•  Graham Norton - The Graham Norton Show – So Television / BBC One
• Michael McIntyre - Michael McIntyre’s Big Show – Hungry McBear / BBC One
• Sandi Toksvig - QI – QI Ltd / Talkback Thames – BBC Two

Entertainment Programme

• Michael McIntyre's Big Show - Dan Baldwin, Claire Horton, Christian Fletcher, Michael McIntyre – Hungry McBear / BBC One

Factual Series

• Ambulance - Jo Hughes, Bruce Fletcher, Kirsty Cunningham, Simon Ford – Dragonfly / BBC One
• Drugsland - Sacha Mirzoeff, Xavier Alford, Bart Corpe, Simon Ford – BBC Studios / BBC Three
• Hospital - Production Team – Label1 / BBC Two

Features

• Antiques Roadshow - Simon Shaw, Julia Foot, Robert Murphy, Sophie Wogden – BBC Studios / Unscripted Productions / BBC One
• No More Boys And Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free? - Javid Abdelmoneim, Helen Veale, Jeremy Daldry, Sam Palmer – Outline Productions / BBC Two

Female Performance in a Comedy Programme

• Anna Maxwell Martin - Motherland – Delightful Industries / Merman / BBC Two
• Daisy May Cooper - This Country – BBC Studios / BBC Three
• Sian Gibson -  Peter Kay’s Car Share – Goodnight Vienna Productions / BBC One

International

• Feud: Bette And Joan - Ryan Murphy, Dede Gardner, Tim Minear, Alexis Martin Woodall – Fox 21 Television Studios / BBC Two
• The Vietnam War -  Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, Geoffrey C. Ward , Sarah Botstein – BBC / Florentine Films / BBC Four

Leading Actor

• Tim Piggott-Smith - King Charles III – Drama Republic / BBC Two
• Sean Bean - Broken – LA Productions / BBC One

Leading Actress

• Molly Windsor - Three Girls – BBC Studios / Studio Lambert / BBC One
• Thandie Newton -  Line of Duty – World Productions / BBC One

Live Event

• One Love Manchester - Production Team – BBC Studios / SB Projects / BBC One
• Wild Alaska Live - Adam White, James Morgan, Roger Webb, Vanessa Coates – BBC Studios / BBC Natural History Unit / PBS / BBC One
• World War One Remembered: Passchendale - Production Team – BBC Studios / BBC Two

Male Performance in a Comedy

• Asim Chaudhry - People Just Do Nothing – Roughcut TV / BBC Three
• Samson Kayo - Famalam – BBC Studios / BBC Two
• Toby Jones - Detectorists – Channel X North / Treasure Trove Productions / Lola Entertainment / BBC Four

Mini Series

• Howards End - Kenneth Lonergan, Hettie Macdonald, Laura Hastings-Smith, Sophie Gardiner – Playground Entertainment / BBC One
• The Moorside - Neil McKay, Paul Whittington, Ken Horn, Jeff Pope – ITV Studios / BBC One
• Three Girls - Nicole Taylor, Philippa Lowthorpe, Susan Hogg, Simon Lewis – BBC Studios / Studio Lambert / BBC One

Scripted Comedy

• This Country -  Daisy May Cooper, Charlie Cooper, Tom George, Simon Mayhew-Archer – BBC Studios / BBC Three

Short Form Programme

• Britains' Forgotten Men - Production Team – BBC Three / BBC Three
• Eating With My Ex - Production Team – Shotglass Media / BBC Three
• Pls Like - Tom Kingsley, Rupert Majendie, Olly Cambridge, Liam Williams – BBC Three / BBC Three

Single Documentary

• Chris Packham: Asperger's And Me - Charlie Russell, Lizzie Kempton, Tom Barry, Will Grayburn – Raw TV / BBC Two
• Louis Theroux, Talking To Anorexia - Louis Theroux, Ellena Wood, Simon McMahon, Peter Dale – BBC Studios / BBC Two
• One Deadly Weekend In America - Sanjay Singhal, Ursula Macfarlane, Jon Alwen, Sarah Hunt – Voltage TV Productions / BBC Three
• Rio Ferdinand: Being Mum And Dad - Rio Ferdinand, Grant Best, Matt Smith, Martin Thompson – Only The Best Productions / BBC One

Single Drama

• Against The Law - Aysha Rafaele, Scott Bassett, Fergus O’Brien, Brian Fillis – BBC Studios / BBC Two
• King Charles III - Mike Bartlett, Greg Brenman, Rupert Goold, Simon Maloney - Drama Republic / BBC Two
• Murdered For Being Different - Aysha Rafaele, Scott Bassett, Paul Andrew Williams, Nick Leather – BBC Studios / BBC Three

Soap & Continuing Drama

• Casualty - Production Team – BBC Studios / BBC One

Specialist Factual

• Basquiat - Rage To Riches - David Shulman, Janet Lee – BBC Studios / BBC Two
• Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain - Production Team – Wall to Wall Media / BBC Two
• Blue Planet II - Production Team – BBC Studios / BBC Natural History Unit / BBC One
• Elizabeth I's Secret Agents -  Chris Durlacher, Bernadette Ross, Julian Jones, Claire Guillon – 72 Films / BBC Two

Sport

• Six Nations: Wales v. England - Production Team – BBC Sport / BBC One
• UEFA Women's Euro Semi-Final: England v. Netherlands - Sunil Patel, Mark Cole, Kay Satterley, Ian Finch – Whisper Films / Channel 4

Supporting Actor

• Adrian Dunbar - Line of Duty – World Productions / BBC One
• Anupam Kher - The Boy with the Topknot – Kudos / Parti Productions / BBC Two

Supporting Actress

• Anna Friel - Broken – LA Productions / BBC One
• Liv Hill - Three Girls – BBC Studios / Studio Lambert / BBC One

Virgin TV's Must-See Moment

• Blue Planet II: Mother Pilot Whale Grieves – BBC Studios / BBC Natural History Unit / BBC One
• Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Revealed – BBC Studios / BBC One
• Line Of Duty: Huntley’s Narrow Escape – World Productions / BBC One
• One Love Manchester: Ariana Grande Sings ‘One Last Time’ – BBC Studios / SB Projects / BBC One

 

• For the full list of nominees visit the BAFTA website
• Find out which BBC shows were successful at the 2017 BAFTAs in our blog 'Record number of BBC wins at this year's BAFTAs'

From our point of view, we think Only Connect fulfils, more than most other quizzes, the ideal balance of seeming to baffle - but then being surprisingly accessible. It is play-along mental exercise and it feels enormously good to get a question right. Because of the huge range of subjects, it’s quite possible that a viewer at home will know a question which completely bamboozles the teams.

I also think that Only Connect questions can contain something beautiful, and viewers can often see the effort and the artistry that’s gone into them, and they like that. 

How many people write for the show?

JWC: There are 27 different credited writers for series 13, though well over half of the questions have been written by the Question Editors and the Senior Writers (6 people in total).

Victoria occasionally contributes entire questions, though more often her involvement is in some fine-tuning. She is particularly good at envisaging how a question might play out in studio and she often makes suggestions for how we can mitigate something potentially tricky cropping up, or increase the chances of something exciting happening.

We’re always amazed by the intellect behind the connections, but what makes a good question and do you always know when you’ve written a good one?

DM: The ideal connection brings together things that seem utterly random, from totally different areas, to all make sense in the end. We love crossover of subject matter in a question. But, equally, a great question can sometimes be something pretty simple about numbers, or songs, or people. 

I’m not sure I actually do know when I’ve written a good question. I often get excited about a question idea I’ve had which, on closer inspection, is shown not to work at all. And sometimes a question which seems mundane can be elevated to a whole new level with a very minor tweak. That’s why it’s good to work on things together. 

JWC: Only Connect is famous for being hard – really hard – but the very best questions, in my view, are the ones which everyone feels they could have got. In other words, much of the subject matter of the question is familiar, but it’s the making the connection which is the difficult bit. The clip below shows a good example, in a question from series 1, which asks what comes fourth after: Wheat, Sett, Cease…

What different considerations are there for each question?

