The Final Cut
The Final Cut is a bold and insightful podcast exploring the latest in film and television. Hosted by Professor John Cook and filmmaker Charlotte Bjuren, each episode dives into new releases, classic gems, and the stories shaping screen culture today.
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The Final Cut
Giants of TV: Conversations with Potter and Newman
Step into a time machine of broadcasting history as Professor John Cook unveils the extraordinary story behind his rare interviews with two television visionaries – Dennis Potter and Sidney Newman.
As a PhD student in 1990, Cook secured what would become a treasured artifact in television history: a candid, two-and-a-half-hour conversation with the notoriously private Dennis Potter, creator of groundbreaking dramas like "The Singing Detective." This wasn't just any interview – it was a champagne-fueled verbal sparring match in a London basement that revealed the soul of a writer who transformed television drama with his revolutionary techniques and deeply personal themes.
The magic lies in the details: Potter arriving late, demanding champagne, chain-smoking throughout while delivering eloquent insights about his craft. "If you listen carefully," Cook reveals, "he would go into a soliloquy and actually reveal many of the secrets." Thanks to modern AI technology, these fragile interview tapes have been restored to near-studio quality, bringing Potter's voice back to life with remarkable clarity after 35 years.
Equally fascinating is Cook's encounter with Sidney Newman, the dynamic Canadian producer who created Doctor Who and revolutionized BBC drama in the 1960s. Newman's candid claim that George Lucas stole the design for R2-D2 from his iconic Daleks provides a delightful glimpse into television history from the man who helped shape it. These interviews capture a pivotal moment in broadcasting's evolution through the words of those who pushed its boundaries.
Whether you're a television history buff, a Doctor Who fanatic, or simply appreciate hearing creative minds discuss their work with honesty and depth, these restored conversations offer unprecedented access to the thoughts, processes and personalities of two men who forever changed what television could be. Subscribe to the JRC Media YouTube channel to hear these remarkable historical artifacts for yourself.
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Hot lights fade, the curtains rise, new stories waiting behind our eyes, charlotte and John with the final say, breaking down the screens in their own way. This is the final cut, where the real reviews ignite.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon and welcome. I'm delighted to be joined by Professor John Cook. He's a professor of media at Glasgow, caledonian, and he's a pioneer of Potter studies, which is basically he literally wrote the book of the great television dramatist Vince Landbeck. So basically the book he wrote was called Dennis Potter Live on Screen, and then he later unearthed an unknown Potter script in the Forrest O'Dean archive which added it to a fresh chapter of British TV history. But long before that, as a young PhD student, john secured two extraordinary encounters an in-depth conversation with Demnitz Potter himself at BBC in May 1990, and an earlier sit-down with Sidney Newman, the visionary Canadian producer who conceived Doctor who and revolutionised BBC drama in the 60s. Today we're going to look back at these informative interviews and hear what it was like to question these two giants of television and the creative prime, and explore how these meetings shaped Professor Cook's own scholarship and teaching career. Professor Cook, thank you for being here. So let's rewind to your student. How did you first land the interview with Dennis Potter?
Speaker 1:Well, thank you very much, Charlotte, for that introduction. Yes, so it's been quite interesting for me recently to revisit all of this 35 years on, to go back to the very beginnings of the work that I've done throughout my academic career, but where it all began, and I've managed to dig out the old interview tapes that I conducted the interview with Dennis Potter, and it all sort of came about, really because I was doing the first British PhD on Dennis Potter's work. Now, for those who may be less familiar with Dennis Potter, dennis Potter is a legendary figure in the history of television drama and he's known not just in the UK but also around the world for a lot of his pioneering techniques in TV drama what are often called non-naturalistic techniques, and a few of the famous ones that he customised were adults playing children in dramas such as his famous play Blue Remember Hills, characters stepping out of the drama and bursting into song, as well as customising a whole series of techniques such as intricate use of flashbacks and flash-forwards and melding of fantasy sequences with reality sequences. So he's a bit of a legend. He's regarded as one of the most important creative figures in terms of the way that he pioneered a lot of these techniques and he's influenced dramatists and filmmakers not just in the UK but also in America, including figures like David Lynch, who actually, at the time that I was interviewing him, he was actually trying to write a script for David Lynch the late great director David Lynch which was actually an adaptation of a novel by a Welsh writer called DM Thomas, called the White Hotel, and Potter was actually busy writing that on the very day that I met him he was working on that screenplay. The screenplay in the end was never produced. David Lynch went on to other projects, not least Twin Peaks, so it was never produced. Um, david lynch uh, went on to other projects, not least twin peaks, um, so it was never, never produced.
