· Talkback Thames TV Studios (UK)

Jonathan YOUNG, Executive Producer The Bill - Talkback Thames TV Studios UK Good afternoon. As with the other speakers I would like to start off by thank you all very much for inviting us here. Talkback Thames is owned by Freemantle Media and we have a number of conferences that we go to within Freemantle Media to try to encourage co-operation within our company. We make a number of the Soko brand shows in Germany, we make La Squadra in Italy.

I have been with the company for three years and we are just beginning to communicate with each other on a regular basis. Although I can see a myriad of problems with working together within Europe, I feel very strongly that it is something that we should be looking to do. I also think there is a real future in it.

I think a lot of what Jackie and I are going to say will have been covered earlier on. We have prepared a presentation which I am going to go through it and as I go through it I hope I can reference some of the notes I have been making as we have been going through to try to pool some of these ideas together.

It is important, before we talk about fraud from our point of view, that we talk a little bit about The Bill. The Bill has been going for 24 years and is the longest-running UK cop show. We do two one-hour episodes a week and we transmit at 8 p.m., so it is a prime-time show, and we currently average a 25% share. The share has been going up this year but as with all terrestrial broadcasters in the UK, the share is generally on the slide. We will talk a little bit about that later.

It is very important for us to be mainstream and we need a popular audience. Longevity for the show is really important for us, so we are constantly discussing ways of reinventing the show but remaining true to our core audience.

So it is clearly a successful show. Let us look at why cop shows work. We have talked a little bit about this today already. Cops are heroes and television viewers want to identify with characters who can do heroic things. Cops are heroes because if anybody is in trouble, the first person they want on their side is a cop. For cops, the stakes are high, partly for themselves as police officers, they get into dangerous situations. The stakes are very high for the members of the public that they deal with as well.

Cops interact with everybody in society. In London, where our show is set, it is absolutely credible for one of our cops to go from an MP or a lord to a homeless person on the street within one day, and I think that people understand cops can reach every person in society.

Cops face human dilemmas in every decision that they make. Of course, cops have protocols, within which they operate, but the decisions they actually make when they are facing members of the public define what kind of society we live in. By that I mean issues like racism, sexism are to do with how the cops interact directly with members of the public. This is drama and conflict. Detection is storytelling. The police process absolutely mirrors the narrative process that we go through when we are looking at a story. Quite often, our lead cop will walk into a situation and say ‘What is the story?’ That is because he wants to know who the characters are, what has happened, why it has happened and who it has happened to? Where did this story start, where is it going, where is it going to end?

It is really interesting. When I first started working with Jackie on the first cop show I did, I realised that the process of an investigation that cops go through when they are breaking down a crime absolutely mirrors the process of storytelling that we go through when we break down a story.

So cop shows work, but we are all in broadcasting facing a very difficult and changing climate. When The Bill started there were four channels, and there are now 250 channels available to the audience in the UK. From the work I have done with our European partners, I think Britain is slightly closer to the American model, but undoubtedly Europe will start to get more and more channels. This really puts the squeeze on the mainstream channels.

That has led to a lot more cop shows. One of our script editors did an exercise going through the listings on Saturday at 8 p.m. and he counted 20 cop shows available at one time for the audience in a multi-channel environment. So that puts a lot of pressure on us, understanding what our show is.

The terrestrial audience shares are declining. There is nothing we can do about this as the Internet penetrates more and DVD sales penetrate more and as digital accounts for a bigger share of the viewers. It is a bigger share of the really attractive viewers to advertisers as well. The squeeze is put on us but the pressure on us is not only to not slide but to see how we can recapture some of that lost ground. We are spending a lot of time looking at how the marketplace works and budgets are being driven down because the advertising pound or euro is being more thinly spread, and we have less money year on year to make the show. In an inflationary environment we have to look for clever ways of doing that.

I wanted to mention one of the clever ways of doing that might well be co-production. I think that is one of the things that make me feel that we have got to find a way of making these co-productions work. If we can double the money we can make better shows.

