Bill Gallagher interview

Bill Gallagher has written for several long-running TV series as well as creating series of his own. He tells UK Writer about his upcoming remake of The Prisoner, and what it’s like being the showrunner on Lark Rise To Candleford.

Your new version of the classic TV series The Prisoner (ITV/AMC) is due out later this year – how did the project come about?

Damian Timmer, who was head of drama at Granada, had been passionate about doing it for a long time but it took him two years to uncover who owned the rights [the series was created by Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein]. Fortunately it turned out that it was Granada International, the people in offices on the floor above him! Once Damian realised that he had the ability to do a remake, he contacted me.

Was it a series you knew well?

I watched it as a kid and it had an enormous impact on me. I couldn’t work out what it was all about but I was completely compelled. It’s reminiscent of Kafka, David Lynch, Samuel Beckett – the kind of stories that impact directly onto the unconscious.

So you accepted the commission straight away?

When Damian asked me to do it the memory of the impact The Prisoner had made on me came back very strongly. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to take on the challenge of doing a remake but these chances in TV are rare so I decided to take it on. Granada were already committed to doing it, so quite soon we met and talked about our approach. I already had some ideas and we stripped it right back to the essence of that mind-boggling experience of finding yourself trapped in a place you don’t understand. The episodic nature of a series meant that we could explore different aspects of this and we knew that, while making sure it was gripping drama, we wanted to keep things tantalisingly and terrifyingly just beyond understanding.

Then all you had to do was write it!

I won’t pretend it was easy. We could have done a fairly simple version with little more than a sequence of adventures but I wanted to write something that had real meaning as well as being thrilling contemporary television. At the same time, I didn’t want to attempt to imitate what The Prisoner had done so successfully already. It was about taking inspiration from the original in order to make something new.

The Portmeirion location is so central to the original series – at what point did you decide on where your version would be set?

The challenge was to make the experience both extreme and impossible to escape and the first image I had was of miles of mountains and miles of desert. Eventually a village was found on the coast of Namibia that fitted the bill. As well as looking great, the location means that, since escape is impossible, characters are forced to face questions not just about where this place is, but what it is and who they are. Of course, it would be crushingly boring if the show just asked those questions. We also had to have characters with real relationships, families and homes despite the extreme setting.

Looking back, had any of your previous writing prepared you for tackling a project like The Prisoner?

Although I learnt the craft of TV writing on fairly conventional series like Casualty and Soldier, Solider my own series have always had a certain strangeness about them. Wokenwell used rather unconventional storytelling and Conviction was about a man coming to terms with his own reality melting down. I like to write things that are mainstream but also a little bit odd. Even Lark Rise To Candleford, which might look very conventional, has quite a few rather unusual storylines.

Lark Rise has been a huge success for the BBC – how did you get involved?

I had a meeting with the BBC about adapting a different book, but they gave me Lark Rise To Candleford and asked if there was any way I could see to do it. Initially I couldn’t see how it would fit into the classic BBC adaptation mould. Characters came and went , stories spanned many years and it didn’t have the central narrative of many other classics. Then I realised that the adaptation could be episodic, just like the book. I could see it as a Sunday night returning drama about two neighbouring communities in a moment of change. Unfortunately it took ten years from that point until the first series was actually made.

That must have been frustrating.

It was nobody’s fault really – just the reality of timing, personalities, luck and fashion. But I could see this beautiful show with Flora Thompson’s characters was just sitting there waiting to be made and it did drive me slightly mad. So I kept chipping away, asking “Can we make it now?” whenever the opportunity arose. Then, finally, a few things came together, one of which was the BBC director of drama production, Nicolas Brown, suggesting that we built the hamlet and the market town as studio lots – we actually built them on a farm yard – rather than filming on location. Suddenly everything fell into place. I’m glad we persevered because the reaction to the show has been fantastic.

And your role is effectively as showrunner?

Yes, I do a lot of writing but also share the Executive Producer role with Sue Hogg.

Have you enjoyed having that extra responsibility?

It felt important, somehow, to be involved in more than just the scripts. Luckily for me, Sue has been brilliant to work with and without her the series simply wouldn’t be what it is. I would say that the show’s identity has come out of our partnership. She’s been immensely generous to me and, consequently, the production side of things has been very enjoyable and rewarding. It’s not something I’d want on every show I work on, but we are seeing it a lot more in the UK now, writers more involved in the whole process.

And what’s next?

I’m adapting The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola for the BBC – it’s the book I brought to them in the meeting all those years ago that ended up with them giving me Lark Rise! There’s also another 12 episodes of Lark Rise – although I’m not writing them all. And a few other things in the pipeline as well. So I’m keeping busy.

More information about The Prisoner: blogs.amctv.com/the-prisoner A date for the UK broadcast has not yet been announced.

This article first appeared in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Summer 2009)

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