UK Drama Has “Five Minutes To Stop Bomb Going Off”

If the UK television drama industry was a pilot episode, it would have have just “five minutes left to stop the bomb from going off,” Sister chief Jane Featherstone has warned.

In a speech at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards in London last night, where she was awarded an outstanding contribution prize, the Black Doves exec producer became the latest high-profile name to voice extreme concern over the future of the biz.

In particular, the Sister co-founder and Chief Creative Officer again pointed to the funding crisis in the public service broadcasting (PSB) system. Featherstone was the first high-level producer to publicly note that the BBC has several shows stuck in a post-greenlight funding cavern, during an appearance at the UK parliamentary inquiry into high-end TV and film in January.

In her BPG speech, she built on the point, saying: “Today, the gap between available funding for programming and current budgets is simply too high We’re at risk of losing the very stories that define us so. The danger isn’t theoretical. It’s immediate. We are in the 45th minute of the pilot episode, and we’ve got five minutes left to stop the bomb from going off.”

Featherstone, who launched Sister in 2015 after leaving storied drama house Kudos, called for collaboration “across the industry to protect the source of our great shared success, our PSB system and the practitioners it supports.”

She described the UK’s PSB system, which allows producers to own the rights to the shows they make, as “like the Amazon rainforest for storytelling,” adding, “If it dies, it takes the oxygen of diverse story with it, and we don’t have the luxury of time.”

Featherstone said the industry needed to first collectively agree there is “something at risk here and that is worth protecting” before making a case “clearly and unapologetically to government and to each other” for financial support.

Wolf Hall writer Peter Kosminski has been leading the charge for the UK to adopt a streamer levy akin to those in place in Europe and other parts of the world, calling the current situation “the greatest crisis” he had witnessed during his working career in a recent interview with Deadline.

Featherstone has previously said she is less keen on a streamer levy, but argued in her speech that the industry should “debate the ways” in which support was provided. That could mean “levelling up the high-end television tax incentive to match independent film better rights deals for independents and producers, higher licence fees from the broadcasters, or indeed, other solutions. There are many, and we need to discuss them, but we need to give ballast during this time of change.”

“This isn’t special pleading, it’s strategic,” she added.

Last year, Deadline revealed that Featherstone’s indie had doubled turnover but was still failing to turn a profit. It has since closed its U.S. office and Cindy Holland has exited. Its latest show, Season 3 of Sky gangster drama Gangs of London, premiered yesterday, the same day Chris Fry was promoted to Managing Director.