Given the capacity of drama to allow people to empathise with others, one interesting question is who you choose as your protagonist. Which made Fiona’s Story particularly interesting, choosing as it did to understand a deeply unpleasant situation from the perspective not of its instigator, but his wife.

Gina McKee was brilliant as Fiona, the middle class mother whose life is thrown into turmoil when husband Simon (just as capably played by Jeremy Northam) is visited by the police regarding the download of images of child abuse. He blusters, stalls, claims that someone has swiped his credit card details, but there’s no getting away from it: Simon has done just what the police said he did. And Fiona has to deal with the implications and consequences of that.

To begin with, Fiona is in turmoil and confusion. She attends a nativity play and doesn’t hear a word, concentrating as she is on the impossibility of what the man she loves has done. And once she’s on that path, she can’t help ask other questions. Why exactly is it that she and Simon haven’t slept together for a year or more? Getting answers isn’t on the agenda though, because Simon has the upper hand, playing emotional games to manipulate Fiona and make her feel guilty. And he succeeds in that, setting her head spinning and feeling bad about herself instead of taking decisive action about her husband, who acts as if he’s done nothing wrong and is supported in that belief by the inconsequentiality of what happens when legal processes slowly creak into action.

Kate Gabriel’s script is strong in depicting Fiona’s erosion. She’s caught in a dismal situation, and in particular the question of whether Simon should be allowed access to their daughters. Simon’s injured face is immensely slappable in the scenes when he’s playing the good father, and his family aren’t much better. His brother pretty much accuses the police of political correctness gone mad for spoiling every man’s right to look at porn, and his mother writes off the situation as a midlife crisis.

No wonder Fiona turns to another man, in the form of the conductor of the choir she’s a member of. Simon is pitiful in his vitriol when he gets wind of this, and petty when he tells his daughters that their mother has a boyfriend. In short order, Simon has a girlfriend, and his daughters and their friends sleep over at weekends. Fiona is put under tremendous pressure, especially when she confides the truth to a friend, who understandably wants her own kids to be let nowhere near Simon.

Fiona’s Story was powerful television, intelligent and uncompromising. The only false note was struck by Simon’s brother and his defence of a man’s right to look at porn, which sounded a bit too much like a political stance than something a real human would come out with. But given the amount of research involved in a piece like this, it’s amazing how subtly written the overall script was.

Armando Iannucci has recently called for the BBC to launch a premium channel, a subject I have no fixed opinion on at this point, beyond thinking we’re already paying for what should be a premium service. And it’s dramas like Fiona’s Story that make a good case for keeping BBC1 just how it is, where everyone can see programmes of this calibre and importance.

Shakespeare had it easy. Writing about kings and spirits, mortality and destiny, audiences expect mighty speeches heading off the beaten track and into the stratosphere. That’s possible on the screen, and we’re used to that in films with an epic scope. But it takes more than skill to bring those larger themes into play in the context of what seems to be a naturalistic thriller. I’ve just rewatched Michael Clayton, and am in awe at the ability of writer-director Tony Gilroy to marshall such forces, and through a device as innocuous as an answerphone message. Here’s a pertinent part of it, delivered by troubled legal wizard Arthur Edens (played superbly by Tom Wilkinson):

“I looked back at the building and had the most stunning moment of clarity…I realized, Michael, at that moment, that I had emerged — as I have done nearly every day for twenty-eight years of my life — not through doors of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen — not through the portals of our huge and powerful law firm, but rather from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the poison — the ammo — the defoliant — necessary for larger and even more dangerous organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity — and that I have been coated with this patina of shit for the better part of my life and that the stink and the stain might in all likelihood take the rest of my days to undo.”

The imagery is somewhere between Shakespeare and William Burroughs. Corporation as organism. And if your employer is an organisation that’s alive, what does that make you? A micro-organism within it? No wonder George Clooney, playing the title role, is confused about his lot in life. He’s been a cop, he’s been a lawyer, and now he’s a fixer, someone people turn to when something ugly needs taking care of.

