19 January 2013
Posted in Events

The first event of 2013 for the Writers' Guild West Midlands Branch will be a get-together with Equity on Thursday 21 February. It will also be the official launch of the Campaign for Regional Broadcasting (CRB). 

CRB is demanding that when Tony Hall becomes Director-General of the BBC he enters into substantive discussions about increasing production at BBC Birmingham. 

The event will be a great opportunity to show your support as well as a chance to get to know local Equity members. 

The meeting will take place in the function room at the Old Royal on Church Street in Birmingham city centre (B3 2DP) at 7:30pm, followed by socialising in the bar afterwards. 

More information: http://www.crbmidlands.org.uk/launch-meeting

11 January 2013
Posted in TV

Rachel Flowerday on her experience co-creating a new BBC drama series, Father Brown, based on the short stories by GK Chesterton

Photo (BBC): Mark Williams as Father Brown 

On Tuesday morning I found myself standing in the Sainsbury’s magazine aisle. Mouth dry. Palms slightly sweaty. Because the following week’s TV listings magazines had just arrived, replete with reviews, interviews, articles… How had I ended up here, with the TX date of my first original series (co-developed with Tahsin Guner, another BBC Writers’ Academy alumnus) less than a week away?

It was all down to Ann Widdecombe. Thanks, Ann.

Back in 2011, Tahsin and I (at this stage, barely acquaintances, much less creative collaborators) were at the end of the road with a pair of original detective dramas we’d independently pitched to BBC Daytime through John Yorke and Will Trotter. Much as the Beeb liked what we’d invented, in order to risk their limited cash, they wanted something a little more bankable.

Roll up, Ms. Widdecombe. She had just put out a Radio 4 show discussing her favourite novelist – GK Chesterton – and his Father Brown short stories, about an unassuming Catholic priest who moonlights as an amateur detective. John pitched the stories straight-off to Liam Keelan (then BBC Head of Daytime), and within days, Tahsin and I were asked – independently – to create treatments, building a precinct and supporting characters around the central priest. Parish secretary Mrs. McCarthy first drew breath in an email to Ceri Meyrick, our producer, in which I pitched a 'doughty, no-nonsense 60-something lay second-in-command who’s kind of a mother-figure but who probably also slightly fancies him/dotes on him… someone to check facts for him, to protect him from the wrath of the diocese, to make sure he eats…' Some of that original email is now on the BBC Father Brown website in her character biog. That’ll learn me.