Interview: Danny Cohen
- Published: 02 October 2008 08:32
- Author: Katherine Rushton
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- Last Updated: 02 October 2008 08:32
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The critical scorn meted out to Lily Allen's chat show has not deterred BBC3 controller Danny Cohen from his mission to give new talent a break.
BBC3 controller Danny Cohen is in a jovial mood. His channel has just won the Edinburgh Television Festival award for best non-terrestrial of the year and he is about to head off on a much-needed holiday to the Canaries.
Perhaps that is why, when asked how BBC3 compares to a "young dolphin" as he claimed at the festival, he ends up doing a kind of dolphin swim across the room - but more of that later.
On a more serious note, Cohen feels the award has well and truly kicked criticisms of the channel into touch. "I am delighted and very relieved. It was a validation of the [February] relaunch and a validation of the value and worth of BBC3."
He rarely allows the channel's detractors to rile him - not even when Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys called for the channel to be scrapped. BBC3's share among its target demographic of 16 to 34 year olds was up 20% in the first six months since relaunch, he points out, and besides, Paxman and Humphrys' logic is flimsy.
Standing up to the old guard
"Channels don't cost money, programmes do and this is the thing that people don't think through when they make these arguments.Are they saying the BBC shouldn't make these programmes for young people any more? If they are saying that, they're talking about the basic principle of what the licence fee should be about and I simply don't agree with them. Young people deserve something from their licence fee as much as anyone else."
However, the attacks against Lily Allen have angered Cohen. Critics lampooned her chat show, Lily Allen and Friends, as "limp" and "desperate" and claimed there were mass walkouts from the pilot episode.
Cohen has since suggested the criticism was partly sexist and vehemently defends Allen's presenting abilities. "Lily has been an icon to have on the channel and she developed fantastically well, fantastically quickly over her first few hours of television. The very harsh nature of those attacks was over the top for a 22 year old."
The criticism of Allen demonstrates BBC3's problem in suffering what Cohen describes as "that rock and a hard place thing", where it is constantly called on to deliver the big audiences but must also develop new talent.
You can sympathise with him, but only up to a point. Lily Allen may be new to presenting but she's hardly an unknown name. And, if and when Gavin and Stacey moves to BBC1 (as even Cohen expects a third series would do), BBC3 won't lose the talent that stars in it: one of the comedies replacing it will be a new sketch show from Gavin and Stacey's leading men, James Corden and Mathew Horne.
Although Cohen admits he sticks to what he knows in his personal life (he is holidaying in the same resort as last year, and always orders the same dish at Pizza Express), he says commissioning Corden and Horne Have Come, which features established talent, is part of a bigger game plan.
"A mixture of new talent and established stars is important because it helps us launch new things," he explains, before reeling off the genuinely new names that are attached to forthcoming projects. Tim Dawson, who wrote new BBC3 sitcom Coming of Age is just 19,
while comedy show How Not to Live Your Life was lead actor Dan Clark's first series.
However, Cohen adds, it is still "wonderful" that Corden and Horne identify BBC3 as the place to launch a new show. They may well have bagged the only new sketch spot going, as BBC3 is more focused on narrative for the time being. "The shadow of Little Britain still looms large," he says.
Dramatic ambitions
Outside comedy, Cohen is looking to build up the channel's drama slate. He already has high hopes for Being Human and Phoo Action, both born out of the six competitive drama pilots that aired at the start of the year, and is on the look-out for other 6 x 60-minute series to air in the second half of next year. "High concept dramas work well for us and they have to be young-feeling, but not exclusively young in their interests," he says. "Sharp young writing should also be a part of our mix. That was what we found with Skins [which Cohen commissioned on E4]. There was an authenticity of voice that comes from having involved that age group."
Another production that captures all those qualities is PAs, a "sassy" comedy drama by former secretary Gabbie Asher, set in a London office and being made by Camden indie 2AM. The decidedly southern credentials notwithstanding, the series was commissioned through BBC Scotland and filmed at the corporation's Dumbarton studios.
