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"I wanted to give a voice
to my generation, because they've never had one on television",
declares This Life creator, 29 year-old Amy Jenkins. " We've
seen ourselves reflected in music and magazines like The
Face and Sky, but not in TV drama."
Like her five main characters,
Amy read law at UCL, then became a trainee solicitor in
a City law firm. But she left after a year to pursue her
dream of becoming a scriptwriter. To pay the bills, she
sold jumpers in the Portobello Road and organised nightclub
'rave' nights - an experience which led her to being employed
as 'rave consultant' on an episode of Morse.
Amy was commissioned to write
This Life after sending samples of her work to World Productions
executive producer, Tony Garnett. "Although the basic concept
was already there" she explains, "they left it up to me
to create the characters and the feel of the thing, because
it was my world they were talking about.
"People in their twenties
today are different from the 20-somthings of ten or twenty
years ago. They're having to make their way in a much tougher
world and they're more interested in sorting out their own
lives than in saving society. But Miles, Anna, Milly, Egg
and Warren also embody the new mood of irreverence. They
take things more lightly than their equivalents of ten years
ago."
"This Life isn't a legal
show - it's about the characters, their friendships, their
relationships and the way they feel and behave at work",
says Amy. "We find out how they handle their cases and what
they learn about themselves when doing it - we never go
into the courtroom because the process is a human one rather
than a legal one. The law itself is cumbersome, out of touch,
irrelevant and often an ass."
"Our five main characters
may be lawyers and professionals but they're not afraid
to swear, take drugs, have a lot of sex and watch a lot
of football. They're into escaping but they're also into
finding themselves - they read self-help books, they're
interested in 'working at' relationships and a couple of
them get into therapy."
Amy admits that she based
quite a lot of This Life on her own experiences of London
house-sharing, though she now lives happily alone in Chelsea.
"I've been through the out-every-night stage," she confides.
"Now all I want to do is stay at home and write."
She thinks the five main
characters in This Life are played brilliantly. "The actors
became extraordinarily involved with each other, almost
as if they were living it for real."
Amy Jenkins' next project
is a feature film for the BBC about a northern girl who
goes to Paris to become a dancer at the Moulin Rouge.
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