Scriptwriter Tony Marchant tells us how having “a belief in opportunity” paved his way to writing success
Tony Marchant
Scriptwriter Tony Marchant is the writer behind TV drams such as the Bafta-winning Mark Of Cain, and the RTS award-winning Holding On. In 1999 he won the Dennis Potter Award at BAFTA for his writing services to television. His most recent work was the BBC One four-part drama Garrow’s Law, which has recently been released on DVD. Tony explains how he used a mixture of Old Bailey accounts and a healthy dose of imagination to get to the truth of how a single barrister overhauled the British legal systems 300 years ago.
What drove you to become a scriptwriter?
I started out as a playwright, but in truth I was most inspired by music, rather than novels or plays, by bands like the Jam and the Clash. They showed me the significance of having a voice, of getting your point of view across by whatever means possible.
Did you receive any formal training?
No, not at all. I left school with two bad A-Levels. But part of the appeal of playwriting was that you didn’t have to have been to university or do a writing course. The way I look at it, talent doesn’t come from education - it comes from having a belief in opportunity.
Did you face much rejection initially?
Of course, but I was just 18 when I started out, so I didn’t expect to succeed right away. I sold my first play when I was 19, and my strike rate, as they call it in the television industry, as in the number of scripts you write that actually end up being made, has been very good.
What would you say was your breakthrough play?
My first piece for the RSC, the Royal Shakespeare Company, was a play called Speculators, which was staged in 1987. I wrote plays I was proud of before that, but having a piece accepted by the RSC gives you a wide stage, a big audience and masses of resources.
In TV terms, the BBC drama Take Me Home (1989) was the breakthrough. I wrote it when I was in my 20s, in 1989 and 11m people watched it.
But Holding On (BBC One, 1998) is my favourite in terms of how ambitious it was.
The Daily Telegraph once described you as the “conscience of British TV drama”. Do you feel a sense of responsibility when you write?
No, I don’t. If I did I’d feel crippled. My only responsibility is to myself to produce the best piece of writing possible and to write something I believe in and can get excited about.
I do find myself writing pieces with a social or moral message, but that would count for nothing without a story. Whatever you do has to be grounded in good storytelling.
What inspired you to write Garrow’s Law?
William Garrow (played in the series by Andrew Buchan) was an outsider trying to change a system, the British Legal system, just when it really needed it. He had a lot of challenges to deal with, including not being taken seriously because of his lower middle class background, and his passion for change, for standing up for what he believed in was really impressive.
How much of the screenplay was based in fact and how much did you fictionalise the story?
The court cases were mostly factual. I read masses of transcripts of Old Bailey cases and picked out the ones that highlighted the changes Garrow was fighting for.
For the first episode I drew from several cases of infanticide as an example of trials where there was no presumption of innocence. Garrow invented the term innocent until proven guilty. It’s also a very emotive subject.
The one case that I used that Garrow wasn’t actually directly involved with was about treason, and I decided to include it because of the contemporary resonance.
It’s a drama inspired by William Garrow’s life rather than a documentary. I invented, or rather, made educated guesses about his personality and relationships with Sarah Hill (Lyndsey Marshal) and John Southouse (played by Alun Armstrong), because not much is known about his personal life.
Drama can have an impact that journalism never can. Drama offers an intimacy with the characters that allows you to get closer to the truth, or at least a version of the truth, than any documentary can.
How do you begin writing a teleplay?
The possibilities of a story have to attract me. It can be a line, an article in a newspaper that intrigues me.
My starting point is often very different to what I finally write. With The Mark of Cain (2007) I read a news story about an 18-year-old soldier who had taken a roll of film to his local processing shop and when it was developed it included a picture of an Iraqi suspended on the prongs of a forklift truck.
It made me think about how a teenager could leave a small town in England and return with thinking something this horrific is completely normal and acceptable.
What do you find the most challenging aspects of writing?
Storytelling, story lines. I find dialogue relatively easy to write but structuring is much more difficult.
What do you enjoy most about the process?
A sense of craft, the sense that you’ve told a story really well and it’s had an impact, that you’ve changed people’s perceptions. Writing teleplays allows you to confront broad issues and strike a nerve across a large audience. That’s really fulfilling.
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Be prepared to get given a lot of advice when you’re starting out. You need to learn to recognise which advice comes from people who know what they’re talking about and are qualified to help you, then discard the rest.
You need to develop a thick skin and a strong chin.
What are you working on at the moment?
The next series of Garrow’s Law, and a film adaptation of the novel The Dig
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