Armando Iannucci Says Creatives Like Moffat Should Decide BBC’s Future

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Armando Iannucci Says Creatives Like Moffat Should Decide BBC’s Future

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Armando Iannucci, the man behind such shows as Veep, The Thick of It (starring Peter Capaldi), and I’m Alan Partridge, says the UK Government should consult creative types, including Doctor Who showrunner, Steven Moffat, about the future of the BBC.

Aunty Beeb has been the victim of a number of attacks by the Government just in time for the BBC’s Royal Charter renewal next year, and Iannucci used his talk at the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture during the Edinburgh Television Festival to demand that important writers and showrunners be consulted to a greater extent when deciding on broadcasting policy. He also described the panel set up to investigate the corporation’s efficacy and future as too narrow.

(Personally, a word I’d use is ‘biased'; among the panel are Dame Colette Bowe, a former chairwoman of the regulator Ofcom who previously suggested that BBC funding should be shared with others; Dawn Airey, former boss of Channel 5 and executive of Yahoo – thus a competitor of the BBC’s news output – who has previously called for the licence fee to be cut; and Stewart Purvis, a former editor-in-chief of ITN.)

At his lecture, We’re All In This Together, Armando said:

“When I see the panel of experts who’ve been asked by the Culture Secretary to take a root and branch look at the BBC, I don’t see anyone who is a part of a cast and crew list.

“I see executives, media owners, industry gurus, all talented people; but not a single person who’s made a classic and enduring television show, not a presenter, a writer, director or creative producer, no Moffat or [Last Tango in Halifax writer, Sally] Wainwright or [producer, Jimmy] Mulville or [Line of Duty scribe, Jed] Mercurio, nor do I see anyone from our world-class post-production industry or from design or drama, no-one from the enormous world-beating service of day-to-day production, to give their views, to offload their expertise on the difficulties and the joys and the challenges of making world standard public service broadcasting… Oh, and no viewers too. Just people from the executive branch of television.”

Doctor Who "You don't just give up, you take a stand, you do what is right, you fight when everyone has run away" Could be Anti-Tory speech

— BlueCollarDoctorWho (@BlueCollarDrWho) July 19, 2015

In my defense of the TV license, I noted that, “born into a society whereby TV is paradoxically very important and entirely trivial, being asked to fork out £145.50 a year is going to cause a bit of cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t help that even the Establishment tells us there is something inherently wrong with paying for television.” And it sounds like Ianucci is on similar lines, that story-makers are undervalued because hey, that’s all they do:

“Are they more wary of us because we deal with intangible stuff, made up stories, unquantifiable and unpredictable entertainments that make us interesting but not really serious, the sort of person it’s good to be photographed chatting to at a Thank You Reception for the Arts, rather than properly engaging with at a boardroom meeting deciding how a crucial segment of the arts should be run?”

And he concluded:

“No one comes into contact more regularly with the hard economics of making a budget work than a production team. Every time I make a show, I’m a small businessman, responsible for hundreds of employees, in charge of a budget of millions of pounds. And of course if the project isn’t successful, the work won’t come back… But believe me, saying tonight ‘We’re All in This Together,’ I’m not being ironic. Playful, maybe, but deadly serious. British television needs to be at its strongest: with a big global fight ahead, we need to consolidate all our talent and expertise.”

He, of course, makes very apt points. We at the K acknowledge that the BBC isn’t perfect. It needs to strive for better, as we all should. But we can’t let it be damaged irreversibly.

Watch the full lecture above, and if you agree, (as noted by BackTheBBC), Google “BBC charter public consultation” or look on 38 degrees or Change.org for petitions that feed directly into the Government’s review.

However, perhaps the best argument for the BBC’s continued existence came from The Christmas Invasion director, James Hawes…