Channel seeks ‘high-impact’ shows for viewers Uk-wide
BBC Scotland has revealed ambitions to create a slate of home-grown drama, comedy, history and entertainment “juggernauts”, which would be shown across the UK.
Scottish commissioning chief Louise thornton said the broadcaster was stepping up efforts to find funding partners to launch more“high-impact” shows suitable forth eU k-wide network.
Finding new screen roles for leading Scottish stars, developing new drama series targeted at younger audiences, creating long-running factual series and nurturing fresh talent are among the key priorities for new BBC Scotland shows in the next few years.
The broadcaster’s ambitions have emergedinthewake of the fifth anniversaryof the launch of a dedicated Scottish channel, which was created as part of an annual £19 million boost to BBC Scotland's budget.
Under BBC Scotland’s enhanced budget since the launch was launched, more than £162m has been spent on Scottish programming, includingnews, drama, comedy, documentaries and sports coverage.
Its strategy of co-commissioning programmes has attracted around £36 min additional investment from elsewhere in the BBC, funding agencies like Screen Scotland, and external producers and distributors.
Thornton hopes to emulate some of the biggest success stories from the past five years, inc lu dingbaf ta scotland award winners like Neil Forsyth's hit drama guilt, which ran for three series, and Jono Mcleod’s Alan Cum ming-starring feature documentary My Old School.
She has also pointed to the rise of co median ashley st orrie, who will be launching her own sitcom this year, a major new drama series being created by actor and comic Richard Gadd, the recent commissioning of a new sitcom starring Gregor Fisher and Greg Mchugh, and the success of documentary series The Agency: Unfiltered.
Another new project is aimed at creating new returning factual entertainment and history series for the network, which would “portray Scotland in a brilliant light”. Thornton said: “The focus of the channel has been brilliant because it brought additional funding for the commissioning of Scottish content. It enabled us to bring the kind of content that was doing well on social media onto the iplayer and the channel. We really wanted to take a few risks and do things we wouldn’ t have been able to do previously.
“A good example of the new way of thinking is that one of the first things that we showed was a drama called The Grey Area, by Garry Fraser, which we’d been working on with him and we were initially thinking it would be for Youtube.
“Ashley Storrie was doing short-form comedy on social media when I first came across her. She did some shorts for us, then we commissioned quite an experimental show with two other comedians – Christopher Macarthur-boyd and Rosco Mcclelland. Now she has a Radio Scotland show and a network-funded sitcom she has written and is performing in.
“That’s almost the epitome of what BBC Scotland should be doing.it’sexcitingwhenyoucan see that happening across different genres ."
Thornton cited Guilt as an example of a show she believed would not have got off the ground without the extra investment in BBC Scotland, but went out across the BBC network when it launched.
Only Child, the north-east set comedy focusing on a fatherson relationship between the characters played by fisher and Gregor, and Lions, Gadd’s sixpart Glasgow-set drama series that will span almost 40 years, will also be shown across the UK.
Thornton added: “Guilt is a show everybody in our team is proud to have delivered. It was dark, comedic and contemporary Scotland, and it was bold and distinctive. we’ re very much looking for our next guilt. what story of contemporary scotland can we really champion?
“I’m very hopeful for Only Child. Still Game was brilliant and still does brilliant numbers for us. Two Doors Down has been amazing as well. But one of my big priorities for me was to get a new network-funded sitcom.
“Now that we are five years in, we don't want to lose the origi
The focus of the channel has been brilliant because it brought additional funding for the commissioning of Scottish content Louise Thornton
nal spirit of the channel, but we also do want the juggernauts. How do we get those big, premium shows which are delivered from Scotland, by working with the money we’ve got?
“We have to balance that up by making sure that all our commissioners have innovation and new talent on their slate. We have to keep renewing and refreshing. But I can also see how meaningful it is when we get big Scottish stars in network shows. We have a feature film project in development with BBC Films that hasn’t been announced yet and we recently launched a development initiative to find big new factual entertainment and history series to be made in Scotland.”
Thornton explained that BBC
Scotland was raising its ambitions to ensure it can compete with the growing number of channels and streaming platforms available to audiences in Scotland.
She said: “Whatever we’re commissioning, we really have to interrogate it, think about who is going to watch it and what they’re going to say about it.”
Thornton was speaking ahead of a new series of the award-winning short form drama Float, a queer love story focusing on two young women in a seaside coastal town.
She said: “A good question for me is what we’re doing in terms of drama for young audience sin Scotland. Float is brilliant, but I don’t want to stop there.”