This week, the nominations for the British Academy Television Awards will be announced. There will be nominations for a range of TV craft roles, including directors, cinematographers, sound recordists and editors, as well as production design, hair and make-up, and costume;

Christa van Raalte

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This blog first appeared on the [Women's Film and Television History
Network --
UK/Ireland](https://womensfilmandtelevisionhistory.wordpress.com/2024/03/22/cinderellas-at-the-bafta-ball/)
website on 22 March 2024.
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This week, the nominations for the British Academy Television Awards
will be announced. There will be nominations for a range of TV craft
roles, including directors, cinematographers, sound recordists and
editors, as well as production design, hair and make-up, and costume;
there will also be awards for programmes and series falling into a range
of genres, with named members of the teams generally including writers
and producers. However, there is one category of contributor you will
rarely see or hear acknowledged: the line producers and production
managers who sit at the epicentre of every production. Their job is to
understand every aspect and facilitate the show's journey from script,
or pitch, to screen. They are the people who make it all happen but are
seldom noticed: the Cinderellas who never get to go to the ball.

Production managers, on the whole, are not an especially self-promoting
bunch, and the fact that they rarely get to bask in the public acclaim
awarded to their colleagues is something they are used to. What they do
take issue with, however, is a widespread lack of professional respect,
which too many of them encounter in their working lives. The negative or
dismissive attitudes they encounter are one reason why the industry has
struggled, over recent years, to recruit people into production
management roles and to retain the experienced production managers they
have.

[Our report, released this
month](https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/39530/), examines the
experiences of people working in production management roles in UK
television and seeks to identify the key reasons behind the production
management skills gap.

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Fig. 1: 'Where have all the PMs gone?', a report by Christa van Raalte,
Rowan Aust, Richard Wallis, and Dawid Pekalski.
<https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/39530/>
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Our participants told us that they often find themselves undervalued,
underestimated, and underpaid compared to equivalent roles in other
departments, with staff experiencing a lack of appreciation and respect
from employers and co-workers. Their invisibility at awards ceremonies
is frequently echoed in other contexts, including within the day-to-day
world of television work. Too often, their critical contribution remains
invisible to colleagues unless something goes wrong. Indeed, many of
their colleagues have only the foggiest idea of what it is they actually
do!

Participants further reported that they and their teams were overloaded,
under-resourced and expected to 'mop up' extra responsibilities without
any additional resources or compensation. Production management staff
were expected to work excessively long hours and to be 'always on',
resulting in a poor work-life balance and unhealthy lifestyle.

We found that these issues were facilitated and exacerbated by a
corrosive cultural divide between production management staff and the
more 'creative' editorial teams. This divide negatively impacted
effective programme-making and individual experiences of work in the
industry. We also found that this divide had a distinctly gendered
dimension, with some 85% of people working in production management
being women.

In this respect, production managers can be seen as heirs to the many
women described by Erin Hill in her history of the industry, the
patronisingly named 'script girls' and '\[for development\]-girls', who
historically took on roles in film production that were not attractive
to men, dealing with the endless, unrecognised support work that
'swirled around creative endeavours' (2016: 4-5). Like these women,
academic researchers have neglected production managers, with only the
occasional mention, even in scholarship focused on women's experiences
in the screen industries, again mirroring their invisibility at those
award ceremonies.

So, when you watch the BAFTAs or read the enthusiastic flurry of news
coverage and social media debate that surrounds them, please spare a
thought for the invisible folk, not on stage and often not even on the
guest list, without whom none of the creative input of their colleagues
would ever make it to the screen.

 

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**Dr Christa van Raalte** is Associate Professor of Film and Television
and Head of the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP), in the
Faculty of Media and Communications at Bournemouth University. She
researches working conditions and management practices in the UK screen
industries and has published a number of article and industry reports on
these topics. She has also published on issues of gender, age and
aesthetics in the Hollywood action film and narrative strategies in
complex TV.

 

 


This blog first appeared on the  Women’s Film and Television History Network – UK/Ireland website on 22 March 2024.   This week, the nominations for the British Academy Television Awards will be announced. There will be nominations for a range of TV craft roles, including directors, cinematographers, sound recordists and editors, as well as production design, hair and make-up, and costume;

CINDERELLAS AT THE BAFTA BALL

Irish TV needs a strong female detective or crime sleuth in the vein of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or Anne Cleeves’ wonderful character Vera on ITV1, starring Brenda Blethyn as Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumbria Police. It gets even better with Sally Wainwright’s creation, Happy Valley, set and filmed in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire.

Finola Doyle-O’Neill

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This blog first appeared on the [Women's Film and Television History
Network --
UK/Ireland](https://womensfilmandtelevisionhistory.wordpress.com/2024/01/05/desperately-seeking-an-ireland-based-female-tv-detective-created-by-an-irish-woman/)
website on 5 January 2024.
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Irish TV needs a strong female detective or crime sleuth in the vein of
Agatha Christie's *Miss Marple* or Anne Cleeves' wonderful
character *Vera *on ITV1, starring Brenda Blethyn as Detective Inspector
Vera Stanhope of the Northumbria Police. It gets even better with Sally
Wainwright's creation, *Happy Valley*, set and filmed in the Calder
Valley, West Yorkshire. Starring Sarah Lancashire as the eminently
practical police sergeant, Catherine Cawood, this pioneering crime drama
series is also co-directed by Wainwright. Added to this illustrious list
was the ground-breaking *Prime Suspect*, created by crime writer Lynda
la Plante, starring Helen Mirren as the complex and at times
unempathetic Jane Tennison, one of the first female Detective Chief
Inspectors, who rises to the rank of Detective Superintendent in
London's Metropolitan Police. The series was inspired by the real-life
experience of former senior police officer Jackie Malton, who allowed la
Plante an insider view of the rampant sexism within the London police
force. Stateside, it's hard to overlook the lasting impact of *Cagney &
Lacey*, the crime drama series crafted by Barbara Avedon and Barbara
Corday, which Avedon also directed.

