Hey, remember when I went to a preview of the first two episodes of Chewing Gum?
The series has just won creator Michaela Coel a Bafta as a Breakthrough Talent. Yay! She took the chance to call for more women and more diversity in TV – especially behind the camera.
As the Evening Standard reported: “I guess I’d probably take this time to urge anyone from an ethnic minority background, women, people deemed as otherwise disabled, to get behind the camera, not just in front of it. To start writing the stories if you want them to be told.”
Given how successful Chewing Gum’s been, and how much I enjoyed it from the start, that would be A GOOD THING (trademark). Obviously we’ve not long lost Victoria Wood, who was just as prolific behind the camera as she was in front of it. Who’s going to step up and inspire the next generation of women to direct TV programmes?
It’s been a problem for a little while now, and Michaela picked a great time to speak up. In 2014, the Telegraph ran an article about the number of TV shows directed by women hitting a 40-year low. A report on the industry had just been published, and the findings weren’t great. The figure, pitiful as it was, had dropped by 12 percent between 2002 and 2012.
The lack of women directors was discussed on Woman’s Hour that same year, for all of 12 minutes: “Also discussed was the fact that the programmes women were allowed to direct often covered domestic and lifestyle topics, and whether or not deep-routed social issues are to blame for women not asserting themselves enough or even going for all the jobs that are out there.”
Dire spelling and grammar aside: ‘Allowed’ to direct? Women not asserting themselves enough? Are we actually victim-blaming female directors here?
Until I started looking into this, I didn’t even realise classic comedy puppet show Spitting Image had a female director. Beryl Richards has won two Baftas of her own. She’s now the chair of the Directors UK Women Directors Committee. And she didn’t even have to sing The Chicken Song.
Directors UK is running a campaign to reach 30 percent female director representation on original shows by next year. Most of it involves lobbying and sending repeated emails until the message gets through. A new partnership with the BBC is going to be mainly research So far, so sluggish. Unsurprisingly, Channel 4 – which broadcast the first series of Chewing Gum on E4 – has already brought out a diversity charter.
As yet, there are few clues as to whether all this campaigning will pay off. But it looks awfully like someone fitted a glass ceiling above the director’s chair.