What do we need to do? We need to work harder to grab the audience. There is a lot of work that we do now on The Bill to make sure that our show is exciting and right up on the pace with the audience. You have to shout louder. By this I mean I, as a producer, am encouraging writers, storyliners, publicity, casting and everybody on the team to think of what we can do to make the show bigger and make it have more impact.

You have to be distinctive. It is a very crowded marketplace out there. One of the criteria we use when we are looking at the show, and I think anybody who has a flipper in a multi-channel environment will understand what I am saying, is that as you flip through the channels and land on our show, you need to know it is our show. We reckon the audience probably samples shows, giving it two or three seconds before they flip on. In those two or three seconds, any two or three seconds out of our show, how do you make the audience know that they are watching The Bill and getting them to stick with you?

I think a lot of that is to do with understanding the format, the thing that makes your format distinctive. So for us, that is a very clear proposition. Our show is about ordinary cops on the beat in London, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The other thing that distinguishes our show from most other shows in the UK is that it is from the police point of view. We never let the audience see anything that our police do not see.

These are rules that were established when the show started. We have discussed endlessly whether we should bend these rules, but every time we start to nudge towards that, we realise we are destroying the central proposition.

We need to work really hard to make an emotional connection. The audience needs to care about what it is watching. I am pretty sure this does not necessarily mean a high body count, but life and death is the biggest emotional stake. If it is not life and death, how are you going to get the audience to care in this crowded marketplace?

You have to have a universal experience. If your ideas are too niche, it is going to alienate the mainstream audience. There is a role in broadcasting for very niche ideas on niche channels, but on mainstream channels you need mainstream ideas. We need to work hard to keep the detection exciting.

I had a discussion with a broadcaster when he was defining what he felt the channel was. He said to look at what sells newspapers, and if you look at the newspapers in Britain, the headlines, it is the stories like murder, rape, bullying in schools, infidelity, sex, which sells. There are custody battles, kidnap. It is not all life and death but these are things which really affect the audience. They are subjects where you know you have an emotional charge when you see these words.

This is going to be a problem with fraud. Fraud is deliberately not on that list. If we are looking at how we do stories about fraud, we absolutely have to find a way of giving it that electric emotional charge that you see, that you get, when you see those words on screen. Newspapers grab attention and they are sensational. The one thing they have that I think the public recognises by and large, is that they are believable, based on real events.

The real challenge for us at The Bill is that we are a drama which has been going for 24 years. We need to keep our feet on the ground. We need to be real and we need the audience to believe us. We have to come up with new ideas the whole time.

The way we do that is by talking to the police. We have got three retired police officers with us at The Bill all the time, we have got a full-time research, a full-time medical adviser, and then we bring in experts as and when we need them for stories.

So I asked a researcher just the other day to list a couple of people that she was talking to at the moment. So we are talking to the head of the child abuse investigation at the moment; child exploitation and protection centre; scene of crime officers, which we talk to on a regular basis; explosive experts; criminal barristers. This is a listing of people involved in the stories that we have got on at the moment, but we talk all the time to experts and we listen to our audience.

I think the audience is the best way of us judging whether we are on message or not. We go out twice a week and get pretty instant feedback. We get feedback on the Internet, we get feedback through broadcasters’ duty logs and we have a mailbag. If the audience finds what we are doing unbelievable, you think you are probably in trouble and you need to rein in your melodramatic impulses.

This is not a limitation for us. The truth is stranger than fiction. The experts will give you something that is more interesting than you can invent. I was talking about this during the break, as writers like to think that their imagination is unfettered, and if they were free they could go into exciting and new places. Some can but the truth is, when you analyse what writers come up with, if they have not talked to the experts you will very quickly find that it is actually an idea they have got from another television show.

If your television show is going to have authenticity and feel real, you really need to talk to talk to the experts, which is why we have Jackie Malton with us full-time on The Bill and in development. Jackie is going to talk a little bit about herself and her background. She is a retired police officer.

- London Metropolitan Police

Jackie Malton, Advisor to Talkback Thames TV, former Senior Officer of the Metropolitan Police Thank you very much indeed, Jonathan. My name is Jackie and I was, in a previous life, a Detective Chief Inspector in the Metropolitan Police. I also say that what I loved about being a police officer was that I was voyeur. What was fantastic about being a police officer is witnessing the messiness of the human condition.

