Whatever became of the big politically-charged drama? There was a whole agitprop tradition in eighties theatre, and you can look at Boys from the Blackstuff as the humanist continuation of that spirit on television. But where did that current go next?

Bleasdale’s anger, channeled through the searing Blackstuff scripts, was directly provoked by the actions of Margaret Hilda Thatcher. With her out of the way, a lot of that ire went - but where to? The sad truth is that subsequent Labour governments have been an embarrassment to many voters on the left, as the party that created the welfare state has embraced market values and become in many ways indistinguishable from its old opponents. In the process, the Labour party has learned a lot about the media, and as it’s become more savvy about spin, the notion of sincere committed drama seems as old hat and irrelevant as standing up for free school milk.

It’s in that growth of a sophisticated media culture that answers to the question of where political writing has gone can be found. Politics and media have become ever more intertwined, and it’s impossible to treat media with the straight-faced sincerity that led to shows such as When The Boat Comes In, say. A drama about people struggling to get by in the depression as traditional industry declines…can you imagine that on tv now? And on what channel?

So, instead of drama wearing its heart on its sleeve, we have scripts that are inevitably satirical in nature since it’s impossible to do media about media without becoming aware of the ironies involved. The most striking example has got to be The Thick Of It, a dissection of the mechanics of spin and the personalities who practice it that is second to none.

Two names stand out as being able to hold a mirror to the nose of the establishment: Chris Morris and Armando Ianniuci. And it’s the fact that the mirror is held to the nose, for snorting purposes, that creates a problem: this is satire so accurate that it’s indistinguishable from the real thing, and is praised by those it parodies. It also excludes a big chunk of the audience who are not as media-literate as its creators: so how can we get a modern audience to sit through a drama with a political element that isn’t some kind of meta-response to the circus it examines?

The best answer to that comes in the work of Jimmy McGovern and Paul Abbott. Both have a knack for writing drama with a strong social element that is emotionally engaging, clever without being up its arse. McGovern’s been at it longer, and back in his run on Cracker there are some excellent episodes examining the state of the nation while still providing a compelling protagonist and crime hooks. Abbott’s politics started to show through in Clocking Off, a means of exploring the different social worlds orbiting a factory in the north. It was also a sneaky way of bringing back the single play to television, and McGovern has done much the same with the more recent The Street. Scratch Abbott’s Shameless, and you’ll find rich social themes underpinning the comedy-drama, and ones that don’t pay simplistic allegiance to the left: the Gallaghers look after themselves and those around them, and if that means milking the state because it’s systems are so slow and cumbersome, then so be it. You can be feckless, and give a feck.

All of this interests me because I’m about to develop a treatment for a tv drama set around a bit of fairly recent British social history that I find fascinating, and believe has a lot of relevance and resonance for the way we live now. And I’m searching for a way to write it that will allow me to include a whole bunch of necessary research and bring it alive for a modern audience, one that probably didn’t watch Our Friends In The North, but likes Spooks, that’s sort of concerned about CCTV but even more about hoodies, and is just as likely to read The Mail as The Mirror. I know it can be done: the task is to find my way through it to reach that audience and share with them my concerns about the time the story will be set, and how that relates to the world we now inhabit.