About the BBC - Richard Klein

Edinburgh TV Festival 2012 'Meet the Controller' session with Richard Klein & 2013 BBC Four preview

Richard Klein Richard Klein — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:41:41 +0000

I'm currently at Edinburgh where I'm taking part in a Meet the Controller panel session with Muriel Gray.

Looking back on 2012, we've celebrated BBC Four's tenth birthday in March with a disco night; we've taken a Scrapheap Orchestra to the Proms and left a model house to rot in Edinburgh Zoo to study decay in After Life; explored the rich cultural heritage of 20th century America with programmes including Rich Hall's Deep South and Art of America; shined a spotlight on women in history in She-Wolves, England's Early Queens, presented by Dr Helen Castor and Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: a 17th Century History for Girls, presented by Dr Lucy Worsley; and paid tribute to an eclectic range of music - from Bowie and Punk Britannia to Symphony and The Story of Musicals; all united by the channel's trademark wit, intelligence and spirit.

]]>I'm delighted that the channel is the BBC's best-loved channel and it's continuing to grow.

Looking ahead, there's much more to come and the announcements I'm making today show the confidence and ambition of the channel.

I talked about a number of new commissions in my session including a major partnership with the Royal Institute of British Architects to a celebration of the golden age of the album from Danny Baker and seasons exploring the curious world of insects and Britain's foodie history.

Richard Klein is Controller of BBC Four

Ten years of BBC Four

Richard Klein Richard Klein — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:50:24 +0000

I am writing this blog while recovering from a dose of viral flu - a sudden attack that floored me for three days, left me shivering like a leaf and feeling as though I was in someone else's skin, hallucinating. Nice.

Bear that in mind, folks, while I tap out some thoughts about the past 10 years of BBC Four.

Well, 10 glorious years, of course. Indeed, if there is one thing that the channel has achieved over the last 120 months it is to prove that it is possible to attract decent audiences not only to thoughtful programmes but also to a broad range of subjects all on the same channel. I think people understand now that Four is an entertainment channel, only we entertain differently, thinking outside the box, through discourse, wit and proposition.

Michael Sheen stars as Kenneth Williams in the BBC Four drama Fantabulosa.

BBC Four is unique in the digital world. It doesn't strip and strand or stack - run the same shows one after another, or play them out like clockwork across the same time slot during the week. It behaves like a mainstream terrestrial channel, mixed genre, moving from one subject to the other.

And now. Since its launch, the channel reaches nearly 10m people a week watching at least three minutes (an industry standard) and our share is hovering around 1.4%.

Some of the milestones? Well, winning four Baftas last year (including best Comedy Performance for Jo Brand and Best Single Drama for The Road To Coronation Street) stands out. As does having the most talked-about drama of 2011 (alongside Downton Abbey!) in The Killing. Having over one million viewers tune in each week to watch our series on The Story of British Musicals felt good, as did having over 1/2m people watch our extraordinary experiment to create an orchestra with instruments purely out of scrap. Afterlife, our 90 minute film that recorded decay and re-be-birth in a house full of rotting food was also a winner with audiences.

Jack Dee in BBC Four comedy Lead Balloon

Looking further back, stand out shows over the years at Four have been the breakthrough drama The Alan Clark Diaries, beautifully acted by John Hurt; the National Trust programme which won a Bafta for Best Documentary series; and the film that opened the channel's first ever moment on air, Michael Landy's extraordinary art happening where he destroyed all of his possessions.

Other wonderful stand-out moments have been a slew of great comedies - The Thick Of It, Lead Balloon, Getting On and Twenty Twelve. In drama there was the wonderful Fantabulosa, about Kenneth Williams, the Curse of Comedy series and The Long Road To Finchley, which told the story of Margaret Thatcher's early years getting into parliament. More recently Hattie, Lennon Naked and Holy Flying Circus have proved that drama is still alive and well on Four!