The genius of the speech quoted is that it sets the frame for the film within mere minutes of it starting. It seems almost to be a piece of satire, but the metaphor is entirely accurate, a clearheaded description of the relationship of the law firm and its biggest client. Only, it’s such a bold statement that it could only be made by someone unhinged, which is the position that Edens occupies within the film, driven to manic depression by the realisation that he has devoted his life to defending the indefensible, and in the clarity of his madness devoting himself to undoing what he has done. No wonder then, that Edens meets the logical fate of someone who is shaking his fist at the skies — he gets struck down, assassinated by the unscrupulous firm he’s been working to defend for an eighth of his life. Edens is a full-blown classical Fool, never mind that he’s in a corporate thriller.

We follow Clayton through the story slowly coming to the same realisation as Edens, but being more worldly wise, how will he respond? Even he doesn’t know, and though we kind of believe that Clooney is the good guy, the writing and performance are skilful enough to keep you guessing what he’s going to do next.

Edens gets to make the crazed speeches that reveal the true playing field the story occupies, and Clayton acts within its bounds. Important then that we can identify with him, and that’s done with aplomb: good looks aside, Clooney is playing a kind of everyman here, or at any rate someone who does the bidding of others rather than truly being in charge of his own destiny, which is a role that many of us can identify with. And it’s clear that Clayton is keen to establish some sort of definitive role for himself, even if his one recent attempt to do so — running a bar — has ended in failure. But that just paints him more surely as one of us, someone who offered a serious chunk of money might shrug his shoulders and move away from whatever is stressing him.

Clayton is a hero though, or at any rate discovers that he can be. He’s already one to his son, who is obsessed as only kids can be with a computer fantasy game that itself is concerned with forging alliances and creating your destiny. Edens sees in the game a metaphor for the situation he’s caught up in, and is inspired by it to do the right thing and expose the wrongdoing of his law firm’s key client. And he dies because of that, an outcome he could have probably guessed had he pursued the logic implicit in the speech quoted earlier.

Knowing the truth, Clayton has the choice to behave as he has for the last chunk of his life, and be a fixer, paid to do the bidding of others. Or he could stand up and deliver on what Edens has uncovered. It’s interesting that at this point in the story, Clayton is believed to be dead: what he chooses to do now will define who he is in his new incarnation. And the way that plays out keeps you guessing right to the last minute, and kept me engrossed in watching what happens in the credits even, when Clayton sits in the back seat of a taxi that’s driving wherever $50 will take him.

This is the second time I’ve written about Michael Clayton. It may not be the last. If you’ve not seen it already, do so if only so you have more of an idea of what I’m going on about next time.

Shortbus is an ideal antidote to bland romcoms, a sexually explicit exploration of modern relationships that takes in homosexuality, threesomes, and problems achieving orgasm along its delightful way. If nothing else, it functions as a good barometer for potential partners: I’m all in favour of its libertarian stance, and anyone who’d act shocked by it is not someone I’d want in my boudoir. Think of it as Moulin Rouge with its kit off: it’s got the same kind of glorious bohemian utopianism, only without the budget and with a cast of unknowns.

The film is adventurous in its structure as well as its content. We get to see the characters alone and together in a series of vignettes connected by delightful computer graphics that make New York out to be a loveable cartoon of a place. It would have been easy just to take a camera out onto the streets, but by opting for the digital route director John Cameron Mitchell starts to create the otherworldliness that characterises Shortbus, assisted by the eclectic music of Yo La Tengo.

Shortbus itself is a club, or perhaps more accurately what anarchist writer Hakim Bey called a Temporary Autonomous Zone. It’s a place where normal social rules are suspended, where people create and participate in their own forms of entertainment rather than merely act as consumers of corporate schlock. It’s popular with a diverse crowd, some of whom are there for alternative cabaret acts, others to join freeform orgies.

Sound fun? It is. Bey’s concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones was based in part on what he termed Pirate Utopias, the free-for-all groupings that lusty buccaneers lived in. And his writings were embraced by the free party culture who created their own suspended realities for urban ravers out in woods and fields. There’s a lot to be said about having your own piece of paradise.

The film concerns itself with three main groups of characters: the Jamies, two guys called Jamie looking to invite a third man into their relationship; a sex therapist who’s never had an orgasm; and a dominatrix who can’t connect with normal relationships. One way or another, wouldn’t you know it, visits to Shortbus sort them all out.

And that’s fine: it’s refreshing to see sex portrayed positively and credibly onscreen, and the film embraces its particular approach wholeheartedly. The making of it too was something like a T.A.Z., created by a process of devising and improvisation rather than rigid scripting. It shows, in ways that work well in the context of this story: a scripted film tends to create hierarchies of performance that don’t exist in Shortbus; here, everyone exists in their own right, equal to everyone else, and that fits its democratic nature.