Speaker 1:But the whole sort of my encounter with them all came about because I was going around london interviewing a lot of the people that had worked beside dennis potter throughout his career, uh, including producers, uh, directors and also actually, as you've mentioned, charlotte Sidney Newman as well, who was really his early executive. Sidney Newman was head of BBC TV drama in the 1960s when Potter was getting his start. So I'd done all this and gone around and interviewed these people, but Potter at at that point had just had the biggest critical drubbing of his career with a four-part serial that is now regarded as a bit notorious, called black eyes, which, um, previously potter had had always had stellar reviews. There had been controversies but he had always sort of won the approval of critics and audiences tended to follow. But with Black Eyes he hit a real brick wall. Critics dubbed it as like the worst serial of the year, and what was more insulting for Potter was that he himself had directed it, the first piece of work that Potter had not only written but directed.
Speaker 1:So Potter wasn't in really any fit state to accept interviews.
Speaker 1:He was quite depressed for a while but eventually, with me going around and interviewing all these other figures and finally what I understand the story to be finally he thought I better see this guy was because I had gone right the way back to find some early letters that in correspondence that Potter had had with an MP called Christopher Mayhew in the late 1950s when Potter was a student, potter had worked on a documentary that Christopher Mayhew had made. This was a member of parliament who was also jobbing as a TV presenter and Mayhew by that stage in 1990 had been ennobled and was now Lord Mayhew and extraordinarily, he seemed to keep all his correspondence going back decades. So when I had written to Christopher Mayhew now Lord Mayhew and Mayhew had said well, here's some correspondence, and he sent it, and that was great for me. But then Mayhew, as a courtesy, informed Potter that these had been sent to me and Potter thought gosh, this little guy's digging here, there and everywhere. I better see him. And that's ultimately how the interview happened.
Speaker 2:So that's fantastic. What preparation did you do? And what was one question you were most nervous about asking him?
Speaker 1:well, I, you know, understandably, I was a little nervous as I showed up to his literary agent's office. Uh, that afternoon. Um, according to my interview tapes, the exact date was 10th may 1990. Um, so it was on that date. Um, so I was nervous because I was a student, he was way up there and I was, you know, just starting out. Um, so it was, there was a, there was a power imbalance, but, um, ultimately, what I had to do with that interview was very much play devil's advocate with Potter because, as Potter freely admitted, he was a reclusive character.
Speaker 1:In fact, at one point in our interview he said I'm a reclusive character, I don't expose myself, I appear to. In his, in his works he meant he appears to be more personal than he actually is. Now, when you've got a writer that actually says that to you, you're immediately on your metal thinking well, hang on, hang on. Is he playing games with me? Is he trying to pull the wool over my eyes or is he being honest? So it was very much an interesting kind of sparring session. It went on for two and a half hours and I should say that Potter was very friendly during it.
Speaker 1:Now, apparently, as I understand it, he could be aggressive to strangers coming in and asking him questions, and many an interviewer from press had been given short shrift over the years and kicked out essentially if they sort of annoyed Potter.
Speaker 1:But I guess with with me it was because I was somebody out from outside that media world of you know the press that potter used throughout his career to manage publicity for his work. This was something different. It was. It was more of a an extended sit down and, and actually, as I look back on it, it was extremely kind of Potter to do this, because I was no one. He could just continue to say no, and so it was actually quite a generous act. And what I began to realise in later years was how untypical this was. Although Potter was quite ubiquitous in the British media, it was always at the time that he was giving publicity for his work, so he would give lots of interviews. But what I hadn't quite appreciated that young was that this was unique, that in fact I don't think he had ever spoken to an academic researcher, someone from outside the press, in such detail ever before so when you walked in there to his office, but what did you first struck you?
