The Bill went out in style last night, with a story that demonstrated all that was good about ITV’s police drama. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into creating a suitable send-off, and I’m not surprised about that having had a run-in with the series a few years ago when I wrote a sample script under the guidance of one of the show’s regular writers and with input from its editing team, thanks to writers development organisation TAPS. I wasn’t allowed to write about that experience at the time, but with both TAPS and The Bill a thing of the past, I can’t see the problem in doing so now.

I was hugely impressed by the team who put The Bill together. There was a real sense of camaraderie among everyone I came across, from the show’s police advisors to the canteen staff. And the scale of the set-up was staggering: The Bill had a larger hospital set than Casualty, and the attention to detail in the operations rooms, interview suites, and cells was impressive.

The experience of developing a story and script under the guidance of the show’s script editing team was brilliant. No sense of the series being formulaic came across: there was a sincere commitment to helping writers develop original ideas, and the process was one of exploration and evolution rather than shoehorning a concept into a tried and tested format. Which isn’t to say that anything goes: The Bill went through different styles, from 30 minute self-contained stories to one hour episodes with a strong soap element. Though I had a great time writing my sample script, it didn’t have enough of a procedural element to really fit in with the way the show worked. And that helps account for my story not being taken up…but of the fourteen writers I was in a group with, only two had their scripts taken further. So it goes: the experience was still more than worthwhile.

Am I sad that The Bill has gone then? Well, it’s truly a shame that a highly talented and motivated team have lost their jobs. But let’s hope that those same skills and qualities gain those individuals new opportunities in the industry. As for the show itself…like many long running British shows it suffered from a lack of vision. Where American shows like The Sopranos have a sense of the big picture from the off, British ones seemingly stumble along and from time to time hit on a consistent theme or arc that’s reinvented when the next season is commissioned.

That pattern has very much afflicted The Bill, the most recent shake-up its move to a post-watershed slot with the swearier and bloodier possibilities that entails. But after 27 years, was any new format going to radically revitalise a show that’s been consuming law and order based stories in the fictional Sun Hill area of London at a rate of knots for that time?

Regardless, the show went out on a high, with a brave story about how drugs, gun crime, and rape go hand in hand to destroy the lives of young people on an estate, where ‘respect’ is redefined by twisted minds to justify sick behaviours. This contrasts with the very different kind of respect that defines the beliefs and actions of the majority of Sun Hill cops. It was a finely honed story, taut and credible, a small screen look at the issues that Harry Brown explored.

Looking to the future, ITV has announced plans for new dramas, all of which have a crime and justice aspect. The one that excites me most reunites former Coronation Street actress Suranne Jones with writer Sally Wainwright, whose Unforgiven was one of my favourite shows at the start of the year, and which went on to win a RTS award. Sure, it’s about a couple of homicide detectives, which is very familiar territory, but with these two involved I’m confident that Scott and Bailey will be well worth checking out.

According to Phil Parker, who thanks to his involvement with the UK Film Council on the training side had the inside track on these things, millions of pounds was poured down the drain on developing feature film scripts by tv writers from the mid-nineties and not a single film was made as a result. As well as adding further weight to the argument that maybe losing the UKFC is not such a bad thing, that statistic also points to a significant difference between film and tv.

For the most part, tv isn’t about much beyond providing surface level distraction for people tired after their working days and not wanting to be confronted by anything that might make them think. Popular drama presents characters who could more or less be ourselves dealing with the same sort of issues that we get to tackle on an exciting day. Order is inevitably restored by the end of shows like The Bill and Casualty, and if there is any upset it’s the sort that’s faded by the time the credits roll and the next programme starts.

Only in the hands of a skilled writer like Dennis Potter, Paul Abbott, or the team who put together American shows like Six Feet Under and The Shield does tv tend to have any real emotional and intellectual heft, and all the above are the exception rather than the norm.

Film though, is — or can be — a different matter. Writers have the opportunity to explore a knotty issue that concerns them for ninety minutes or more, and even average box office fodder can reveal layers you’d be amazed to discover in much of what washes up on the small screen.

Take Guy Ritchie’s version of Sherlock Holmes. At first glance it’s a geezerish twist on Baker Street’s most famous resident, with the great detective frequently bare chested and indulging in fisticuffs with a variety of ne’er-do-wells. Scratch the surface and there’s a lot more going on — which is what I’d hope for given that five writers are credited with devising and scripting the screenplay.