Stephen Fry on Wagner

One of the pleasures of running BBC Four is being able to bring new talent to the public, and because BBC Four is all about proposition and authorship there's been some great new faces telling new stroies as well as familiar faces telling unexpected tales. Stand-outs among the familiar for me include Stephen Fry's film on Wagner, Ian Hislop on the Beecham reforms, Richard Wilson on Britain's best drives, Jo Brand on crying and, of course, Julia Bradbury's walking programmes.

Less familiar but with real stories tell include Lucy Worsley's history of the house, Jim Al-Khalili's on-going films about deep physics and Robert Bartlett's insightful series on the medieval mind.

The cast of BBC Four comedy The Thick of It

Of course one name also stands out for me - Andrew Graham Dixon, who over the past five or six years has been building a body of work desrcibing the art of various countries. Andrew's take is effortlessly propositional and his last series, on American art, was masterful.

So, going forward, what now for the next 10 years? Well, be in no doubt that it will be tougher here. Following the government's decision to freeze the licence fee, BBC Four is facing some quite serious cuts in originations - ie new programmes, and I have no doubt that these will have an impact.

However on a more positive note I am determined to do everything that I can to ensure that the quality and tone of BBC Four programmes remains as high as ever. And to ensure that the spirit of Four - witty, knowing, curious, having something to say, propositional - will be maintained. And expanding the channel's role as the curator and leader of the BBC's Archive project - rolling out as much of the archive as we can in a way that is both entertaining and financially sensible - will also form a new part of the channel's activitities.

Stephen Mangan and Darren Boyd star in three new episodes of Dirk Gently.

Coming up this year will be the final series of The Killing, and a terrific new police murder mystery called The Bridge. There's our new series on Catholics, a gorgeous new series on Art Nouveau and our new drama series inspired by Douglas Adams - three more Dirk Gently episodes.

And now, enough - my head's spinning again, and I'll sign off before I start typing nonsense! Keep an eye on BBC Four and I very much hope you enjoy what you see.

Richard Klein is Controller, BBC Four

BBC Four - curating content on-air and online

Richard Klein Richard Klein — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Thank goodness my interview at the Media Guardian International TV Festival is over. It's always slightly terrifying and good to get some fresh air afterwards, but actually Penny Smith, who was interviewing me, was delightful. Hopefully the audience found it an informative and lively session.

Naturally there was quite a bit of interest in what the future holds for BBC Four post-DQF (Delivering Quality First). While there are no final decisions yet, there's one thing we do know: we've all got to take our share of cuts. Of course no one welcomes being cut back and it will bring changes. I'm not at liberty to talk about it what these changes will be yet as we don't know the outcome, but I promise I will do everything in my power to keep the essence and spirit of the channel - appealing to people who love to think, be entertained on every subject and who enjoy a channel that has an opinion and offers perspective.

In my session, I was keen to talk further about BBC Four's new role as the curator of content online as well as on television. It was recently announced that BBC Four will be the gateway through which audiences can explore the rich heritage of BBC TV programming. BBC Four's collections will be curated around seasons/themes, something I think we are very good at, and will take the viewer on a deeper journey through the subject via the BBC's extensive archive, with content from all genres and channels. Today I announced our first 'collection', which will be around the channel's Army Season in September. We've managed to find some amazing gems from the archive which chart the British Army from the 1950s to 90s, brought bang up-to-date with our programmes that form part of the season on BBC Four.

You can read more about our new 'collection' on the BBC Press Office web site, where we also announce a new arts series for BBC Four, Art Noveau, which explores the short but brilliant life of this movement at the end of the 19th century. I also announced two 90-minute film adaptations of Alan Furst's novels, The Spies of Warsaw - yes, I am still commissioning drama on the channel. The video is the one I showed in my 'Meet the Controller' session at the conference, which features some of our recent successes and offers a sneak preview of The Killing 2. (Talking of The Killing, I hope you are managing to catch our repeat showing of the first series which is stripped across the schedule at 10pm, continuing until 15 September.)