Speaker 2:what struck you first about his demeanor or working environment? Was it like a, like a den, or like what? Was it the office? What would it look like?
Speaker 1:well, the interview took place in potter's uh literary agent's office, so it was a a neutral space.
Speaker 1:In that sense it it wasn't like being invited to the writer's private apartment or anything like that, so it was a neutral space. It was in the basement of his agent's office, then office I think the agency's moved since then. But the interesting thing was Potter arrived late. Now, this is characteristic, so I understand. But when he arrived, maybe about 20 minutes late, something like that I'd already been chatting to the literary agent and um, uh, you know, and she gave me the literary agent's name was Judy Dache, and she gave gave me some interesting background about her own, how she came to be involved with the work of Dennis Potter. But but then when Potter came in, I was immediately struck by how tall he was actually, because the television screen doesn't really show, you know, potter didn't need to be always shot in close-up in interviews, so he was quite tall. But he immediately came in and he immediately asked his literary agent for champagne to be brought down from upstairs. Uh, and he, as soon as he came in and took off new times old times champagne, yeah, this was so.
Speaker 1:This took me back a little bit. And and um so potter, I guess in that sense, was the original champagne socialist. He, um, he enjoyed the good life, he, he smoked prodigiously and he also did drink. And this was in the middle of the afternoon. So he asked for champagne to be brought down from his agent's office and what I noticed was that when he sat down he began to pour some out for himself, and then he looked up at me, and I'll never forget him staring up at me from behind his glasses, saying, oh, I suppose you'll want some of this too. And then, when I held out my glass for him to pour, he said typical Scotsman, you know, wanting something for nothing. So it was that kind of spirit of badinage and playfulness and friendly verbal jousting that characterized the whole interview.
Speaker 2:However, he was famous, a very old journalist. Did he test you and how did you win his trust? I mean, how did you feel, how did you build trust with him? Was he worried about?
Speaker 1:Well, I think yes, well, this was one of the things is, I could have been anyone and the theory could have asked anything about his work, and there were occasions when I did do that, actually, where I sort of pried a little bit. Now, the occasion of this particular discussion is because to mark Potter's 90th anniversary it's 90 years since Dennis Potter was born.
Speaker 2:I have released an extract from the interview, which I think Charlotte is going to play a bit of at the beginning of this, yeah, and in this, actually the bit that I've selected now this previously the interview was unlistenable.
Speaker 1:It had been recorded on an old sort of cassette dictaphone. It was all I could afford as a student and while it was transcribable and I could, you know, use it for quoting in my thesis and then in my academic publications, it was unlistenable to anybody really. But what I've been able to do with the latest AI tools is take an extract and restore it to near studio quality. So for the first time people can hear what I heard 35 years ago and the quality of the man's diction. He was extremely eloquent. Sometimes the way he talked, it was like poetry. But the extract that I've chosen is exactly one of those moments when I was just sort of maybe going a little bit too far for the reclusive potter, a little bit maybe too personal for him, and you'll hear laughing. He says I think we've reached the end of this interview. But then, yeah, but then characteristically, rather than swerving, he then went into a soliloquy, essentially a speech that was far more revealing and told me far more about the character of the man and now you, the audience, who can listen to it, than anything that I had the rather banal question that I had asked. So this was extremely characteristic of Potter is that he gave you a lot and he did give of himself and he did reveal himself, albeit in his own way and in his own oblique way. He's never going to give me the direct. You know he hated the word about. He says if you ever ask him or ever asked him, you know what's your work about. He says if you ever ask him or ever asked him, you know what's your work about. He says I hate that word. I hate. You know it's not about. You know, art shouldn't be about that. In his terms, it should be oblique, it should have metaphor, but what he would do is by, he would go into a soliloquy and actually reveal to you, if you listen carefully, many of the secrets, if you listen carefully, many of the secrets.
