The Sweeney, Minder, Widows, all had a radical impact on the way television drama was produced. These famous tv series’s led the field in the shift from studio-based drama to the reality of location based films.
They were all made by Euston Films, whose reputation for making ‘Cinema for Television’ attracted producers like Verity Lambert (founding producer of Dr. Who for BBC) and Linda Agran( Poirot and Widows)
So, Linda invited me to London to direct the photography on Euston’s next major production, Prospects(12 x1hrs). This was to be a co-production, with Ch.4 making their biggest investment to-date.
I was thrilled to be asked to work for Euston Films. Certainly,it would break the London–centric phenomenon of London producers bringing their own talent from ‘down south’ to work on Scottish based productions – a practice that stillcauses friction today.
Angus Robertson: “The spirit of production quotas should be fully embraced to ensure a strong, sustainable future for the future of broadcasting in Scotland.”
Similarly, Ofcom said: “…channel 4 must, in the future, be much more open and transparent about its approach to commissioning and its impact on each individual nation”.
But I was placed in a dilemma for different reasons.
I had already directed the photography on the late Charlie Gormley’s first feature film ‘Living Apart Together’ starring B.A. Robertson, when he asked me to photograph his second ‘Heavenly Pursuits’ starring Helen Mirren and Tom Conti. Gary Parker had also asked me to photograph his first feature film called ‘A Girl in the Picture’ starring John Gordon Sinclair from ‘Gregory’s Girl’ fame. Three fabulous offers , but only Euston Films ‘Prospects’ was fully funded at the time .
History confirms that I would spend the next three months on the Isle of Dogs, as the wrecking ball demolished Canary Wharf and the bulldozers left nothing of the surrounding community. A community which had once been the haunt of the Kray Brothers and where Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes searching for Jack the Ripper was now only a bomb site – ready for the new financial centre.
2) So ‘Prospects’ take place in a tough, hostile, derelict, kind of world, in which two young lads, one black, the other white are trying to make their way. It’s a comedy-drama where all the boy’s efforts to make money fail, but it’s more than that; Prospects also dealt with many human issues of British society at the height of Thatcherism, including, unemployment, crime, poverty, regeneration, racism. There were metaphoric threads throughout portraying how the social, political and economic landscapes of Britain were changing.
Prospects was very successful and gained a cult following; the ratings being well above everybody’s expectations. The series was so popular that it earned a repeat network showing, in the nine o’clock prime-time slot on I.T.V.
That year I was director of photography on twelve hours of high-end film drama. Naturally I was disappointed that both ‘Heavenly Pursuits, and ‘A Girl in The Picture’ passed me by,but what a triumph that both Charlie and Gary got their films made in Scotland.
Read about this and many more stories in my autobiography:
‘Shaping the Shadows: A Picture Maker’s Story’ currently onstudent offer(£10) from The National Library of Scotland:
http://shop.nls.uk/shaping-the-shadows-2798-p.asp
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