Dear England playwright James Graham said he “may not have survived as an artist” if he “lived in a purely commercial environment” as he appeared in front of MPs to discuss the future of the BBC.
Graham appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (CMS) alongside The Rest Is Entertainment podcast host Marina Hyde on Tuesday to discuss the issues facing the broadcaster and what needs to be done to ensure its long-term success.
The Olivier award-winning playwright said: “If you are a commercial streamer, you view risk slightly differently – it is understandably about reaching the largest international audience to get the largest eyeballs.
“I celebrate this. It sounds like a bad thing, but there is still just about in this country, both in our arts and theatre section and in our media and television sector, the right to fail, and we should celebrate that so when, if I fail, and I have frequently, thank you for listing all the things I’ve won awards for.
“No one ever remembers the things I haven’t done that didn’t work, but it’s the places where it didn’t work that I learned the most lessons as a creative, and if we lived in a purely commercial environment I may not have survived as an artist, particularly an artist from a background where I wasn’t given the training or I didn’t have the safety net of a subsidy from my parents.
“I was allowed to fail and learn from that failing so that I can write a television drama.”
Graham, whose TV writing credits include Sherwood, Brexit: The Uncivil War and Channel 4’s Brian And Maggie, added: “My first ever play was supported by BBC Radio Nottingham.
“We got a small budget from them, they gave us lots of publicity and chats as we opened in Nottingham, and I got both the confidence in talking about it, but also the empowerment and some of the resources and the training to do that.”
He said the BBC do a “huge amount” of training, adding: “The drama programming budget at the BBC is under strain, and they probably are going to have to make cuts.
“I worry about that, because I think it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle with the thing that you’re best at in the world and most admired at in the world, and you’re making cuts because of what I consider to be unnecessary funding pressures.
“I think how you embed yourself in local communities, and particularly in the regions, is the only way that you’re going to get access to underrepresented, and particularly working-class talent.”
The CMS committee will gather the views from a full range of witnesses over the coming weeks in order to make recommendations to help shape the new royal charter.
The charter, which is due to come into effect in 2028, sets out the BBC’s public purpose and is the constitutional basis for the corporation, which is predominately funded through the licence fee, paid by UK TV-watching households.
The playwright was also asked about the BBC’s independence from government and ability to remain impartial – a point of contention for the broadcaster.
He said: “Everyone’s perception is going to be different, and that is the nature of the, I think, that is a symptom of the culture that we’re living in.
“Our frame of reference when we look at the world, has changed. It’s not for broadcasters anymore. We all live in 65 million different realities.
“It’s a really difficult problem in the modern world, that if you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing absolutely nobody.
“I’ve seen people on social media declare that they have cancelled their licence fee because of the BBC being ‘clearly so pro-Israel over Gaza’, and then the inverse countered it because of that.
“I don’t know how you solve that problem, except that impartiality to me is an aspiration. It will always slightly fall short because it’s run by human beings and human beings are flawed, but I don’t think we should make perfect the enemy of the good.”
The second part of Tuesday’s meeting will feature co-chairman of the Creative Industries Council Sir Peter Bazalgette and former Channel 4 chief executive Alex Mahon.
The session will also hear from programme maker Patrick Younge, who currently chairs the British Broadcasting Challenge, a group set up to promote discussion about public service broadcasting in the UK.
