Empire Road – Director Michael Custance

 My first BBC job.  This series was commissioned by BBC Birmingham drama dept. which was renowned for being more daring and experimental than BBC London. ‘Empire Road’ was no exception and Peter Ansorge the producer was one their most daring producers.

There is a long straight road running up through immigrant area North Birmingham called Bristol Road. All the shops were owned by Asians and all the manual jobs, digging up the roads and council works were done by West Indians. Between the two cultures there was a lot of racist tension.

Written by Michael Abbensetts it was a political series aimed dead centre at the racist problem with the leading family being West Indian and their daughter marrying an Asian.  Michael wrote the series using comedy to attack the racism and by using comedy he could get away with going further into the problem than a straight drama could have done.

Filming on the streets was a bit dangerous but thankfully nothing happened. Norman Beaton the top black actor in the country played the lead role and most of the others were first timers.   Rehearsals with a cast where half were culturally completely different from the other half was lively to say the least.

The series had a huge impact in the national press particularly when the Imans of the local mosque tried to get the series banned because of the mixed marriage.   The producer Peter Ansorge told them to go to the Birmingham marriage registry and see for themselves that there were hundreds of mixed Islam marriages in the district.  They still would not have it and went to their member of parliament and of course got no further with a politician.

The series was hysterically funny and mixed with West Indian music, jam sessions, street dances, singers.  I will never forget the actress that launched into ‘Sitt’n On The Dock of The Bay’ in the middle of a scene completely unscripted and on the spur of the moment yet quite brilliant.  In the studio when shooting a party scene with a reggae band you could have cut the haze of marijuana with a knife. I think we all got a bit high. Illegally, we locked the studio doors to stop anyone complaining in the middle of the shoot.

Getting the mixed race cast to turn up rehearsals at the same time was a battle we never won, despite having two lists of call times, the West Indian list was 15 minutes earlier than the Asian list to try and get them all together at the same time.  A young actor turned up 45 minutes late and I let rip, “Why on earth can you never be on time”.  “I’m never on time man but I am in time”.  Of course he was ‘in time’, because I can not start without him.

In the midst of a studio shoot my gallery was suddenly filled with police coming to arrest  Norman Beaton, the star.  Peter, the producer managed to talk them into waiting till we had finished shooting that day. They sat down and watched the shooting for two hours. Made their day.  Norman was playing Father Christmas and the minute we finished the last shot he was marched away still in his Father Christmas costume.

We needed a really grotty small cafe and found one at the end of Bristol Road yet when we arrived to film a few days later it was totally redecorated and spotless.  The owners wanted their cafe looking “Nice for your film”.  Embarrassing.  We could not say to them we wanted it grotty.  Had to leave and find another in a hurry.

 

David Rose obituary by Simon Farquhar

David Rose. Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Below is Simon Farquhar’s obituary of David Rose, which is published in The Times today, 24th Feb 2017. Thanks to Simon for sharing the full copy of his article.)

When David Rose was appointed the BBC’s Head of English Regions Drama in 1971, with a noble brief to “find new writers in the regions and nurture them”, the Head of Plays waved him off to the new Pebble Mill studios in the badlands of Birmingham saying “you will come to our weekly meetings, won’t you?” Shrewdly, Rose replied “thank you, but no. I don’t want to know what you’re doing, and I don’t want you to know what I’m doing”.

It was typical of what made him an adored man, a wise and altruistic professional with a Father Christmas beard, a twinkling eye and a boundless enthusiasm for drama, stories and, crucially, storytellers. Softly spoken and broad minded, he was a quiet giant who gave a voice to those with new and dangerous things to say, driven, unlike many other pioneering forces in television drama of the time, not by politics but purely by principles, and known to chew his handkerchief in anxious moments. His ten years at Pebble Mill are now the stuff of television legend and a wonderland for the tv historian to explore. On his watch, that building became a powerhouse of innovation and unpredictability; young talent such as David Hare, Willy Russell and Stephen Frears made the place “the British film industry in waiting”.

