Tony Marchant on BBC's 'Garrow's Law'

Tony Marchant (left) being interviewed by Bob Shoemaker (right)

WHAT are the difficuties of transferring a drama from the author’s script to the TV screen? Professor Bob Shoemaker from University of Sheffield interviewed the author Tony Marchant from the award-winning BBC programme ‘Garrow’s Law’.

BBC drama ‘Garrow’s Law’, is inspired by the online Old Bailey Proceedings which includes 240,000 documents from trials between 1674 to 1913.

The award-winning screenwriter and playwrighter Marchant  talked about the challenges and the opportunities writers face when they have to present history on TV.

“I needed to do a cross-examination of facts. At  the end I had a 40-page document. In drama you have to do several drafts before you finally decide”, he said.

Historical research

Marchant read the book that the story was based on and invented the rest of it. However, he still had concern about telling the truth. As he pointed out: “I tried to be truthfull, it’s different from telling the truth.”

Another important matter is the context. ‘I took seriously the context’, he said. We should try to interpret what do all these things mean to us now and of course taking the motive of the story seriously, which makes people want to see it.”

Expectation of BBC

Exploring history in a very popular way is good and it is a happy coincidence to tell a story of the 18th century through contemporary media and TV, he said.

However, the main concern has to do with the audience and their willingness to watch history on TV.

In the pitch given to the BBC the focus was on the characters and the BBC wanted to be sure that the stories would have an impact on the audience.

Control of the writer or the director?

Many people may wonder, who has the power after a drama is played on TV? The writer or the director?

The answer lies somewhere in the middle as both of them contribute  to the best possible production and presentation of the drama, he said.

Marchant said about his part that during the preparation for the TV procuction on BBC they tried to be less dry, more emotional and visual. And usually, this is what discriminates prose from a TV production.