The film itself makes no apologies for its pro-sex stance, and there’s no reason it should. One word of caution for anyone planning to emulate Hakim Bey’s inspirational message: his name is a pseudonym for the rather less fantastic sounding Peter Lamborn Wilson, well known for his attraction to young boys, the details of which are unpleasant in the extreme. Come to think of it, pirates weren’t as much fun in real life as Johnny Depp makes them seem, either. The concept of a T.A.Z. is fabulous, but it seems you’ve got to be just as careful who you invite to yours as you would be about any other social event. So much for the erotic anarchist scrum of Shortbus? Maybe. But there’s nothing to stop it being an inspiration, something to be guided by in the same way that others geek out to Star Wars. Given a choice between polishing Darth Vader’s helmet, and getting my own seen to, I know which I’d prefer…

—————————————————————————————

Also on a political note, Random House have changed the use of the word ‘twat’ to ‘twit’ in Jacqueline Wilson’s book for children My Sister Jodie on the basis of 3 complaints. Please feel free to voice your opinion: their email address and my communication to them follows…

To: childrenseditorial@randomhouse.co.uk
Subject: tw@s

Congratulations Random House,

you’ve submitted to the conservative sensibilities of less than a handful of concerned parents, and changed the text of Jacqueline Wilson’s book ‘My Sister Jodie’ on that basis. What about the nearly 150,000 buyers who DIDN’T complain, who maybe felt that the word was entirely appropriate in the context it was used? Perhaps we can look forward to a new edition of the diaries of Ann Frank in which Nazis don’t appear, for fear of causing offence.

Not impressed,

– Adrian Reynolds

Just watched Finding Neverland on BBC3, which featured Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie and told the immensely moving story of how he came up with Peter Pan as a result of his friendship with a widow and her four young sons. Lovely stuff in all kinds of ways, and it addressed some interesting aspects of creativity and people who choose to follow it as a way of life.

Barrie tells one of the boys that the trick to writing is simple. All you need to do is listen to the talking whale in your head, and write down what it says. Which is a delightful and fun way of saying something quite important: that whether we think of it as a whale or otherwise, there’s something within us that has stories to tell.

The trick is, nourishing that something. Stories may seem to come from nowhere, but as far as I can figure they’re very much influenced by the diet of experiences and information that we sustain ourselves on. One of the reasons I stopped writing prose early on was that my influences showed up too readily. One short story walks in the footsteps of J.P. Donleavy too closely for me to be comfortable with it. A faltering attempt at a novel foolishly tried to ape Thomas Pynchon. And so on.

Scripts, being leaner constructions, are less prone to such echoes. Besides which, I’ve made a point of getting a better balance between living and writing since those days. Now, however busy I am, I make sure I still find time for a coffee with a friend, a trip to a cinema, a listen to some new music. The thinking being, the greater your input, the greater your output.

Now, I can’t graph that theory for you. But I can tell you that I used to suffer a lot more minor illnesses than I do these days, and that since becoming an infovore more conscious of the data I’m grazing on, my health has improved and I’ve been writing more. Hmm.

Here’s the thing. In order for you to come up with ideas that could become stories, you need to expose yourself to a wide range of stimuli. People, books, films, websites, music, cult organisations, whatever. It all gets absorbed and integrated, and the more of it there is, the less likely connections you can make between different aspects of your internal world to use as the basis of stories.

In the past week, I’ve seen a defrocked vicar improvise a blessing for friends celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary, made a fish pie for a dozen people, spent a lunchtime getting to know a neighbour whose parents saw fit to christen her Virgil, tracked down Ken Campbell’s introduction to the Robert Anton Wilson memorial show in London and Alan Moore’s contribution to same on YouTube, and watched a policeman keep a straight face while someone told him about how his mother had stolen the robot he’d invented. If I can’t concoct something out of all those experiences, frankly I’m not trying. And that’s where proper care and maintenance of a whale comes into it. They’re extraordinary creatures, and they need to stay happy in the sea, with all the nourishment and exercise they deserve. Washed up on the beach, they’re just so much blubber and sushi.

