How to Produce Comedy Bronze is a glorious blend of memoir and manual. It looks back on Jon Plowman’s 30-year career as a freelance producer and BBC Comedy impresario, and speaks to the next generation of aspiring TV producers with various learnings accumulated along the way.
W1A has enjoyed two successful series gently mocking its BBC paymaster and delighting audiences. But with government pressure on the corporation mounting, Writer/Director John Morton faces some tricky decisions as he prepares a third series.
“It will be harder to pretend that I don’t hope the BBC survives,” Morton told a packed RTS London Centre event, “W1A: the story behind the series”, at the end of January.
Writer/director John Morton explained to a packed London Centre event at the end of January that the show’s forerunner, London Olympics mockumentary Twenty Twelve, was initially poorly received by the BBC.
“Twenty Twelve had a bit of a bumpy start – it wasn’t always liked very much in the BBC,” revealed Morton. “When it went out and did okay the music changed from ‘We don’t think this is very good’ to ‘Can we have more of these wonderful characters?’.”