A couple of — related — points demonstrate the kind of thinking that went into making Ritchie’s Sherlock the most interesting film of an otherwise overhyped career. First, what’s the essence of Holmes? Well, the detective’s much-vaunted intellect has to be a big part of the answer to that question. So, one thing that makes sense is to pit him against a non-rational opponent. Which is what we get in the form of a seemingly resurrected aristocrat who allegedly traffics with demons.

Think bigger. OK, Holmes is a fin-de-siecle hero, and what characterises the spirit of his age? Well, it’s a time when Darwin and Marx have advanced the cause of intellect, both thinkers challenging the hold of religion and superstition. Too, the Industrial Revoluition has changed the lives of all, whether through uprooting rural dwellers to cities, or changing family structures for all.

So, how about an antagonist that embodies the forces of change sweeping through the country as it edges towards the twentieth century? Sounds good, and that’s exactly what the writers came up with. The necromantic aristo is emblematic of the shift from a spiritual to a scientific worldview, claiming supernatural powers with which he intends to acquire real political clout. And he nearly does too, brewing up a venomous toxin intended to despatch any MPs who are against him, and lying that the forces of darkness are involved.

It’s all neatly done, and with the smokescreen of a confrontation on an unfinished Tower Bridge, order is restored in the nick of time and a sequel involving Moriarty neatly set up. The alert viewer will note that the depiction of the baddy very much prefigures the rise of fascism in the twentieth century, the sort of effect a writer (or writers) can pull off when given a bigger canvas to work on than those presented by a witless tv soap.

Where film writers can shape their work with theme, tv writers are often limited to a few building blocks which need to be put in different permutations again and again for there to be any sense of novelty for the viewer. Which isn’t intended to be a sleight against those who write for tv, but an observation about the effect of working for a series script editor who is up against all kinds of constraints. And while there is tv that challenges my generalisation there, I’d on the whole much rather write for film because of the scope it presents.

Hmm, so a couple of days back I posted about my favourable first impressions of Firefly having watched the pilot episode. Since when I’ve watched…well, after writing this piece I’ll be onto episode three of disk three, which will be my tenth of the fourteen installments that made up the series. After which I’ll give renewed attention to the Serenity feature film spinoff which I will view again with added insight into it all.

Last time I watched that much of a show in a short space of time was when I got into The Shield. Which raises the question of exactly what Joss Whedon has done to give his show such a strong pull. Firefly maintains my attention throughout, more so than Buffy even, which had more than its share of off-centre episodes. (Interesting, the distinction between off-beat, which can be good, and off-centre, which isn’t.)

Part of the skill is in getting the audience to root for the characters. As with Buffy, they’re an interesting bunch — and rather than go for obvious conflict between them, as so many shows do, what bonds them is just as important as what pulls them apart. Conflict for its own sake can be dull, but with characters who play valuable roles in each others lives, and depend on one another, those bonds are just as important as the potential for breaking them. And those bonds run deeper than the technical function of the character roles.

Look at the interaction of Captain Mal Reynolds and Companion Inara for instance. At first sight, he seems to look down on the interplanetary escort girl. Look a little further, and you realise Mal has a touch of insecurity about sexually independent women. And their relationship is more than professional. It’s all beautifully depicted in the episode Our Mrs Reynolds, written by Whedon himself. Mal is duped into marriage by a woman who first seems a naive farm girl, but turns out to be a sophisticated con artist who knows exactly which buttons to press to get the results she wants. She uses a toxic lipstick to knock Mal out, and Inara kisses the captain in an attempt to bring him round, which sends her woozy too — a kiss born of genuine attraction as much as for medical reasons. Only, Mal goes for the easier conclusion that Inara was affected by the lipstick since she kissed the conwoman — his edginess about Inara being bisexual, and more sexually sophisticated than he is, won’t allow him to see that Inara really is drawn to him.

Fantastic stuff, beautifully played — but the above sounds like soap opera more than science fiction. Well, truth is that the science fiction aspects of the show are very much to do with the environment and trappings. This is not drama that comes from scientific concepts — science is not one of Firefly’s drivers at all. Not in the sense of episodes being based on stuff that the writers have picked up in New Scientist anyway. But there’s a rich story universe here, with the characters flitting between planets that mostly resemble the wild west because they’ve been terraformed to look that way. And there’s a backdrop involving a semi-evil Alliance that won the war against the Independents Mal fought for. You can tell they’re the bad guys because of their love of red tape, and they’ve done something unspeakable to the doctor’s strange sister, River.