Richard Klein is Controller of BBC Four

The Media Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival starts today and goes on all weekend. Details on the official web site Follow @edinburghtvfest on Twitter.
The Guardian has a special page for news from the festival.
There's also a special page on the BBC Press Office web site for announcements from the Festival.

Women We Loved on BBC Four

Richard Klein Richard Klein — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:00:59 +0000

Women We Loved - well, I certainly love them now - Enid, Gracie and Margot, that is.

After a three week rollercoaster of a season called Women We Loved, BBC Four has recorded some of its highest viewing figures ever, including a 1.4 million audience for Gracie!, about Gracie Fields. In the previous week Enid - about children's writer Enid Blyton - won over 1.3m viewers. And last night the season ended with a fine film starring Anne Marie Duff playing Margot Fonteyn.

Now, ballet doesn't usually rate anywhere. Sky Arts' documentary about Margot - coincidentally played out just the night before BBC Four's drama - rated 2,000 viewers. So I wasn't holding my breath. But over 750,000 people came to watch BBC Four's film, and for that I am both grateful and delighted.

It is always a bit of gamble to commit to three big dramas based around a single subject, especially one about the arts, in this way - and women artists at that. So I was a little apprehensive.

And when I first turned up at the office last week and looked over to the channel scheduler to enquire about how Enid had done - the first of the three films to transmit - he rolled his eyes and said: ''There's a '3' in the figures.''

Now I know BBC Four isn't just about share and ratings. It is reputation that counts. But still, my heart sank. Only 300,000 viewers! This had Helena Bonham Carter playing Enid and the drama team had worked miracles to make the film as wonderful as possible.

''Actually it's 1.3 million,'' said the channel scheduler after a pause. He'll have to go.

When I first commissioned these three films the idea was to try and reflect the private lives of three women who had lived their lives very much in the public eye. All three women were artists, serious players in the artistic worlds they chose to inhabit: Enid, one of the greatest writers of children's literature and certainly the most prolific; Gracie Fields, one of Britain's greatest female singers and entertainers; and Margot Fonteyn, possibly Britain's finest ballerina and certainly its most famous.

But it isn't easy having a private life when you're striving for greatness, and these films sought to explore the demands of that coexistence. Across the season three separate stories showed how these women tried to lead complex lives and how they each in seperate ways dealt with different pressures - some handling it well and some handling it pretty badly.

It is a hallmark of BBC Four's drama output that the channel provides a platform for performance. In all three cases the central leads - Helena as Enid Blyton, Jane Horrocks as Gracie Fields and Anne-Marie Duff as Margot Fonteyn - delivered in spades, and I am grateful to their efforts.

I've been thinking hard about how to expand BBC Four drama output. I want to carry on what is a fine tradition of biopics here. Next up, in early January, is Sophie Okonedo's extraordinary depiction of Winnie Mandela; and then Christopher Eccleston plays Beatle John Lennon in a powerful exploration of why he broke up the Beatles and went to America. Blame it on the parents, I say.

But I am also going to be taking drama in a new direction. I still think it is important to offer audiences something that they instantly recognise. So, a true story like Canoe Man, which tells the story of John Darwin, who went missing in his canoe and was presumed dead until he turned up five years later living next door to his wife, is a high-profile subject for a factual drama.

But I am also keen to open up the channel to other expressions of drama, and one way we will do so is via modern adaptations of 20th-century classics. I have commissioned a new season for next year potentially called Modern Love. This seeks to explore the story of how men and women have changed in their relationships between each other, as seen through literary classics of the 20th century. To that end I have commissioned two new dramas - DH Lawrence's Women In Love, and John Braine's Room At The Top. Both of these novels take very different approaches to the same subject, and both are sometimes overlooked, which makes them intriguing subjects for our first adaptations. They'll form the backbone of the season, with a range of other programming examining the same subject from different angles. Modern adaptations are an exciting new direction for drama on the channel and one which I hope the viewers will love as much as our biopics of Enid, Gracie and Margot. We're hoping to attract the same calibre of actors to the project and as soon as I have news I will share it with you, but if you would like to read more about the two adaptations for BBC Four, please click here.