DM: Order is of the utmost importance. It can be a little counterintuitive. Rather than putting the most “obscure” clue first, it often works better to start with one that gives less away, or is more ambiguous or mysterious. Something obscure, if recognised, can be a big giveaway.

Precise wording and punctuation can also make a huge difference e.g. if a clue says something like 2000 Olympics, Olympics: 2000, Olympics in 2000 etc. it’s surprising how those little differences can be vital

Changes to layout can come quite late, when we see what the questions are going to look like on the screens in the studio and at home.

Sometimes font size and colour can play a part too, even the number of lines that the clues are displayed on. We’re working on the experience being fair for the player and accessible for the viewer.

JWC: We talk quite a bit about the question answering “journey” – we want different clues to give little nudges here and there, we try very hard to avoid too many situations where it is “either you know it or you don’t”: that isn’t really what Only Connect is about.

How many questions get written in total to edit it down to the number used for each series?

JWC: Questions get pitched before they are written up in full form for the show. For series 13, we looked at pitches for about 1600 questions, of which about 550 were written up, and 444 were used (this is just for Round 1 and Round 2).

Is there much editing between writing the question and it appearing on screen?

JWC: The process is pretty detailed. Question writers send in their pitches; David and I review the pitches to form a shortlist; Jenny Hawker, the series Producer, reviews the shortlist; we send back the survivors from those initial reviews to the question writers who give them the full treatment (checking sources, finding supporting information etc.); these are then submitted for us to check again; then they are reviewed by the team of verifiers who triple check all the facts; questions come back from the verifiers and are assembled into sets for each show.

Then the fun really begins with our day long question meetings when David and I, along with Jenny and Chris Stuart, the Executive Producer, go through every question together, making tweaks, and sometimes rejecting questions that we’re not convinced about. Once all that is done, Victoria looks at every question and provides her thoughts.

Every question gets several final sets of eyes on it on studio day from the graphics team, the producers, the question editors, and the host.

What are the OC team’s favourite questions of all time?

DM: Well, my favourite question was written by someone else – one of our new writers – and is in this year’s final. I can’t give anything away, though it will involve some physical activity by a contestant.

As for my own questions, I’m very satisfied when I can use different areas of my knowledge to first bamboozle people, only for them to get there in the end.

Then again, I submitted a music question which was in the closing stages of the last series which had songs by acts featuring the four husbands of Patsy Kensit. That went down very well.

JWC: I have far too many favourite questions. One that I like from series 13, mainly because it lives up to the archetype of “four seemingly random clues” (but also because of it starting with one of the easiest clues in the history of Only Connect) is:

Answer: Milk drinkers. It starts with a clue that any human in the world of almost any age would know, then follows it with three quite specific references. So we’re inviting the team to get the points as soon as they know one of the other cultural references (because of how easy clue 1 is). And the last clue is quite amusing.

Stats please…how many contestants have competed over the show’s 13 series and what are the highest and lowest scores?

JWC: There have been 218 teams on in total. One team name – Geocachers -  has been used by two separate teams, several years apart.

The highest ever score is 41, achieved by the Epicureans (the next highest score is 36). The lowest ever score was 4, by the (first) Geocachers. Honestly though, 4 is nothing to be ashamed of. Most people at home are punching the air in delight - and boasting about it on Twitter - if they get a single question correct.

How do you decide which episode to put a question in - do you always look out for a good subject spread?

JWC: It’s an art rather than a science. We try to place less difficult questions within episodes early in the series, and the harder ones towards the end to create a difficulty gradient throughout the series. But it is important for each episode to have a bit of variation in question difficulty – though in many ways that sorts itself out by ensuring there is a wide range of subjects covered in each episode.

You want each episode to have a good balance of puzzle-type questions, fact based questions, and different types of sequences from the more straightforward to the more lateral thinking. Additionally, we try to make sure that the questions “look different” to each other within a show as well. By that we mean trying to avoid both picture questions in a show being all pictures of people, or two number questions within a round that might look quite similar on screen.

Do contestants really dislike/perform worse the music questions?

JWC: Stats time again. In the history of Only Connect, the average score across all Round 1 questions is 1.25 points. The average score for music questions only is 1.15 points, and the average for picture questions only is 1.12. Compare these two then to the average score for the plain text based questions which is 1.32.

So yes, people do slightly worse on music questions, and the picture questions, with picture questions having a tiny bit lower of an average score. I think with music questions it is more a case of either loving them or hating them, but it is definitely a “thing” to at least appear to dislike the music question.

By comparison, on Round 2, the averages are:

• Overall: 1.35,
• Music only: 1.52 (though bear in mind that there have only ever been 36 Round 2 Music Questions),
• Pictures only: 1.27,
• Text questions only: 1.35

Do you ever worry you’ll run out of new material?

DM: I believe David Bodycombe, the first Question Editor, expressed understandable concerns that we’d run out after a few series. Yet the questions keep coming. It is generally agreed that Round 2 is the hardest one to find good, original material for, but the writers keep on coming up with the goods. 

As question setters, do you have to know everything about everything?

JWC: We wish. But I would say that knowing a little about a lot is very helpful in setting Only Connect questions, as it helps open up new avenues for research and finding perfect clues in unexpected places.

DM: Yes. Of course.

 

• The Only Connect Final airs on BBC Two on Monday 30 April  at 8pm and will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer for 30days after broadcast
  
• Follow @OnlyConnectQuiz on twitter
• Have a go at some of the 'Walls' from previous series of the show

This year was the second year that I applied for the BBC Writersroom New Directors Scheme on Doctors - last year I got to the final round of interviews but was pipped to the post. At first I was gutted I hadn’t got it - but then I went away and got working on improving my portfolio. I completed post on my funded short film, sent that off to festivals, got some shadowing experience on TV dramas, attended Berlinale Talent Lab (after four years of applying) and of course watched lots of Doctors!

So I was thrilled that my perseverance paid off when I got one of the coveted spots on the BBC Directing Scheme this year. I say this because I think that how you come back from rejection is such a vital part of getting where you want in the end - and so that all those who are feeling battered by rejections can feel that this is, unfortunately, all part of the game and that if you keep working, keep showing your passion then in the end someone will say “yes, show us what you can do!”.

The process of the BBC Writersroom Scheme has been really supportive and well structured. The three of us trainees went up to BBC Birmingham, where Doctors is filmed, in the summer for three days. Here we saw how the Doctors machine operates and got to film a test scene so that we could see just how fast you need to shoot and how to work with two cameras. This really gave me confidence when it came to then directing the real thing when I headed back up to Birmingham for a month in October to direct my first episode. 

I was working alongside a very experienced Doctors director, Gary Williams, who was my mentor for the month showing me the ropes. Gary was brilliant - getting the balance just right between being supportive, but giving me the space to be my own director as well.

My episode had a great script - although I was a little worried when I read it to discover that one of my key guest actors was in fact a dog! What I particularly loved about the whole process was the two and half weeks of prep time you get as a director. Previously on my shorts I have always had to crush prep in gaps between the rent-paying jobs, doing bits here and there. This was the first time I had been given real time and space to prep - it was so satisfying to really focus on the work and not worry about juggling anything else.

During this time we did castings, recces, meetings with HoDs, shot planning, blocking planning and so on. It meant that when the shoot came round I felt really well prepared and ready to go – which, given how tight the schedules are, is vital to ensuring you get everything shot each day.

I know it sounds like a cliché, but the whole team up at Doctors were so supportive, helpful and friendly. They all want you to succeed and know that it¹s a tough job - especially on your first episode - so they are all working with you to make the show the very best it can be. There is a really lovely atmosphere on set - even if the last two hours of every day feels like a mad dash to the finish line where everything is pretty hectic!