Firefly proves that all a series needs to work is interesting and well-played characters. Sure, the fact that they flit about in a spaceship is fun — but a lot of that stuff is set dressing. More than anything, this is a series about how people get on in their very different ways, and how enjoyable it is to see that when those people are more or less functional and typically inclined to look out for one another. As such, it’s a more human and compelling future than those offered by most tv science fiction shows.

Sometimes a show’s central metaphors are obvious to its creators. Other times, they’re so embedded in the show that they pass unquestioned. With Star Trek, you can’t get away from the sense that what you’re watching is American foreign policy in outer space. Uniformed men patrolling the frontiers in a heavily armed vessel claiming a non-interventionist stance but forever imposing their values on the foreigners they encounter — yeah, that feels about right.

So powerful is that notion of space as a military domain that it affects other science fiction shows too: it’s a rubric that also shapes Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5. Which is fine as far as it goes. Interesting that British tv science fiction, coming from a country that’s through with its imperial past and questioning that legacy, is more sceptical — Dr Who is a maverick pacifist, and the heroes of Blake’s 7 were political radicals fighting against the state rather than on its behalf.

After the success of Buffy, Joss Whedon wanted to make a science fiction show, and it’s typical of his scale of vision that he looked beyond predecessor shows and came up with his own rough and ready version of a universe to have adventures in for Firefly. The protagonist is Malcolm Reynolds, who is established in the pilot episode as a soldier on the wrong side of a war, now turning his hand to shifting cargo round the cosmos to make ends meet. He does so in an outdated Firefly class spaceship with the assistance of a crew of misfits. Their roles — pilot, engineer, medic — are familiar from Star Trek, but without a uniform or code of conduct to bind them together, the captain relies on leadership skills and an understanding of the bigger picture to guide his crew. Tension about where the ship goes, and how, is an important part of the fabric of the show.

I suspect that the way Firefly works is in large part a function of Whedon’s experience in delivering episode after episode and season after season of Buffy , the captain of his own ship for sure — and up against powers that be in the form of networks, advertisers, actors growing in popularity, and audience expectations. On the basis of the pilot episode at least, Malcolm Reynolds has more responsibilities than the other members of the ship Serenity, and isn’t as readily open to identification as teenagers would have found high school girl Buffy. Which may be one reason for the show having been cancelled after 14 episodes — though the network opening the series with an episode several stories in, rather than the intended pilot, may have a part to play too.

The central metaphor that Firefly uses is that of the western. It’s not hammered home too heavily, other than in the country-tinged theme song, and there are interesting detours from that central notion — such as the occasional use of phrases in Chinese by the characters. But the design aesthetic of the spaceport they visit, and later of a planet where they hope to turn a profit, is one very much drawn from notions of the Wild West. One of the more interesting parallels is the presence on Firefly of a woman described as a ‘companion’, but who Mal charmlessly refers to as a whore. She rents the spaceship’s shuttle vehicle and operates from there, itself a fascinating notion: whoever heard of subletting a spaceship before?

There’s a city slicker on board too, and it’s with his presence that the future of the series lies — the rich boy doctor came aboard, disguising his sister as cargo, and trouble lies ahead: her mind is the subject of experimentation, and she’s an asset that the bad guys want to recoup. It all makes for a healthily eclectic mix, though perhaps too varied for an audience that historically likes its science fiction shows a bit more cut and dried. But the vitality of the concept, and some typically sparkling Whedon dialogue, make for a highly appealing premiere, and a show I’ve got another 13 episodes of to hopefully enjoy.

A little while back, I looked at the theological aspects of how Ashes to Ashes, Lost, and Battlestar Galactica wrapped up. Now, with the conclusion of Matt Smith’s first season as the Gallifreyan gadabout, it’s worth having a look at how Dr Who functions — and its resonance with one of my favourite films, Donnie Darko.

Under Stephen Moffat’s stewardship, Dr Who has been a more successfully integrated series than it was under the guidance of Russell T Davies. Where Russell unified the show was in its themes, and particularly its vision of a future in which polychromatic polymorphous perversity would hold sway over the universe like a camp tentacled version of a Benetton ad. Evil was narrow minded, fearful of diversity, and good would triumph through the power of love.

