Happy Valley, Top Boy, Doctor Who, Slow Horses, Killing Eve, I Will Destroy You, Fleabag and, most recently, Adolescence – at first glance, it seems perverse to argue that British TV drama is in crisis. But this is the message from leading figures within the industry.
Amid headline-grabbing debates about the dangers of toxic online content to children sparked by Adolescence, the show has provoked discussion about the threat to British TV from streaming services. Co-written by the British writers Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, and filmed with British actors in the north of England, Adolescence was funded by the US company Netflix. In February the platform launched the acclaimed Toxic Town, also written by Thorne, dramatising the 1995 toxic waste scandal in Corby.
Why weren’t these shows – about British working-class people with a strong social purpose – made by the BBC, ITV or Channel 4? According to Peter Kosminsky, the Bafta-award winning director of Wolf Hall, the answer is simple: the public service broadcasters can no longer afford to make high-end drama. He is calling for a levy on the streamers – a “Netflix tax” – to be channelled back into British programme-making.
Streaming has changed how we consume television (less than half of young people watch linear TV in a week) and sent production costs spiralling, with disastrous consequences – 70% of the freelancers on whom the industry depends are out of work, with senior producers forced to take jobs stacking shelves or to retrain altogether. It is also dictating the kind of shows being made. Cash-strapped executives are backing projects with international appeal – like Adolescence – at the expense of unscripted programmes and less splashy, uniquely British dramas.
Wolf Hall is one of the undisputed jewels in the BBC’s crown. But Kosminsky says he would not be able to make the final instalment, The Mirror and the Light, today. The executive producer of ITV’s surprise triumph Mr Bates vs the Post Office has said the same of the four-part series that drew in 4 million viewers an episode and led to new legislation. Both shows only aired last year.
It is hard to imagine Netflix giving the green light to a TV series about a software malfunction in the UK Post Office. But in four hours of primetime TV, Mr Bates vs the Post Office succeeded where a decade of campaigning and journalism had failed – to make us understand the human suffering behind the headlines. Following in the tradition of Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home, the series showed that TV can be a powerful tool for social change.
Its impact was testament to the importance of public service broadcasting. The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have been training grounds for many of today’s biggest names, without which we may not have the future Thorne, or Phoebe Waller-Bridge, or Michaela Coel. Television is hailed as the most democratic art form. If people can no longer afford to make a living from it, diversity on and off screen will suffer.
The 7 million people tuning in live for The Traitors finale on BBC One in January proved that “appointment TV” is not dead yet. But successful television isn’t just about viewing figures. It is about telling the stories of those who might otherwise be overlooked, the “skint little people”, as Mr Bates puts it. Amid the battle between public service broadcasters and streaming giants, it is critical that those narratives do not get lost.
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