David Agnew - Conditions of Use

Conditions of Use

When the original freelance scriptwriter was unable to accommodate fundamental changes requested by the production staff, and the production staff had to perform a major, last-minute rewrite themselves, conditions were ripe for the use of "David Agnew". BBC rules prevented the production staff from taking the screen credit without a time-consuming, bureaucratic appeals process, meaning that the quickest way for the project to continue under the BBC system was to offer a "false" writer. Sometimes production staffs were directly ordered by BBC management to use the credit.

Unlike the similar "Alan Smithee" credit for film directors, "Agnew" was not used in protest of the finished product. In fact, the original, freelance writer would have departed the project long before he or she could have objected to the episode as televised. Indeed, the actual writers of a "David Agnew script" — typically the producer, director and/or script editor — would ideally liked to have received credit for their work, had BBC rules permitted it.