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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/19/the-guardian-view-on-bodyguard-to-keep-making-brilliant-shows-the-bbc-needs-resources
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| The Guardian view on Bodyguard: to keep making brilliant shows, the BBC needs resources | The Guardian view on Bodyguard: to keep making brilliant shows, the BBC needs resources |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| It is a remarkable time for television. Between the TV channels, their on-demand services, the leviathans that are Netflix and Amazon, there has probably never been a more bewilderingly vast selection of quality drama to choose from. There’s almost too much to see: some viewers feel they can hardly keep up with the masterpieces that have seemed to come thick and fast, from Mad Men to The Wire and Succession to The Crown. This autumn the BBC is keeping its end up, too, with the Danny Boyle-directed Trust, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Killing Eve and, of course, Bodyguard, by Jed Mercurio, the screenwriter behind the addictive police procedural Line of Duty. | It is a remarkable time for television. Between the TV channels, their on-demand services, the leviathans that are Netflix and Amazon, there has probably never been a more bewilderingly vast selection of quality drama to choose from. There’s almost too much to see: some viewers feel they can hardly keep up with the masterpieces that have seemed to come thick and fast, from Mad Men to The Wire and Succession to The Crown. This autumn the BBC is keeping its end up, too, with the Danny Boyle-directed Trust, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Killing Eve and, of course, Bodyguard, by Jed Mercurio, the screenwriter behind the addictive police procedural Line of Duty. |
| Bodyguard, the sixth and last episode of which is broadcast this Sunday on BBC1, has been a phenomenon: appointment television when conventional wisdom decrees that viewers gather round the telly only for sport and The Great British Bake Off. Viewers who failed to clear their diary for episode four of Bodyguard, intending to catch up via iPlayer later, were duly punished. Spoiler alert: Mercurio defied the convention that some characters are too important to kill. Viewers learned from their mistake, and over a million more tuned in live for the following episode. In fact, the whole notion of the spoiler has been ramped up to a new level by Bodyguard. To avoid hearing about Mercurio’s devilish plot twists, viewers will have had to resort to elaborate contrivances – avoiding all social media, naturally, but also the coverline of last week’s Radio Times, which trumpeted the storyline from newsstands across the country. | Bodyguard, the sixth and last episode of which is broadcast this Sunday on BBC1, has been a phenomenon: appointment television when conventional wisdom decrees that viewers gather round the telly only for sport and The Great British Bake Off. Viewers who failed to clear their diary for episode four of Bodyguard, intending to catch up via iPlayer later, were duly punished. Spoiler alert: Mercurio defied the convention that some characters are too important to kill. Viewers learned from their mistake, and over a million more tuned in live for the following episode. In fact, the whole notion of the spoiler has been ramped up to a new level by Bodyguard. To avoid hearing about Mercurio’s devilish plot twists, viewers will have had to resort to elaborate contrivances – avoiding all social media, naturally, but also the coverline of last week’s Radio Times, which trumpeted the storyline from newsstands across the country. |
| Despite everything, though, these are anxious times for the BBC. Its director general, Tony Hall, laid out the problem in a speech to the Royal Television Society this week: brutally, the BBC increasingly lacks the resources to compete in this new drama golden age, notwithstanding the recent, controversial commercialisation of its production branch, BBC Studios. The Crown, for example – a lavish Netflix hit, made by British production company Left Bank Pictures, and on paper an obvious show for the BBC – was way beyond its resources. And headlines have proclaimed that Bodyguard’s international rights have been acquired by Netflix, leading to fears that a hypothetical second season could depart from BBC1. | Despite everything, though, these are anxious times for the BBC. Its director general, Tony Hall, laid out the problem in a speech to the Royal Television Society this week: brutally, the BBC increasingly lacks the resources to compete in this new drama golden age, notwithstanding the recent, controversial commercialisation of its production branch, BBC Studios. The Crown, for example – a lavish Netflix hit, made by British production company Left Bank Pictures, and on paper an obvious show for the BBC – was way beyond its resources. And headlines have proclaimed that Bodyguard’s international rights have been acquired by Netflix, leading to fears that a hypothetical second season could depart from BBC1. |
| The biggest drain on the corporation is that it must carry the cost of free licences to the over-75s, a duty imposed on it by George Osborne when he was chancellor of the exchequer. By 2020, that will cost the corporation £750m a year. To put that in context, British public-service broadcasters between them spend only £2.5bn on content each year – which is, of course, peanuts compared with Netflix’s annual budget for content of £8bn. The BBC has the chance to review the over-75s situation in 2020. It could decide, for example, to means-test the fee, so that the better-off viewers pay. But that could prove too costly to the BBC, both in practical and political terms. | The biggest drain on the corporation is that it must carry the cost of free licences to the over-75s, a duty imposed on it by George Osborne when he was chancellor of the exchequer. By 2020, that will cost the corporation £750m a year. To put that in context, British public-service broadcasters between them spend only £2.5bn on content each year – which is, of course, peanuts compared with Netflix’s annual budget for content of £8bn. The BBC has the chance to review the over-75s situation in 2020. It could decide, for example, to means-test the fee, so that the better-off viewers pay. But that could prove too costly to the BBC, both in practical and political terms. |
| So what? The quality of TV has dramatically improved, after all, and that is the main thing. But that position would be shortsighted. The Crown notwithstanding, very little of Netflix and Amazon’s material is made about, and in, Britain. If the UK wants to communicate something meaningful about itself, both to its own citizens and to viewers overseas – surely an important consideration after Brexit – it really needs the BBC to hold the centre of a public-service broadcasting landscape, one in which the small, the quirky, the unexpected stories as well as the big thrillers and the pitch-perfect costume dramas can flourish. | So what? The quality of TV has dramatically improved, after all, and that is the main thing. But that position would be shortsighted. The Crown notwithstanding, very little of Netflix and Amazon’s material is made about, and in, Britain. If the UK wants to communicate something meaningful about itself, both to its own citizens and to viewers overseas – surely an important consideration after Brexit – it really needs the BBC to hold the centre of a public-service broadcasting landscape, one in which the small, the quirky, the unexpected stories as well as the big thrillers and the pitch-perfect costume dramas can flourish. |
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