Archives for May 2008

I'm putting the finishing touches to my latest Holby 1st draft. The deadline is today which can be a little arbitrary - today first thing? Today end of? I used to be under the illusion that the sooner I got the script into my editor, the sooner notes would come back to me, the quicker the whole process would become .. not so. We're all dependent on everybody else's windows of opportunity.

I've been doing a fair bit of writing in the garden, the weather having been nice recently. My workspace (worthy of a colour supplement spread as I've said) is in the garden and I can look out over the lawn to my blooming peony next to the plastic pink flamingos. I've taken to lying on the grass with my laptop, I have to weary of bugs mind you. This has made the whole writing process very pleasant. But then I often find writing the 1st draft good fun, ignorant of just how many pages of notes it is going to generate - it all still feels fresh and exciting.

Ask me how I feel at the end of draft 7 - when the prospect of rewriting the same scene for the 7th time makes you want to gaffer tape the laptop shut and go shopping for the day.

I went to hear John Yorke give a talk about 'Life After Continuing Drama' at the Writers Guild a few weeks ago. It was illuminating, especially the notion that there is no conspiracy amongst the BBC to ignore good writers. Good writers are in demand. This must be so - look how many episodes of each CD show are broadcast each year, hundreds of them. Not to mention the Spooks and Waking The Deads of this world.

I reckon it's useful to have a good agent, an agent with their ear to the ground - I'm out of the loop when it comes to who's commissioning what for whom, I'm too busy writing. My agent lets me know when he's putting my name 'out there', phones me to ask if I'm still happy doing what I'm what I'm doing, we chat about the previous nights' Eastenders. We rarely meet up to face to face, it's not unlike Charlie's Angels, his is the disembodied voice on the end of the phone, lining up my next mission.

I know he likes the way I write, he 'gets it' and that's really important. Of course some writers are happy without an agent, they get jobs word of mouth and are rarely out of work. Whatever works I say.

I have a good support system, if I'm flagging I'll email other writers for support. If I'm stuck for ideas there are a few 'ol buddy books I tend to dip into, this usually kick starts my writing again.

If you're writing for Holby and Casualty then there are two texts that are a must :

"Blood Sweat And Tea" (Real life adventures in an inner city ambulance) by Tom Reynolds and "In Stitches" (The highs and lows of life as an A & E doctor) by Dr Nick Edwards. Both books are laugh out loud funny, both may make you think twice about visiting an A & E department - for various reasons.

For CD writing generally, you can't get much better than Ed McBain who penned the 87th Precinct cop series. He is the master of the hook and the cliff along with subversion of expectation - great fun to read. "Non Fiction" by Chuck Palahniuk is another book that has me crying on tube journeys (funny, as opposed to tragic) and always gets me writing again.

I am in the daunting position of writing two shows almost at the same time.

I didn't plan it this way - scheduling is the monster that skulks in the in - box, then hits you with an email throwing you into hysteria. My next Casualty episode was intended to dove tail neatly into the final stages of this current Holby, but date changes have made this less likely. The hardest bit is not the amount of writing ahead, but making sure I don't have Connie walking into the ED putting arms in slings or Kelsey on Darwin tackling coronary embolisms.

Casualty are musing over my Guest Story pitches as I write - I wait with bated breath. A lot of work goes into producing these Guest Story documents. It's not merely a case of standing before the exec producer saying "Imagine Titanic meets Only Fools and Horses - there's this guy..." I would feel gutted if I had to shelve characters I'd nurtured into a medical crisis.

Tuesday 27th May at 8pm I have a Holby on BBC1. Great casting I might add, my 'A' story yoof has done me proud. It's nice when a plan comes together.

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Well, here is the news release which has just been issued.

"The BBC today announces the six candidates selected to take part in the BBC's College of Comedy training scheme launched earlier this year.

The scheme will train six writers on the job over a year by attaching them to sitcoms and sketch shows, giving each a mentor for original work, and running a series of masterclasses in all aspects of comedy writing.

The scheme has been a huge success receiving just over 1300 submissions, some from as far afield as the USA, Australia and New Zealand.

The six candidates selected - which includes one duo and one trio - are:

Leah Chillery a playwright who currently has commissions with Nottingham Playhouse, the Eclipse Touring Theatre company, and Birmingham Rep. With BBC Comedy, Leah is developing a sitcom for BBC Three called Ebony's Yard.

Rob and Neil Gibbons are twins. They have projects in development with Baby Cow, Hat Trick and ITV Productions. They began as sketch writers, and have been developing narrative ideas since 2004. They are currently writing for Steve Coogan's stage show.

Catherine Shepherd is an actress who has appeared in many TV and radio comedies. She wrote and performed on the Peter Serafinowicz Show and Dog Face, contributed to two series of Concrete Cow on Radio 4, and has had an afternoon play broadcast.

