Writing for television - a dying craft?

FAKE CARMODY

never watch BBC :D

The first episode of Bonekickers might well have been the worst thing I have seen on TV for a good five or six years.

I was reading Andrew Collins' book (I had one second to grab at the bookstore, and knew it was lame the second I bought it. Went back and got the Iggy Bio as well, anyway close bracket carry on) and he had a spate of writing scripts for Eastenders. To be fair, he was always given a brief of what the episode was to feature, and the task was just to write the dialogue and scenes.

Still, I did get the impression that if AC was conceived as being qualified to write based on knowing the right people (or, the right people knowing him), it doesn't say much about getting in actually talented people to do the job.

To be serious, I don't really watch TV drama from this country - Hollyoaks is about as close as I get, and that's pretty strictly for shits and giggles. I think we do documentary well, and occasionally one-off or short serials are quite compelling, but I'd never even consider watching Eastenders or Holby City.

Also expensive but crap plays about old comics and old fascists

It's just that they seem to have lost - or never had in the first place because they're not been properly trained in writing - the ability to write coherent, believable screenplays with logical plots and good dialogue and without feeling the need to reference the same exhausted furrows of populist reference which makes virtually every TV show sound like one of those Channel 4 list shows run backwards.

And I'm in total agreement with Tom - no more "plays" about mediocre sixties/seventies TV stars please.

With the soaps, isn't it just that every character has to have an issue as every conceivable plotline has now been exhausted that all that's left is the lesser and lesser likely things?

Mavis Riley's wedding, where both the bride and groom were no-shows is a sort of example. It's unlikely but not quite inconceivable. Give it a 65% unlikely rating.

It gets to the point where anything that happens in real life has a 6 month stayback period before featuring in a soap...

How about just writing about their everyday lives, as used to happen in Corrie, instead of endlessly trying to Attract Younger Viewers with atrocious sub-Hollyoaks plotlines?

Society is in the gutter.

Who is this "Local Garda" anyway?

The Irish filth?

That reminds me of when Donal Mcintyre's undercover docu about Football Hooligans was remade, practically word for word, into (an) episode(s) of the Bill with Karl "Brush Strokes" Howard in the main role...

I'm enjoying LG's heartfelt reminiscences on the lovely place Northern Ireland was thirty years ago...

I was sent down a false route that Bonekickers was on Amazon Prime so I had to get a cheap dvd set of eBay to scratch the itch.

Haven't seen it since it was on and if anything it has dated considerably and I'm happy to report it is still as badly made (and especially the writing) as it appeared at the time and that I still absolutely love it.