BBC Drama North

Phil Collinson produced the first four series of Doctor Who, and executive produced The Sarah Jane Adventures. His other credits include Sea of Souls, Born and Bred, and Linda Green.

Hilary Martin has worked on a range of dramas including City Lights, No Angels, Linda Green, and A&E, as well as a stint in the commissioning department at Sky. You can read her thoughts on Drama in the North from last year.

Kate Rowland is the BBC Creative Director New Writing

Drama North are a recently formed BBC in-house drama department, based in Manchester, with a remit across the North of England. Drama North is developing a broad slate of drama projects across all four BBC TV Channels.

What TV Drama inspires you?

Phil: In recent history, State of Play is my favourite piece of British television because I think it was everything you would want to make. It was epic. It was beautifully made. It made London look wonderful. The writing was incredible. And essentially it was all about Paul Abbott's script. I'm also a great admirer of American telly - Battlestar Galactica is probably my favourite - and, of course, Doctor Who.

Hilary: In the last year I've loved Being Human on BBC Three. I think it's really helped define that channel and felt like a very exciting fresh idea: high-concept without being off-puttingly sci-fi, and very much about friendship, flatsharing, and love.  I just thought it was brilliant.

What's the vision for Drama North?

Phil: In order to demonstrate the BBC's commitment to the North we are building a big new studio and office complex in Salford which will house a large number of departments including BBC Sport, Five Live, and Children's - which are currently based in London - as well as the existing departments working out of BBC Manchester. There's never been a Drama Department for the BBC based in the North of England, and so when they asked us to come and set one up we said yes because I think it's a brilliant thing to be in a position to champion Northern Drama talent.

What I want to do is establish as many returning drama series as we can in as many different bits of the North of England as we can, because I think it's incredibly important that BBC North doesn't just become BBC Salford, that actually you all feel a sense of ownership, that the content we make really does reflect what everybody wants to watch, is part of you and what you want to do.

In terms of particular shows I just want to make good ones. And I think the best favour I can do anybody in the North of England is to just make television that people watch, that matters, that is good.

Hilary: One of the reasons we're so drawn to wanting to set up returning series is that we feel that's somewhere we can grow newer writing talent, and also of course being able to have people come in at trainee level and work their way up through the production side of things. Our desire though is to get the stories that writers feel passionate about telling onto screen.  And this means being true to whatever format suits the story - but we are always keeping an eye on finding those big ideas that can form a bedrock for our department and the region.

How did Cardiff become a centre of excellence for Drama?

Phil: When we arrived with Doctor Who a returning drama series hadn't come out of BBC Wales for about fifteen years. And it's fair to say that it had been neglected. There was a lot going on in the other nations and regions. It was incredible to see what can happen if you bring a big show to a city.

I stayed on Doctor Who for four years but by the time I left we had built a studio there for the first time which had six sound stages to cater for not only Doctor Who but the two spin off series, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures that we launched on the back of Doctor Who. And these are three series that sell right across the world.

Also Merlin comes out of there now. It's a real success story and it comes out of a commitment to the city and an absolute desire on the part of the people who made the show to employ people who were Welsh. We established apprenticeship schemes with local community colleges and institutions to make sure that we gave people a chance to come and see how we made the show, to talk to the people who made the show, to try and understand what it was that went into the making of it.

Hilary: And now in Drama North we are busy developing from scratch those kind of shows. When we get that big hit we hope it will do the same thing for the North. The biggest prize for us is to try and find those returning nine o'clock big BBC One shows, the sort of shows that will come back again and again and again across a number of years. And so that's one of the main areas that we've targeted.

What are the different channels looking for?

Hilary: BBC One is the channel that everyone should find something that appeals to them on.  It's for a mainstream audience that expects entertaining and thought provoking drama with high production values and quality scripts. 

Phil: Those really simple but really bold ideas, it really helps when an idea can be defined as something different and above the norm.

Hilary: Sunday night on BBC One also feels like an exciting place to try and find a new generation of shows for. Brilliant shows like Lark Rise have been very successful in that slot but I think there's an interesting question of what else could sit there. Perhaps shows for a family audience with that sense of adventure and exploration building on the excitement that Doctor Who has brought to Saturday night might be something interesting to explore.  

There's going to be a big push for BBC Two development in the coming year. Ben Stephenson has talked about a desire for drama on this channel to feel like an event. The BBC makes many single dramas but it's sometimes quite hard to find them in the schedule. BBC Two will hopefully begin to feel more like somewhere you can go and find those special pieces of work.

BBC Three we feel very excited about because it feels like the channel will take vibrant ideas with newer writers attached, we feel very passionately about providing the commissioners with options for BBC Three. It is a home for young, feisty and irreverent shows. A mainstream channel which steers young.

Phil: I think stylistically you can be very bold here too in the way you tell stories.

Hilary: In my view, the brilliant thing about BBC Four is quite often it can be a quick development process. Sometimes an idea will be so exciting that BBC Four will just fly with it. Obviously the budgets are much smaller on BBC Four but it is the place where a passion project with a clear voice has a good chance of being made.

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