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best of british
“Technically,
you reach a
certain point
where you
know you can
direct, and
in the end I
don’t have
any joy just
being the
best paid
technician on
a film.”
Franc Roddam calls them his “uncles”: Harry, Masterchef, Making Out, The Canterbury Tales (in its latest TV incarnation) and, most enduringly, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
He explains: “I’ve known vari- ous people down the years who all seemed to have rich uncles. I didn’t, so I had to create my own. What I did in essence was to cre- ate my own development fund, my own survival mechanism.”
These “uncles”, his creations, are, course, high-profile series and serials which have decorated our television screens on and off for more than 20 years, notably Aufpet (as it’s nicknamed) which is now on its fourth, Cuban- themed BBC airing after starting out on ITV back in 1983.
When Teeside-born Roddam isn’t dreaming up TV concepts, he’s thinking up inventions or, as he’s about to unveil to a hopeful- ly startled world, a new publishing company whose launch title, Clive Woodall’s One For Sorrow, Two For Joy, has already been snapped up by Disney.
But, for Roddam, all this tireless activity – and more to be men- tioned later – is merely a means to an end which, at the moment, is a long-dreamed-of feature film based on Adam Zameedzad’s acclaimed novel, My Friend Matt, set in Africa and dealing with the effects of war on children.
Ah, yes, a feature film because we’re actually talking about the same Roddam, who after an award-winning start with his TV drama, Dummy, once helped carry the flag for the British film industry as director of films like Quadrophenia, The Lords Of Discipline and The Bride.
But you need a long memory to recall Roddam’s last feature. It’s been 12 years and counting since he directed the mountain- set adventure, K2, in Kashmir, Pakistan and British Columbia.
But don’t think that the self- styled “polymath” has been for even a moment sitting idly around waiting for the next proj- ect to come knocking.
to be franc
Writer-director Franc Roddam has created some of television’s best-loved programmes, But, as he tells Quentin Falk, they are only a means to another end
Before My Friend Matt, which has had a typically tangled and expensive pre-production involv- ing getting rights, losing them then winning them back again, there were two years down the Amazon on an abortive film called Rainforest.
He notes: “My career has been marked by these really per- sonal, powerful films I’ve wanted to make. The concept is every- thing to me. Technically, you reach a certain point where you know you can direct, and in the end I don’t have any joy just being the best paid technician on the film. Also, the films I was
being offered seemed to be either slasher movies or soft comedies.”
But bills and the development of those “personal, powerful” projects still had to be paid for. He had no interest in actually directing any of his own TV cre- ations – “too time-consuming, and I always took the view they would earn me money to deve- lop other ideas” – so there had to be some other compromise.
Enter Moby Dick, a mini-series revisiting of Melville’s classic, star- ring Patrick Stewart as the obsessed white whaler. “When Moby Dick came up, I thought
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Photos main: Franc Roddam; from top: the latest Auf Wiedersehen, Pet cast; Om Puri in Canterbury Tales