My first contact with Ed Brubaker was when he wrote the series Sleeper. The online buzz was very positive, and I picked up the first of the collected editions. Seriously impressive: in a fully formed collaboration with artist Sean Phillips, the pair had conjured up a convincing noirish world of spies, superpowers, and subterfuge. The series is based round one smart conceit: that an agent is undercover in a criminal organisation, and the only person to know his true identity is in a coma.

Sleeper is a dark exploration of intrigue and morality, sure enough set in a superhero universe, but one in which the powers are metaphors for approaches to living. Without doubt it’s one of the smartest comics series in recent years, with a sledgehammer conclusion that makes utter sense in a truly twisted way.

So, having pegged Brubaker as a talent worth watching, I was bound to pick up more of his work, yes? As it turns out, the answer is a grudging yes, since after Sleeper Ed went over to Marvel, where he reinvented Captain America, a title I had zero intention of picking up. Only, I kept hearing it was good. Which made sense, given who was writing it. And the art, by Steve Epting, looked pretty fine too. Only, it’s Captain bloody America: please don’t make me buy a comic about a man who wears a stars and stripes costume with pointless ickle wings on the head. Well, I finally did, picking up a paving slab sized anthology of Brubaker’s first 30 or so issues on the series. And it’s very good indeed, a taut contemporary thriller that manages to utilise many elements of the hero’s past and incorporate them into a rattling and thoughtful Bourne style story that works really really well. If this is how good mainstream comics have got while I haven’t been watching, I’m more than impressed.

While Brubaker is doing a bunch of work on Marvel superhero titles, he’s also pushing out a creator-owned crime collaboration with the dark and edgy Sean Phillips. It’s called Criminal, and the third collection is just out. No funny costumes here, though the latest volume strays from that rule a bit what with it being set between 1967 and 1973. The emphasis is less on the impressive plotting of the other work I’ve read of Ed’s, and more on depicting characters caught up in classic noir situations. Deals gone wrong, women using their sexuality to get what they want while men use guns to do the same, and a world in which trust is the rarest commodity.

Make no mistake, Brubaker isn’t reinventing crime fiction here, other than in the fact that comics haven’t been used to tell stories like these before in my experience. And that’s fine. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like. The stories are interconnected: the first two volumes are set here and now, while the latest happens three decades ago. But some of the characters and stomping grounds remain the same, which itself suggests something about the social and economic forces that lead people into a life of crime.

It’s psychology that really matters to Brubaker though: he gets under the skin of these characters in a way that gets you to empathise with them, however appalling the choices they have to make, and that takes more than skill. The secret – and this is what connects all of Ed’s comics that I’ve read – is that he cares about the characters he’s writing, and understands them as a mature human being. And that makes a big difference in comics, when – if their writing is anything to go by – so many writers are trying to recapture what got them excited when they were reading the same titles in their teens, but lack the intellect and empathy to deal with real people…

So, media is about to get all digital on us, and one of the things I’ve been hearing is how that’s all about packing innovative content into a condensed time package. After everyone’s watched the first three seconds of that dog wearing a Darth Vader helmet, odds are they’ll want to skip to a toddler sitting on the back of an alligator. We’re busy people: no time for engagement, we want novelty and we want it now.

All very well, but one of the biggest hits on YouTube at the moment – six million viewings and rising – is a 75 minute monologue by a man who does nothing more visually exciting than a few press-ups. Admittedly I’d be pushed to replicate his feat, but I wasn’t watching out of envy. No, I was watching Randy Pausch because he was sharing the lessons he’d learned from life. A life that he knew would soon be ending.

Believe me, I’m in no way maudlin. Not big on sentimentality at all. And neither is Randy: his talk, to a packed auditorium at the university where he’d been doing work on virtual reality for some years, was entirely free of bogus emotion. Instead, this was a clear and inspirational reflection by Randy on how he’d made his childhood dreams come true, and what he’d done since then to inspire others to do the same. But don’t take my word for it: here, go and watch –

Randy Pausch video

I’m assuming you’ve found time to watch Randy’s speech. And I want to use it as the springboard to ask what you can imagine yourself watching in ten years time, when – as all the pundits are telling us – there will be a convergence of technologies in the box with the screen in your living room. Television and computer will become one, and you’ll be able to call up any images you choose to watch.

