Timewasters follows a London jazz quartet who reluctantly time travel to the 1920s, encountering a host of bizarre situations and characters.
Among the band is Nick (Daniel Lawrence Taylor), Jason (Kadiff Kirwan), Lauren (Adelayo Adedayo) and Horace (Samson Kayo).
From true crime to reality TV – and, increasingly, drama based on real-life events – duty of care to programme contributors is now a key topic across the production community. Recent controversies around Strictly Come Dancing have only emphasised further the importance of duty of care procedures.
That’s why the RTS hosted a timely “How to…” session to discuss the lengths producers must now go to in ensuring the best duty of care without compromising content.
How do we make entertaining and dramatic scripted and unscripted content, without anyone suffering in the process? Our expert panel delved into how to give the best duty of care on a production without compromising the content, while looking at past and present duty of care procedures, and what challenges lie ahead.
Opening the discussion, ITN CEO Rachel Corp said diversifying ITN had been hugely important for many years. She explained: “There are some great initiatives going on. I think everyone would agree that our newsrooms and our content are unrecognisable compared with not very long ago. But, clearly, there is stuff that needs to change.”
Lyndsay Duthie, CEO of the Production Guild of Great Britain, said: “You have to sell yourself. There’s no point staying at home… jobs aren’t going to come to you. You’ve got to get yourself out there.”
She admitted: “It doesn’t matter if you’re giving an Oscar-winning speech… or it’s your very first interview, it’s still nerve-racking.”
With more than 100 soon-to-be graduates in attendance, it gave them a chance to speak to employers and industry experts as they consider the transition from education to the workplace.
Fittingly for a venue that has just seen its club survive in the Championship with a last-day win over Hull City, the event was compered by Match of the Day commentator and RTS Devon and Cornwall committee member, John Roder.
More than 1,600 tickets were sold for the RTS Futures Careers Fair in Islington, London, in early February – a record number for an in-person fair. The fair welcomed close to 50 industry exhibitors, while at the CV clinic more than 350 attendees had their CVs tweaked by media professionals and 100 TV experts offered advice in the “ask me anything” area.
What does 2024 hold for the TV industry? Hosted by Katie Prescott, panellists Claire Enders, Dan Clays, Ash Atalla, Patrick Holland and Evan Shapiro discuss their 2024 TV predictions at an RTS event, from freelancing, to viewing habits, to the effects of geopolitical events and AI.
Panel
Paul Wells, series director of BBC One doc Soldier, and Mark Tattersall, executive producer of Channel 4’s Top Guns: Inside the RAF, discussed making the docs at an online RTS Yorkshire event last month.
For Top Guns, Leeds-based True North Productions took cameras inside Scotland’s Lossiemouth airbase and the planes policing Nato airspace. Tattersall, an experienced hand at making military docs – he worked on Channel 5’s Warship: Life at Sea – said the RAF wanted to “showcase what it did [and was offering] access to nearly all areas”.
After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, many companies worldwide issued statements of solidarity and support, and posted black squares on their websites and social media feeds. In the UK, the movement galvanised the TV industry. Broadcasters took stock of the sometimes paltry proportion of their output they were commissioning from black people. ITV announced a Diversity Acceleration Plan while Sky pledged £30m to support anti-racism and improve diversity and inclusion. As a result, there was an uplift in demand for diverse talent, on-screen and behind the camera.