Born in Swanage, Dorset, David Edward Rose and his sister Daphne lived over the jeweller’s shop his parents ran in the High Street. He inherited their love of music and his mother’s interest in amateur dramatics; his uncle had also set up the first cinema in town. After Kingswood School in Bath and war service with the RAF, during which he undertook 34 flying missions in a Lancaster Bomber, he took a year out in Cannes. After watching Michael Powell explaining film rushes at the end of a day’s shooting on The Red Shoes, he aimed at becoming a director. He studied at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, then worked in repertory theatre for five years, firstly as an actor at the Royal Hippodrome in Preston, where he met his first wife, Valerie Edwards, and then as a stage manager at Sadler’s Wells, before joining the BBC in 1954 as an assistant floor manager.

In his first week, he worked on the now-legendary Rudolph Cartier production of 1984. He later transferred to Elwyn Jones’ Dramatised Documentary Unit, where his first credit as a television director, Medico (1959), about the service that offered emergency medical advice to those at sea, won that year’s Prix Italia. Rose was fond of relating how, after the prize giving, he said to a man at the bar “Hello, I’m David Rose, a producer”. The man replied “hello, I’m Samuel Beckett”. Rose met Gracie Fields on the same trip, and said he always regretted not introducing them.

The following year he launched Z Cars, a series it is impossible to overstate the importance of in television history. It brought a new immediacy to television drama and believed that “a police thriller could be a work of art”, something television is only now, over half a century later, realising again. The pressure of live broadcasts was immense; on one occasion, when actor James Ellis had broken his foot, Rose, out of shot, carried him from one high stool to another, to give the illusion that the actor was delivering his lines standing up.

Director of Television David Attenborough would later say that appointing Rose as Head of English Regions Drama was one of the best decisions he ever made. The triumphant debut, Peter Terson’s The Fishing Party (1972), a story of three Leeds miners on holiday, was an authentic, unpretentious, home-grown treat. After its broadcast, Managing Director of Television Huw Wheldon telephoned Rose and said “if that’s what you’re going to do boyo, that’s alright by me”.

Plays with fire followed this beguiling start; incendiary half-hours such as James Robson’s magnificent Girl (1974), in which Alison Steadman and Myra Francis gave British television its first lesbian kiss, were history in the making. A Touch of Eastern Promise (1973) was the first drama on British television with an entirely Asian cast; the soap opera Empire Road (1978) was another first, written, acted and directed predominantly by black artists, set in one racially diverse street in Birmingham.

Nowhere on television before or since has the “right to fail” principle been so fearlessly executed. Rose loved discovering writers with no screen experience; “some people thought this was mad, but I thought it was great. They come with no baggage”, he explained. “Every day of my working life depended on writers. The BBC used to do audience satisfaction surveys, and you had to score a figure as close to 72 as possible to keep the bosses happy. I didn’t agree. If it was a low figure, I thought that was good. I don’t want to make it easy for the viewer. I don’t like them to know what’s coming”.

Although some of Birmingham’s output was commissioned by London, there was a kitty of development money which allowed him to make things without having to ask permission. This was how he got something as wild as The Ken Campbell Road Show on the air, and other works that could be called courageous and adventurous; he knew a keen as mustard young director like Matthew Robinson was just the person to hand a script like Eric Coltart’s Doran’s Box (1976) to. “I don’t understand it, it’s about a man who shoots at aeroplanes”, Rose said. Whatever was inside that puzzle box remained a mystery for the small number of head-scratchers who watched the finished piece, but we had fun trying to find out.