What all of these aforementioned crime dramas have in common is that
these strong female detectives were created by women who knew their
characters and their terrain well, be it London, Northumbria, West
Yorkshire or New York. All aspired to create strong, relatable female
crime investigators, a cohort sadly missing on Irish television.

This is a surprise because in Ireland, just like in the UK, we have
top-notch female crime writers who understand the darker and penumbra
areas of Irish life. Their skills should be nurtured and honed by Irish
TV bosses on RTÉ and Virgin Media to adapt their best-selling novels to
the small screen. For example, Irish author Sinead Crowley's Detective
Sergeant D.S. Claire Boyle, in *One Bad Turn*, would make a gripping TV
lead detective; or indeed, Irish crime writer Jess Kidd, whose super
sleuth, Irish care worker Maud Drennan, is ideally crafted to embody a
female TV detective who is attuned to the nuanced nature of Irish
society.

That is not to say that Irish television drama has not had its own
recent golden era of strong female TV characters, most of which were
written by women. These include formidable females of family dramas such
as *Smother*, *SisterS* and *The Dry. *

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sizes="(max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px"}](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/the-dry-rte.webp)

Fig. 1: *The Dry *(RTÉ One/BritBox, 2022-)
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The latter RTÉ drama series was written by BAFTA-nominated Nancy Harris,
about her own experience of Ireland's complicated relationship with
alcohol. Northern Ireland actor Roisin Gallagher plays the very
relatable recovering alcoholic Shiv Sheridan, whose attempts to stay on
the wagon are simultaneously tragic and comic. Harris's script allows
audiences to focus on the female alcoholic, a figure historically
portrayed on Irish television as male and menacing. Notably, that
menacing alcoholic father is the end product of *SisterS*, starring
Sarah Goldberg and Susan Stanley, who created, wrote, produced and
starred in this insightful pursuit of a father who never fails to
disappoint. Lest we should forget also the international success of
shows like *Bad Sisters*, created by Sharon Horgan, and *Derry Girls*,
written by Lisa McGee, all highlighting the fact that Irish female
writers are eager to create complex, three-dimensional women who are not
afraid to show violence as well as tears. Nonetheless, women write all
these aforementioned Irish dramas, but **not one** is directed by a
woman. Why not?

This issue was addressed in an article called "Men get cameras, women
get clipboards" by Harrison Bennett in the December 2023 edition
of *Television Magazine.* Although this article primarily explores
gender disparity in factual TV, it also cites some interesting
statistics from a report by Creative Diversity Network based on its
six-year overview of Diamond data from 2016-17 to 2021-22. The report
found that among the "key creative and authorial roles of writer,
director and producer/director... the gender gap is widening". The
Diamond data shows that the disparity cuts across most genres, but stark
gender gaps exist from producer/director to director and series
director, where men dominate at 73%, 74% and 94%. Thus, the author
concludes the cliché that "men get cameras, women get clipboards" still
rings true. However, unlike RTÉ and Virgin Media Ireland, efforts are
being made by the BBC, Channel 4 and The National Film and Television
School to bridge that skills gap by launching a training programme for
female producers called Female-Self Shooters.

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Nonetheless, it is not all bad news for female creatives in Ireland. In
fact, on a very positive note, Ireland is one of the first countries in
the world to recognise the enormous contribution of Casting Directors.
This year, the Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) not only
established a dedicated Academy Chapter for Casting but also announced
the first IFTA Casting Director Award, which will be presented at the
2025 annual IFTA Awards. Notably, many of Ireland's top casting agents
are women. These include Louise Kiely (Emmy nominee for *Normal
People*, *The Banshees of Inisherin*) and Carla Stronge (3 times Emmy
Award Winner for *Game of Thrones*). The introduction of the Casting
Director Award in Ireland builds on the Irish Academy's honouring of two
Veterans of Casting with IFTA Lifetime Awards for Nuala Moiselle
(*Vikings*, *The Secret Scripture*) in 2007 and Ros Hubbard (*The
Commitments*, *Far & Away*) in 2018.

Finally, with the Irish government's recent extension of the Section 481
tax credit from €70m to €125m, Ireland is a paradisal location for film
and TV dramas. This will keep Irish casting directors busy as they seek
local and international acting talent for lead roles. It is hoped that
at least one of those roles is an Ireland-based female-driven detective
drama series written by a woman and, dare I say it, directed by a woman.
It's time to throw away those clipboards!

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Dr Finola Doyle O'Neill** is a Broadcast and Legal Historian at the
School of History, University College Cork, where she lectures on Irish
Film and Media History.

 


This blog first appeared on the  Women’s Film and Television History Network – UK/Ireland website on 5 January 2024.   Irish TV needs a strong female detective or crime sleuth in the vein of Agatha Christie’s
<em>
 Miss Marple
</em>
or Anne Cleeves’ wonderful character
<em>
 Vera
</em>
on ITV1, starring Brenda Blethyn as Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumbria Police.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

CINDERELLAS AT THE BAFTA BALL

DESPERATELY SEEKING AN IRELAND-BASED FEMALE TV DETECTIVE CREATED BY AN (IRISH) WOMAN!