I’m very proud of my first episode and excited for it to be aired in February when I will see my name up on the telly for the first time. I am hoping to be back in Brum directing my first full block of Doctors in 2018. I am also developing a sci-fi tv series at the moment that I am hoping gets commissioned and would eventually love to be directing for shows such as Doctor Who and Sherlock. The BBC Writersroom Scheme has been amazing so far and I hope just the start of my working relationship with the BBC.

Miranda Howard-Williams is a director

• To find out more about training to support writers and directors visit BBC Writersroom
• Read also What the BBC Writersroom New Directors’ Scheme did for me

“You come in to the field with a plan, but ultimately you do what nature tells you.”

Ted Giffords, Cameraman

“You come in to the field with a plan,” says cameraman Ted Giffords, “but ultimately you do what nature tells you.”

The plan, for a key sequence in the BBC’s forthcoming Blue Planet II, was to try and film an amazing new behaviour. It’s one of countless new behaviours that viewers will see on Blue Planet II, not least because, as series Executive Producer James Honeyborne says, the science has moved on.

“New discoveries have given us a completely fresh perspective on life beneath the waves. What you’ll see across the series are new stories featuring new species, new places, new behaviours, all filmed in new ways. Our USP is very much newness.”

This particular piece of newness consisted of a marine double act featuring both Killer whales and Humpback Whales. More than a decade ago Blue Planet, the BBC’s last landmark story of the seas, filmed Orca working Herring. ‘Working’ means corralling the fish, bamboozling them, wrangling them in to a tight ball like a border collie with a flock of sheep. Then the Orca stuns one or two with a flap of its tail and ends up with a meal floating deadweight in front of it.

What scientists have observed in recent years - is that Humpback Whales, all 30+ tonnes of them, have started to get in on the act. Humpback Whales are thought to react to the commotion of the Orcas corralling the Herring. Swooping in and opening up their vast mouths, the Humpbacks swim through the buffet that the Orcas have so generously laid on for them, and gobbling up dozens of fish in a single pass. It’s a smash and grab run of epic proportions.

The plan sounded simple: film this behaviour happening. But in order to locate the whales on the infinite fjords of northern Norway, the crew need to do what nature is telling them.

Nature’s message is relayed by seagulls. The footballer Eric Cantona was mocked when he talked about seagulls following trawlers in the hope of finding fish, but his rationale was sound. The seagulls do indeed follow the trawlers when there are Herring to be had, and it is herring that the Orca, and hence the Humpbacks, will follow.

Today is day 10 of a two week shoot, but it’s also the culmination of two years’ work. Producer Jonathan Smith has been following the herring, and thence the Orca and the Humpbacks, for two years for this sequence. He has done stints underwater, diving with a rebreather (to avoid bubbles on camera) in near freezing temperatures. He has tracked the Herring from out in the open Arctic in to the fjords, where for reasons we still don’t quite fathom they have moved just this last year. The whales have followed. They may not be here next year; they weren’t here when Blue Planet I was filmed. This is Smith’s last shoot. He has yet to see a Humpback pull off its heist.

We are so far north, inside the Arctic Circle, stationed on the remote island of Vengsoya, that the days are hopelessly short. It is deep in to November and every day the sun comes up 20 minutes later. Light is at a premium - it’s workable from about 11am today and it will expire at about 2.30pm. And so a converted fishing boat is readied before sunrise and we head out on to the fjords in the mizzle.

Natural history work takes you to remote places but it is rarely a solitary pursuit. As we run north towards the open ocean Smith is messaging a network of contacts - scientists from the Norwegian Orca Survey, fishermen, guides - all of whom are out on boats of their own already. Cameraman Ted Giffords has his own assistance, in the form of a 1,000 millimetres long lens on a giro-stabilised boom arm, handy for spotting gatherings of gulls at several kilometres. He’s glued to his screen, on look out. And Skipper Torre has an app, naturally, for monitoring marine traffic. It tells him where the boats are, what they are and if they’re fishing. Cantona Theory dictates that boats + seagulls = Herring, and Herring = Orcas. Humpbacks are the final variable in the calculus. You need all of the elements, plus the light and a dab of luck, to be in with a chance of a shot. So far they haven’t got any decent footage of the Humpback bursting through with its mouth open - the money shot - in ten days on the water.

Jonathan Smith promises an abundance of Orcas and so inevitably we start off finding none. There is a slight tension as phones are checked, charts scanned and far off, shadowy surface ripples turn out to be everything but whales. There’s not much time.

The sun, when it does rise, barely makes it above the horizon, a pink bedspread laid on the skyline. But as it does, at around 10.30am, a tip-off comes in, and Smith orders the boat to be turned around. We head to Kaldfjorden. It’s a 300 metre deep, 10 mile-long inlet that cuts south and then south-east between stark snow-topped peaks. We motor there to find trawlers and gulls at the far end and still we see… nothing. Smith remains positive - a requirement of the job, I suspect - “These seas contain the most amazing biomass of animals in the ocean,” he says. “Normally we’d have seen loads of Orcas by now.’”

You have to be prepared. Ted Giffords is in charge of the Cineflex camera that will get us the shot, if only the sea life would oblige. The Cineflex allows the boat to be bobbing all over the place while the shot remains still and composed. There are between five and ten Cineflexs of this type in the world - they’re hard to track down because they were originally designed for the American military and they can’t be moved from country to country without specific security clearance. This one has a 4K camera inside its sealed, counter-weighted housing and it can shoot in slow-motion; previous series like The Hunt couldn’t, and they weren’t filmed in such high definition. But higher definition requires more light. Giffords notices that his technical explanations are losing me:

“Basically it’s harder to do but the end result is better. People will notice a difference.”

You can’t not notice an Orca, especially in these flat, calm waters - their dorsal fins can be up to 6ft high on a male, and they travel in pods, usually five or more. Their stately silhouette is unique. Smith and his crew are seasoned spotters, and a tap on the shoulder alerts me to our first sighting, with one, two, then three spouts as the Orcas blow, several hundred metres away. We chug in their direction and on the way spot our other cast members - Humpback ‘blows’ are bushier and more spread out, I’m told. The sight of the Humpbacks’ magnificent tails rising, fluking and slipping away has me excited, but the crew are unmoved: they’re just ‘logging’ or relaxing, not feeding.

Suddenly there are Orca wherever you look down the Kaldfjorden, carving elongated Ms through the surface, while humpbacks rise and dive in tandem. With the sun now up and the mountains glistening it is an awesome spectacle – but it’s a distraction, and I fail to notice what’s happening on our other side, right up by the shore. It’s a group of Orcas, swimming back and forth in formation, so close to the water’s edge it’s as if they’re on watch. Smith is excited. “They’re definitely working fish. This could be about to kick off.”

And then it kicks off.

“Halve the distance between here and the shore,” Smith calls to skipper as he grabs his binoculars. “Pick them up at one o’clock so we can keep the view… Humpbacks at 10.’

It sounds like he’s expecting the animals to arrive on a pre-arranged schedule, until I realise that the hands of a clock are the shorthand amongst captain, producer and cameraman for target location.

The Orca swim away but there’s a shadow visible beneath the surface, heading directly towards where they were. Smith tells Giffords to bring the camera to three or four, Giffords thinks they need to be on the other side, but Smith tells him there’s no time, something is going to happen now, and right on cue small fish start leaping out of the water, churning it up like it’s coming to a fierce boil. The sound makes me spin round just in time to catch sight of 36 tonnes of Humpback whale arcing out and then back down through the surface. I cannot believe what I have just seen.

But the team know instantly that they have not seen enough: Smith and Giffords take a look at what they just filmed, and even though it’s all there in stunning close-up the humpback’s immense mouth only occupies the left of the picture.

“To get that magic it needs to be full frame,” says Smith.

