Help and His Dark Materials writer Jack Thorne: Why we need the BBC

By: Jack Thorne

I love the BBC. I’ve always loved the BBC. Just as I’ve always loved Channel 4. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched other channels too, and indeed worked for them. But there is something about the ethos of the public service broadcaster, the British public service broadcaster which warms my insides with joy.

So this is written with extreme bias. I am not impartial, but I do think there are several impartial reasons for the BBC to be protected, for the licence fee to be protected. I’m not going to list them all but the one, personally, that I think hasn’t been given enough focus in the debate is the local versus the global.

Television has an importance beyond just a means to pass the time. It isn’t just chewing gum for the eyes. I said in my MacTaggart lecture that it is an empathy box and I truly believe it – a connection to what this country is beyond the hamlets we live in. I talk to people for work, but my circle of family and friends beyond that is extremely small. I’m 43 and I think that’s pretty standard for my age. Similarly my reach online in terms of what news I read, and what social media I associate with, is also limited. I have never, on any of the places I check, seen a single article expressing fears about vaccines. In fact, not one of my friends has expressed such fears to me. But I don’t doubt for others that fear is all they see and talk about.

And then we turn on the TV and the radio, and are presented with a complication of lives, many different ways of living. There is less curation – there is still some, and representation on that television is far from good enough, but there is a spread of reaction. And most importantly of all, with drama these views aren’t just stated, they’re explored. We are shown people who look and feel and are different from ourselves. From The Archers to EastEnders to Line of Duty, we are given windows to other peoples’ worlds. A British Social Attitudes survey revealed 36 per cent of respondents don’t know any disabled people. Where better to see the complication of their lives but on TV?

Netflix, Disney, Amazon will not provide these windows in the same way that public service broadcasters will. They will not provide them because they are predominantly concerned with reach not representation. Of course they’re not, it’s not their responsibility. It is the BBC and Channel 4’s responsibility, it’s in their charter. And that is my big concern if the BBC is threatened with commercial pressures: when does their responsibility change from representing and reflecting the glorious diversity of Britain to watching their share price or subscription numbers?

I’m a huge fan of all the streamers; I spend a fortune in subscriptions, and my wife and I are glued to every different type of TV most nights. But if I want to see a portrait of my country, I know I’m unlikely to get it there. They do tell stories about the UK, but they tell stories that are globally consumable. There tend to be a lot less regional accents and a lot more RP, and they tend to be stories about a version of Britain rather than the truth of Britain. I love Bridgerton, I love The Crown (and I have a version of the next 40 years in my head where Golda Rosheuvel is the future Queen of England, and what a glory she’d be). But Time, Our Friends In The North, The Salisbury Poisonings, Holding On, Five Daughters, Three Girls – I don’t see those shows on streamers because they aren’t shows that will play globally. They are distinctive, they are real, they are our stories and they are vital.

We are already seeing these types of shows under threat. They are threatened by the price inflation of a TV hour that’s happened particularly in the last few years. As we have become more attractive as a location to make TV, due to tax incentives and general crew brilliance, so the cost of making TV has become more expensive. Crewing a show, finding locations, finding studio space, all these things have become more competitive and so more expensive. Increasingly to make TV shows you need to attract international finance, and with social realism that’s really hard. On my TV show last year, Help, we were incredibly lucky. We had superstars Stephen Graham and Jodie Comer on our side, and so we got finance, but even that wasn’t easy because we were telling a British story about British care homes with British (Liverpudlian) accents that international audiences sometimes struggle to understand.

Threaten the BBC and this drain will get even worse. I’m not worried about Jimmy McGovern making shows, he’s fine – but how do we support the next Jimmy? The next Sally Wainwright? The next Michaela Coel? These authors are vital not just for the good of our industry, but for the good of our country.

Now, obviously, drama is the bit of the TV industry I understand. But what is true for drama I know is true for news, for documentary, for entertainment and lifestyle shows and for soaps. TV and radio were built by the BBC in our country to reflect our reality back to us. Often it is not reality we see in our daily lives, that we need TV and radio in order to give us a scope of understanding. That makes it vital.

TV is precious, the BBC is precious, we must protect it.

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