How many kinds of talent does it take to make great TV drama?

Betty Willingale died on Tuesday. She started out as a script editor in the 1960s, best known for her work on BBC TV drama adaptations of classic literature including I, Claudius (1976), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979), The Barchester Chronicles (1982) and The Old Men at the Zoo (1983). Later in her career she produced acclaimed adaptations including Bleak House (1985) and Fortunes of War (1987).

Her death is a sad reminder of how many kinds of talent and passion that go into making great TV drama and how many are unsung heroes and heroines.  

For example, there are the great executives. Denis Forman was chairman of Granada in the 1980s when it produced Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown, two of the greatest drama series in the history of ITV. Jeremy Isaacs was director of programmes for Thames in the 1970s when they produced dramas like The Sweeney, The Naked Civil Servant, Rock Follies and Bill Brand. A few years later, he gave David Rose the creative freedom to run Film on Four. During his time at Channel 4, Rose approved the making of 136 films, half of which received cinema screenings. One of my favourite drama-documentaries was about the role of Sydney Newman in the creation of Doctor Who. He was also responsible for The Avengers, Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play. The great executives have always been enablers, people with vision and ambition who gave others — Verity Lambert at Thames, David Rose at Channel 4 — the freed0m (and the budgets) to make great drama. 

Then there are casting directors. We all know that Peter Flannery wrote Our Friends in the North but who cast Gina McKee, Christopher Eccleston, Mark Strong and Daniel Craig, all in their late 20s or early 30s, and all of whom went on to have such exciting careers in TV and film? Or who was in charge of casting at Spooks, the long-running BBC spy drama? During its ten series the cast included Matthew Macfadyen, Jenny Agutter, Keeley Hawes, Rupert Penry-Jones, Peter Firth, Hermione Norris, David Oyelowo, and Nicola Walker — and that’s just some of those on the Grid. Others included Simon Russell Beale, Tom McInnerny, Hugh Laurie (pre-House), Anna Chancellor, Robert Glenister, and, again, many more. Who chose the actors and actresses who made up the casts of Dad’s Army or Blackadder? 

All fans of Sherlock know it was created and written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and brought together Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman to reinvent Holmes and Watson. But how many know that David Arnold (who scored five Bond films) and Michael Price (music editor on the Lord of the Rings trilogy and composer of more than thirty film scores) wrote the extraordinary music?  

Some composers worked for years with particular directors. Adrian Johnston who wrote the distinctive music for Stephen Poliakoff’s greatest TV dramas, from Shooting the Past and Perfect Strangers to Gideon’s Daughter, and which immediately give Poliakoff’s work that distinctive feel.

Then there are people who produce the “look” of programmes which can take so many different forms. It was the costume designer, Sarah Arthur, who came up with Sherlock’s clothes, especially that sweeping coat. Luke Hull and Claire Levinson-Gendler won BAFTAs for the extraordinary production design on Chernobyl. Hull has just been signed to do the production design for the Game of Thrones prequel. Shortlisted in the same year were Martin Childs and Alison Harvey for The Crown (which has so far won more than thirty awards and has been nominated for more than one hundred more). 

There are the unforgettable opening titles of Mad Men, designed by Steve Fuller and Mark Gardner, though Fuller generously said that “the main idea came from Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator. He said on the briefing call ‘I imagine a guy walking into a building, taking the elevator up to his office, putting his briefcase down and jumping out the window…but not that.’ I thought ‘Why NOT that?’” And, of course, the opening titles of Doctor Who which have undergone various changes over the years along with that music, written by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Of course, it’s not just TV drama where so many different talents come together. For four years in the 1990s I worked at BBC2’s The Late Show with many talented directors and presenters, but also an astonishing team of gifted graphic designers, set designers, editors and cameramen and women, among others, who could work under pressure, turning things around at incredibly short notice, sometimes still working on items when the show was live on air.  

This is a tribute to Betty Willingale, but she is just one of the many, many creative figures who made the masterpieces of British television. 

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