God I wish we had journalists dealing with this stuff in the UK https://twitter.com/moryan/status/1285301343213805572

This resonates, particularly in a country where we don’t even have a showrunner model for newer writers to observe. Oftentimes the ‘showrunner’ is a newcomer, author, former standup comedian, or even the current commissioning editor.

Oh and see also Acclaimed Former Hollywood Greats who turn out to not be really

The Sun King model exists here for sure. But again, unlike America, when we use the term ‘showrunner’, we don’t fucking know what it means. We think it means ‘peak tv’. So we elevate a writer who never so much as managed a co-op, and give them a small corporation to run.

Everything goes wrong. They’re told ‘if you need help, ask’, but if you made me a feckin Doctor tomorrow and told me the same, I wouldn’t even know what *help* to ask for. So they hire the wrong people, they panic, they don’t know how to give good notes, the insecurities are wild

And I’ve been there, I’ve been put in this position, I wasn’t supported where it counted, I hated how terrified and insecure it made me and I know I was unable to look after anybody else. Or protect anyone else.

We also have a particular ‘failing upward’ culture in in management in UK TV. People who carry a reputation for toxicity or spinelessness or uselessness (not a crime itself, but often, if undiagnosed, an enabler of a toxic work environment) empowered to manage time and again.

Often the issue of our big shows is no one is in charge. But also everyone is in charge. Decisions don’t get made or contradict. The writer and the producers don’t get on. The Sun King - a writer or an MD or an exec - is overcommitted but refuses to delegate.

None of these things individually are crimes. And I’ve never personally experienced anything as aggregious as experienced by those in the above article. But we have our own culture whereby the collisions of unchecked management issues create a hideously toxic environment. Often.

We particularly seem to have this issue on Big Shows. Perhaps because most of our managers grew up making small shows but now have come into sexy SVOD money and their fear of failure spirals down until everyone is paralysed, second-guessing, wanting but afraid of ‘authorship.’

The contradictions are rife. Sometimes it’s everyone wants ‘authorship’ but no one wants to surrender full editorial control to any one person. So everyone is in charge/no one is in charge.

Or: FULL CONTROL has been surrendered to someone who hasn’t a fucking clue.

I’ve experienced both. I know script editors and story producers and writers who’ve experienced both and worse. There’s a culture of improvisation and toxicity around our Big $$ TV industry which has kept me return. Smaller shows are less crippled by fear/sideways hierarchies.

Money doesn’t have to poison creativity, but money brings with it a fear of losing money which DOES poison creativity. And you can tell by the poison all over the damned floor that British TV is new to this Big Money business.