The messiness of the human condition is what storytelling is all about. Way back in 1991 I was one of three female Detective Chief Inspectors in the Metropolitan Police, a very male-dominated culture. There was a famous writer in England called Lynda La Plante who wanted to write a drama about a female Detective Chief Inspector, and that drama was called Prime Suspect. It starred Helen Mirren and that programme has gone on to be very powerful in terms of television fiction globally. Lynda La Plante did all the research with me for that character.

It was a little bit like a catharsis, a little bit like going to therapy every week, to tell her what it was like to be in a male institution, and being a very lone female voice. I also say that I was one of the first officers, I think, to be in the Serious Fraud Office when I was a Detective Inspector. I was in the Metropolitan fraud squad, which I must say I did not like at all.

The reason I did not like it was that there was this attitude that people had who committed fraud that they were not really a thief. My experience of people who commit fraud and economic crime is that they are thieves. They thought it was a little bit of a grey area and I found that very interesting. The people I arrested were fascinating in themselves and, by being a voyeur, I was interested in that kind of person who committed that kind of crime.

A lot of those people were professional and male. Very few who committed the crime were professional and female. When I left the police service, doing Prime Suspect and subsequent television shows gave me that appetite for create storytelling. In my short presentation today I would hope that my purpose of talking to you is to appeal to the creators within you. You need to have somebody who will kind of spill the beans.

Jonathan mentioned that there is a detective principle in the storytelling of the drama and the process and the logic. Basically, what you do need to make the character authentic is someone who is willing to spill the beans. That is, in OLAF you just do not sell the good things about you all. You have to tell some of the darker things about you and be open. One of those things about being open is talking to the script writers. They are the ones who will make that process, if you like, and turn it into drama.

We are not a police documentary. It is not a documentary about OLAF. It is fiction and it will be appealing to the audience. We have already spoken today about emotion, about identification, about how the audience will deal or identify with the hero, the protagonist, and of course our antagonist. One of the things I have learned in drama is to make your antagonist likable as well as your protagonist is likable. My favourite word is verisimilitude, which I cannot even say now, and this applies to the protagonist, a core sense of truth and belief about the character, and of course their vulnerability, which is very important.

Often this character is complex, as with Tennyson, and at war within themselves. They are consistent, as the previous speakers spoke of, but there is a heart within the range of emotions. They are surprising, fresh and authentic in the moment. Define who the character is and do not let the character bleed into something else. Go to the edge of the abyss with your character, let them fly close to the sun.

In drama we expose and tolerate the messiness of the human condition. Humans in a constant changing flux, and change is what we know best about ourselves. We have to appeal to the human-ness within all of us. Make friends with your shadow, own the dark side of yourselves. Our inner conflicts drive our relationships, our relationship’s conflicts drive our external conflicts. We must look at all of those issues about ourselves.

The world at work is a family. When I was a police officer in the Metropolitan Police, when I joined in 1970, obviously most of you were not born then, but in 1970 it was perceived to be – and my experience was – it was a dysfunctional family trying to get better. In 1985, when I was in the fraud squad, and 1992 talking to Lynda La Plante, I had that whole sense of betrayal about talking to a writer about the Metropolitan Police and my experience within that Metropolitan Police, the feeling I had that I was disloyal to the organisation but loyal to my own soul. Little did I know that there would be a conference here in 2007 talking about fraud and TV fiction, which is absolutely fantastic. I was a lone voice.

I would like to show you a little video, and in that DVD there are a number of things. One of them is about using your city as a character. This city we are in now is absolutely beautiful. I have never been to Vienna before but for all the countries that you come from, use your city as one of the characters, especially in economic crime. The city of London is beautiful, so use it.

Also in this video, what it will show you is what we have done from The Bill, taking clips from The Bill to show the city of London. I am also showing you a little clip from a documentary when an undercover police officer works as a fraudster, and he identified himself with a fraudster. It is a little interview with him, and it is interesting about his observation. There is also a little bit of Prime Suspect. Thank you very much.