All lovely stuff, but it got a bit repetitious, and there was rather a lot of handwaving at the expense of credible story detail. Which is what makes Moffat’s approach so interesting, and different. Admittedly, some of the individual episodes — Moffat’s in particular — weren’t as strong as they could have been. But the threads connecting them have really demonstrated the time and space spanning nature of the Doctor’s adventures in a way that the series hasn’t seen before.

As with RTD’s use of Rose Tyler, Moffat’s championing of new companion Amy Pond has been at the heart of the show. More than was the case in days of old, companions provide the critical human dimension to stories that could otherwise be abstract, especially for a show that is — let us remember — rightly aimed at a family audience.

Interesting that there’s been a tonal shift too: under RTD, there was quite a bit of playing to the gallery in the form of farting monsters and other playground-friendly stuff. With Moffat, the connection with children is at the heart of the series in a fundamentally serious way, through the business of why exactly young Amy Pond was living in a house on her own when the Doctor first encountered her. And ultimately it’s through the imagination, memory, and stubbornness of Amy that the series reaches its triumphant conclusion.

What connects Donnie Darko with this series of Dr Who is none other than Jesus Christ. All three sacrifice their lives that we may progress in our own. Which is pretty big stuff for stories aimed at young people, and appropriately so. Kids have a natural fascination with matters of philosophy, and when they’re captured in story form the effect can be very powerful indeed.

There’s even more similarity between Donnie and the Doctor at first glance, when you realise that both intend to sacrifice themselves with the world being none the wiser. Both are more than willing to make that sacrifice, but the distinction between the two is that while Donnie fills that Christ template pretty well, the Doctor has more than a little of the trickster about his make-up.

That trickster element is why the Doctor’s enemies line up to have him incarcerated in the Pandorica — the Doctor not recognising in the description of its captive as the most dangerous being in the universe a description of himself. And it’s that same trickster pluck which gives him the solution to the apocalyptic conundrum that results: he knows that Amy has the capacity to will him back into existence through the elaborate thread that he weaves through her life.

And really, that’s the difference between Donnie and the Doctor — the teenager has humility, where the old man from Gallifrey has the desire to see even more of space and time as he adventures another day, setting off in the TARDIS on another madcap quest like nothing has happened as he whisks Amy and her beau away from their wedding and into the beyond…

Interesting, isn’t it, that three established dramas have come to muddled conclusions by veering into spirituality that wasn’t necessarily part of the ride that viewers signed up for at the outset of those series. I’m talking here of Lost, Ashes to Ashes, and Battlestar Galactica, all of which took a turn for the religious as the end post came in sight.

There are a few ways to look at this phenomenon. Easiest is to suggest that they’re all a slightly (but not much) more grown-up version of the hastily scribbled ‘…and I woke up and it was all a dream’ that school kids can be relied on for when the teacher has set an essay at the start of class and the bell has just sounded. Which is to say, it’s a cop-out.

But even if it is a cop-out, why that particular one? Hmm. Well, in the case of Lost the series title is probably an accurate description of how the writers felt when they’d got several seasons in and had detail upon detail of accumulated mythology to explain away somehow. You can understand the temptation. Exactly how do you explain away the myriad layers of nonsense that happened on that mysterious island without resorting to the supernatural? And if you’re going to head in that direction, you might as well embrace it wholeheartedly, even if it leaves a lot of peoples’ heads unsatisfied.

You could say that this in turn is evidence of the puddingheadedness of the general public, a good number of whom despite the best efforts of Mr Dawkins and his fellow rationalists continue to consult their stars while having their palms read and auras fluffed. With so many people letting the side down, it’s easy to cynically give them what they want in the form of some vague spiritual pablum that handwaves everything from Hurley’s hair to the invisible monster, which I now assume to be nothing less than the Holy Spirit.

As for Battlestar Galactica, there always was a Mormon subtext to the original series I understand. Show creator Glan Larson was a Mormon, and with characters called Cain, Adama and Lucifer it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to pick up some of the show’s subtext. Having God intervene at the finale may have been a shot from left field to viewers interested in the show’s convincing political intrigues, but let’s remember that there are people including recent American Presidents who believe that the Middle East will be a focal point for the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy.