The captain turns the boat around. They know by now that a hungry Humpback will take several passes at a hearty fish supper, and even better, the Orca are back, pushing the Herring even closer to the shore, driving the fish in to the shallows where they can’t escape. With a silvery slick of fish at the surface, the Humpback must surface too. We wait, but not for long. The Cineflex camera hangs over the edge of the boat, and again the whale’s shadow ghosts towards us. This time Giffords is ready and the spectacle is centre stage: as the whale surfaces the water becomes pockmarked and froths with fleeing fish. And then the whale breaks the surface, mouth gaping open, an epic parabola of baleen-plate teeth, humped back, small dorsal and disappearing fluke, before a colossal crash; the vast shadow recedes quietly in to the deep.

The crew holler and celebrate. “We have one!” says Ted Giffords as Smith congratulates his men. It is the first major behaviour shot they have got on this stint, the culmination of a new piece of scientific observation that it’s hard to credit as real until it’s been filmed and shown. And yet still the light remains the most precious commodity, and so minutes later we’re off again in search of another piece of ‘magic'. The ocean is boundless and there’s always more to see. The Blue Planet film crew just have to find it.

“It’s a cliché,” says Jonathan Smith, still with binoculars in hand, “but the only time you don’t get something is when you stop looking."

And that’s a theme that goes not only for this shoot but for the whole Blue Planet II series.

“We’ve completed 125 expeditions to 38 countries around the world, and our camera teams have worked in every continent and across every ocean,” says James Honeyborne, back in the UK. “One of the things that has really fascinated me during the making of this series is the extent to which we’re on the front line: we’re not just reporting these scientific stories, we’re actually help uncovering new scientific stories. So much so that at least 15 scientific papers are being written on behaviours we’ve filmed. That’s the levels of newness we’re at, that is the great opportunity of being in the sea, and that’s the great excitement for us.”

Blue Planet II starts Sunday 29 October at 8pm on BBC One. To find out more about the series read the full media pack or watch the prequel on iPlayer now.

Director Nimer Rashed, one of the original cohort for BBC Writersroom New Directors’ Scheme looks back on his experience and shares his aspirations for the future.

Before you undertook the directors’ scheme what experience had you had in directing for the screen?

About 10 years ago I directed my first thing ever, which was a short film for Film London, that was my first break into directing. Back then my focus was writing for theatre and television and I was given this break to do this short film which I wrote and directed. Riz Ahmed was in it – this was before he was the Emmy Award-winning superstar he is today. We got him just on the cusp of his break out which was great.  So I basically wrote my way into directing with the help of Film London and I took to it very naturally and easily, especially because it was something I had written – a natural extension of imagining things is realising them.  So that was it, the first bit of directing I did and   quickly found I liked it and wanted to do more of it. 

How did you feel when you found out you’d got on the scheme?

Since that film I’ve been wanting to break into telly and the reality is there are very few opportunities to break in – the BBC Writersroom Scheme was like a massive open gateway beckoning me saying ‘apply apply apply’ and I did, and got in. In the intervening years I’d done a lot of directing and a lot of work and obviously that had helped to bolster my application and I was ready for it.  I was so happy that the scheme was running at all and then to actually get in on the first year that they were running it – there were big celebrations.

What was the process of the scheme?

It was an introduction to professional TV directing at Doctors, so started with a few days induction. We went to Selly Oak [where Doctors is filmed] and were introduced to how ‘Doctors land’ works which is this well managed, well run, fast-paced accelerated process. When I tell people about it now I say it taught me how to be a professional because it showed us the amount of preparation and diligence required to hit the ground running, there’s no time to muck around, everyone there is at the top of their game, you have to work quickly and be able to make decisions very fast. We were shown the focus required to direct successfully and introduced to the process of how to keep up with the Doctors pace which has held me in good stead I think.

How did it feel walking on to the Doctors set for the first time as a director?

It was a bit like what it must be like if you’re a footballer and you walk into Wembley stadium having been in the minor leagues for ages, walking into an arena that you’ve been preparing for for a very long time and suddenly you’re surrounded by people all looking at you saying ‘right, come on, show us what are you made of’. It felt very exciting, but also like something I’d been waiting for, preparing for for a long time. I think I did hit the ground running because of all the years of preparation that had led up to it, it was very exciting but also it just felt like something that was right. The time had come to do this, it just clicked. I enjoyed it and was exhilarated.

The scheme gave us all the insight into the specific working of what Doctors requires of you – which is full on, but it did prepare us. We could ask thousands of questions, we met the crew who gave us real insights, the Execs were all very supportive, and a hugely experienced director called James Larkin was very instructive and helpful. So to be honest I felt well prepared, the training was thorough and it wasn’t a surprise.

Thinking back there is a moment when you are finally let go and the wheel is in your hands – having been the co-pilot for the training and suddenly there you are in the driver’s seat, and there is a moment of ‘oh right this is really happening’, which is surreal at first. But then you realise: 'no it's okay, I know what I’m doing'.

What advice would you give to aspiring TV directors?

In terms of people who want to break in to the industry I think it’s about resilience: I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to do this for a really long time and could have stopped or given up many times. Any creative person knows that feeling. The best advice I’ve got is to create your own opportunities to make work, which you can do now, don’t wait for permission. The film that won the Virgin Media Shorts Grand Prize directly before getting this, was a low/ no budget film which won awards and really helped me. So make stuff, make stuff, make stuff – don’t ask for permission. And know that you are a director even before people start calling you one, I think it’s important to have that mindset.

And then when you do get an opportunity like this one rise to it and give it everything because directing, especially for continuing drama, is incredibly intensive and requires a lot of you but if you can deliver you will be asked back and it has given me a career which is great.

What’s next for you?

Thanks to Doctors I joined Directors UK and am a participant on their High End Directors Scheme for directors ready to take the next step in their career. I am currently shadowing on Mike Bartlett’s Press working with the wonderful director Tom Vaughan who did Doctor Foster among other things who is being incredibly helpful and mentoring me.

We are about to start filming that next week. I’ll be on that for the next five months shadowing, and directing second unit which is a wonderful opportunity. I’ve learned that high end dramas may have bigger budgets, but in directing terms they feature exactly the same challenges as on continuing dramas like Doctors – just on a bigger scale. I genuinely think if you can direct Doctors you can direct anything. It’s true when I tell the people I’m working with now that on Doctors we shoot 20 pages of drama a day everyone is impressed. So to have gone through a year of directing that much material and making decisions quickly has really prepared me for the big leagues, I hope. That’s what I hope is coming next.

Where would you like to be in 10 years time?

I’d like to be working at the highest end of TV drama and making films as well, but TV is the new films. Doing what I’m doing now making great TV which informs, educates and entertains. A dream is to make great drama with mass appeal but with a social conscience, resonant storytelling that is contemporary and reflects modern society in all its glory.

The BBC Continuing Drama New Directors' Training Scheme is open for applications until 16 October 2017

Nimer Rashed is a Director

• To find out more about training to support writers and directors visit BBC Writersroom
• Read also The BBC New Directors Scheme for Continuing Drama: EastEnders
• New Directors Scheme: The Story So Far… An Interview with Ruth Carney

John Morton, writer and director of Twenty Twelve and W1A discusses how he came to set his sights on the BBC for the hit series, and how he tried to avoid writing a follow-up to Twenty Twelve.

It’s Autumn 2012. Perhaps not surprisingly Twenty Twelve, a show about the organisation of the London Olympics, has come to an end and I’m cycling across London (on a fold up bike bought from the set) on my way to a meeting to discuss any ideas I might have for taking the show or the characters further.

Of course I haven’t got any ideas. I’d said from the outset that unusually for a television show Twenty Twelve had its own end built into it from the start: once the Olympics had come and gone it was dead. The clue was in the title. ‘Yes but will you at least come and talk about possibilities’ was the gnomic and in retrospect very W1A response. Of course I was too weak to say no.

Looking back now I realise that if anything is going to clear the mind and liberate the creative juices in unexpected ways, an hour’s pedalling through central London traffic on a child sized bike isn’t it. But at the time I didn’t know that and I arrive at the appointed Italian restaurant with nothing .