[Video clip played]

Jonathan YOUNG I just wanted to round this off by talking specifically about fraud. We make drama and we have a lot of advantages over documentaries. We have to be believable but we do not have to be literally truthful. Dramas tend to rate higher than documentaries, dramas can create big characters and we can be really bold with the literal truth. We can pull together strands from different real stories to create ‘what if?’ scenarios, such as what if this were to happen? We can really appeal to a big broad audience.

Fraud is complex. It is outside the headline titles I put there. Clearly if we were literally going to do something about fraud, you have to look at how you package it so you get it within a world where there are emotional connections. Almost certainly it would involve some of those other headline cases, there is bound to be some kidnapping or murder along the line.

How would we approach a show, specifically? What would we have to have as well as the drama? We would have to care about the perpetrator, who is doing the fraud, and why they are doing it? Are they in debt, are they being blackmailed? We would have to care about the victim. Jackie talked about fraud as a victimless crime. A victimless crime really is a hard sell for a television production company and for a broadcaster. We need to find out who the victims are and to breathe life into those victims.

There is a third person we need to care about. We need to care about the cop who is doing the investigating. The cop is going to be our way into this story and we need to create a character who is really, really compelling.

So how would I approach it? I think the first thing I would need would be a writer who is passionate about the subject. I am sure it is true of television throughout Europe, it is particularly true, I think, in England, that the writer is the character that sells the show. The broadcasters believe that if you have the right writer, you can attract the right talent. An exciting writer is the first thing and to excite the writer, you would need some way into the story. We will talk about that.

You need to be confident that you could create a character that could become iconic. This may also be part and parcel of casting. You would have to create a character that really could attract heavyweight casting. You need a unique point of view. That goes back to the thing that Jackie and others have mentioned. With the unique point of view into fraud, you have to tell us that is going to shock, surprise or entertain the audience.

If we are going to put fraud on TV and make it seem good and rosy, it is not going to be that exciting to the audience and it is going to look a little bit like propaganda. I would just encourage you to say that, you talked about the truth that was in the public interest and the truth that, by implication, was not. Really, all truth should be in the public interest, as far as we as broadcasters are concerned, even if it looks like it is getting you into trouble. Surely that is a good thing to do. You need to provoke a response, you need to provoke a debate and you need to put something in front of the public that is really going to excite them.

That is what we need to do as entertainers. If you want to get broadcasters on-side, between us we are going to have to find a story that is fresh, original and surprising. Thank you very much indeed for your time, we have really, really enjoyed being here. I hope some of this will be useful and lead to co-operation between yourselves and various broadcasters.

Jackie MALTON Way back in 1985 I was part of the Serious Fraud Office. Since then organised crime has grown and grown, and organised criminals have grown and grown. It is much more interesting, with these type of people, in 2007 since I dealt with organised crime. The criminals seem to be much more colourful and richer.

The other thing that is quite interesting about organised criminals today is that they are coming from a level where they are putting themselves in academia. They are going to university, learning about marketing, learning about the financial side of it and then going into criminality intentionally. I find that in itself fascinating.

I would agree that if I went to the Serious Fraud Office today I would probably find it much more interesting than I did in 1985.

A speaker Do you think it can always be translated into good films? I think it has enough for a good story.

Jackie MALTON It does have enough for good stories. That is why we are trying to appeal to the creators that are within you to be voyeurs, to make those detailed observations. It has been said today that some people will talk and just say how it is, but not particularly with much detail or observation. There are other people that will talk within any organisation, who will tell you much more.

We spoke to two police officers two weeks ago. One gave the party line and the other one gave the richness. That is the one you want, that is the person you need to talk to. The more that you observe about the people that you deal with, not just as investigators, the more detail that you get the more you give out which is colourful and adds texture.

You will always find those people within an organisation who are passionate about what they do but also passionate about the characters they observe. That is fascinating and that makes rich television. The people who want to make rich television about fraud are you guys. You are the ones who will create it, not us, because you live and breathe it every day. Therefore, if you want to make it then you have to do your parts in the process, and your parts in the process are to observe, be a voyeur yourself, be passionate about it and tell us. We will do the rest.