The Gossip - Sass, Sex and Stephen Poliakoff

A Noel Coward biopic is planned for BBC4

More arts and media gossip and whispers from Ben Dowell.

Have just enjoyed a sneak preview of Stephen Poliakoff’s forthcoming two TV dramas – and have also had a long chat with the great man himself.
The first, Joe’s Palace, is familiar Poliakoff territory  - a naïve young lad is given a job guarding a house which is kept empty by an eccentric and troubled billionaire (Michael Gambon), opening up all sort of secrets.
The second, Capturing Mary, was my favourite and was about the house in its heyday of the fifties and involves the manipulation of a young girl by an establishment figure (well played by David Walliams of all people) when the house hosted lots of parties thrown by Gambon’s father.
He’s a funny old sausage Poliakoff – he was very keen to defend himself aganst accusations that he gets a cushy ride from the BBC “(other writers have the same freedom, with budgets and creatively, people like Russell T Davies, Paul Abbott, Peter Morgan….”) when we spoke.
He’s also keen to point out all his Baftas and Golden Globes. “Success, to put it brutally, is rewarded,” he told me. And quite right too.


ITV1 has abandoned plans to adapt Andrew Davies adaptation of Joanna Briscoe's raunchy modern novel Sleep with Me as a two-parter, I can reveal.
Mr Davies has put the finishing touches to his script based on Ms Briscoe's erotic thriller, which was published in 2005 but it will now be a two-hour film rather than a two-parter of 90 minutes each - as had been originally envisaged. According to a senior source involved in the production, the decision reflects a change of strategy at the drama department. "ITV is beginning to fee that high end dramas like these are better served as films - A Room with a View which is coming out soon on ITV1 is self-contained and that seems the way forward now for ITV1 at least for the time being."
ITV’s decision also reflects its strategy of shaking up its drama output by wooing a variety of independent producers with the promise of higher budgets and "sassier" and more "contemporary" commissions.
The project, which has not yet been cast, will be made by Clerkenwell Films, the independent producer co-founded by actor John Hannah.  Sleep with Me tells the story of a love triangle between a literary editor on a national newspaper, his academic wife and an interloper called Sylvie.


Brit creative Susannah White is directing a big HBO show via UK independent Company Pictures set around the second invasion of Iraq which I am told Channel 4 are picking up….even though they haven’t admitted it yet…


Another target for a BBC4 biopic – a big six parter on Noel Coward.
If the money can be found amid all the cuts that is.


Have you noticed how there has been less sex in BBC1 drama Judge John Deed lately?
Well the reason is that the man playing Deed, ex Professional Martin Shaw, has insisted on it as he feels the character is not being portrayed seriously enough.


Tubby Manc actor John Henshall (last seen playing John Prescott in the hilarious ITV1 film Confessions of a Diary Secretary) tells me he is working on a TV comedy pilot about a prison visit for the BBC written by Michael Burgess, a Manchester comedian.
“It’s for the BBC,” he tells me. “That probably means they will put it on BBC3 and pay us no money and then put it on BBC1 and rip us off.”
Better not let them hear you say that, John, if I were you.


I quite liked Starter For Ten, the film produced by Tom Hanks and based on David Nicholls’ jolly book about a State school boy going to university and getting obsessed by a. the girl and b. going on University Challenge.
I hear Hanks is also keen to make a film of Nicholls’ subsequent book, The Understudy, and has optioned the rights.

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