Drama queens: making television drama for women 1990-2009

Abstract

Women have been making popular television drama for the ‘female’ audience since the early days of television in the UK, yet it is only in relatively recent times that their contribution to daytime series and early evening soap has extended to the primetime ‘quality’ slot in the mid-evening schedule. As I have argued elsewhere, female producers such as Verity Lambert and Lavinia Warner played an important role in commissioning works focused on female characters' lives and experiences, although it was not until the early 1990s with Sally Head's production of Lynda La Plante's award-winning Prime Suspect (Granada for ITV, 1991–2006) that a female writer achieved critical and popular success in the traditionally ‘male’ genre of the primetime crime series.1 Since the 1990s, a number of what are now conceived of as ‘quality popular’ dramas created by female writers have achieved national and international acclaim. These include award-winning single, series and serial dramas such as Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (BBC2, 1990), Band of Gold (Granada for ITV, 1996), Fingersmith (Sally Head Productions for BBC1, 2005), White Girl (Tiger Aspect Productions for BBC2, 2008), Cranford (BBC Drama Productions/WBGH Boston, 2009), Small Island (Ruby Films and Television/AL Films for BBC1, 2009), and popular series drama such as Call the Midwife (Neal Street Productions for BBC1, 2012– ), Scott and Bailey (Red Production Company for ITV1, 2011– ) and Getting On (Vera Productions for BBC4, 2009–10). Most academic work on television drama and gender since 2000 tends to rely heavily on textual analysis and theorization, often focusing on issues of postfeminism in US ‘quality popular’ dramas such as Sex and the City (HBO, 1994–2004) and Desperate Housewives (Cherry Productions/Touchtone Television, 2004–12), or teen dramas such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Fox, 1997–2003);2 to date there have been few attempts to understand the ways in which female creatives, defined here as producers, writers and directors, influence the depiction of female characters and their issues and concerns on the small screen. Denise Bielby argues that if we want to understand fully the ways in which the symbolic content of the products produced by the film and television industries is gendered, attention has to move beyond textual analysis and theorization to include the material barriers that prevent women working in the industry from becoming equal producers of these texts with their male counterparts.3 Award ceremonies offer one way of assessing the contribution of female creatives to dramas that are considered excellent by their industry peer group. The contribution of female writers, directors and producers can be discerned from an analysis of the credits of nominated dramas at the annual British Academy Film and Television Awards (BAFTAs). This analysis encompasses the twenty years from 1990 to 2009, a period in which it is claimed that the ‘feminization’ of television has taken place, explained in part by the increasing power of female commissioners in major organizations such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.4