Tales from the scriptwriter

Published: Friday, 22 June 2007, 5:47PM

Jimmy McGovern is one of the most important TV and film screenwriters to have emerged from the UK over the past 20 years. He is also one of its harshest critics. The man who created Cracker in 1993 sets high standards, but he believes that British TV still has a lot to learn. Especially from the Americans.
 
He told ITV.com: “Often if you compare American drama with our drama I think the acting in American dramas is often better. But also the sound quality is fantastic and it makes the pictures look good. We don’t do enough of that here.”
 
He emphasises that the best of British drama is on a par with America, though. “We have very good writers in Britain and they produce very good drama. One thing I tuned in to watch recently was Island At War. I really enjoyed and I forgot it was originally made for ITV.”  
 
Surprisingly Jimmy admits he doesn’t watch much TV. “The reason I don’t watch television drama is that I’ve been disappointed with it in the past. I know what I want to watch but it’s not for me to pontificate. But if something is poor you should say it’s poor.
 
“A lot of people might say my stuff is bad but at least I care. I’ve often said that what I write isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it is the truth to me.” 
 
The return of Cracker in 2006 was a big challenge for Jimmy. “When we made the last Cracker I worked so hard. I wasn’t on good writing form afterwards because I was on call all day and it got very tiring. I was pleased with the results, though.”
 
Harsh reality is at the heart of any McGovern script and it's easy to see why. Born into a working-class Roman Catholic family in 1949, Liverpudlian Jimmy was one of nine children. A series of dead-end jobs followed school and he found himself married with three children by the age of 23.
 
Searching for direction in life, he attended writers' workshops and trained as a teacher. But he became disillusioned with a system he felt was failing Britain's youth. Eventually he began to pursue writing more seriously and had some work performed in local theatres.
 
Jimmy worked as a scriptwriter for Brookside between 1983 and 1989 and turned in about 80 scripts for the groundbreaking Merseyside soap. Brookside established him as a professional writer and work followed for the BBC, including an award-winning play, Needle. Cracker followed and its success meant he was in demand and free to pursue new ideas.
 
More recently, Jimmy created and was the lead writer on a new drama series called The Street for the BBC, produced by ITV Productions. It was critically acclaimed.
 
It would be wrong to portray Jimmy’s work as unrelentingly harsh. As he once said: “I look around me and see crime, poverty, drugs and violence but I also see lots of love. I tell love stories.”