Phil Redmond

[cwilson]

Phil Redmond is the most well-known drama producer in Britain, and his name is familiar in most households as the creator of the long-running children's school drama, Grange Hill, and the soap opera, Brookside. Redmond rose from a council estate childhood in north Liverpool to become a media celebrity and owner of a large private production company. As for most working-class children, a career in the media lay outside his reach, and in 1968 he left his local comprehensive school to train as a quantity surveyor in the building trade. However, by 1972 he had abandoned this, and had resolved instead to become a writer, and to take a university degree in social studies to help him in the task. The course had a profound effect on his career, and his writing and programs continually draw on forms of social observation.

The producer's career in television began as a scriptwriter for comedy programs, but his major breakthough came in 1978 when his proposals for a new children's drama series were adopted by Anna Home at the BBC. What set Grange Hill apart from other high school dramas was the program's realism and its interweaving of serious moral and social issues, such as bullying, teenage sex and heroin addiction into the story lines. The programme's unsentimental approach to schooling and controversial subject matter has frequently provoked complaints from pressure groups. Despite the objections, however, the series has always been hugely popular with young people and successive generations of school students have grown up with the programme and enjoyed exposure to the problems of the "real" world.

Redmond wrote over thirty episodes for Grange Hill in its first four seasons, but his ambitions were driving him towards becoming a producer in his own right and following up the opportunities created by the advent of the fourth terrestrial channel in Britain. He approached the Head of Channel 4, Jeremy Isaacs and David Rose, its commissioning editor for fiction, and succeeded in convincing them that they should adopt his proposals for Brookside, a twice-weekly soap opera focusing on social issues based around family life on a new private housing estate. The setting up of Channel 4 brought a new style of television company to Britain that operated by commissioning independent production companies to make programs. In 1981 Redmond secured a £4 million pound investment from Channel 4 to establish his own company, Mersey Television, and to begin work on Brookside. Much of the money was spent purchasing and fitting-out the real Liverpool housing estate that was to serve both as the production and company base.

The development of Redmond's soap opera is of considerable importance to the history of the British television institution. Since its launch in 1982, Brookside has provided Channel 4 with by far its most popular program, and has played a major role in establishing the viability of the channel. The setting up of Mersey Television in Liverpool to produce the program represents a considerable innovation, for it has created not only the largest independent production company in Britain, with over a hundred full-time jobs for the local work force, but has also significantly extended the opportunities for television production outside London. With his production base secure, Redmond has continued to maintain an anti-metropolitan stance and, going against the industry's received wisdom, has championed the cause of regional television.

Redmond has always contended that the audience of popular drama will respond positively to challenging subject matter. With Brookside he was to prove his point. After a slightly shaky start, the program's realist aesthetics, pioneering single-camera video production on location, and engaging major social issues such as unemployment, rape, drugs, and lesbian politics has won over an up-market audience group not normally interested in soaps. The program has in this way helped to raise the stakes of production thinking and has added a new seriousness to popular drama. So a new generation of realist drama programs, including top programs such as EastEnders and Casualty, have followed Brookside's example and explored contemporary social problems.

Redmond's success as a producer necessarily stems as much from his shrewd business instincts as his ability to generate creative ideas. The making of a soap opera has much in common with other industrial manufacturing processes, and Redmond's early training as a surveyor instilled in him a respect for the kind of strict budget control and resource management that underpins the whole Brookside operation. The permanent locations then do not just contribute to the realist look of the program, but are a way of reducing production overheads. He has been equally adroit in marketing the program and creating media events out of the dramatic sensations that are introduced into the storylines from time to time.

The producer's wider business activities provide a conspicuous example of the new entrepreneurial spirit that pervades broadcasting in Britain following deregulation. In 1991 he was at the centre of the £80 million consortium bid for the new ITV franchise in North West England, that had been held by Granada since 1956. Though the bid was unsuccessful the additional premises that had been acquired to substantiate it have strengthened the power-base of Mersey Television and enabled it to extend its production. In 1990 the output of Brookside was increased to three episodes a week. In 1995 Redmond successfully bid for a new youth soap opera, and Hollyoaks has been introduced into Channel 4's early evening schedule. Currently the annual turnover over the company is more than £12 million pounds.

Redmond is also active in helping to formulate new training policy for the television industry. He is particularly concerned with the vocational opportunities for new entrants, and as Honorary Professor of Media Studies at the Liverpool John Moores University he is helping to develop a media degree programme with close industry links.