Over fizzy water and some sort of pesto affair Jon Plowman (Twenty Twelve Exec Producer) and Mark Freeman (the BBC’s then Head of something) do their best to prod me gently in various benign ways. Was there somehow a way of transplanting the characters lock stock and barrel to a new situation somewhere else? That’s an easy one. No, there wasn’t. Could they believably be recruited one by one to help with next Olympics in Rio perhaps? Again I was ahead of them. No they couldn’t.

This was going better than I thought. I seemed to have got involved in a sort of anti-pitch process and was beginning to be think that if I stuck to my principles for once I was probably capable of making it out of the building without any kind of commission at all. And the thing is I nearly made it, but then over coffee I made a really basic mistake.

At some point during the life of Twenty Twelve I remember saying, again under intense questioning, that the only kind of future life for the show might be to take Hugh Bonnevilles’s character Ian Fletcher, drop him somewhere else, and start all over again with all the other characters. I’d briefly thought about the BBC as a possible place to drop him and for some reason I reminded them of this now.

I thought it was safe to mention it. With the BBC having just gone through a really tough time, this was surely an even worse idea now than it had been at the time. But it was already was too late. I should never have had the pudding. They’d played the long game and they’d won.

By the time I’d managed to unfold the bike on the pavement outside the restaurant the course of the next four years of my life were set. But really I shouldn’t complain.

When I was first trying to get started as a writer I had a Post It note stuck to my computer screen: Nothing worthwhile is easy. I can’t remember who said it now, but it’s helped me ever since. Back then when rejections came - regularly, often, in fact always for a few years - it was a reminder that no one said this was going to be easy, that most people who are trying to get going probably end up folding at some point, and that not folding was about the only part of the process that was within my control.

These days it’s even more applicable. Confronted with the prospect of writing a third and probably final series of W1A at the start of last year my first thoughts are all to do with the familiar weight of responsibility I feel to the actors, the viewers, the BBC, to the characters themselves who don’t even exist for Christ’s sake. In the attempt to make these six new half hours a bit the same, at the same time different, and crucially better than everything that’s gone before, the daily battle with the writer’s (for me) natural feelings of inadequacy are in some ways even harder to win than they ever were. To remind yourself that it’s never been easy, it’s not supposed to be easy, and that if you were finding it easy the chances are it wouldn’t be any good is an essential part of the process.

Is it all worthwhile? It’s not for the writer to judge ultimately and in the case of W1A it’s too late now anyway, it’s out there.

As Siobhan Sharpe herself would say and in fact has said in the past - "We are where we are with this guys. And that’s never a good place to be."

Judge for yourself whether it was all worthwhile or not as W1A series 3 begins at 10pm on Monday 18 September on BBC Two.

Casualty is a stalwart of Saturday night TV and it has been a big year for the cast and crew, celebrating their 1000th episode, and 30 years since the drama first aired. Dramas based around the medical profession weren't new in 1986 when the first series was broadcast, the BBC had already produced Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Angels, The District Nurse and A Very Peculiar Practice to mention a few, and others have followed including Doctors which started in 2000, and Cardiac Arrest andBodies - both penned by Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) but Casualty has outlasted them all. 

The programme has always had social conscience. Growing up, Casualty was the first show to introduce me to words like anorexia, homophobia, and euthanasia and although it was fictional, it made me think, not only about the real lives of those who worked in hospitals, but also the real lives of patients, everyday people who sometimes needed more than to just be plastered up and sent home.

Still can't stand hospitals though.

The morning after the night before, the night before being the screening of the 30th anniversary episode of Casualty, I was lucky enough to be shown around the set of the long running BBC One hospital drama:

We all know Casualty is set in Holby, a fictitious city in Wyvern, South West England, yes? Good.

When the show first started filming took place in London and Bristol and continued to do so until series 26. Since 2011 the show has been filmed in a purpose built set in Roath Lock, Cardiff (pictured above) which is also home to Doctor Who, Class and Welsh language continuing drama Pobol Y Cym.

The view of the hospital patients see on arrival. Authentically weather beaten and unnervingly realistic, encompassing both the fear one gets when you or a loved one is in a bad enough state to go to A&E and the reassuring relief that you’re in the best place to be looked after.

The exterior of Holby City Emergency Department where patients and staff come to smoke (we’re looking at you Dr Zoe Hanna).

Looking a lot better than in it did by the end of the 30th anniversary show, those of you who haven’t seen the episode yet definitely don’t watch the behind the scenes video about how the team pulled off such an amazing stunt, with minimal CGI. If you have seen the episode, definitely do. Two words. Gaffer tape.

Not quite the apprentice glass table, this humble boardroom is where none of the staff want to end up, as they are generally on the wrong side of a suspension from work if they’re in here.

More often than not however, staff leave of their own accord, with the show recently saying goodbye to some much loved regulars:

Often with a send off in the pub across the road:

It being a morning tour, both myself and my colleague Ceri, who was kindly showing me around, decided against popping into The Hope and instead made our way to the ED's reception:

Tempting though it was to take a peek in the confidential patient files, we instead went up the staircase, where Charlie Fairhead had his stand off with Jacob Masters in the anniversary episode, to the second floor.

Where we found the Geraint Morris ward

When the set was rebuilt in Cardiff, this ward was created to honour the original producer of Casualty, Geraint Morris. When Ian Bleasedale (Josh Griffiths) accepted the BAFTA for best continuing drama in 2007 on behalf of the cast and crew, he dedicated the award to the much loved co-creator of the show who died in 1997.

Injuries and scenes of surgery require huge attention to detail and fake blood and body parts, some of which are stacked up in these slightly macabre shelves. The show relies on the expertise of medical advisers like Pete Salt who makes sure what we see on screen looks authentic. In the Q & A the night before, Cathy Shipton (Duffy) had said that the original cast spent time in a real hospital shadowing staff to try to get an understanding of what they do, Ceri assures me that this still happens with new cast members when they join the team.

Much of the medical equipment and props used in the show are donated from former hospitals. Other items have to be bought in, and others are made on site for specific episodes.

Dick Jones is in charge of the medical props on the Casualty set, you can find out more about what he does on the BBC iWonder website.

On our way through the corridors between dressing rooms and sets we bumped in to producer Gail Evans, closely guarding the script for the Christmas episodes that were being filmed that day in August.

The filming schedule for some of the 43 episodes of series 31 stretches long into the corridor. The 12 hour days start 7am, with the production crew on set and actors in make up. Cast and crew work hard and to a tight time frame.

Having spent a couple of days in amongst the show's environment, it became very clear that everyone in the team was very supportive of each other and had the utmost respect for the hospital staff they portray.

As Derek Thompson who plays Charlie Fairhead put it "There is only one star of Casualty, and that's the NHS".

Jen Macro is Digital Content Producer for the About the BBC Website.

• Series 31 of Casualty continues Saturday nights on BBC One.
• Catch up on previous episodes on BBC iPlayer, including the feature length 30th Anniversary episode 'Too Old for This Shift' which is available until Monday 27 September.
• Find out about the programme on the Casualty website.
• Read Jen Macro's blog 'Casualty turns 30 with feature length episode'.

It’s my first visit to BBC Wales in Cardiff and as I walk down to the Wales Millenium Centre in the evening sun, through the building’s huge glass front I notice some of the Holby City Emergency Department regulars in their finery making their way through the Centre’s reception to the BBC Hoddinott Hall. I feel relieved I had brought a smart shirt with me, but still feel woefully underdressed compared to the glamour of the likes of Amanda Henderson (Robyn Miller), Crystal Yu (Lily Chao), George Rainsford (Ethan Hardy) Amanda Mealing (Connie Beauchamp) and Charles Venn (Jacob Masters) to name a few of the Casualty cast members in attendance.
On walking up the stairs to the hall it becomes obvious that this is a big deal in the Casualty team’s calendar. Everyone is excited to see the feature length (1 hour 37 minute) episode on the big screen, with a live score by Jeremy Holland-Smith, performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales who rehearse, record and perform regularly in Hoddinott Hall.

