Why being the BBC’S Arts director is such a tricky act
BBC Arts director Jonty Claypole takes Ben Lawrence through his programming highlights for 2018 – just don’t mention Front Row . . .
Who would be a television arts commissioner in this day and age? There’s the microbudgets for a start; the constant fight to stress the relevance of your field, and the carping of the cultural critics who hark back to a mythical golden age when the schedules were covered with Reithian goodness.
It’s a good job that Jonty Claypole, director of BBC Arts since 2014, is an optimist. I meet the 42-year-old in New Broadcasting House, in an office with a weighty pile of highbrow books on the table and a French Beckett poster hanging sadly on the wall. We are here to discuss Claypole’s slate of programming for 2018, and he breathlessly talks me through the commissions. There’s a big dance season, including a profile of Kenneth Macmillan and a series of new works in collaboration with Sadler’s Wells; a documentary about the last 10 years of Picasso’s life; a celebration of some of our most seasoned actresses, including Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins, reflecting on their roles in British theatre, and profiles of the novelists Angela Carter and Muriel Spark.
Claypole believes he “has the space to be bold with commissioning”, that “fear is crucial to the process” and that “without new talent you are going to die”. He has an infectious enthusiasm, despite a tendency to slip into corporate jargon. “We are really pleased with our creative documentaries,” he says, which feels at odds with his supposed passion for his subjects.
The big bone of contention though
is Front Row. When the TV version of the 20-year-old radio arts programme launched on BBC Two last year, presenters Giles Coren and Amol Rajan got themselves in hot water before it had even begun, principally over a distinct lack of interest in theatre. Not only did their comments – Coren said he had barely been in the past six years – suggest an uncomfortable revelling in anti-arts thinking, but the appointment of a male Oxbridge duo was unquestionably elitist. Claypole tells me that the series will return in April, but very little else.
“We are going to give details next month,” he says, poker-faced. Have Coren and Rajan been sacked? “As I said, we’re announcing next month.”
The TV version of Front Row was a shambles – an over-timid, overprocessed version of a once great show – but Claypole defends it to the hilt, saying that its “noisy and provocative nature” prompted strong reactions. “The vitality of the arts depends on the responses they provoke,” he says. “They should not be a hallowed thing – they are living and breathing and are there to be talked about.”
He also says that arts criticism will be an important part of its return – a frustratingly absent form of programming at the corporation these days. He is reluctant, though, to be pinned down on obvious gaps in BBC arts programming. When I lament the lack of a regular BBC book show, Claypole’s optimism momentarily fades. “We don’t have any plans to do that, but if it felt like we had the right talent and we had the right format …”
He points to the BBC’S work with literary festivals, including Hay-onwye and Oxford. But there are more than 300 literary festivals around the UK, which must surely mean that the appetite is there. So are books a hard sell?
“No, not at all. On BBC news we do things like Meet the Author, we do books the whole time through our mainstream programmes – BBC Breakfast does them throughout the week. And then we do books through Front Row. Authors are always part of that.”
This doesn’t feel entirely satisfactory. There is also a lack of arts programming on prime-time BBC One. If we can have natural history at 9pm (as we do, regularly), why not arts?
“It does happen periodically, and I’m sure it will happen again.”
So there is nothing imminent? Surely something on Shakespeare or Dickens would be sufficiently mainstream?
“When the right thing is developed, I can see it happening.”
We’re on safer ground, perhaps, with Civilisations, the BBC’S big flagship arts series for the year. It’s a reimagining of Kenneth Clark’s ground-breaking 1969 art history series Civilisation, spreading its wings beyond the West and now with three presenters – Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga. Claypole nearly falls off his chair when I ask whether he’s seen the original.
“Of course, I’ve seen it. It would be terrible if I hadn’t. It was one of the first times that an authored landmark series was produced and it created a genre. I love Clark, actually. He’s not as patrician as people say. He was very provocative, self-consciously so, and he sort of relished that. He gave you exactly what you want from a personal view. You want a polemic.”
The level of erudition on Civilisations is bound to be superb although I imagine the budget is eye-watering. Claypole won’t discuss the cost of each episode, but denies my supposition that it has led to cutbacks on other arts programmes.
“Well, um. Ha, no,” he says, slightly set off course. “We always, um … have ambitious projects, but what we have here is a big series that has coproducers as well. PBS [the American public service broadcaster] are big backers of it. In terms of overall hours, it hasn’t impacted.”
It is perhaps unfair to goad Claypole too much. The BBC make the best arts programmes in the world – no other broadcaster comes close. But the fact is that there is a frustrating lack of competition – confirmed by the fact that Claypole can’t name a single programme from a rival channel that he wishes he had commissioned. Sky Arts continues to plough its own furrow to sadly small audiences, but the other terrestrial channels seem reluctant to engage.
Is it just that the arts are not appreciated by that many people in the UK? Claypole vehemently disagrees – and becomes incredibly animated when I talk about accusations of elitism that surround opera or classical music.
“I don’t see any art as elitist and I think the word elitism is a very dangerous one, actually. Look at the work opera companies are doing up and down the country and the fact that a commercial station like Classic FM can survive through listenership.”
So the arts are actually more thriving than ever?
“I think they are and that’s because there is a broader range of voices making art than there’s ever been before. It feels like there is always incredible work going on here and I can’t think of any other country like it.”
Claypole has done good things. On his watch, there has been some terrific programming – both highbrow and populist – from the innovative Performance Live strand, exploring live performance in a TV context through the work of of-the-moment artists such as Kate Tempest, to art documentary series like December’s terrific The Art That Made Mexico. But there are holes – a lack of dedicated content on books and classical music, in particular.
As Claypole puts it, we may “lead the world” but “we still have a long way to go”.