Speaker 1:And this was proven about a decade later when I had the great fortune of meeting Potter's eldest daughter, jane, jane Potter, who's still alive, and this was an event in the Forest of Dean in 2004. Forest of Dean in West Gloucestershire is where Potter was brought up and where, nearby his, his family still still live and um, jane had managed to hear, even though they were almost unlistenable, had managed to hear some quite a bit of of my interview. Uh, potter had apparently talked about the interview to her, according to jane at the time, and said it was a good interview. And when Jane listened back to it 2004, 10 years after her father's death, she took, she said it's a bit like having my father back in the room with me. So it was, it was a good interview.
Speaker 1:That that did reveal a lot of stuff and I mentioned to Jane that, as a young student, when I left the interview two and a half after two and a half hours and they finally got rid of me, I thought to myself, oh, maybe I've missed my chance here, maybe there was some things I could have asked and didn't and so on. Maybe I've blown it. But then, listening back to the tapes, I realized that Potter had given me a lot and in fact Jane entirely unprompted said that confirmed that when she said with that interview he gave you everything. So it was, it was, um, you know, in that sense it's a remarkable interview and I hope to be able to release more of it to studio quality and, in fact, ideally what I would like to do and maybe put out an appeal if anybody's listening.
Speaker 1:I would like to partner with a professional studio producer who would be able to release the whole thing and and do it into the best quality. What I've done with this youtube extract is a sort of proof of concept, a technical uh experiment on my part, just using standard desktop tools, but it'd be great, now that I've relocated the interview tapes, to really clean them all up in studio quality, release them professionally so that the audience can hear this, I think, very significant.
Speaker 2:Interview with potter so, and if any of you listeners who have contacts in in the media industry or in in in terms of able to clean this up, that would be superb if you can get in touch with us or get in touch with John on LinkedIn. My final question here before we move on is what answer from Potter surprised you most? Did it change the way you later interpret his play?
Speaker 1:yes, that's a. That's a good question, charlotte. Well, um, again, it's. It's revealed in embryo form in the extract that I've released, which to the public, which is about, uh, I think it's about a six minute extract, uh, and it came at the very end of the interview when, admittedly, potter was getting a little bit tipsy because he had been drinking so much champagne. By the way, he drunk champagne and chain smoked throughout our entire interview and I remember my phd supervisor saying I should have been paid danger money for being in in a room with the, you know, passive smoking, because it was literally a sealed off um basement in his agent's office.
Speaker 1:But, um, the key thing was that came out a lot from my interview with Potter is the religious aspect of it. Now, I wasn't particularly religious in any great respect, so therefore I was more interested in the techniques that Potter was using. But I realized after the interview and it had been dawning on me for some time before, but I realized that there was no way I could avoid tackling religion in porter's work, um, on the basis of the interview that porter had given me, because, as you will hear in the youtube extract, um, he says, you know, at the end of the day, I remain a christian and here we're now going to listen to the extract from the interview.
Speaker 1:Except this, that at the end of the day, I have tried through a long route and through my own calvaries or whatever.
Speaker 2:I remain somehow or other, against all the odds of a Christian. Now we're moving on to Sidney Newman. So you were very lucky not just having met Dan Sporter but you also met Sidney Newman. So how did that encounter come about and what did you hope to learn from the founder of Doctor who? And could you also tell us a bit the audience, a bit about Sidney Newman and what his part was in founding Doctor who? Yeah, sure, I mean he, his part was in founding Doctor who.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, I mean, he's famous not just for Doctor who, but nowadays I think that's what he's most remembered for because he was the guy who, when he was a Canadian Sidney Newman was a Canadian producer who moved into television production in Canada, I think originally from documentaries, and then built up a reputation in Canada that he was poached in the late 1950s to come over and work for the commercial television station ITV in Britain and he pioneered a groundbreaking series of single plays, single television plays under the umbrella title Armchair Theatre. Anyway, flash forward to the early 1960s and Newman was being so successful at ITV where he had also pioneered the Avengers, not the MCU, the Marvel Cinema Avengers, but the original 1960s spy series the Marvel cinema Avengers, but the original 1960s spy series starring Patrick McNee and most famously Diana Rigg as his female sidekick. And the Avengers was doing great guns. In fact, recently on my YouTube channel released my son actually did the edit released a YouTube shot showing the title sequence from the Avengers. So Newman was a real powerhouse in television drama production, both high-brow, like single television plays, and the low-brow mass market stuff. As a result he was so successful.
