The Guardian view on British TV drama: a new golden age?
Speaking at the Royal Television Society’s autumn conference, the former media minister John Whittingdale suggested that the dominance of global streaming giants such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney was endangering the future production of distinctively British content. In future, public service broadcasters would need to be legally directed, he suggested, to create programmes embodying a kind of “Britishness” exemplified by old favourites such as Dad’s Army or Only Fools and Horses.
As critics such as the historian David Olusoga have pointed out, attempting to define a supposedly core Britishness in a multicultural, evolving society would be a highly contentious exercise. It would also be a futile one in an industry that is entering a fast-moving, exciting and unpredictable golden age. Startling figures released this week underline that investment from the streamers is helping to transform the scope, ambition and range of TV and film production. Traditional broadcasters such as Sky and the BBC are following suit, spending more on big-budget content. As the year comes to an end, overall investment in shows costing at least £1m an episode is two-thirds greater than the previous record set in 2019 – before the pandemic. Netflix intends to double the size of its Shepperton studios in Surrey. Disney, at Pinewood studios, and Apple, in Aylesbury, are also expanding their footprint. During the course of the past year, the UK has hosted close to 200 major TV and film productions, including the home-grown Doctor Who, Shetland and Ghosts.
Public service broadcasters have a special responsibility to attend to the state of the nation and must always be given adequate resources with which to do that. Small-scale creativity and innovation must also be protected in an age of big-budget production. But portraying “Britishness”, in this transformed landscape, is becoming a perpetual work in progress. A transatlantic focus on greater diversity has led to milestone portraits of multicultural Britain in which, for example, black lives and experience have been belatedly foregrounded.
Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You – on the BBC and HBO – and Steve McQueen’s Small Axe films for the BBC broke new ground in this regard. Luther, the detective series starring Idris Elba, also broadcast by the BBC, is now to be made into a film by Netflix. The hit Netflix drama Bridgerton is more in the “made-for-global” category, but – filmed in Bath and produced by a black American – it showcases both Regency England and a full range of contemporary British acting talent.
Interviewed in the Radio Times earlier this month, the former Doctor Who actor David Tennant joined Mr Olusoga in questioning the government’s desire to protect nebulously defined “British values” in television programming. They are right. At this time of new possibilities, proliferating platforms and cultural cross-fertilisation, the last thing our broadcasters need is a nostalgic attempt to force the future of high-end British drama to conform to a narrow, selective version of the past.