Even ex-cast members want to see the performance. Lee Mead (Lofty) who left the series earlier this year has popped over for a look and hovers at the back of the auditorium hoping to watch as much as he can before dashing across to perform in the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang which is also on at the Wales Millenium Centre.

Quite by accident, I line up behind the longest serving member of the Casualty cast, Derek Thompson (Charlie Fairhead) to enter the hall. I find myself quite star struck, crossed with the feeling that I already know Derek, having watched him on screen for so long, his face and mannerisms are so familiar that I feel I should be telling him my darkest fears in return for a piece of Charlie’s trademark, calming, worldly wise advice.

The anniversary episode hinges around a celebration for Charlie Fairhead’s 30 years of service in the NHS, and in turn marks a milestone for the actor who has played him for 30 years, making him one of the longest running continuous characters in a BBC drama, one year behind Adam Woodyatt (Ian Beale) in Eastenders.

From the moment the lights dim and we are given a recap of the previous episode, which caused quite a stir with fans who reacted to a (quite literal) cliff hanger that left Connie Beauchamp and her daughter’s life in jeopardy, the atmosphere is more like a cinema than my usual solitary viewing. The orchestra strike up the opening theme and immediately it’s goosebumps all round. The live score really bringing another dimension to the drama on screen.

Speaking to Andy Farquharson who is Operations and Logistics Manager of BBC National Orchestra of Wales, he tells me that although the orchestra are used to playing scores along to edited visuals (including this feature length episode) the live performance is a different experience to the usual day in the hall where they can ‘fast forward’ to the parts of the film that require music, play numerous takes to get the best performance and have microphones placed around the orchestra to balance the sound. The performance I witness in Hoddinott Hall is completely acoustic with each member of the orchestra wearing headphones playing a track of dialogue, cues and a click track to ensure every musician starts playing at the right point and rigidly to the timing of the visuals on the big screen.

The recorded score that viewers will hear at home when the episode is broadcast was muted in the hall’s speakers, and recreated by the live performance of the orchestra. The process took two days of rehearsal and playing through the whole episode a number of times to be confident that all would run smoothly on the night. The orchestra were taking a well-earned recovery day after the screening before returning to rehearsals for their upcoming performances at the BBC Proms.

Along with the live music, sharing the emotional rollercoaster of the Too Old For this Shift in a room full of people laughing, gasping and shielding their eyes from the gory bits made for a completely different and much richer experience than watching by myself. It also became apparent that this episode is very much a team effort, from script writers, to make up artists, to stunt co-ordinators, to director, to cast. As Derek Thompson mentioned in the cast and crew Q&A after the screening “You’ve just been passed the ball by all these people who have conducted the match beautifully until then. I was terrified that I was going to be the one who dropped it – that was the only thing”. I can assure you that nobody dropped the ball from what I could see.

I’m sworn to secrecy about a lot of what is in the episode, but I can say that in the audience was Pam St Clement, most well-known to viewers as Pat Butcher/Wicks/Evans in Eastenders, who makes a special guest appearance in the episode. She’s not the only actor to have made the journey from Walford to Holby City Hospital. Here are a handful of others:

So, having seen it, I would encourage you to sit down with friends on Saturday 27th August to enjoy the very special episode of Casualty as it turns 30. Turn up the volume and have your popcorn at the ready. Pyjamas optional.

Jen Macro is Digital Content Producer, About the BBC website and blog.

• Casualty – ‘Too Old For This Shift’ is broadcast on Saturday 27 August on BBC One.
• Watch the trailer released on 16 August.
• Read the Q&A with Director Oliver Kent, Series Producer Erika Hossington and cast members Derek Thompson(Charlie Fairhead), Amanda Mealing (Connie Beauchamp) and Cathy Shipton (Duffy) on the Casualty website.
• Find out more about the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
• Watch the BBC National Orchestra of Wales perform at the BBC Proms.

John Lennon declares the Beatles "bigger than Jesus".

England win the World Cup.

And Time Magazine calls London "Swinging" - in what would become the word that defined a decade.

But 1966 wasn't all about the capital. And it wasn’t all about football. All over the country, things were changing, and they were changing fast.

I hadn’t been born in 1966, but for most of my life I’ve been immersed in the cultural impact of that year. I grew up watching Star Trek which first aired in the US in ’66 – as did other childhood favourites of mine The Monkees, The Time Tunnel and Mission: Impossible. It was also the year that a number of incredible songs were hits – including the extraordinary Beatles classic Eleanor Rigby. Many of the hits of ‘66 I play regularly now on my phone, still marveling at a technology that back then would have seemed just impossibly far fetched.

So to mark a half century passing, we decided to make a programme in every region of England, celebrating 1966 and the changes it brought about.

They’re a fascinating selection of films.

In the West Midlands, Adrian Chiles discovers how new arrivals battled racism in everyday life.

In the South East, Simon Fanshawe visits my old university – then a new university – in Canterbury. In the East Midlands Robert Lindsay remembers life in Nottingham while Stuart Maconie uncovers a world of casinos, strip joints, slum clearances and women’s lib in the North West.

Then, of course, there is the capital of the swinging sixties where Patsy Kensit explores what it was really like in London using five of her favourite photographs from the time.

Wherever you are in England, you’ll find Living in ’66 a wonderful reminder of a world now gone, but not totally forgotten. Frankly the great thing about making a TV programme about the mid sixties is that there was colour everywhere – and the music was sensational – which are quite simply a programme maker’s dream. If I was to think of 1956 I’d imagine black and white pictures and prim and proper people – think 1976 and I’d imagine beige outfits and an economic crisis – both a far cry from the exuberance, the colour and the change of the mid-sixties.

There's a unique perspective to explore with regional programmes like these - an opportunity to see the transformation of inner city areas to huge changes in transport and education. Do be sure to watch to find out – or to help you remember – what it was like 'Living in ’66'.

Stuart Thomas is Head of English Regions Programmes

• Living in ’66 airs on BBC One in England at 7.30pm on Wednesday 1 June, 2016 and all regional programmes will be available to watch on iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast.
• Read more about the programme on the Media Centre website.

In a new two-part series about Europe, Nick Robinson explores the troubled history of the UK's relationship with Europe, as the UK gears up to decide its future in the June referendum. In this post, originally published in the Radio Times, Nick writes about the challenges of reporting the referendum, and distinguishes between facts and predictions.  

Facts. We want facts. Please give us the facts. That’s the cry I hear again and again from people who feel assailed by claim and counter claim about what it will mean if we vote to leave or remain in the EU. Many voters feel baffled, dazed and angered by the confident yet contradictory assertions of the two sides in this debate. “Come on Nick” people say “you get this political stuff. What and who should we believe? Will we be richer as Boris claims or poorer as Cameron insists if we choose to get out? Will Europe make it harder and more expensive to sell them stuff or will they be desperate to carry on selling us their BMWs, cheese and wine? Will we get more control because we’ll be the ones deciding or less because we won’t be sitting at the big table any more?”

Let me tell you what I tell them. Sorry. No can do. I am not able to give you the answers you crave. “Why not?” I hear you ask. “Are you too scared to tell us what you know? Too fearful of being bullied by the rival campaigns? Too nervy of breaching the BBC’s impartiality rules?. “After all”, you might add if you were in a particularly ungenerous mood, “didn’t you get a bit of a kicking in the Scottish referendum?”

There would be no point me denying that reporting on a choice this big and this contentious is without its problems and pressures. Both sides leap on any work or phrase or perceived unfairness just as they did in Scotland. Now, as then, every headline, every word in a script, every guest booking is scrutinized for inaccuracy and unfairness. My twitter timeline has already been filled by people declaring with certainty that they know which side I’m on. For now I’ve resisted the temptation to link up those who “know” I’m all for Remaining with those for whom it’s obvious I’m backing Leaving.  