Conventional channels will still be there in some form, or at any rate the BBC will be since its revenues are assured as long as licensing remains its rource of funding. Plus, the BBC has some of the world’s best archive material, that it’s already letting us peek at and which will go on to be a key source of audiences, and perhaps income, in the future. (Only, let’s do the decent thing, which hasn’t been much in evidence so far, and pay the creators of shows a decent repeat fee for material that’s still in demand.)

Imagine then: whatever you want to see in your living room, you can. The question becomes, are you willing to change your viewing habits to encompass experiences like Randy Pausch, or will it essentially be business as usual for you? If all you want to watch is the shows you already like, they’ll be there. And you’ll be able – as is already the case – to download films and sports events. But what else? Basically, whatever you’re into, you’ll have access to. The questions are how you get to find out about it, and who pays for it.

And how does all this affect writers? Bottom line is that we’re content providers. And as the range of niche markets for writing skills increases, so does the possibility of finding work. It won’t always pay as well as some of the gigs we’re used to, that’s for sure. But for an enterprising writer with the ability to generate concepts, work in a team, and network, there’ll be a growing market for the things we can do.

I’m starting to explore the possibilities of the digital world myself: over the weekend I put forward a proposal to make some specialist learning materials available digitally. And I just bought a DVD and CD set as the result of an expertly conducted teleseminar at the weekend: hundreds of people in 25 countries listening in on phone and via computer to someone give a content-rich talk for nearly two hours linked to the package that they’re promoting. Not only that, but there’s an opportunity for ongoing online contact with the package’s author for continued tuition. It’s an impressive model, and just one example of the shape of things to come.

Something interesting happens to some comedians when they get successful. Sadly, it’s not the sort of interesting that makes them funnier.

John Cleese is one case in point, a wonderfully funny man once upon a long time ago, since known for corporate videos and tiresome books on therapy.

Mike Myers…well, I’d hesitate to call him a funny man at all, but it looks like he’s become the comedy equivalent of M. Night Shyamalan, each film worse than the preceding one until some kind of null point is reached at which even their creators must face up to the fact that they’ve been producing shit for some years.

Eddie Murphy, once a supremely funny man, now reduced to films in which he’s pretty much the only actor, cast against himself in a fat suit with alarming frequency.

It’s not pretty. And now it looks like Adam Sandler might be going the same way. Which is a shame. He showed real promise in his seemingly sincere chaotic instincts, which Paul Thomas Anderson harnessed to amazing effect in Punch-Drunk Love, a truly unsettling film about the mania that love can catch people up in.

Sandler’s new film is You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, and one worrying sign is that it’s got a serious undercurrent. In this instance, Sandler is attempting to mend the rift between Israelis and Palestinians through the healing power of humour. A noble intention, but comedy and nobility don’t really go together.

The plot works well enough, and I can imagine it being played straight as a touching piece of world cinema, as an Israeli soldier fakes his death to start a new life in New York as a hairdresser. Only, that arthouse version would have less emphasis on Sandler’s voluminous pubic hair, and the scenes with him fucking the matrons who come for his winning touch with a coiffure would probably be handled with more sensitivity.

It’s kind of entertaining, and there are a few genuine laughs to be had, but this is pretty thin stuff without the antic spirit of true comedy. It’s possible to deliver messages along with the laughs; that’s proven by Dodgeball, which really is as its strapline suggests a tale of underdogs triumphing over corporate jerks. But the laughs have to take priority over anything else for that approach to work. And unfortunately for Sandler, that isn’t the case with his new film. A shame – but maybe its failure will pre-empt a personal crisis for a canny filmmaker to capitalise on in years to come, and reignite the frantic energy that characterised Sandler’s earlier performances.

God, I’m glad I’m not waiting for me. Typically, I write in a fairly efficient manner, and developing treatments and meeting deadlines is something I take in my stride. But this particular feature treatment is taking forever. And I’m fine about that: progress might be slow, but I’m happy about the pieces that have been popping up, and which one by one are filling out the big picture. And since there’s been no deadline imposed on it, I’m fine about letting this project take its course.

Why is this story taking such a long time to appear? After all, I’ve trained myself to turn treatments round fairly rapidly. But this one is different. Primarily because it has its roots in my personal experience, and a particular set of events that were traumatic at the time but which I now view as very positive for what they did for me. Events which I’m constructing a psychological thriller from, that plays with the genre it is an example of. All of which is a way of saying it’s richer and more complex in some respects than stories I’ve tackled before.