At least with Ashes to Ashes the denouement is in line with what went before. Ever since it started with Life on Mars there’s been an element of karma to what’s going on with Gene Hunt and crew, so it’s only fitting that the series be wrapped up with that aspect to the fore. Besides, how else are you going to resolve the show’s mysteries? In this case at least, getting all spiritual was a fitting finale.

Back to where we came in though: what does all this say about the contemporary viewer? A few years ago X-Files tapped into the then zeitgeist with a series that promised mystery and conspiracy but no resolution. Running from 1993 to 2002, there seemed to be something very millennial about Chris Carter’s series, and the way it pitted a sceptic against a believer, held together only by prolonged sexual tension. Now…what?

Perhaps the 21st century is all about incorporating sprituality into the mix. If robots and Mormonism can go together, a tropical island offer a chance of redemption, and a 70s cop can be a guardian angel, what tv shows will emerge in an era where all-encompassing fundamentalism of various sorts from free market atheism to militant Islam rubs shoulders with the very individual salvation offered by the personal growth movement?

There’s a school of thought that says much of what we get up to has its roots in different stages of humanity as a species. Rewind way back and you’ve got two currents. One is all about individual expression and winning through. Your fundamental instinct to survive and make your mark, manifested in everything from a caveman wrestling a sabretooth tiger to Tiger Woods scoring a hole in one more beautiful woman. Alongside this, the need for the tribe to prosper as a group, which calls for individual welfare to be subordinated to the collective, be that a genteel family in a Victorian novel or a Los Angeles street gang.

A lot of drama has its roots in this individual v tribe dynamic. It’s there in Romeo & Juliet, where the hero falls in love with a woman from the wrong side of the tracks, and it runs through a whole bunch of manly films. Gangster films often focus on the pull between a hotheaded youngster wanting to make a name for himself and the loyalty that’s necessary to progress in a crime family. Kill by all means — but only kill the people your superiors tell you too.

One contemporary take on such a theme was presented in the superb ITV drama Father & Son, the first part of which ran this evening. ‘Torn from the headlines’ is the expression some papers use for drama like this, inspired by real life gangland shootings in Manchester. Writer Frank Deasy has done wonders with that exceptionally raw material, translating it into a gripping, moving, and powerful tragedy about families and violence.

Teenager Sean O’Connor is the son of a killer, and in taking a gun from his girlfriend’s hand and holding it himself, seems to have inherited the title himself. Claimed almost as a trophy by an old ally of his dad’s in prison, Sean is under the older man’s wing — but that isn’t to say he’s safe. The ally wants out of prison, and realises Sean is a valuable piece on a chess board that also includes teenage gang members, the aunt who’s brought Sean up and works for the police, and fellow cops who view Sean as nothing more than the latest in the line of murderous O’Connors.

There are strands of tension accreting throughout the story. Sean wants to do right by his aunt, a positive role model, and steer clear of his dad. He loves his girlfriend, and goes to prison rather than allow her to face a murder charge. His cellmate professes allegiance to Sean’s dad — but will sacrifice Sean to get what he wants. And the murder happened in the first place in self defence as response to a friend of Sean’s being shot by gang members.

It’s potent and beautifully played stuff, and though the future looks bleak for Sean O’Connor, there are three episodes to come, and in them the certainty of further twists on the theme of individual will and its relation to collective experience.

These dynamics are at the heart of many a martial arts film. David Mamet’s Redbelt is about a martial arts tutor loyal to his lineage who ends up caught in a fixed tv tournament and fighting against its corruption, in the process winning the heartfelt thanks of his school’s grand master. Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai are honorable warriors prepared to sacrifice themselves on behalf of a defenceless farming community. And so on.

You can find variations on the theme in westerns, and in any film where a new recruit is initiated into a service and needs some of their maverick qualities sanding down — though inevitably it’s the utilisation of same that saves the day and for which the initiate is rewarded by the elders of the tribe. All of which is to suggest that this is a theme as old as civilisation itself — and Father & Son an excellent example of a modern take on it with more of a socially relevant than a mythic interpretation of it.

Only 1 in 5 of scripts commissioned by the BBC end up going into development. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not, but that’s the statistic. You could argue that the solution to making better programmes is in commissioning less but spending more time on development. Only, talk to people who’ve been through the development process and it’s by no means a given that the end product is better as a result.