Fear not, though, neither I, nor my colleagues at the BBC, will be bullied or neutered or lobotomised. There is another reason altogether that we can’t give you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the vital decision facing this country. The reason is this - there can be no facts about the future. Only predictions. 

No journalist, no pundit, no expert can resolve these questions for you. Sure, we can tell you about the facts that underlie the arguments - what, for example, are the trading arrangements or immigration rules or budget contributions other countries which are outside the EU have with it. That, though, is not enough on its own to predict what lies ahead if we stay in or get out.  Those claims and counter claims are based, at best, on well intention and well informed guesswork and, at worst, on prejudice, exaggeration and spin. In the end this is a matter of judgement. Yours. 

There may be no facts about the future but there are some when it comes to the past. That’s why my producers and I have spent weeks trawling the archives as well as talking to some of today’s political leaders for a two part documentary about just that - the remarkable story of Britain’s troubled relationship with Europe. I’ve been trying to discover why one question has divided the public, torn apart political parties, felled Prime Ministers and baffled, bemused and angered our neighbours for decades. The question is - does Europe mean “them” or “us”? 

The ambiguity in our attitudes began with and was embodied in the father of the idea of a United Europe. He was not a Frenchman or a Belgian or a German but the man who would go on to become the globally recognised and revered symbol of British exceptionalism - Winston Churchill. Long before the Second World War but with memories still fresh of the last one Churchill argued for a United States of Europe. As our wartime leader he proposed something unthinkable now - the creation of an “indissoluble union” between Britain & France with "joint organs of defence, foreign, financial, and economic policies." The British government signed up rejecting only one part of the plan - a single currency. However, the French turned it and us down - not for the last time. After the war Churchill once again argued that Europe needed to unite though to this day historians still argue about whether he saw Britain as players or spectators, partners or sponsors in the grand project he advocated. 

The leaders of post war France & Germany wasted no time in pursuing the goal he had argued for so passionately. His successors first sat on the sidelines and scoffed at the idea that Europe would ever get its act together. First the European Coal & Steel Community & then the EEC (the European Economic Community) were created. Next they changed their minds and spent a decade pleading to join. Only to be rebuffed by the French again. Finally Britain did sign up to what everyone called the Common Market in 1973. Only two years later we were arguing about whether we should leave again in the first Europe referendum. In the four decades since then that question has felt unresolved. 

 

Of course my series - “Europe - Them or Us” - cannot present a single agreed historical truth. Looking back, just like looking forward, involves judgements too. However, let me reassure you that if you watch you will not be forced to endure the yah/boo of so much of today’s debate. You will hear only from people who were there at the time - Prime Ministers, Presidents, their ministers and advisers - about the decisions they took then.

The decision we all now face is one of the most momentous the country will have taken since Churchill was at Number 10. It won’t only determine whether we remain in or leave the EU. It could re-shape politics for good. Lose the vote and few can see David Cameron, despite what he says now,  able to continue for very long as party leader and Prime Minister. Win it, and there might be fizz for him & his backers on referendum night but his party will wake up to a giant hangover on the morning after. Those who wanted to leave the EU won't simply forgive & forget. 

But why does this matter I hear you ask?  For this very important reason. Cameron has pledged to quit before the next election. He may be another casualty of Tory splits on Europe or he may go at a time of his own choosing. No matter.  Changed leadership rules will mean that for the first time in this country's history it will be the votes of 100,000 or so party members - not voters or, as in the past, MPs - who will choose his replacement and the next occupant of Number 10. 

Little is certain. Except perhaps this. If more people understood how we got to where we are now they might find it easier to decide where we should go next. 

That is one fact I am happy to offer to you. 

• Europe: Them or Us is at 9pm, Tuesday 12 April on BBC Two.  

This evening, I’ve hosted a special event to celebrate the best of BBC Two and announce a a range of new commissions on the channel, from edgy dramas to distinctive comedy and compelling factual.

It has been a huge honour to be running BBC Two for the last year and I’m thrilled that the channel is in such great shape.

From the critical and ratings success of Wolf Hall, BBC Two’s biggest drama series in at least 13 years and Banished, which was our 4th highest drama series launch, to stand out seasons on food, the super rich, Taking Liberties and our Holocaust Memorial programming, we’ve got people talking and watching the channel in significant numbers.

At the event I wanted us to celebrate the unique contribution BBC Two makes to creative and civic life in the UK, showing the broadest range of content and commissioning more new programmes than any other channel - grown up, opinionated, smart content that is distinctively BBC Two.

BBC Two - Signature Drama

The channel plays a key role in supporting creative brilliance in the UK. British drama simply wouldn’t be the same without BBC Two. Over the last 50 years the channel has made a huge contribution to nurturing talent and enabling creatives to do their best work.

It’s a tribute to the great talent that want to work with BBC Two, a channel that has won more RTS awards than any other and has just been nominated for twenty Baftas, many of them recognising our distinctive, high quality drama and comedy, from Marvellous and the Honourable Woman to Inside No 9 and Harry and Paul’s Story of the Twos.

I want the best creative talent in Britain to come to BBC Two to do their best most authorial work. The audacity of asking creative individuals like director Peter Kosminsky and writer Jimmy McGovern – both known for their contemporary drama – to take on the challenge of period drama. The brilliance of names like, Jed Mercurio, Stephen Knight and Peter Bowker’s doing their most personal, signature work on BBC Two.

I’m also thrilled to announce that following the RTS award-winning success of The Honourable Woman, Hugo Blick is developing a new project for BBC Two.

And we’re attracting great performing talent to BBC Two as well – like Natalie Dormer in our upcoming the Scandalous Lady W, telling the true story of Lady Seymour Worsley, who defied convention in 18th Century high society, or Charlotte Rampling, Ben Whishaw and Jim Broadbent in the new London Spy, or Anna Friel in the gripping thriller Odyssey and Peter Mullan, Gary Lewis and Sharon Small in Ian Banks’s Stonemouth, a rite-of-passage tale delving into love, loyalty and vengeance from new writing talent David Kane.

So, I’m delighted to announce that Daniel is taking the lead role in our factual drama Game Changer – the story of the controversy surrounding the computer game Grand Theft Auto - arguably the greatest British coding success story since Bletchley Park.

 

Also coming up we have Life in Squares, an intimate drama about London’s Bloomsbury group with a fantastic cast including Phoebe Fox, Lydia Leonard and James Norton; and an epic adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s best-selling book, Last Kingdom by award-winning writer Stephen Butchard.

These new dramas cover a wide range of subject matter but what unites them all is the strong sense of authorship that runs through them.

BBC Two - Inspiring Passions

Factual programming is the life blood of BBC Two. We want BBC Two to actively enrich people’s lives - inspiring them to pursue a personal interest, expand their knowledge or find out more about the world around them. We want to tackle contemporary issues in lively, intelligent ways or encourage viewers to take their passions further.

From cookery and gardening to stargazing and sewing, BBC Two viewers are an active bunch and, inspired by the strength of our factual content, love nothing more than getting out there to take their passions and interests further.

There are reported spikes in telescopes sales whenever Stargazing Live is on air and astronomy is now a GCSE subject; sewing machine sales soar whenever the Great British Sewing Bee is on-air and sewing classes have been enrolling record numbers; and Gareth Malone has helped drive a massive uptake in singing with choir organisations reporting a doubling in participants over the last 5 years.

I’m particularly excited by a new series that I hope will take viewers passions and interests in a new direction. The Great British Pottery Throw Down, presented by Sara Cox, will introduce us to the world of pottery - soon we’ll know the meaning of blunging’, ‘flocculating’ and we’ll be hoping to avoid the dreaded ‘fat bottom’!

BBC Two - Part of the national conversation

But it’s not just personal passions that BBC Two helps to fuel. I want the channel to broaden horizons by engaging in the national conversation and tackling contemporary issues in lively, intelligent and hard-hitting ways.

