Cambridge he read Modern Languages and became secre- tary of the Union.
After four years as a Granada trainee, he finally made it to BBC Television working on pro- grammes like Panorama and Newsnight, as editor of Wogan and Open Air, and Head of Topical Features, BBC Daytime.
But despite his unbounded enthusiasm for Discovery, Peter Weil remains unfulfilled.
“I desperately wanted to be a presenter; the new Eamonn Andrews. I badgered Mike Scott at Granada to let me do a pilot, an in-depth interview with Steve Morrison, then Head of Regional Programmes, was my undoing. I had researched his background far too well.
“After the interview, Scott took me on one side and said: ‘Peter, you’re a man of many talents, but maybe those talents would be bet- ter employed at another company.’
Cate Blanchett’s
six of the best
Industry personalities hand out their very own BAFTAs
Best Film
Of course, it changes week by week... but let’s say for now, Sexy Beast. It was so... well, unexpect- ed. The performances were absolutely impeccable. What about that incredible scene where the four of them are sitting round the dinner table waiting for Ben Kingsley to arrive. There was such tension. Everyone had sweaty knees watching that.
Best TV Programme
Kieslowski’s The Dekalog. It’s one of my all time favourites. It’s the way he interweaves the narra- tive, the repeated motifs, the depths to which he’s able to plunge immediately. He takes no prisoners as a filmmaker.
Best Score
The Double Life Of Veronique by Zbigniew Preisner. Sorry to be so Kieslowski-centred but it’s some-
thing I do play over and over again. I was doing a play about Kafka when I first heard it and found it incredibly haunting and the music also has an absolute purity. It soars.
Best Film Line
“Nibble, nibble little mouse” [as Cate purrs to Kevin Spacey dur- ing post-coital munchies] – that’s what made me want to do The Shipping News.
Best Video
I have a video of The Teletubbies which I watch with my six-month- old son. It’s mother’s little helper.
Best filmmaker
Ingmar Bergman. I understand he’s revisiting Scenes From A Marriage with Liv Ullman again. Any chance I could work with him? Probably very, very slim. But I can always hope.
Cate Blanchett, who won the Best Actress BAFTA for Elizabeth, is cur- rently starring in Tom Tykwer’s contemporary romantic thriller, Heaven, co-written by the late Kryzstof Kieslowski. She has just finished filming the title role of Veronica Guerin, about the mur- dered Irish investigative journalist.
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