Pulse, a new pilot for a series that plays on BBC3 tomorrow night, is a good example. It’s scripted by Paul Cornell, but he’s the third writer to turn his hand to the job, and I dare say none of them did just one draft before moving on. Still, as a jobbing writer he should be used to working with the concepts of others: he’s written some strong stories for Dr Who, and has scripted comics for Marvel too.

The most relevant part of Cornell’s CV on this occasion is his stint on Casualty, Pulse being a medical drama. But, dipping into his Who and Marvel work, it’s one with a horror/science fiction element too. Which you’d hope means Cornell is in his element. Sadly, I’m not convinced.

Medical horror could go in all sorts of exciting directions. Especially with the brave new world of modern science to play with. Cybernetic enhancements, gene splicing, drugs to enhance cognitive functioning…if you can’t have some fun with ingredients like that, you’re not trying. And it may be that Pulse is going to reveal high jinks in those directions. But on the basis of the first episode I’m not going to bother to stick around to find out.

The problem is that Pulse has narrow horizons. It’s content to be another tv programme, when there’s already hundreds of them out there. The belief that by mixing genres it’ll produce something special is heading in the right direction, but the show stays within televisual boundaries. And really, that’s not enough.

So, I’m criticising a tv programme for looking and sounding like a tv programme? Sounds ridiculous, but that’s what it amounts to. The makers might point to budgetary limitations as being the reason for sticking to the tried and tested. I refer them to Paranormal Activity, a terrifying movie made for next to nothing that did very well commercially, and is going to spawn sequels. Kind of like how a tv pilot then leads to subsequent episodes.

Thing being, that Pulse looks pretty much like every medical drama you’ve ever seen. And moves at a slow and steady pace as it establishes the characters before bringing on the scary. By which time I was bored bored bored. If you’re going to do an experiment in genre-splicing, how about using those aspects of each that make them exciting? It would have been good to see the characterisation of a tv hospital drama with the thrills of a horror film. But if that’s what the makers thought they were delivering, I have news for them: they failed.

Pulse was…ok, but ok’s just not good enough. In a world where I can look at all kinds of stuff on YouTube, pop a DVD of a film on, or crack open a box set of a genuinely adrenaline-charged series like The Shield, exactly what incentive do I have to watch a medical drama that brings to mind that damning phrase on film certificates: ‘contains mild peril’?

I don’t like my peril mild. When I want peril, I want it uncut and to appear at unexpected moments and to freak the bejesus out of me. Not in the last few minutes of a tv drama when there’s been nothing upsetting for the rest of the episode, meaning that the shock has got to come…any…minute…now…given it ends in 300 seconds.

All of which should have been known to Cornell, a talented writer who’s worked on Dr Who — a show that has produced genuine shockers in the form of stone angels, Daleks, and alien monsters that live in rooms you’ll never find in your very own house. That’s the bar for horror — set by a show for kids. The fact that Pulse didn’t raise mine tells you all you need to know.

I’ve never warmed to Martin Amis. I’m not sure many people have. Oh, he’s without doubt a very clever man, but the few times I’ve tried reading his work I’ve bounced off the surface and been repelled by what I’ve sensed lurking deeper. But maybe that’s my fault for reading Dead Babies, which even a lot of his fans don’t like.

There’s also the business of his massively overinflated self-perception. He considers himself one of the few Men of Letters still standing, and the deal he has with his publishers reflects that preening arrogance: there is no way that publishers will recoup the money invested in him. He is a status purchase; the literary equivalent of a statue in the garden — probably one of those crass ones of a boy pissing in the pond, since Amis fancies himself as a bit of a webel.

All of which explains my ambivalence about Money, a two-part adaptation of which started last night on BBC2. And which was highly enjoyable — almost enough to make me pick up a copy of the book. Second hand, at any rate, preferably from a charity shop. Money is Amis’s take on what Thatcher did to Britain, and it has to be said it does so very well. Mind you, I was working in advertising in London when all this was happening, cutting my teeth as a copywriter, so there’s a lot for me to wince at as protagonist commercials director John Self implodes when his crass film project is picked up by an avaricious producer and his life falls apart on both sides of the Atlantic.