Anyway, it’s nearly done now. Some of the bigger realisations about this story have come through sleep: I’ve woken a few times now with another piece of the story in my head, that’s worked better than the provisional piece that was there before it. And the whole is shaping up nicely.

The slow pace on this project isn’t matched by my progress generally: I’ve been working on a couple of television concepts which have come to me quickly, and that I know exactly where I’m going with. Helps that they’re animation projects that I’m developing with just the right people, whose interests and sensibilities I know, so that we’re working in tune with one another. So, all being well, those ideas should proceed at a fairly rapid pace, while the feature treatment just bubbles away by itself.

I’m getting a more complete sense of what the treatment is about than I ever have for a story I’ve developed, and when I’ve related it to people the feedback I’ve got is that it’s both original in conception and very cinematic in the way it unfolds. And I suspect that all of that means the script itself will be relatively easy to write when it comes time to do so.

All of this is about saying that different projects have their own rhythms. Some tv shows are easy to pitch for once you understand their ebb and flow. Danger is, you’ll write what amounts to a pastiche of the show rather than something that speaks to its core. Contrast a bog standard episode of Casualty with some I’ve seen that had boy wonder Paul Cornell’s name on: he brought those characters alive in a way that very few writers on the show ever have.

Other occasions, I’ve burned through treatments that I loved then and now in no time. After having spent ages developing low-budget naturalistic dramas, I got thoroughly sick of the real world and, in the course of a week, developed a detailed science fiction epic that remains one of the concepts I’m proudest of. It may never find a home, though I’m always open to possibilities (graphic novel, animated series, blockbuster movie…), but creating it taught me a lot about following my instincts in the search of something truly big and mythic.

Here, I’m following my instincts once again, enjoying what I’m finding; it’s just that the process is taking longer than I’m used to. But, at this particular point, I’m not on anyone’s clock… though I soon will be when I present the completed treatment to the production company who’ve expressed an interest in it since I first verbally pitched it to them. Fingers crossed, eh?

Well, I kind of had to watch. Tonight’s New Tricks was preceded by some nonsense in The Daily Mail (‘know thine enemy’ is one good reason to keep tabs on what happens inside its pages) about what a well crafted and uplifting show it is, like what they made in the good old days, and how it fully deserves to be beating miserable and politically correct soap operas in the ratings. Plus, this particular episode was concerned with hypnosis and NLP, two related subjects I am more than passingly acquainted with, and I was curious about what would happen to them in the hands of comfy mainstream drama.

In practice, I was too busy trying to work out how the story worked to be upset by any passing damage that may have been done to the reputation of mesmerists. Besides, I’m not enough of a geek to care. Anyway, what seemed to be going on was that a now deceased magician of the old school had been stitched up by a young pretender working newfangled neurolinguistic tricks resulting in a young woman killing her husband, to ruin the reputation of the Paul Daniels type and secure the ascendancy of the Derren Brown stand-in.

As if that wasn’t complicated enough, there was additional stuff to do with the pseudo-Derren disguising himself and rumbling what the cops were up to. Only, he disguised himself as a blatant Monty Python comedy character, which didn’t convince. Plus, there was a guy called Merlin who was in contact with the woman who’d been Svengali’d into offing her hubby. Not sure what he was about, other than to provide a red herring. And then there was the wheelchair-bound brother of the maligned magician, who – cleverest of them all – set a trap for the NLPer that the police fell into. For a while anyway: the Mail didn’t get where it is by supporting programmes that show the police with egg on their face.

Frankly it was all too intricate to unpick, and I think that was part of the intention. Make it seemingly complex and people will think they’re being presented with intelligent drama, when really this was Last of the Summer Wine crossed with The Bill. Loveable codgers get into all kinds of antics when they examine unsolved cases. Waking the Dead with a ‘funny’ tie and without the intimations of mortality.

The thing is, there’s a market for this kind of stuff. I don’t get it personally – not a fan of cosy tv basically. And is it true that older viewers don’t want to be challenged? Maybe they’re just as likely to be watching Shameless and The Wire, but I haven’t looked into the demographics. I only hope that when I get beyond sixty, my idea of good telly is more radical than pablum like New Tricks. And I wish that actors of the calibre of James Bolam were presented with scripts that got them really working, and not just coasting in roles that win them pin-up status in SAGA magazines.