Trippplicate are three women who have been working as a team since 2002 and have won glowing reviews for their Edinburgh shows. Morgan Lloyd Malcolm has strong affiliations with the Old Vic which include writing a play performed by Kevin Spacey and Thandie Newton. Verity Rose Woolnough directs live comedy and is a freelance writer working in advertising and PR. Katie Lyons is an actress who was a regular in Green Wing and co-starred in the award-winning Boy A. As Trippplicate, they are developing a new BBC Three project.

Andrew Viner has worked with Aardman, and has written extensively for children's television, notably on Bear Behaving Badly for CBBC, and Skatoony for the Cartoon Network.

John Warburton is a former journalist turned stand-up comedian and comedy writer. He is lead writer on a new sketch project being developed by Baby Cow in Manchester, has contributed to the Comedy North show Scallywagga, and is developing a sitcom pilot with Comedy North.

The scheme is run by Micheál Jacob, formerly the BBC's Creative Head of Mainstream Comedy, and executive producer of My Family, 2 Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, and The Smoking Room. He combines running the college with developing and executive producing programmes.

Micheál said: 'The quality of entries was very high, and we're delighted with the writers who made it through the selection process. I hope the college can help them become regulars in the first team of comedy.'"

And there I go, pursuing my dream of being Arsene Wenger.

I suppose the most frequently asked questions are - why them, what makes them special, and what was the process.

To deal with process first, the assessment worked as an inverse pyramid, starting off with two of us, extending to a further two, and culminating in a panel of six people - including me - voting for the writers they felt impressed most. The writers with most votes were interviewed by me, Kate Rowland from the writersroom, and senior colleagues from the comedy department. Of the chosen six, I had previously met only one in a writing context.

As to the why them question, the answer is quite hard to put into words. Walter Pater, the 19th century aesthete, wrote that all art aspires to the condition of music. For me, good writing sings, and what was common to the all the work of the final six was the fact that they sang, not just to me but to people with quite diverse comedy tastes and backgrounds. Some were Martha Wainwright, some were Mahler, but they were all funny, accessible and felt like only those writers could have written them.

Now I'm planning the first workshop, looking at shows to which writers can be attached and thinking about mentors, and I'll report on progress here.

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As you may already be aware, Sharps is the BBC writersroom open call for new writing talent. There's a £500 bursary, a residential training scheme, and BBC mentoring available for the best scripts on the theme of "The Nation's Health".

You might be working on your entry already. Or perhaps you're already done and chafing at the bit to send it in.

Well, the online application form is now live. So as soon as your script's done, you can send it to us.

The deadline's not till June 16th, though. Why not take the opportunity to look it over one more time, and write another draft before sending it in? See how you can make it just a little bit better?

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Liked Ashes to Ashes?

Well, we had a chat with creators and showrunners Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah the other day about writing for Gene Hunt and his time-travelling partners.

You can find all the details in our interview - and also read the first episodes of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes in our Script Archive

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Well, today we've let the people we would like to interview know, and let the people from the long list who we're not going to interview know too. We'll be meeting people next Tuesday and Wednesday, and announcing the six by the end of next week, all being well. And that's the news from the college.

Since some of the comments have moved into general areas beyond the scheme, it seems like a good opportunity to address some myths and misconceptions.

One, which hasn't yet surfaced but is bound to at some point, is that we are so bereft of projects that we steal ideas from new writers and give them to some mythical group of favourites who exist in a basement of Television Centre waiting to be fed. There is never a shortage of scripts of ideas. There is always a shortage of good scripts and ideas. Indeed, when I ran an online team-writing project called Cleaners, someone claimed I had stolen it which, since it was based on a format I devised at Alomo, was demonstrably untrue. It's a fact of writing life that several people will have a similar idea at much the same time. Although I have only once seen a project set in a public lavatory.

Another, which Kroggy has raised, is that there is some sort of clique or inner circle of writers, to which outsiders can never be admitted. This is a good conspiracy theory, but doesn't bear close examination. In my seven years at the BBC, I have found or been involved in finding (some with the invaluable help of the writers' room) seven writers who had no broadcast credits, knew no one at the BBC, and are all now writing professionally both here and for other broadcasters. Colleagues have similar experiences to report. Everyone in comedy wants to find and foster new writers whose work they can develop and see produced. There is no closed shop.

I am currently reading projects which we plan to pitch to commissioning and thence, all being well, to channels. A quarter of those projects are by writers with no broadcast credits, and are thus, by my definition, new. For some it may be a second or third attempt to get a show made, but for all of them it was a matter of someone here who didn't know them finding a script they liked.

So while we obviously have a pool of writers who seem likely to create a produceable show, it is a pool which is constantly refreshed and continues to expand. That doesn't feel like a clique to me.

I thought the college entry requirements were clear, though I had three or four requests for clarification. They were designed to rule out complete beginners, because the scheme isn't designed for complete beginners.

The final shortlist was a result of reading and comment by nine people with significant experience in television comedy, including the senior members of the comedy department.

I am not going to publish submissions, first because some are in development outside the BBC, and second because I will not expose writers to trial by internet, even if they were willing. .

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