Freddy

This was in todays Independent

PODIUM

A golden age before talent was stifled by formulas
Ken Loach . . From a talk by the film-maker on the 1960s, given at Tate Britain

IN THE early Sixties I got a job at the BBC. I'd applied to be an assistant floor manager and got turned down, but some weeks later got accepted to a directors' course. Then came an induction course. It was not so much a course on making anything, but on how the BBC works: about filling forms on time and the ethos of the BBC.

While at the BBC, I got caught up with a group of people who had huge freedom to create contemÂÂ*porary drama, namely the Wednesday Play and Play for Today. We were given licence to put on a contemporary piece of 75 minutes or more each week.

I would not pretend that everyÂÂ*thing was good, but there was a huge respect for writers. And the key people who made it work reÂÂ*ally made a massive contribution. That was a situation that one could not imagine occuring now. Hugh Greene, the Director General, asked-Sydney NewÂÂ*man, a Canadian who had done contemporary drama at ArmÂÂ*chair Theatre, to come and do that at the BBC. He was the new head of drama and he made the space in the schedules and orÂÂ*ganisationally for that to happen. He got a young producer, James McTaggart, and James brought in a a writer called Roger Smith. Roger then brought in two other script editors called Tony Garnett and Ken Trodd.
These men were the powerÂÂ*house, and together they found a really dazzling collection of writers. Without their interest in raw talent, it could not have hapÂÂ*pened. They wanted originality of form, originality of ideas, a connection to peoples' lives.

Nowadays there are so many people who sit on writers' shoulders. They have producÂÂ*ers by the throat in terms of forÂÂ*mat, in terms of who should be cast, how they should be cast, what the style of it should be. Happy programmes for happy people is the formula. Now there is a rigidity that invariably stifles creativity.

"What I owe you Colonel Lawrence, is beyond evaluation."