Speaker 1:The BBC poached him in the early 1960s to come over to the BBC and be head of TV drama head of BBC TV drama running the whole show, history and the future and would be a crotchety old man. Initially. That's how he was envisaged and a lot of it was, as Newman admitted to me, was borrowed from HG HG Wells' famous novel the Time Machine, published in 1899, but more particularly the 1960 Hollywood film version adaptation of the Time Machine that Newman had watched. Newman wasn't the most literate of men he had read. You know he read widely but he wasn't steeped in literature. Movies and TV was his first love. So in that sense he was a bit of a rough populist compared to your typical BBC type in the early 60s. And it was a result of that populism that Newman and he came up the name, I think as well, doctor who.
Speaker 1:So I was extremely lucky to get Newman as an interview because Newman just happened to be in London in February of 1990 when I was doing my research. He had spent years in the 70s and and most of the 80s in Canada, but he occasionally came back to London and rented a flat because to visit his daughter, whose name was Gillian, and it just so happened that as I was doing my research. He was over in London. So that was an unbelievable piece of luck. So you know we talk about, you know, dennis Pother and how fortunate I was to get that interview. Well, that was as a result of a bit of hard graft, you know, trying to persuade Pother. But with Sidney Newman it was pure luck, because these were the days before Zoom, you couldn't just go online and speak to somebody in Canada. So the fact that I got that, that was actually to me the biggest scoop of my research.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he had already been shaking up drama. Could you sense the confidence or controversy in the room when you're interviewing him also as a person? Well, how did you? How did he come across?
Speaker 1:very dynamic man. He his colleagues had often talked about as being one of the most dynamic figures ever to have worked in television. But but one of the things that was interesting. You know we've talked about dennis potter and how he was so tall. Sydney newman, he was a little fella, he was, he was, you know, he stood up to my shoulder and I'm not that tall, I'm about what? Five feet nine. So he was a little man. Maybe it's the little men, you know, they often say the little men are the most powerful Napoleon complex.
Speaker 1:I don't know, but you could tell that this was a man who had been a powerhouse. I mean, when I was meeting Sidney Newman he was older, he was rather a bit of an unknown figure in british television by 1990 because he had left britain in 1967 to go back to his native canada. So that meant that while he was a legend in tv history circles and amongst those of his colleagues who remembered him, to the current generation of TV producers in Britain in 1990, and obviously since not as well known, and Doctor who at that point was in a hiatus, so Doctor who, his name wasn't discussed really in relation to Doctor who. So he was a bit of a sadder figure I would say Dennis Potter was at the height of his powers when I met him. Sidney Newman was a figure in decline who was trying in his occasional visits to Britain to interest British television in making some of his productions. And he did have some success with a few independent productions pitched to Channel 4 at the time. But you can see, if you look up his resume on IMDb for example, how his work was tailing off and he was a sort of the lost ghost of British television.
Speaker 2:Do you feel it was a sort of sunset boulevard moment?
Speaker 1:A little bit. He had time on his hands and he wanted to talk and he wanted to talk and with me he found somebody that we wanted to listen because, you know, not many of my generation would know who Sidney Newman was. They'd know what Doctor who was and they'd know the Avengers, but they wouldn't know the name. And I was there to interview Sidney Newman, not about Doctor who but about his relationship to Dennis Potter and the fact that he had been head of TV drama during that period.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so that's what brought you into. That was what it was about?
Speaker 1:yeah, but I couldn't resist pitching some questions about Doctor who, because I love Doctor who so much.
Speaker 2:So, and the question that you had in your interview did you manage to, was it quite talkative of Doctor who, was that? So? What was the majority of the interview spent on? Was it on Doctor who or was it on his television career, and how long was the interview?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, these are all good questions. The interview, I mean I spent most of the day with Sidney Newman and it wasn't just, you know, with the tape recorder switched on. I mean, when I look back at my interview tapes I have about probably about three hours worth of stuff on tape. But I sat and had lunch with him in his apartment. You know he wanted to speak. I think he was probably a bit lonely in London and so I spent time with him. I had my lunch with him and I spoke to him.