What would I do if I was asked to write an episode of New Tricks? Yeah, like it’d ever happen. But supposing it did…for a start, I’d make sure it was much more character-based than the overly plot-heavy episode I saw this evening, which packed too much story detail in at the expense of credible emotions and motivations. For a show that’s supposed to be fun, it was lacking in lightness of touch, unless that’s what the ongoing Gerry Rafferty subplot was meant to demonstrate.

The role model to go for, curiously, would seem to be Dr Who, which manages to tell big stories that have significance for its protagonists and has a huge heart at the same time. Cue Denis Waterman telling the audience how amazing he thinks pensioners are, with their brilliant mobility chairs and so forth. Hmm, maybe not. But there is, I’d like to think, room for a drama starring older people that doesn’t rely on faux-characterisation to create a bond with its audience, and which presents stories that can challenge, and not just comfort. And in the same way that Who is a show grandparents can enjoy with younger members of their families, wouldn’t it be great for the kids to share viewing with the oldies?

You can only write so much before wondering why you’re devoting so much of your time and attention to a pursuit that pays off for such a small number of its practitioners. It’s something I’ve been thinking through again lately, having decided that I won’t be putting in an entry for this year’s Red Planet competition.

Why not? After all, it’s a brilliant showcase for writers, with unsurpassed prizes. True, true. But in terms of where I am and where I want to be, I don’t currently have a new pilot script in me that’ll be sufficiently distinct from the one I entered last year, set in the world of drugs work. Sure, I could write something, but the only new project that’s close to me writing it is one that’s not too far away in subject matter.

Why is that important? Because I feel I’m at an interesting stage with my writing, with a strong pilot script for the drug worker series that’s already attracted professional interest, and which I want to circulate further around the industry. And when I do, it’ll be accompanied by a feature script that I’m happy with.

So, how come it’s taken so long to get these scripts sorted out? Well, I’ve written all kinds of work over the years, some of it commissioned and paid for. But somewhere along the line I got sidetracked by my relationship with a particular filmmaker. We made a short together that got to tour internationally with the support of the British Council, and he turned up on a regular basis with other opportunities following that initial success. Which was great. I developed any number of treatments and scripts for shorts and features alongside him, and learned a lot in the process. Great to a point, except you can only work on projects for no money for so long before weariness starts to set in. And the projects being dangled were further and further away from my true interests.

Things came to a head when I was coaxed into writing a treatment set in the world of American cage fighting. It was reasonable enough, a perfectly professional piece of work that would have made a solid film of its sort. Only, my heart wasn’t in it. Even less so when a meeting was arranged in America at which the story was pitched (thankfully not by me) to Jean Claude Van Damme. At which point I realised that I was participating in some kind of cheesefest that didn’t represent me in any way.

Since then, I’ve taken a different tack. It took a while to sort out exactly where it was taking me, but what matters is that I can honestly say every project I’ve been involved with since those days has been one I’m fully engaged with and committed to. Yes, I can turn round a competent and well executed story of various sorts – but for me, with my background in advertising, that’s really just a demonstration of copywriting skills. And I’d still be working in advertising if that’s all I aspired to.

Instead, I’m finding that I’ve regained the enthusiasm for writing I had in my early days, before I knew quite what I was doing. Some of the sample scripts on this site come from that period; the play Breaking In for instance. God only knows what the structure of that play is, but it’s not one you’d find recommended in any book on writing for theatre. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a story about two people in a relationship that seems to be doomed, but where there’s the hint of light if they can only stop for a moment and see what they’re doing to themselves and each other. Simple as that. And funny, too. The core is what matters, and that’s what I’ve realised anew in the range of stories I’ve been developing in recent years.

The seed for the stories I’m interested in can be all kinds of things. It can come from knowing drugs workers and being fascinated by how they keep going in the face of overwhelming odds. From wanting to tell a modern day fable with a talented illustrator. From finding an original way to tell what might otherwise be an imagination-free genre tale. Whatever it is, there’s got to be a kernel there, a challenge I’ve not taken on before that can inspire me to keep working, whatever else is happening. And if that challenge is there, and I can meet it, then I can honestly say I’m doing the best I can at writing what matters to me. And believe me, that feels a lot better than knowing your cage fighting yarn is being discussed by the Muscles from Brussels.