BBC Television Drama - The Modern Era

The Modern Era

As of 2010, the current Commissioner of Drama at the BBC is Ben Stephenson. Working with Stephenson are: Head of Series & Serials Kate Harwood and Controller of Continuing (i.e. year-round) Drama Series John Yorke (who also acts as Head of Drama for the BBC's in-house production arm), with David M. Thompson of Film & Single Drama overseeing one-offs. Sarah Brandist and Polly Hill are the commissioning editors for independently-produced drama programming.

Having been Head of Serials from 1997 to 2000, Jane Tranter was made Head of Drama in 2000. Tranter's era from 2000–06 saw a return to longer-run episode series, with programmes such as Spooks being given longer second runs following successful debut seasons. Recent years have also seen a huge increase in continuing drama output, with EastEnders gaining a fourth weekly episode to add to the third added during the mid-1990s, and Casualty and its spin-off series Holby City (1999–present) turning from regular seasonal shows to year-round soap opera-style productions. These moves have been criticised in some quarters for filling the market with insubstantial populist dramas at the expense of 'quality' prestige pieces, although there have been several notable drama serial successes, such as Paul Abbott's State of Play (2003) and the historical drama Charles II: The Power and The Passion (BBC Northern Ireland - 2004).

Another move of recent years has been the regionalisation of BBC drama, in response to criticisms that the majority of programmes were made and set in and around London and the surrounding areas, with the BBC's central drama department currently being based at Television Centre in West London. As far back at 1962, the makers of Z-Cars had deliberately set their programme near Liverpool in the North of England to break away from the perceived London bias (although, ironically, it was shot in the BBC's London studios), and in 1971 an English Regions Drama Department had been established at BBC Birmingham headed by David Rose with a remit for making 'regional drama', gaining a major success with Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff in 1982. In the modern era, however, the separate BBC branches in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have their own drama departments with Heads of Drama who have autonomous commissioning powers, both for in-house production and co-production with or commissioning from independents.

Although some of these shows are purely for regional consumption, such as BBC Scotland's River City and BBC Wales' Belonging, many programmes networked nationally on BBC One and Two are made in 'the nations', with perhaps the highest profile being the current BBC Wales revival of Doctor Who. The larger English regions also produce drama productions of their own, with BBC Birmingham providing the detective drama Dalziel and Pascoe, daytime soap opera Doctors and anthology series The Afternoon Play for national consumption, for example.

From 1999 until 2006, the BBC also had a new in-house drama division, BBC Fictionlab, which specialised in producing dramas for the corporation's digital stations, particularly BBC Four. Notable Fictionlab productions for BBC Four included The Alan Clark Diaries (2003), a live re-make of The Quatermass Experiment (2005) and the biopic Kenneth Tynan - In Praise of Hardcore (2005). Several of these have later seen analogue transmission on BBC Two. However, in January 2006 the BBC announced that Fictionlab was to be disbanded, as the digital channels were now well established and no longer needed a specialised drama production unit.