Speaker 1:And in fact there's a funny story actually, because when I, when I was preparing to come down from Scotland to do these various interviews because I'd scheduled them, you know, one each day because I had a number of potters directors to interview and so on Sidney Newman had said remember to bring a haggis. So I get to London and I suddenly realise, oh, I forgot to bring a haggis. So I chase round all the London butchers and you know I go into several butchers no haggis here, mate, this is London and eventually find a haggis in Covent Garden, a garden butcher. So I bring this haggis to Sidney Newman's apartment, you know, as a kind of a gift, saying here's the haggis. You know you asked for haggis and Newman says yeah, but it'll be off right Because it's not down from Scotland. You asked for haggis and Newman said yeah, but it'll be off right Because it's not down from Scotland. And I didn't have the heart to say to him that in fact I just bought it that morning from a butcher's in Covent Garden. So that's the haggis story.
Speaker 1:But I spent a lot of time with him that day and got a lot of material. But you're right, the bulk of the interview was on I took him through his career, starting in Canada, and I was kind of conscious, you know, that I just didn't want to do just talk about Dennis Potter that. You know, having a sit down with this man was quite unique. So I went through his entire career and also pitched in questions that were entirely unrelated in relation to Doctor who. But yes, the bulk of the interview was on Sidney Newman, his career at BBC television drama and how he interacted with Dennis Potter.
Speaker 2:Was he proud of the Doctor who, how it came out? I mean, sometimes when you find the writer to write something and what comes out on the screen is quite different, was he quite happy with how they had staged it? Or was it then that the writer had more powers over the production that perhaps they don't have today?
Speaker 1:Well, sidney Newman was keen to stress that he, as head of TV drama, he wasn't a producer of Doctor who. In fact it was a young, one of the first actual female drama producers, verity Lambert, who Newman appointed to be the first series producer of Doctor who. This was quite groundbreaking a time when women tended just to be secretaries or assistants at best, and Newman actually was a sort of early feminist in that sense, in the sense that he would, he would give young women opportunities, and women of all ages opportunities, I think maybe because Canada was slightly more egalitarian at that point compared to, say, um, england. So Verity Lambert was the producer and she realized it in her own way and with the first director of Doctor who, the director of the first story, an Asian man called Varys Hussain. So again, you know, diversity right in there, right at the very start of Doctor who, and Newman facilitated that.
Speaker 1:He didn't oversee it day to day, but Doctor who wasman's creation, newman, um, you know there was a lot of hands involved in the creation of doctor who, but the inspiration for it would never have happened at the bbc if it hadn't been for this canadian with, um a penchant for science fiction and time travel, who had recently seen the movie the Time Machine coming into the BBC and wanting to shake it up and having the power to do so. So that's really important. So, newman, you know a really important figure.
Speaker 2:And if you compare these two experiences, in what way were the differences in the interviewees? Potter and Newman were the different interviewees.
Speaker 1:Potter and Newman Different. Yeah, I mean Potter, it was like an English literary seminar, you know, in the sense that you're going into a great deal of depth on aspects of his religious belief, his artistic techniques and very much exploring that world and getting into a kind of literary depth. With sydney newman it was much more um conversation, about um production and about audiences, and you asked before charlotte about whether he was proud of doctor who. Um, we've released um on youtube.
Speaker 1:A short extract from my interview with sydney newman, a sort of follow-up to the Dennis Potter interview which people can hear on YouTube, and the bit that we've selected or that I found relevant to Doctor who is where he says he in his opinion I'm not sure I agree with it myself, but in his opinion George Lucas with the R2-D2 robot in Star Wars stole the cylindrical design from his Daleks you know Doctor who's Daleks. So we've put this out on YouTube. I think it's gone a little bit viral. I bet you love that. You can listen to it. Yeah, so you can listen to it. But that, I think, shows that he was proud of Doctor who and felt a sense of ownership over it and I think actually actually a little bit of bitterness that had maybe run away from him and he had not maybe, in his view, been remunerated enough yeah, because Star Wars certainly got a lot of attention at that time, people queuing for miles for us to say it maybe.
