Attachments is a crucial
plank in the channel's autumn schedules
and it's arguably the most exciting new
drama series to emerge this year. If
all goes to plan it should be the first
water cooler conversation-starter since
Big Brother. But no one in their right
mind would try to sell it on the names
of the cast, who are all young unknowns
- in some cases, fresh out of drama school.
In refreshing contrast to every other
'major new drama series' on TV this year,
Attachments has been trailed not on the
pulling power of its stars but on the
allure of, well, its drama.
That, and the fact that
it comes from World Productions, the
stable set up by TV drama potentate Tony
Garnett. If push comes to shove, the
hard sell on Attachments runs: 'From
the creator of This Life and The Cops.'
It's significant that the 'star' of Attachments
is the 65-year-old bloke who dreamt it
up and developed it.
The interview-shy Garnett
is a reluctant star. He carved his reputation
in the Sixties and Seventies with Cathy
Come Home, Kes and Law And Order. After
a demoralising Eighties in Hollywood,
during which he directed the feminist
cop flop Handgun and produced Earth Girls
Are Easy , he came home and got stuck
into making realistic TV drama again,
such as Between The Lines and Cardiac
Arrest. When This Life achieved cult
status in 1996, so did Garnett.
If producers are supposed
to be faceless, then executive producers
(Garnett's title these days) should by
rights be the hollow men of TV. But Garnett's
hard-won reputation as the small screen's
secret godfather comes partly from his
success as a kingmaker. He does not cast
stars in his dramas, he creates them.
There was a huge fuss last week over
a classified ad placed by director Roman
Polanski for an unknown to star in his
next film The Pianist, a $20 million
concentration camp story. 'Acting experience
not essential,' it ran.
Assuming Polanski finds
the 'sensitive, vulnerable and charismatic'
individual at the auditions on 30 September,
this will be a big break indeed for some
young hopeful. But being an unknown young
actor, especially in this country, must
be a miserable exis tence - made all
the more frustrating by trailers for
every 'major new TV drama'.
As ITV and BBC become ever
more like old-fashioned Hollywood studios,
putting stars under contract for headline-grabbing
seven-figure sums and then casting them
in unsuitable projects, all the good
work seems to go to the same relatively
small handful of established TV faces.
ITV now has its Famous Five: Sarah Lancashire,
John Thaw, David Jason, Robson Green
and Ross Kemp. The BBC has Nick Berry
and Warren Clarke. Add to these contract
players the ubiquitous Lorcan Cranitch,
Iain Glen, Timothy Spall, Pam Ferris,
Sue Johnston, Ricky Tomlinson, Pauline
Quirke, John McArdle, Trevor Eve, Amanda
Redman and Amanda Burton, and you've
got most of current British TV drama
covered.
A month ago, we saw Iain
Glen in the final episode of BBC1's Glasgow
Kiss on the Tuesday and Iain Glen in
the first episode of ITV's Anchor Me
the following Sunday.
In the same week BBC1 scheduled
a repeat of The Royle Family (starring
Sue Johnston) directly after crime drama
Waking The Dead (starring Sue Johnston).
Now, Sue Johnston is a terrific actress,
and can credibly transform herself from
a criminal psychologist to a sofa-bound,
chain-smoking cake shop assistant in
the time it takes for BBC's continuity
announcer to hand over from one programme
to the next - but such overexposure makes
the suspension of disbelief that much
trickier.
The danger of too many
familiar faces in star-led drama is that
the audience stops seeing the character
and starts seeing the actor - a state
of affairs that may please TV's ratings-obsessed
schedulers but which compromises an actor's
dramatic potential and homogenises his
or her portfolio.
Of course, stars have always
been the currency of Hollywood film studios,
and the top 'marquee names' - Tom Cruise,
Tom Hanks, Jim Carrey, Julia Roberts,
Harrison Ford - command a commensurate
degree of power as a result. American
TV is not far behind, with the stars
of big-hitters such as ER and Friends
demanding ludicrous per-episode sums.
Why? Because they can. The new wave of
British TV stars such as Lancashire and
Kemp may now be able to negotiate £1.3m
apiece, but this money is spread across
two years and many contractual hours
of television. For ITV to get its money's
worth it has to guarantee coverage of
its new signing, and for Lancashire and
Kemp to feel stretched as actors they
will want to try on a variety of different
hats.
The comparison between
TV and films breaks down on the question
of sheer airtime. Last year, Harrison
Ford was an internal affairs cop in Random
Hearts. This year he's a brilliant research
scientist in What Lies Beneath . If the
truth be told, he's Harrison Ford in
both films, but at least audiences had
12 months to forget he was a cop. British
TV audiences had just five days to acclimatise
from sports reporter to architect with
Iain Glen.
Ford brings us to Star
Wars. Still one of the world's favourite
films, it's easy to forget that it was
a cinematic This Life in 1977 - a major
new drama with a cast of unknowns. (It
was even a series, although nobody knew
it.) Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing
were, in minor roles, the film's token
'names', though hardly much of a pull
in the States. Lead actors Harrison Ford,
Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were virtual
nobodies at the time, but Star Wars was
sold as a story, as an experience, and
of course it made icons of everyone involved.
True, the low-profile casting occurred
mostly because George Lucas used up his
budget on models and wires, but the dramatic
effect was the same as when we first
'met' Egg, Millie, Miles, Warren, Rachel
and Anna on This Life in 1996. Thanks
to Garnett's tradition of casting the
untried and unknown, the viewer is forced
to engage with the characters.
It should be noted that
by the time of Phantom Menace, Lucas
had succumbed to the dark side of star
power, casting Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson
and Samuel L. Jackson - two of whom then
whinged about acting against blue screens.
You don't catch unknowns doing that.
If British TV drama continues
to operate on Phantom Menace lines, rather
than Star Wars, then Tony Garnett's enthusiasm
and commitment to young, untried acting
talent becomes ever more important. (His
ethos extends to writers too - neither
Cardiac Arrest creator John MacUre nor
This Life's Amy Jenkins had any TV 'form'
before Garnett nurtured them, and the
two series of This Life became a virtual
training camp for young directors.)
Attachments, set in the
dramatically unpromising offices of a
lifestyle website, may begin with a naked
man on a skateboard, followed by a lithe
couple shagging, but once the attention-grabbing
is over, it quickly settles into the
This Life/Cops groove: fluid camera,
naturalistic acting, lots of sitting
around swearing, and that illusion of
a docusoap. Very little happens, until
something important does, and that's
its magic. It seems that TV drama has
come full circle since Cathy Come Home.
We should be thankful for that.
Last week, as if to neatly
galvanise the Garnett Effect, BBC2 ran
a two-part special of The Cops. It is
not overstating the case to say it ranks
as some of the finest drama shown on
any channel all year - which, admittedly,
is not saying a lot set against the likes
of Waking The Dead, Anchor Me and Badger.
But it seems you have to take your gripping
homegrown TV drama where you can get
it in the 21st century, whether it's
a genuine triumph like Paul Abbott's
Clocking Off, repeats of This Life and
Prime Suspect, Ethel's death on EastEnders
or even the dinner-table confrontation
'episode' of Big Brother.
Unless an asteroid hits,
many of the previously unknown cast of
The Cops will be as deservingly famous
as This Life 's Jack Davenport and Daniela
Nardini this time next year. Maybe in
three years they'll be signed to ITV
for £1.3m, we'll all be sick of the sight
of them and... 'coming soon to Tuesday
nights - a major new, 10-part drama series
starring John Henshaw, Clare McGlinn
and Parvez Qadir'.
Attachments starts at
9pm on Tuesday on BBC2
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