The past decade has seen the rise of the premium cable television network and a subsequent migration of film-makers and writers from the Silver screen to the small screen. With the success of US channel HBO prompting a cycle of big-budget 'made-for-television' films and series (such as The Sopranos (1999-2007), The Wire (2002-2008) and Mad Men (2007-present)), the trend for Motion Pictures Made for Television has not only been consolidated in the US, but has also been followed on an international scale, with other television networks following suit. Critic James Wolcott notes how, “with home theaters going big, wide, and hi-def with digital cable, plasma screens, and sound systems, the aesthetic gap between multiplexing and couch-potatoing has never been narrower” (Wolcott).
HBO's recent production Boardwalk Empire (2010-present) serves as an example of the growing appeal of the television film (and filmic drama series) in contemporary society. The most expensive pilot episode produced in television history to date (it reportedly cost $20m), it was directed by renowned film director Martin Scorsese. While films and drama series were being made for US television from the 1960s, they were often hampered by restrictions (from low budgets to censorship) and subsequently failed to match the quality of those shown on the big screen. It is only in the past decade, with the dramatic increase of funding for US television, that the American television series has offered writers, producers and directors alike creative (and commercial) opportunities which at least match, if not succeed those provided by its powerful film industry. In interview, Scorsese remembers “...hop[ing] that there would be this kind of freedom [in TV], the ability to create another world and develop character in a long-form story and narrative” and posits HBO as being the “trailblazer in this” with their “thoughtful, intelligent and brilliantly put together” productions marking “a new opportunity for storytelling, which is very different from television in the past” (qtd in Brokaw). The extent of Boardwalk Empire's critical and commercial reception (its pilot alone pulled in 7.1m viewers (Seidman) during its first night on US TV, attracting 438,000 viewers during its UK debut (BARB)) would appear to correlate with Scorsese's opinion, and support Wolcott's argument that today's “TV promises so much less, yet gives so much more”; “... Strip away the glitter and grandiosity and the truth is that most of what's on the movie screen runs a ragged second to what's available on television at a fraction of the aggravation” (Wolcott).
While the case for this in the US today may be evidenced, what about elsewhere? The “creativity boom in television” (Wolcott) has not been a distinctly US phenomenon. In fact, the release of Boardwalk Empire coincided with Britain's own “Scorsese of the Midlands” (Said), Shane Meadows' move from the big screen to the small screen on UK television; 2010 saw him revisit his most successful feature film to date, box office hit This Is England (2006), with a four-part television sequel This is England '86 (aired on Channel 4). Where the original feature (set in 1983, against the political backdrop of Thatcherite England) follows twelve-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) as he is welcomed into a gang of skinheads, the series picks up three years on. In recent years, Meadows (whose past works including Twenty Four Seven (1997), Dead Man's Shoes (2004) and the Eurostar-funded Somers Town (2008) are all influenced by his working-class roots), has “...come from nowhere (in cinematic pedigree, at least) to make himself the indigenous film director to watch” (Gilbert). So what provoked a filmmaker of his calibre to move away from the cinematic arena? As Gilbert brings to question, “doesn't Meadows, like so many in the movie business, look down his nose at the small screen?” (Gilbert).
Meadows' choice to revisit the gang of This Is England on TV is perhaps not so surprising when taking into account the roots that influenced him. Unlike in the US, the British film industry has had a longstanding relationship with television. In fact, as Gilbert notes, “if there was ever a film-making lineage from which Meadows is descended, it's [the] school of British social realism, one that traditionally finds irrelevant the schism between cinema and television“ (Gilbert). While Hollywood's unbreakable international monopoly on the film industry in the 1960s negatively impacted on British cinema (the decade saw a drastic decrease in cinema-going and the withdrawal of American funding trigger the stagnation of British film production), the industry was saved from complete collapse through its integration into the television medium. According to Lay, “television … from this point, became the 'natural home' of British social realism and sustained it throughout the hard time ahead” (Lay 68), providing a platform for film-makers to showcase their works when the big screen would not allow.
Hard-hitting television shows soon became a ”staple of the social realist mode of expression” (Lay 35) and seasons such as BBC1s The Wednesday Play strand (1964-1970) and Play For Today (1970-1984) which screened weekly contemporary social drama plays written for television not only reached audiences on a wide scale, but also provoked public and political discussion. Shane Meadows recalls how, during his youth, ”there'd be a hard-hitting drama every week, whether it was Boys From The Blackstuff or films by Alan Clarke” (qtd in Greene), and notes how watching them on TV fostered a communal viewing experience in contrast to that involved in cinema spectatorship. The public success of British television throughout this period began to recompense for the losses previously suffered by the film industry. Additionally, the birth of Channel Four (C4) in 1982 was instrumental in promoting British filmmaking talent on a national and international scale, meanwhile ”institutionalis[ing] the close relationship which had developed between television and film production during the seventies” (Lay 79)
Through its motion picture arm and Films on Four series, the Channel Four Corporation produced several notable television films which served as indicators that ”the fortunes of the British industry [were] chang[ing]” (Lay 78). For example, Stephen Frears' My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) performed so well on the festival circuit that it was distributed internationally and even earned screenwriter Hanif Kureishi a BAFTA nomination. It was, as Tessa Ross comments, ”proof that Channel Four's inaugural film policy worked in every way” (Ross 5).