Rose had far more respect for his audience than his superiors. He had to fight constantly for his survival within the BBC, and had his fair share of hot potatoes: Philip Martin’s savage Gangsters (1975), Watson Gould’s blistering feminist attack on a patriarchal society, The Other Woman (1976), Malcolm Bradbury’s concupiscent The History Man (1981) and a planned-then-banned production of Ian McEwan’s Solid Geometry. But there was also Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May (1976), Alan Bleasdale’s The Black Stuff (1978) and the film he was most proud of, Penda’s Fen (1974) by David Rudkin, one of the richest and most sophisticated works ever produced for television. At its simplest, the story of a teenage boy’s awakening to the English landscape surrounding him, its potent blend of folklore, folk horror, questions of personal and national identity, environmental concerns, sexuality and religion made for a bewitching brew, interweaved with the music of Rose’s favourite composer, Elgar.

The days of pockets of anarchy at the BBC were coming to an end as the 1980s ushered in new threats to autonomy and artistic integrity. Rose was two years off retirement when Jeremy Isaacs invited him to become Head of Fiction at the new Channel 4.

It was an Indian summer for him. In his first year there, he produced 20 feature films; the previous year there had been just 21 made in Britain as a whole, only two of which were British. Over eight years, he approved the making of 136 films in total, the advantage over the films made for the BBC being that some had the chance of a theatrical release. High profile successes included My Beautiful Launderette (1983) and Mona Lisa (1986). And fiction didn’t only mean films: he also commissioned a soap opera like no other, Brookside (1982), a breeding ground for writers such as Jimmy McGovern and Frank Cottrell Boyce.

Some disapproved of Film on Four, claiming it betrayed television drama by diverting funds into a moribund film industry. But it allowed strange, wonderful work to be produced and gave a transfusion of faith into British movie-making. As we salute the arrival of T2 Trainspotting we should remember that it, like its predecessor, was backed by Film4. In 1987, Rose received the Roberto Rossellini Award in Cannes for Channel 4’s “services to cinema”, a remarkable and deeply significant achievement.

His appetite for new people and places was a personal as well as a professional virtue; in his later years, having read that if you make a new friend you extend your life by a week, he made a point of getting to know new people, be it in the street, at a bus stop or at a concert. Director Tony Smith says that “he could be irascible, infuriatingly dilatory, he said ‘garn’ and ‘goff’ instead of ‘gone’ and ‘golf’. He was patrician, but a benevolent and self-challenging one. And we all loved him”.

His domestic life was a busy business: married three times, lastly to producer Karin Bamborough, who had been his assistant at Channel 4, he made his own huge family as harmonious a place as Pebble Mill had been; domestic life was often carried out to a classical soundtrack which he would usually be caught conducting around the house or at the wheel of his car. His passion for music and drama was passed on to his nine children, one becoming a jazz musician and another becoming a producer. At 89 he made his debut short film, Friend or Foe, which explored his experience of Parkinson’s Disease. It won him a Mervyn Peake Award.

When he received a BFI fellowship in 2010, Head of Film and Drama at Channel 4, Tessa Ross, announced that “you are in my head all of the time, as I try and protect that precious place”. Tony Smith recalls how “towards the end of his time at Birmingham he took a sabbatical. Some months after his return, he asked me: ‘English Regions Drama – have we succeeded, really?” I answered him at length, ticking off all the positives.  He made no comment.  As I was leaving, I said, ‘You know, when you were gone, we were afraid you wouldn’t come back’.

He had returned then, but he will never be replaced.

David Edward Rose, producer, born 22 November, 1924; Swanage, Dorset, married 1st, 1952, Valerie Edwards (d 1966); three sons three daughters; 2nd, 1966, Sarah Reid (marriage dissolved, 1988); one daughter and one stepson, one stepdaughter adopted; 3rd, 2001, Karin Bamborough, died Hackney, London, 27th January 2017

Simon Farquhar

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Michael Abbensetts 1938-2016

Michael Abbensetts talking to Michael Wearing

Michael Abbensetts talking to Michael Wearing, at the Midlands Arts Centre 2010

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Norman Beaton in Empire Road. Photo by Willoughby Gulachsen, no reproduction without permission.

