DB7

Will BBC2's new thriller charm us into taking notice of climate change?

James Rampton reports from the set
Thursday, 17 July 2008

The makers of Burn Up knew from the outset that their drama would be a tough sell. The two-part BBC2 thriller by Simon Beaufoy, the writer of The Full Monty, focuses on an oil-industry conspiracy to cover up the full extent of global warming, led by a charismatic and duplicitous American lobbyist called Mack (played by Bradley Whitford, Josh in The West Wing). Ranged against Mack are Tom (Rupert Penry-Jones from Spooks), an oil company chief who belatedly sees the light, and Holly (Neve Campbell), a fellow executive who's secretly collaborating with the environmental campaigners.

Christopher Hall, the producer of Burn Up, which is going to hit the screens next week, admits that "the question we kept asking ourselves was, 'How do we make a sexy programme about CO2? It's a gas, for goodness' sake!' So we see this piece as a Trojan horse: we rivet viewers with good drama and smuggle the message in that way."

In his research, Beaufoy interviewed everyone from the chief executives of oil companies to the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and representatives of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. He says: "There isn't a more important issue in the world than global warming. Even the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs crisis were notional threats. A warming planet isn't a threat – it's happening.

"But I'm still aware that it's potentially a very dry subject. Dealing with a gas you can't see makes it very difficult for a writer. It's like writing Spooks without any terrorists. So I had to tackle the subject through the characters; that's always the way in to any issue. I thought a thriller seemed the appropriate genre, given the devious, underhand way so many oil companies have behaved."

Whitford, relaxing in his trailer in a car park in Southwark, south London, is dressed in the kind of sharp suit without which no oil company lobbyist would be complete. At one point, he affects to have forgotten the name of his character in The West Wing: "What's his name, that guy who I pretended to be for a while who built my house?" And at the end of our interview, he is momentarily unable to open his caravan door. "Help!" he cries out in mock terror, "I'm going to be locked in here for ever with a journalist!"

Campbell, looking on, remarks with a smile: "Bradley just can't stop himself performing. We just went for a walk around the Globe Theatre, and the whole time he was giving the tourists a show."

Whitford, who won an Emmy in 2001 for his role as the loyal presidential aide Josh, starts by underlining the importance of sugaring the pill of the eco-message in Burn Up. "If you're dealing with urgent matters, you have to be very careful that the piece works dramatically. Nobody enjoys being served worthy vegetables – 'Eat up your civic greens or you'll feel guilty!'

"There is always a danger of tackling topical issues and assuming that they'll work just because they're topical. That was something we constantly worried about on The West Wing. You're very lucky if your story is about something important, but the story must come first. Burn Up overcomes the danger of preachiness by being primarily about the characters. The issues play through the relationships, so it's not like a sermon. Being fed civic vegetables can be very hard to stomach."

Penry-Jones chips in: "Viewers don't like being lectured to. That gets very annoying very quickly, and the film-makers come across as do-gooders. Burn Up is a complex drama that respects its audience's intelligence. So much television these days is dumbed down to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

"People with brains just aren't catered to," he says. "I don't understand half of The West Wing, but it's still my favourite show ever because it makes me feel really clever. We're hoping that Burn Up will have the same effect on its viewers."

The makers of Burn Up, who began researching the subject for the thriller five years ago, could scarcely have found a more topical issue. Indeed, some things Beaufoy was writing about three years ago have subsequently come to pass – for instance, the Inuit whose habitat is threatened taking the oil companies to court.

Hall adds: "It's become such a hot topic. Virtually every other word on the Today programme is 'environment'. It's like a snowball that's just getting bigger and bigger. There is a danger of climate-change fatigue and people thinking, 'Oh no, not another person banging on about global warming,' but I don't think it's helpful to say, 'We're doomed.' We want to let people know that there is hope and that we can make a difference."

Whitford, who has also starred in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, observes: "This topic is really in the ether, isn't it? While we were shooting in Canada, there was an international environmental conference in Bali and my government was being more than a little atrocious. That mirrored many elements of this drama."

Some people deny the existence of climate change. Do the global-warming deniers in the US get Whitford down? "Oh yeah. We've just lost eight years because we've had the worst President in history at the most delicate time in history."

Many believe, too, that the high profile of environmental issues is in large part owing to the success of Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. "The documentary works so well because of Gore's spellbinding character," Whitford says. "There is also a fascination about him. Viewers think, 'Oh gee, we could have had this guy as President. He is smart and prepared and curious – and look who we got instead!'

"In the wake of losing the 2000 presidential election, Gore was like Oedipus. How do you feel after such a loss? How do you make yourself get up and brush your teeth each morning? I've met him and he's very gracious about losing, but he's been on a huge emotional trajectory. If you lose to Winston Churchill, that's one thing, but losing to George W Bush is quite another. Boy, you've got to have compassion for Gore."

The 48-year-old actor says that the success of An Inconvenient Truth is "on the one hand encouraging, and on the other depressing. It feels like we reached the tipping point in the argument about global warming thanks to a movie. That's sad. Shouldn't our scientists, our media and our politicians be ahead of the people who are wearing make-up for a living?"

What makes Burn Up intriguing is that it is not mere banner-waving, eco-friendly agitprop. Mack, an almost irredeemably slippery lobbyist for Big Oil, is by far the most seductive figure, a devil who, once again, has all the best tunes. Whitford says: "Mack thinks that if there are any international constraints put on oil production or carbon emissions, then it will interrupt the glorious beauty of the free-market system. So he uses all the charm at his disposal to promote unfettered capitalism."

Hall adds: "We've given Mack all the best one-liners. Making him so winning was another way of stopping the drama becoming preachy. No one is one-dimensional. We met a lot of people from the oil industry and they were all human beings. I'm sure there's even an endearing side to George W Bush."

All the same, Bush – a Texan who has always been heavily backed by the oil industry, who signed off at the recent G8 summit by cheerily saying, "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" – is not mentioned in Burn Up. Whitford says: "The B-word is not uttered because we wanted to make the drama universal. As much as I'm frustrated by Bush's attacks on my children's future, I was worried that this could make him the bogeyman of global warming. That would diminish much more entrenched issues. He'll be off soon, anyway. By the way, what are they going to put in the George W Bush Library? Sports Illustrated, the football highlights, a treadmill and a putting machine?"

So, in the end, can drama change anything? Rare examples such as Cathy Come Home – which led to the formation of the charity Shelter – have effected a genuine political transformation. But Campbell is not entirely convinced. "I don't think that drama can make a difference politically, but it might make some people see what a vital issue this is. Will they watch Burn Up in the White House? I do hope so."

What's up next for Whitford? He reveals that he is going straight from Burn Up to the Broadway run of the French farce Boeing Boeing. "I was excited by Boeing Boeing because it has absolutely no cultural relevance at all," he says, smiling. "I've done saving the world – now I'm ready to flirt with girls in mini-skirts!"

'Burn Up' is on BBC2 on 23 and 25 July at 9pm