We have series coming up looking at the low wage economy in Britain’s Hardest Worker and the education system in Chinese School.

I’m also very pleased to announce a new series, Old School, with the Hairy Bikers taking on an ambitious experiment to see if they can improve the lives of both the elderly and school age children. BBC Two opens up the world up to viewers with our distinctive, thought-provoking coverage of UK and international stories.

No other channel shows such a broad range of coverage, and I’m proud we have nearly 60 hours of prime time specials such as tomorrow night’s Peter Taylor’s film, with an exclusive interview of a high level Islamic State member, tracing the money trail that has made IS the World’s Richest Terror Army.

 

There’s also the upcoming Children of Gaza - with Lyse Doucet following the lives of children on both sides of the conflict. And, the unbelievably powerful documentary series, The Detectives, with exclusive access inside a serious sexual crime unit in Manchester, revealing the real difficulties in tracking and prosecuting sex offenders.

These are all hard-hitting, important films which sit at the heart of what I believe BBC Two’s purpose should be.

BBC Two - Making you smile and laugh

But let’s not forget that BBC Two is also here to make you laugh.

Comedy is part of BBC Two’s DNA. I’m really excited by the great new range of shows we have coming up this year, from the welcome return of W1A and our transgender comedy, Boy Meets Girl to Javone Prince’s first sketch show for a mainstream channel and Cradle to Grave, an adaptation of Danny Baker’s brilliant autobiography with Peter Kay in the lead role.

I’m delighted that Stefan Golaszewski and the incredibly talented team behind the BAFTA award-winning Him & Her are back with a new series, Mum - a family sitcom about new beginnings as the central character, Cathy (played by Lesley Manville), rebuilds her life following the death of her husband. Vivid, poignant and truthful and yet laced with excellently crafted comedy.

Also coming up, we have darkly comic thriller, Stag, from Wrong Mans creator Jim Field Smith and staring Jim Howick and Stephen Campbell Moore. A meek schoolteacher struggles to survive the Stag weekend from hell on a deer-stalking expedition in the Scottish highlands. It quickly gets messier than anyone expected, as the hunters become the hunted, sordid secrets emerge, and old friendships are tested to the limit.

And I’m thrilled to announce that Family Guy is coming to BBC Two for its next series.

These are just some of the many treats we have in store this year on BBC Two – you can find out more and see a sneak peak of some of the shows coming up on the Media Centre.

BBC Two may not be the biggest channel but it will always be the most important on British TV in terms of the sheer range and quality of its content and its commitment to the creative community.

From enabling British writing, presenting and directing talent to do their most distinctive, signature work to Factual with real purpose that tackles contemporary issues in lively, intelligent ways or encourages viewers to take their passions further, I want BBC Two to be the place to come for widest range of grown up, opinionated and entertaining content on British television. There should be no more exciting place to be in television than BBC Two!

Kim Shillinglaw is Controller, BBC Two and BBC Four

Neil is presenting his second series of annotated documentaries about the music which fires him up on BBC Four at the moment. The third and final episode goes out later this week. His is a compelling presentation style. He takes a thing we're all of us (usually) familiar with and with a soft voice, a wry smile and a beautifully sculpted sentence, forces us to listen to it in an entirely different way. In an instant, the familiar becomes utterly entrancing. And when lecturers command your attention in that way, they could tell you the moon was made of artificial bath sponge and you'd believe him purely because he told you so.

In my slightly odd way, this shameful gush (3) is backed up by evidence. I first saw Neil introduce the Sound of Cinema series as part of the Radio 3/BBC Four collaboration showcasing film music a year or so ago. In a darkened BFI cinema, Neil took the opening sequence of the Ipcress File and explained how John Barry's score reinforced the alluring sophistication of Michael Caine's youthful spy in 1960s London. Amongst the grimness of the setting, Caine shone like a beacon of style. So too, Barry's music. When I watched the Ipcress File on TV over New Year (part of BBC Four's season of spy films for the holiday season) it was Neil's presentation I couldn't get out of my head. That Mr Brand has got a bit of a talent there.

"Were you a lecturer at University?" I asked him as he left the press event launching the Song and Dance year at Sadlers Wells a couple of weeks ago. "No," he replied, "I did stand-up at Edinburgh." I marvelled, gushed and almost certainly embarrassed myself, praising him on a similar presentation he'd done during the event half an hour before. He thanked me, then asked me if I thought it went alright. I said it did. We then agreed to continue retweeting one another's tweets. That's how it works in the social media world, I'm slowly beginning to realise.

This post isn't a love-fest for Neil Brand. Rather's Neil's programme and his appearance at the Song and Dance press launch helps flag up something a little special and unorthodox about some press events at the BBC. First and foremost they're designed for journos, bloggos and any other interested parties to pen something which draws the readers eye and pulls in - one hopes - more viewers and listeners. But, the press event I attended at Sadlers Wells did something a little different. It acted as the equivalent of an introductory lecture for a course module that didn't originally seduce me to sign-up for the course but did, unexpectedly, pique my interest nonetheless.

I've only ever been to Sadlers Wells twice in my life. The first was - as it happens - 30 years ago nearly to the day (4), when me and some school associates attended a matinee of a new stage production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Me and then best pal Marcel spent the entire journey from Suffolk incredibly excited about the prospect of seeing 'Pure Imagination' on stage, and spent the entire journey back whining about how the stage show wasn't anything like the film. We had no idea about rights and the limitations of stagecraft. The second time I was there was to attended a performance by the Rambert Dance Company. Dance was new to me. Weird. Impenetrable. Intimidating. With no script, I feared I wouldn't be able to comment on anything but the physique of the dancers. As it happens, I was pretty much right.

Yet, the press event set those fears to rest. In the Linbury Dance studio, two lean moustachiod dancers nodded modestly as Tony Hall introduced them to the assembled press. Some eery music was cued in. Then something magical occured in front of us. Two people completely unknown to us were without warning communicating directly in an incredibly intimate space. Forty people watched in silence as two human beings started doing things with their bodies most of us don't see in real life. Dance - modern dance with all its fascinating twists, turns and question-posing contortions - suddenly came alive. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me particularly, but that moment, being that close to real-life dancers, the art form momentarily came alive for me.

Us scribbling crowd, awwed and ahhed when Dame Kiri stepped up in her dazzling bright orange knee-length jacket. She talks about her role as Patron of BBC Cardiff Singer of the World - the competition returns this summer as part of a season celebrating the Classical Voice across BBC radio and TV – but my attention seems more on her outfit. Similarly, Darcey Bussell's appearance reminded me that even in a media environment I still go a little weak at the knees when I see a celebrity. Some things never change. I very much hope they never do.

What that event achieved was something which perhaps goes overlooked. It introduced something to me (at least) which I'd never thought I'd be interested in. I want to know more about dance. I want to see more dance. I want to understand how narrative is achieved through silent moves. What is the language used? And of its art-form counterpart, song, what history have I missed over the years about the technology we've all of us taken for granted in the production of the music which forms a soundtrack to our lives? How did recording technology intersect broadcasting innovation and how did that impact on the BBC?

Such things make that recurring dream less fanciful and more like a long-term post-BBC goal. Will the year of Song and Dance at the BBC unearth some things unstudied which need greater personal investigation?

(1) Last year we installed decking over the patio in our garden.

(2) I'm not kidding. This bit is actually true. I lived in Morecambe Bay and Lancaster University music department scheduled a two hour music history lecture on a Wednesday morning at 9am.

(3) Shameful because generally speaking, us BBCers shouldn't really gush, still less express an opinion.

(4) I've checked in my diaries from 30 years ago - this is confirmed as true and not made up.

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the BBC Blog and website

• Episode three of Neil Brand's Sound of Song is on BBC Four at 9pm on Friday 30 January; the first two are available on iPlayer. 
• Find out more about the BBC Year of Song and Dance on the BBC Media Centre website.