Iannucci: BBC should launch premium channel to rival HBO

Armando Iannucci

As reported by The Guardian today:

“The award-winning writer and producer behind The Thick of It and I’m Alan Partridge has called on the BBC to launch a subscription channel to fund rivals to ambitious US shows such as The Sopranos and The Wire.

“Uninhibited by the need to placate advertisers, the subscription networks have been given the opportunity to experiment, but on a big rather than timid scale… let’s take a wager that the BBC brand is the best TV brand in the world, that people will pay for that brand,” he said.”

This could potentially be amazing, and I would pay for it. There’s not much drama on British TV just now that rivals stuff like The Sopranos or The Wire – in fact, I can’t think of anything. State of Play is the only thing that occurs to me, and that was 5 years ago.

Imagine if you had several State of Plays a year, each lasting 13 episodes. I’d like to think there are British writers and directors out there who could create the British version of The Wire – and by that I just mean any show that’s brave, detailed and patient. It doesn’t have to be about the police – it doesn’t have to be about anything.

We can already hold our own against HBO comedy – I’d take The Thick of It and Peep Show over Curb Your Enthusiasm and Sex and the City – but the new channel could be a platform for this kind of (sorry) intelligent comedy. You could commission that second series of Nathan Barley Charlie Brooker always goes on about, and anything that Chris Morris wants to do. Track the Edinburgh Fringe for weird, exciting new voices in comedy, and give them a small budget and an hour to produce something that could be amazing.

BBC0?

P.S. If this were to happen, the producers would have to avoid just commissioning dozens of shite period dramas – but of course they wouldn’t avoid it, because it’s all they appear to know how to do. There seems to be a blind spot in British television that presumes if people are dressed nicely and talk in old-fashioned proper, then the show they’re appearing in is high-quality drama. This is not the case. Anyway. Please do this. And put Armando Iannucci in charge, and knight him.

State of Play (picture from the BBC site). More of this, please.