RTS Programme Awards 2021

The judges said: “This is presented to a screenwriter whose work over the last twenty years has taken television drama to places it’s never been before, explored themes never explored before, and – more than anything - told stories never allowed before. That writer is Russell T Davies.

Russell is one of the greatest dramatists of his generation, a writer who – as he put it himself – writes about “the big stuff…the stuff that makes you laugh, the stuff that makes you cry”. And perhaps it’s the epic nature of what happens to the characters in his shows that’s made his work so loved by critics and audiences alike…most recently, of course, with the sublime It’s A Sin on Channel 4.

Russell grew up in Swansea in a house full of books, but it was what came out of the television in the corner of the living room that intrigued him most. As a young teenager, he devoured a wonderful mix of Seventies television dramas – Play for Today, I Claudius, Rock Follies, the works of Dennis Potter. Oh, and one more show, every Saturday teatime on BBC One…but more of that later.

His passions propelled him to the West Glamorgan Youth Theatre, where he fell in love with the craft of communicating stories to an audience. Youth Theatre took over his life, and it was here that he first began writing short plays of his own. After university he knew that theatre – or even better, television – was what he wanted to pursue. The BBC turned him down three times for their graduate traineeship, but by chance he managed to land a job on the children’s show Why Don’t You? produced by BBC Wales. He was on the right path…and from that moment on, he never looked back.

His early work in children’s television included a turn as a storyteller on Play School and writing jokes for the Chuckle Brothers; I’d love to know which jokes – maybe he’ll tell us one later? He directed, wrote and produced all kinds of children’s television at the BBC. In the early Nineties Russell moved to Granada Television as a writer on Children’s Ward. He became producer of the show and wrote an episode about a teenage boy with HIV, contracted through a blood transfusion. A later episode, also written by Russell, centred around the grooming of children by paedophiles in online chat rooms. This was on Children’s ITV, at four thirty in the afternoon in 1994. It won him his first Children’s BAFTA. It was – and still is – brave, ground breaking television…early period Russell T Davies, and a taste of things to come.

Living in Manchester during the Nineties led Russell to his breakthrough work, Queer As Folk, in 1999. He was writing mainstream shows for Granada by day - and by night immersing himself in the city’s exploding gay culture. At its epi-centre was Canal Street…on Canal Street the lights were bright, the music was great, and the bars were full of vivid characters - each with a story of how their lives had brought them to that place. Why was no one putting these characters on television, or telling their stories, he wondered?

Russell realised that if anyone was to do so, it should be him.

Queer as Folk put a hidden truth on television: young British men leading gay lives, lives that were raucous and messy, difficult and loud, loving and glorious. Quite incredibly, we’d never seen this on television before in the three decades since homosexuality had been de-criminalised. For a dramatist, it was unexplored, rich, open territory. Territory Russell made his own.

Working alongside his long time producing partner Nicola Shindler, Russell followed Queer as Folk with Bob and Rose in 2001 – the story of a gay man who marries a straight woman and has a child with her. The following year brought an exploration of themes around faith in The Second Coming starring Christopher Eccleston, a work described by Russell’s contemporary Paul Abbott as “a television masterpiece”.

In 2004 Russell wrote Casanova, a revisiting of the notorious lover’s memoirs starring David Tennant…and its debut on BBC Three broke the channel record for first run drama. And it was at this time that Russell realised an ambition that he’d harboured for years, all based on an obsession that went right the way back to that childhood living room in Swansea: he got the chance to reinvent Doctor Who. He’d been handed the keys to the televisual sweet shop.

For five years from 2005, the colossal machine that Doctor Who became more or less took over Russell’s life… As showrunner and chief writer he re-imagined it for a new century and a sophisticated new audience, building epic stories around big, technicolour characters - adding special effects and production values that set new standards for fantasy drama. He allowed his imagination to run riot. But more than anything, he brought warmth and heart to Doctor Who, refashioning the show as a drama for the whole family to watch on Saturday teatime – and even in primetime on Christmas Day. With spin off shows like Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures running alongside it, Doctor Who became a global hit that continues to enthrall audiences to this day.

Russell returned to writing about gay themes in his next major work - Cucumber, for Channel 4, and then in 2016 he adapted and produced what he called “the gayest ever Midsummer Night’s Dream” for BBC One. Two years later came the multi-award winning A Very English Scandal, which explored the passions, secrets and betrayals in the relationship between Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott through the Sixties and Seventies.

The potential consequences of the rising tide of populism in Britain were examined in Years and Years in 2019. Russell time-travelled the Lyons family of Manchester fifteen years into the future, landing them in an era of mind-bending new technology against a backdrop of political and economic turmoil. And then in 2021 came It’s A Sin, Russell’s empathetic rewind to the arrival of AIDS in the Eighties…a timely story about how a mysterious new virus unleashed great waves of fear, denial and death. For a younger generation of gay viewers in particular, it was a genuine eye-opener – did this really happen like this? An older generation remembered…”yes, I’m afraid it did.”

It’s A Sin, in some ways, is the ultimate Russell T Davies drama – a story of characters looking for their truth, and dealing with the consequences. As Lucy Mangan in The Guardian wrote, “He creates real, flawed, entirely credible bundles of humanity and makes it clear, without even momentary preachiness, how much they have to lose.”

That’s what Russell does. He unflinchingly writes about the truth of real life, gives his characters wit and authenticity and his shows undeniable integrity, then defends them to the hilt. As he once said, “If it’s true, then it’s true. And you can never back down from that."