From Issue 9, March 2002:

Series vs. serials

by TAPE's John Peek

Self-contained series storylines or serial elements is a difficult mix to get right. John Peek examines the trends to see which is proving more effective in the ratings war.

UK series drama is at something of a crossroads as we move into 2003 and I am not referring to the revived former 70s Soap that recently experienced another spruce up!

Over the past year, a number of contributors to ScriptWriter Magazine – including myself – have provided various takes on the genres of television fiction: Human Drama, Romantic Comedy, Medical Drama, the enduring success of Crime Drama and so on.  One article that particularly resonates is Jack Kibble-White’s intriguing piece entitled Precinct Copperas that appeared in the September 2002 issue.  This discussed the hybridising of the Precinct Cop Drama with Soap, something which has been seen in the various generations of ITV’s The Bill, as well as in more recent (and less successful) BBC equivalents like City Central and Merseybeat.

This blending of genres is also evidenced in Medical Drama in the BBC’s Holby City, which has now become a successful year-round phenomenon, delivering timeslot-winning audience shares for BBC1 well in excess of 30%.  I previously referred to London’s Burning, ITV’s long-running fire-fighter drama, as a Soap, arguing that this had contributed to its success.  However, having watched series 14 of that show unravel across last summer (my article in the September 2002 issue of ScriptWriter having been written before the series went on air), I have begun to rue my comments. More about that in a moment.

Moreover, it has spurred me on to examine the significant decline that appears to have befallen the traditional, long-running drama series with its strong, self-contained narratives and recurring characters, and to question whether the current direction of UK drama is actually in the best interests of either the form or the audience.

Certainly the conventional drama series is an increasingly rarefied beast in the fast-moving jungle of contemporary television. ‘Event’ television in all its various forms – such as reality formats, celebrity specials, short-run serials, two-part dramas and, of course, the seemingly ever-increasing episodes of peak-time Soaps, have all conspired with the increasing range of viewer choice to put more traditional examples of the once-weekly television drama under greater pressure than ever to deliver audiences.

With the media economy in turmoil, the heat is on to cut programming costs.  It follows that, since television drama is arguably the most expensive programming of all, it is the first to suffer.  ITV has experienced a significant downturn in advertising revenue which, coupled with the collapse last year of the ITV Digital platform, has meant that it has been forced to dilute the volume of drama on its schedules at any one time, hence the emergence in peak-time of exploitative reality shows like the….From Hell strand, which deliver reasonable audience levels and are much cheaper to produce.  It used to be that ITV could be guaranteed to have an original drama series airing at 9.00pm on at least four nights of the week.  Reviews of the schedules across the autumn at least would indicate that this has now dropped to around two nights per week.

The BBC, meanwhile, is comparatively better off at present thanks to its solid and bankable licence fee (at least until the next Charter renewal). It has attempted to capitalise on ITV’s current problems but it is also now funding many more channels and services out its revenue stream – e.g. the digital services BBC Choice/3 and BBC 4, News 24, CBBC and CBeebies etc. (not to mention the gamut of new digital radio services) – so the money has to go much further.

Of course, the counter to this is that UK television drama has traditionally been the ratings driver for the mainstream channels.  Once series like Inspector Morse, A Touch Of Frost, Casualty, Peak Practice and Soldier Soldier could be relied upon to deliver peak-time audience shares in excess of 35%.  However, that is no longer the case.

At least part of the reason for this stems from the fragmentation that has occurred as a result of the multi-channel world in which we now watch television, which means that a very significant and continually growing segment of the UK audience now has access to more than just the terrestrial or over-the-air broadcast channels. 10 million homes out of 24 million are now ‘multi-channel’. Such a plethora of viewing choice inevitably means that audiences for even the most popular dramas on BBC1 and ITV1 are going to be lower now than they used to be. This also makes the job of launching new drama that much harder.

Not only are many of the new weekly dramas that make it to our screens failing to deliver the viewing levels that they used to, they are also losing a significant proportion of their audience during their run, or simply not attracting them in the first place.  By any measure, that is a major problem.

Let’s look at some examples. The following table lists the 14 new drama series (which for the purposes of this exercise I have defined as four or more episodes) that debuted in 2002 on either BBC1 or ITV1, i.e. dramas that are new and are not returning series. The slight exception is Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, but since it has off our screens for nearly a generation, it can hardly be considered as returning by any normal measure.  These have been listed in order of average audience share achieved (from highest to lowest):

Of the 14 new series listed in 2002, four can be said to have delivered audiences in strong numbers and averaged prime-time shares in excess of 30%.  Of these, the top of the pile is undoubtedly BBC1’s pick-up of the comedy drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, featuring the re-assembled cast of the former ITV series.  The result was a series that delivered a share average which was actually well over 40%, with no sign of decline and audiences of around the ten million mark (rare figures these days).

ITV1’s Foyle’s War could not match those numbers but it did enjoy increasing audience shares during its relatively short run, from around the 32% level up to 42%, indicating that audiences have taken to the wartime crime investigation series and boding well for the future.  BBC1’s Born & Bred was another Sunday night drama that delivered strong and consistent shares during its run, and looks set to do the same when it returns in 2003, while the thriller series, Spooks, certainly had a big initial impact.  Indeed the spy drama’s opening episode delivered an impressive audience share of over 40% (over nine million viewers), but subsequent weeks saw this drop to the low 30s for the rest of the series.

However, for the majority of the other debutantes last year, the picture was much less encouraging. ITV1’s high profile The Jury started by being very promising with shares in the high 30’s and audiences of around eight million, but by the fourth episode it has lost 3 million viewers.  BBC1’s star vehicles Being April (for Pauline Quirk) and Paradise Heights (for Neil Morrissey) also experienced significant audience declines during their runs, Paradise Heights losing three million viewers during the course of its six episodes (from around 6.5 down to 3.5 million).

At the bottom end of the spectrum, the Dublin-set romantic comedy Any Time Now and the Sally Phillips vehicle, Rescue Me, did not even achieve a decent sampling.

Admittedly Any Time Now aired in a relatively late timeslot on Thursday nights (10.45pm), but it was still totally beaten by ITV1’s alternative viewing reality docs, The Strongest Men in Britain, The Angriest Men in Britain, etc.

Rescue Me however aired at 9.00pm on Sunday nights but it could only generate audience shares of around 15-16%, equating to around 3.5 million viewers.  To be fair, it was partially up against Heartbeat on ITV1, which remains a top performer, but it was also beaten in the ratings stakes by BBC2’s offering of SAS Are You Tough Enough?

Equally dramatic was ITV1’s decision to pull the John Thompson vehicle Stan The Man just four episodes into its Monday night run, because of its poor performance, while its non-drama replacement, Journeys From Hell, delivered an audience two million higher.

There appears to be a certain pattern emerging in terms of which of these dramas are series and which are serials. It is difficult to be definitive because virtually all dramas have some level of continuing narrative strands that are important in terms of providing an ongoing level of character development and interest. However, I think that it is significant that series with a clearer and more defined element of closure per episode do tend to be grouped towards the top in share terms, e.g. Foyle’s War, Spooks, Ultimate Force and Wire In The Blood, with only Rockface in the sub-25% area. (I would argue that there are other reasons for this like the limited level of interest that tends to affect all climbing-related or outdoor rescue scenarios.)

So is this a pattern that shows any signs of influencing the performance of long-running series as well?  Well, again I would argue that there are clear signs that it is.

This is where I want to look at the drama I mentioned briefly at the start of this article: London’s Burning.

Cont. in Issue 9