Self is a grotesque boor, beautifully played by Nick Frost, the only actor that writers Tom Butterworth and Chris Hurford had in mind for their adaptation of the book. He manages to make the loathesome porn addict, drug hoover and misogynist enjoyable to spend time with, and funny for good measure. Not that he humanises Self in the mawkish/Morkish way that Robin Williams can, but you could say he holds up a mirror to the audience, which serves a similar function without seeking to ingratiate.

With a name like Jeremy Lovering, the director was born to call the shots on a twisted satire of unpleasant appetites running riot, and he does so in style. Period details heighten the retro aspect with a touch of teethclenching for good measure. The visual design is strong, matched by an excellent note perfect period score from Daniel Pemberton that has echoes of the decade’s finest and trashiest tunes…it’s symptomatic of the time that many of them occupied both roles simultaneously.

Altogether then, I’m very pleased with Money. You could say it’s a bit glib, self-satisfied, but given both the source material and the author, maybe that’s to be expected. For all that, it sheds light on a decade that we can look at with new eyes in the wake of banking scandals and a new era of Conservatism, albeit hopefully toned down by Liberal Democrat influence. We shall see…and it would be good to see someone chart this new government and its Big Society with the same relish that Amis brought to Thatcherism.

All that said, there’s another take on Money that captures much of what Amis and this adaptation shoot for in just two and a half minutes. Seriously. The Flying Lizards version of the song of that name, known primarily for its Beatles version but originally by Motown mainman Berry Gordy, crystallises what those times were like in a brutal 151 seconds. Don’t believe me? Check out the video here, and see what you think…

So, the BBC is opening its doors to the Writers Academy once again. And it really is an outstanding opportunity for those who wish to develop a career with the world’s most venerable and respected commissioner. Only, one of the things I’ve learned in the last couple of years is that career path is not the one I intend to pursue.

I’d love to write for some of the BBC’s shows, I really would. Dr Who would be my absolute dream gig, but then there’s The Street, and Spooks, and Survivors, and maybe something original for CBBC that would allow me to recapture the eerieness I felt watching Children of the Stones way back when.

But there’s no guarantee that being in the Writers Academy will open those doors. Sure, it’ll increase your chances — but the core task of Writers Academy is to groom writers to script the BBC’s flagship shows: Eastenders, Holby, Casualty and — on the nursery slopes — Doctors. And I realised a while back I have no true passion for any of those programmes.

I’ve written for Doctors, and had a lot of fun doing so. Learned some things of use, too. But having got my first idea approved and developed, I found that I was still more excited by what I’d done for my trial script than what transpired as my first tv episode was brought to fruition. And as I produced more, and more, ideas for a second episode, I realised what part of the problem was. As a writer, your job is to create a distinctive episode. As someone involved in the show, your role is to ensure a consistent series. And those two responsibilities don’t always dovetail. There’s a danger of truly distinctive elements getting sanded down by the compromises involved in working on a branded property.

It took a while to reach that — possibly controversial — conclusion. And I continued to produce concepts after my second episode was broadcast. By which point I realised I was also in a pool of 200 other writers also generating a multitude of concepts for the show. Which had to get past first your script editor (mine were both lovely people I had a good working relationship with) and then people further up the food chain before getting a go-ahead. Now, let’s say each writer contributes 15 one page outlines to their story editor in a season…you can see where this is leading. Generating such a concept could take a day or more, so while the chances are better than that of a spermatazoon fertilising an egg, it increasingly started to feel like a numbers game I wanted no part of.

So, I opted out. Actually, that was part of a wider commitment to only work on projects I felt truly passionate about. And guess what? I’ve been happier since then, and more satisfied with my writing. That’s where my drug worker series The Sharp End came into existence, which has been well received by everyone who’s seen it, and which I’m waiting for someone to bite at — or offer me interesting work on projects of their own. And it’s led to any number of other opportunities, such as the invitations to work with an up-and-coming theatre company and talented filmmaker that I wrote about recently.

All of this suits me because I have an entrepreneurial streak as well as a creative one. I’d rather take a chance on developing projects of my own, getting involved in the networking and production side of it all, than spend a career working on someone else’s shows that I don’t have a real feel for. It’s that simple.

So, I won’t be applying for the BBC Writers Academy. But it remains a superb opportunity for those of you who have a genuine love for the shows it’ll get you involved with: Academy graduates are increasingly involved in scripting those dramas, so there’s a clear route to stability and success to be found. I wish that worked for me, but it really doesn’t, so I’ll be taking my chances elsewhere. Wish me luck.