Speaker 2:So do you feel that he didn't get as as much yeah reward or remuneration for it as he deserved? Is that Well I?
Speaker 1:think towards the end of his life. I think he actually tried to ask the BBC for money because he felt a sense of copyright that he had owned it. But the problem was that he was in common with all the directors and producers of Doctor who. As an executive he was an employee of the BBC and the BBC owns the copyright to all its dramas. So Sidney Newman's attempt to try and sort of get some money for it never succeeded, as best I'm aware. There may have been some sort of private compensation I don't know, but certainly publicly I'm not aware of it and Newman actually tried to. When Doctor who was not succeeding in the 1980s, he tried to step in to become its producer and to revive it by bringing back the second Doctor, patrick Troughton, and this was a sort of attempt, I think, for Newman to try and reassert his control over Doctor who.
Speaker 2:When you look at these both men, they were outspoken critics of bureaucracy and broadcasting. Do their warnings still resonate with today's streaming landscape?
Speaker 1:um, yes and no, I mean that they're. Obviously we're going back to figures who worked. Their heydays were between the 60s and the 1980s, newman, particularly 1960s. Dennis potter had a career that started in 1965 and continued up to his death, sadly from cancer, at the age of 59 in 1994. So, um, they are figures in that sense from 20th century television and we've moved on now.
Speaker 1:Um, I have, um, you know, I've been interviewed over the years by various journalists about dennis potter and the question sometimes comes up, you know, would a dennis potter survive today in today's world of streaming? And I say absolutely if dennis potter was in his 50s today, because obviously if he was alive today he'd be 90, a bit old maybe now. But if he, if he had been in his 50s today, he would very much, I think, be working in streaming because he liked the idea of creating a television novel. And we are in the era of streaming now, where series tend to be about six to eight episodes. They're not the sort of long runs of 24 episodes that just a few years back used to characterize american television. So that's how potter wrote in the 1980s. He would write six part serials, um, maybe up to with his final works, karaoke and cold lazarus eight parts. So he would perfectly fit um that mold and he would also, I think, want to have one foot in hollywood and one foot in the bbc, because he had striven for that, particularly in the 1980s as his hollywood screenwriting career took off. He always wanted to have one foot with the bbc and one foot in hollywood.
Speaker 1:So what would be more, what could be more perfect for pot Potter than, say, a co-production deal with Netflix on a, say, a six part serial that was for the BBC but co-produced by Netflix or or one of the other streamers? So I think Potter would have um, would have um, survived today. Sidney Newman, um, well, obviously Doctor who's back, and it's been back since 2005. So Sid Sidney Newman, we could imagine, could be some sort of consigliere to Russell T Davis. If he was still alive, I'm sure someone like Russell T Davis would have sought out Sidney Newman. He has acknowledged Sidney Newman within the creation of Doctor who. So I think Sidney Newman maybe, as an eminence Grease, could have contributed to Doctor who.
Speaker 2:OK, just a couple more questions before we finish up here. If you could re-ask one question to each of them with a hint side of your scholarship, what would it be?
Speaker 1:Gosh, that's big questions.
Speaker 1:I think I'm satisfied that in both interviews I covered the ground and so, despite my initial misgivings with Dennis leaving the Dennis Potter interview dash, I wish I'd asked him that. I wish I'd asked him that in reviewing the tapes I found that he had given me everything. It's just that when you're sitting there with Dennis Potter and you've got this flow of eloquence and words and you're getting drunk with him which may have been his technique, actually giving me champagne as well, making me drunk or a little bit tipsy, and the interview quickly went out the window in terms of structure and I realized that there was no way that I was going to be able to pin dennis potter or someone of that nature to a structure. You know, tell me what happened, this and this and this and this, um. So in the end it was much more poetic and it was much more, as I said, a verbal, a friendly, verbal, jousting match, as I tried to to probe, and he tried to duck and weave and spin and spar, because the one thing that no writer can really do to an interviewer is reveal themselves entirely. They have to hint.
