Births, Marriages and Deaths (BBC2, 1999)

Abstract

Births, Marriages and Deaths (BBC2, February–March 1999) was a four-part serial made by Tiger Aspect Productions, an independent production company set up in the late 1980s. One of the stipulations of the 1990 Broadcasting Act was that both the BBC and ITV should take at least 25 per cent of their programmes from independent production companies and it may be no coincidence that, with a new attitude and approach to drama production, independent production companies were in the forefront of new stylistic developments in the 1990s and 2000s. Like World Productions, Tiger Aspect capitalised on the opportunities opened up by the introduction of a 25 per cent quota and, after making factual programmes in the early 1990s, started producing drama from the mid-1990s.