Drama in decline

The Oscar-winning screenwriter Colin Welland has led a stinging attack on the quality of modern TV drama, accusing executives of "robbing" young talent of the right to take risks because of their obsession with viewing figures.

The veteran playwright said the demise of one-off plays and the pre-eminence of soaps and formulaic star vehicles were driving away new writers by depriving them of a chance to experiment and a "licence to fail".

Welland's criticisms have been supported by some of the most respected and prolific television writers of recent times. Alan Bleasdale, the writer of GBH and The Monocled Mutineer, said TV was now run by accountants who put their "stopwatches" before their "hearts and courage".

And Alan Plater, who wrote The Beiderbecke Affair, said a culture of timidity was depriving TV of "individual voices" such as that of the late Dennis Potter.

Welland, 66, who starred in the 1960s police drama Z Cars before establishing his name as a scriptwriter, said: "There was rubbish written in the 70s, but now there are no slots at all on British television for one-off ideas. They have robbed young writers of the licence to fail.

"When you had a series of plays it didn't matter if one
didn't come off. Now they want writers to write at least three episodes of every idea, or six episodes.

"They can't afford to fail because it would be failure on a large scale. They can't afford to take a risk. They always have to have a star, a puller-inner, and they go to the 'experienced' writers. They want audience-builders."

His views were echoed by fellow Northerner Bleasdale, whose classic dramas include Boys from the Blackstuff.

"Television is in danger of being in the hands of accountants who have no hearts and no courage, only stopwatches," he said. "I was very lucky when I started out. New writers had a chance. Writers today have to serve their apprenticeship working on soap operas, but these things breed habits you could best do without."

Plater, whose credits include the award-winning political drama A Very British Coup, said today's drama lacked the
"individual voice" of playwrights such as Alan Bennett and Dennis Potter.

"Whether we're talking about challenging individual plays or series like The Singing Detective, it's a hell of a job to get anything like that on now because you've got to crawl through so many hoops," he said. "What we've lost, or what we're rapidly losing, is the individual voice."

Criticising the increasing emphasis on spectacle and star names, rather than character and dialogue, he added: "Movies are normally a major assault on your emotions, but TV can afford to be an invitation to participate with your brain. Most good television is about people in rooms talking. It's not about car chases."

- INDEPENDENT