Norman Beaton in Empire Road. Photo by Willoughby Gullachsen, no reproduction without permission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Guyanan-born writer, Michael Abbensetts, sadly died on 24th November 2016. Michael settled in Britain in the 1960s and gave a voice to people from a Carribean heritage, through his writing for the theatre and television. He worked on several Pebble Mill dramas in the 1970s and early ’80s, often with producer Peter Ansorge. His first Pebble Mill production was Black Christmas, in 1977; followed by Empire Road (series 1 and 2), the first black British soap opera, 1988-9; and Easy Money, part of Playhouse, 1982. He also wrote an episode of Doctors in 2001, which was his last television script.

Michael attended the ‘What was Pebble Mill’ screening event at the Midlands Arts Centre in 2010, and was interested in commemorating the dramas made at Pebble Mill.

(Thanks to Lez Cooke for updating some of the information in this post.)

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Terry Barker: ‘He did an episode of Doctors which I script edited in late 90s’

Janice Rider: ‘The Mac event was the last time I met Michael before he became unwell . Not many people may be aware that there is a beautiful photograph of him in the National Portrait Gallery collection by Horace Ove, filmmaker, who directed some episodes of Empire Road. A lasting tribute to a great, gentle playwright. http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw79463/Michael-Abbensetts?LinkID=mp68713&search=sas&sText=Michael%20Abbensetts&OConly=true&role=sit&rNo=0

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Vision of a Nation: Making Multiculturalism on British Television

Gavin Schaffer bookCopyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.

This newly published book by Gavin Schaffer, from the University of Birmingham, explores the development of multiculturalism on British television. It includes several mentions of programming from Pebble Mill and BBC Birmingham. Gavin’s research for the book included a detailed interview with Stephanie Silk, who was a PA in the Immigrants Programmes Unit in the late 1960s, as well as interviews with English Regions Drama Department producer, Peter Ansorge (producer of Empire Road , Britain’s first black soap opera, written by Michael Abbensetts).

It is Steph Silk on the front cover, with Saleem Shahed on the left, and Mahendra Kaul in the middle, from the Immigrants Programme Unit. The photo is from summer 1968, at a charity dinner in London, arranged by the Indian High Commission.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Vision-Nation-Gavin-Schaffer/dp/0230292984/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401910435&sr=8-1&keywords=vision+of+a+nation+gavin+schaffer

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook Page:

Julian Hitchcock: ‘Many, many memories…. Mahendra (who was also a restaurateur) was rather grand. Saleem gave off an air, not only of pipe tobacco, but of a university vice-chancellor.

Studio B! Ah, the glamour!

I was always proud of Pebble Mill’s role in the policy. There were ups and downs, as well as hours of incomprehensible chat shows, but you felt that it was engaging its audience keenly and in a vital way. Year on year, you felt it responding to social developments as, in the other direction, the rest of BBC programming caught up.

Before that happened, there was a period in which the Unit was thought by all too many as a silo for people whose epidermis was insufficiently French. I recollect being mortified with embarrassment by the “helpful” suggestion of a senior producer to a bright new graduate [of Asian complexion] who was gaining work experience at Pebble Mill and who was interested in getting into production. Fag in hand, she advised the girl to try Asian programmes.

The remark was simultaneously offensive and very good advice. I’m delighted that those days are behind us. That they are is in no small part due to the efforts of the Asian Unit.’

Lynn Cullimore: ‘Yes, remember all that. I worked in what was called The Asian Unit at one time and have to say I never went hungry because there was always a restaurant of a relative somewhere near where we were filming. I worked on Black Christmas too – John Clarke being the producer. There was also a couple of series called “Together” which was about ethnic minorities living in the Midlands. It was interesting and I learnt such a lot.’

Films and Plays from Pebble Mill

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.

This booklet was published in 1980 by West Midlands Arts, to celebrate ten years of regional television drama.

The dramas mentioned include Gangsters, Black Christmas, Empire Road, Licking Hitler, Dreams of Leaving, Girls, Jack Flea’s Birthday Celebration, Only Connect.

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