Quarantine for actors gives new meaning to a ‘closed set’

ACTORS will have to quarantine with their co-stars in order to get new television dramas and films made, the BBC has suggested.

Production on new shows needs to restart before the end of the year despite social distancing rules still being in place, said Piers Wenger, the corporation’s head of drama.

While the BBC announced yesterday that it is reviving Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, a series of monologues that can be filmed under current restrictions, dramas must also provide “all of the thrills and spills and big rollercoaster emotions that people have come to demand”, Wenger said.

“Until you can put two actors together on a set it’s very hard to produce a drama normally,” he said during an online interview with the Edinburgh TV Festival. “If social distancing continues for a year, we are definitely going to want to make new drama in that time. So are we going to have to look at quarantining actors and crew to allow actors to interact in the same space?”

The quarantine proposal is also under consideration for Strictly Come Dancing, which would see celebrities and their partners moving in together ahead of rehearsals.

Kate Phillips, head of entertainment at the BBC, said: “We are absolutely looking very carefully at Strictly and how we could do Strictly this autumn. It is one of our big priorities.”

Charlotte Moore, the BBC’S head of content, said: “At the moment we are all in it together and we like being able to see inside somebody’s house. But there’s also a massive appetite for all the flashy shows as well. We need to be careful it isn’t all Zoom shows.”

♦ Streamed films will be eligible for next year’s Oscars in response to the Covid-19 pandemic closing cinemas across the US, it has been announced. In a major departure from existing rules, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said that for 2021, movies that do not receive a full cinema release will be able to compete at the awards.