Speaker 1:With Sidney Newman it was more I think Sidney Newman felt had done pretty exhaustively, I think, in his wonderful Canadian jargon. I think he'd have sucked me dry, which is slightly odd. But there we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I must say, if I had interviewed either of them I would be completely starstruck, so probably wouldn't have got out a word. So my question is for a student watching this who dream of interviewing their heroes what practical advice, ethical caution would you pass?
Speaker 1:on. Well, ethical. You've got to be ethical. You've got to be. You've got to be truthful. You'll you'll quickly get sussed if you're, if you haven't prepared, or if you're going in with an alternative motive. So say, for example, you're actually just interviewing someone to try and get a job out of them, whereas you've you've told them that oh yes, I really want to find out about your work. So you have to be ethical. You also have to prepare, so you have to know what you're asking the people. This is important, because I would not have lasted two and a half hours with Dennis Potter if I hadn't shown to him that I knew at least a little bit about his work. So I pretty much watched everything that I could get my hands on at that time. I'd researched and researched, so I was prepared when I went in Nervous, and also I had.
Speaker 1:The other key thing, though, is you cannot go in with what's called in the academic panel. It's a structured interview where you just have this checklist of questions and you just fire them off and you don't listen to what the interviewee has. Listen to what the the interviewee has to say, because the interviewee might reveal gold dust to you, uh, but you're not pursuing it because you've got this checklist. So it has to be structured, but it also has to be open and free at the same time. In the academic parlance it's called semi-structured. Have a skeleton, knowing what you want to get out of them in advance, but be prepared to allow the interview to be free-flowing in order that you can allow the subject to reveal themselves to you rather than you're not bothering to listen because you're too busy. Moving on to the next question.
Speaker 2:and finally, when you revisit these tapes, is there any single line that gives you goosebumps? Is there anything you think, oh God, oh no, oh God, how wow. How did I ask that? Something like that?
Speaker 1:Well, to be frank, I mean it's been very interesting revisiting the tapes because it's been 35 years and you know it's not that I've listened to them for a long time With the Potter one, though the Potter interview has kind of lived with me because I have. There was an attempt to digitize it and release it in the mid-2000s in a website that called itself the official Dennis Potter website, which the owner of the um unfortunately is no longer with us was very proud of that. The potter family had agreed that you could use that title, so we actually released our, you know, got the tapes digitized and released through that website. Unfortunately, the website is now defunct. It's been defunct for about 15 years, um, but they were all released then. But the problem was, I'm sure nobody listened to them because the quality was so terrible, because we couldn't digitize at that time or we could digitize but not do AI cleanups. You know it's only in the last two years or so that we've had AI bots that can go in and clean up.
Speaker 1:So when you ask about goosebumps, it's not so much the content of the Dennis Potter interview that gave me goosebumps recently. It was when I did that run through, you know, of these very dodgy tapes, very unlistable tapes, shove them through, uh, an ai, uh, standard desktop ai cleaner, and out came dennis potter's voice, um, studio quality in the same. So I was so suddenly I was going was taken back 35 years to what I heard in the room, rather than this rather sort of, rather sort of trebly tinkly voice that had been on the original analogue tape. Suddenly this was Dennis Potter back and that is what you can hear now in the cleaned up extract that I've released for his 90th anniversary. It really is.
Speaker 1:You know it's not perfect and there are. There are little glitches and and what used to be called wow and flutter um on the tape. So it's not perfect, uh, and that's why I'd like to get it even better. But my goodness, what? What an improvement from what it was. And you can get a sense of that if you listen at the start of the interview, where you have a little bit of the older analogue, and then what I do as a demonstration is I take you into the studio quality AI-enhanced recording and man, what a difference.
Speaker 2:Thanks, yeah, and thank you for the interview, say for listening. In the back here we will. We show a clip from this. But if you want to find out more or if you want to listen to, please go to the jrc media youtube channel and listen to the extract. And, as I say, the aim of professor cook is to release the whole extract as the cleaned up version and if you're able to assist with that, please contact us. But otherwise, I would just thank Professor Cook for this interview and thank you, thank you.