The 1960s through to the 1990s was an increasingly fertile period for British television production. Moreover, it was one during which Britain's broadcasting industry became internationally renowned for its quality programming; as Lawson recounts, ”... the yanks were OK for glossy shows about cops ... but the serious stuff was made here: classy costume dramas, the bold and campaigning Play for Today” (Lawson). Today, however, an overview of the industry provides a different story. In what seems to be something of a reversal, US TV has seen a smartening up of its content, whilst UK TV has seen a dumbing down. As Meadows himself comments, ”the dramas and reality TV people are seeing [here] are so sugar-coated” (qtd in Greene). He draws attention to ”what's happened in America, with the Sopranos and The Wire” commenting on how, in comparison, ”so much stuff coming out of there is so good” (qtd in Gilbert). According to Connolly, ”we have to admit that the once ground-breaking beacons of great British TV drama, the programmes that had the nation talking every morning after transmission, don't seem to shine so brightly nowadays. Somehow, our TV has slipped behind America” (Connolly).
This is, of course, partly due to a scarcity of funding. In July 2010 Ofcom figures revealed that British spending on television drama had dropped by 17 percent since 2005. As Jukes states, ”drama is incredibly expensive to make and economies of scale kick in when stories are told over 13 or 24 episodes” (Jukes). So is it any wonder that programmes produced on home-turf have neither the style, substance, nor scope to compete with their American counterparts who, in stark contrast, are financially equipped to take risks and fund long-running dramas?
Although there have been recent proposals to invest substantial amounts of money (at least in UK terms) in the production of dramatic programmes (a £25m investment in BBC2 was announced in March 2010, whilst the omission of expensive C4 reality TV show Big Brother from our screens has freed up £20m supposedly due to be invested in drama), there remains little financial profit to be made from working on the small screen. Meadows' latest change of direction then (albeit made possible with the new C4 funds), was governed not by hope of financial gain, but by his dissatisfaction with the current climate of the television industry with regards to its content. Meadows proposes that, ”when you do something dramatic and realistic it has an effect on people” (qtd in Greene); this belief is encapsulated by his poetic realist approach to filmmaking and, significantly, it is one which is very much aligned to the ethos which characterised the national televisual output during its golden age.
This Is England '86 is Meadows' attempt to inject a new wave of social realist drama on to our TV screens. Although he remained at the helm of the project, Meadows' employment of a creative team (he co-wrote the sequel with Jack Thorne, handing over directing responsibilities to Tom Harper for the first two episodes), marks a diversion away from the traditional British role of the television film-maker as single-author and a move towards a more Americanised collaborative approach to writing and directing. This team ethic which presides over US productions is attuned to Hollywood's profit-driven commercial model, governed by the requirement for the quick production of materials. Requiring an immediacy not only in terms of production and content, a television series also has to engage the viewer from the outset in order to maintain their attention and commitment throughout its run; ”A medium with less time to spare and more rigorous, restrictive formats to follow... television syncs to the synaptic speed of our minds, our ability to process information and achieve pattern recognition” (Wolcott). Meadows' sharing of responsibilities in This is England '86 not only enabled the project to be completed under tighter time constraints, but also allowed for a more seamless translation of the original feature film to television series. Accordingly, the conjunction of Meadows' accomplished filmic writing style with that of Jack Thorne (writer of television series Skins and Cast-Offs) culminates in ”a strong kick of cinema in a TV show” (Aitkens).
Whilst the latest instalment of This Is England marks the story's adaptability to both film and television, the two formats bear significant differences from each other. The feature film usually revolves around a single character (in the case of This is England, Shaun) whereas the television series, with its segmented format, lends itself to multiple narratives. The transition of Meadows' story to the televisual medium subsequently permitted him to develop the peripheral characters seen in This is England in more depth (for example, Woody and Lol). The box-office success of This Is England meant that the rapport between its characters and audience had already been established to some extent, giving credence to Meadows' decision to follow them in more detail on the smaller screen. Another disjunction between television and cinema falls in the way the audience is catered to: unlike cinematic exhibition, which takes place in a public arena, television viewing occurs in a domestic sphere, and subsequently offers a more personal mode of interaction between story and spectator. This Is England may have achieved transnational acclaim following its theatrical release (it won the 2007 BAFTA for Best British Film, whilst also appearing on several critics' choice top-ten lists in the US) but its story is distinctly British, based on Meadows' own experience of growing up in Nottingham in the 1980s. Regardless of its specific period setting which evokes the sense of disenchantment synonymous with the Thatcherite period, This Is England and its sequel also resonates with younger contemporary audiences; its strength, as Head of Drama for Channel 4 Camilla Campbell suggests, lies in its ability to unite generations of audiences and in ”all it has to say about the way we live now as well as the way we lived then” (Channel 4 Sales) Meadows' statement confirms this correlation; he articulates, ”not only did I want to take the story of the gang broader and deeper, I also saw in the experiences of the young in 1986 many resonances to [today's] recession, lack of jobs, sense of the world at a turning point” (qtd in Aitkens).
This comment serves to highlight Shane Meadows' social realist roots, characterised by a commitment to representing what is real about contemporary Britain. Lloyd describes how ”US TV dramas are not devoid of reformist zeal but have grown up in a tradition of entertainment, constrained by a need to compete for audiences who are believed to desire escape, not food for thought” (Lloyd). Whilst the current successes of US television dramas far exceeds those produced by any other national industry, the reception of This is England '86 (it achieved the highest rating ever seen for a series launch on Channel 4, won Top TV Drama at the Southbank Awards, and has been recommissioned: the next one-off instalment This Is England '88 is scheduled to be screened in December 2011) has given both industry and audience ”food for thought”. Only time will tell whether British drama will be able to compete on an international level with the US. Whatever the case may be, Meadows' recent translation of This Is England from the big screen to the small screen certainly indicates that quality social realist texts for which we were formerly renowned could once again be ”alive, if not necessarily well, and living in television” (Lay 103).
References
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Written by Pippa Selby, 2010; Queen Mary, University of london
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Copyright © 2011 Pippa Selby/Mapping Contemporary Cinema
