TV bosses should dare to flout Ofcom rules, says Grange Hill creator Phil Redmond
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Producer says ‘courage has gone out of broadcasting’ and audiences want to see grittier issues. The creator of some of Britain’s best-loved soaps has said the “courage has gone out of broadcasting” and suggested that television bosses should not be afraid to flout Ofcom rules.
![[Headshot of Phil Redmond with big hair and glasses]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/57d9c586b8666b543587d444230b9c8ce5df0d2e/415_0_2636_2635/master/2636.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Phil Redmond – the brains behind Hollyoaks, Grange Hill and Brookside – said there was “too much risk aversion” in television, with producers afraid to upset regulators even if it meant pleasing audiences. Redmond told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think the problem is that the courage has gone out of broadcasting really, and there’s just too much risk aversion.
There is a place for something like Grange Hill, and from my career, I always found that the harder you made the storyline, the more you upset the regulators, but the more the audience appreciated it, because the audience live these issues, and what they want to see is their own life put on screen as realistically as possible.”.
He also said future soaps set in schools ought to be more gritty, with social media being the “big issue” that children are facing. To make a programme like Grange Hill you need television producers with real “life experience”, he said, such as growing up in a working-class background.
Redmond added: “I think at the moment, we’ve got too many programmes being made by people who just want to be in telly, people who want to come into the media because they think it’s cool. “And when I was looking at trying to find writers for all the shows, my first question is: ‘What do you want to write about?’ And they’d say: ‘I’ll write anything, you tell me what to write.’ [I’d say:] ‘I don’t want to tell you. I want you to tell me.’”.
