John Yorke Interview

John Yorke first worked for the BBC in radio as a studio manager. He has been a storyline consultant on Casualty, was Executive Producer of EastEnders for two-and-a-half years, and was Head of Drama at Channel 4.

Your job title is Controller of BBC Drama Production and New Talent. What does that actually mean?

Effectively it means I look after all continuing drama shows: EastEnders, Doctors, Holby, Casualty.  The big change in the last couple of years has been the removal of the boundaries between the old Serials and Series departments, where they've come together as BBC Drama.

I manage the overall drama department together with Nick Brown and Kate Harwood. It's a very big department, because we make a lot of output, but it seems to work very well. I look after about 400 hours of television. If you put Kate's area alongside that - it's less because she doesn't do the high volume stuff so much - it's about 450, maybe 500 hours of television.

It's a lot.

How did you get started in television?

I was working in radio as a drama producer. And I'd tried for years to get into television, failed miserably, and then one day someone left EastEnders the day I'd written my third letter to the producer. I met them and they gave me a job, and I worked my way up from there.

It was just knocking at doors for a long time until the door opened. But during that time I started to learn what to do. By the time I got to EastEnders, because of my experience in radio I knew how to script edit. And the more knowledge you can get before entering the industry the better placed you are.

Are you an executive producer of the continuing dramas?

Actually I'm not. I decided when I joined that they should have their own execs because I think managing them too hands on from the centre is probably a dangerous thing to do. The exec on Casualty is Belinda Campbell. On EastEnders it's Diederick Santer. On Doctors it's Will Trotter. And on Holby it's Tony McHale.

How deeply are you involved in the process of making these four shows?

I'm responsible for the overall direction and design, and largely what that translates as is I'm across all the storylines, and double check them and just make sure I'm happy. But I'm not dictatorial about it. If they really want to do something that I don't like then they normally get to do it.

At the other end I'm also responsible for training the new talent that goes into the programmes. So I kind of work at both ends of the spectrum, but I try and let them be as autonomous as possible.

From a writing perspective what are the differences between the four main BBC continuing dramas?

Doctors is just a rather beautiful, archetypal story. So it's the joy of simple storytelling at its best. Casualty's great to write because it's all action, so it's a bit of a gift for a writer really. Holby's slightly more demanding because it's less action-orientated, it's all set within the hospital after the illness has occurred. And EastEnders is a unique beast unto itself. The skill with EastEnders is juggling five or six open-ended storylines at the same time, while making it a satisfying and rewarding emotional experience in every episode.

What are the entry routes into continuing drama?

In the old days, people just sent their scripts in and if anyone could be bothered to read them, occasionally someone got through. Now there's a more rigorous procedure.

The predominant routes are either through shadow schemes or the Writer's Academy. The Writer's Academy is run centrally by myself and Ceri Meyrick, but the shadow schemes are run by the shows themselves and are entirely independent. It's really important you have that dual entry because otherwise you just get people that I trained, and that would be disastrous.

Ceri is responsible for reading everything that comes into the department and she'll contact the individual development editors on the show and say "They'd be great for your shadow scheme." And they themselves find people. So agented writers can contact the shows themselves and send their stuff in.

I do insist that everything that's sent in gets read. We aim for a response time of a month. We don't always hit it because the volume is very high but we really aim to get that. And sometimes someone just comes in, writes a script and it's brilliant.

What does a writer need in order to write continuing drama?

I think they need stamina: sometimes it can be an endurance test. I think they need to understand that they're part of a team, and their job is to hand the baton on in the best possible shape rather than to write their own single play. But most of all they need to love the shows with all their heart. With every fibre of their being they need to adore every character on that show. And the best ones are always those.

Can you give us any hints or tips for writers starting out?

You have to write all the time. You're going to get it wrong - a lot. And writing's a skill, like learning an instrument. It takes four, five, six years to really start to understand what it involves. There are occasional exceptions to that, but the trick is perseverance.

But the main one is passion. You've got to really want to do it. It's got to mean more than anything else in the world.

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