North of the border it has inevitably raised eyebrows about how well it counts as an out of London commission but Cohen is adamant it will "easily qualify".
"They will have spent all the money up there and the production will have been based there. There is good drama made in Scotland and we want to do what we can to make more of it," he says.
No doubt his insistence has a lot to do with the demanding targets director general Mark Thompson set at the start of this year, to secure nearly 50% of all productions from outside the M25 by 2016. "The most senior people in the BBC - my bosses - are determined that we meet those targets and that means that I imagine we will."
In keeping with this Cohen is also eyeing a new teen series set and based Manchester. The project, about life in a hair and beauty salon, is currently in advanced development but could become the channel's first original soap (see news) if it gets the green light.
It would also be jointly funded by BBC3 and the corporation's cross-platform teen strand Switch, putting a stake in the ground for their future collaboration.
Is this a forerunner to a regular Switch slot on the channel? The BBC has already asked the BBC Trust about starting BBC3 at teatime instead of 7pm, and is starting to discuss how it could use the extra time if approved. The ultimate decision would lie with BBC Vision director Jana Bennett but Cohen says there is "no doubt" his channel and Switch would have a much closer relationship, even if there isn't a wholesale move from BBC2, where it currently airs.
"How that relationship works is something we've still not worked out - but it makes total sense that if we've got longer hours and Switch is making content for teens, there would be a place for it in the afternoons. That's just logical."
Unprompted, he adds that he has no intention of absorbing Switch into his current brief. "I don't want to run Switch. I've no desire to. I'm busy enough," he says.
The next big idea for factual
Among the matters keeping Cohen occupied at present is the hunt for a new factual "theme". He wants something that can encompass a range of series and one-offs, as the beauty season did earlier this year, but none of the ideas up his sleeve at the moment fulfils all the criteria, he says.
"The beauty season was a big, broad appealing subject that could be interpreted in many different ways. It would be great to find [another] season which has a thought-provoking question at its heart - that is meaningful for everyone and young viewers especially."
Certainly the beauty season combined mass audiences with worthy content that helped boost BBC3's public service credentials. Its examination of the fast fashion industry in Blood Sweat and T-Shirts and disabled model search Britain's Missing Top Model ticked all the boxes, but ratings winner Glamour Girls - about page 3 models - made a less convincing PSB case.
Cohen is unapologetic. "We will make programmes about subjects we know matter to our audience and that includes the kind of lives they think they might lead in the future. When people watched Glamour Girls, one of the main things they got out of it was, this isn't very glamorous and it isn't even very well paid. There are different ways of showing your face to the world and it was a very valuable thing for us to do."
Elsewhere Cohen has engineered a move away from the shock docs that used to dominate BBC3 schedules, famed for tabloid titles like F*** Off I'm Fat and Me and My Man Boobs. It's a shift in keeping with Cohen's own, more subtle, character.
Softly spoken and intellectual, he admits to an "obsessive" work ethic that is a million miles from BBC3's often hedonistic feel. "I worked ridiculously hard at my GCSEs. I had folders like this [he gestures] just of revision notes. I was obsessive about doing really well in my degree."
But Cohen also has an appetite for mainstream pleasures like football, cricket, EastEnders ("the one programme I never miss") - and dolphins, as it turns out.
"I did once swim with them," he confesses. "I was really quite scared. I'm not a mega-confident swimmer and I've never really liked having my head under water but my girlfriend pushed me to do it when we were in the Med." Here he drops to a stage whisper and moves across the room. "It was amazing. They're so fast and they come as close as this to you."
So how exactly do they compare to BBC3? Suddenly on-message Cohen is back: "Dolphins are inquisitive creatures that like to have fun but are also known to be intelligent and that's what BBC3 should be." His job now is to make sure it stays that way.
FACT FILE
Age: 34
School: City of London
University: Read English literature at Oxford
First job: Researcher, documentaries at Granada
Career high: "Meeting Hansen, Lineker and Shearer on Match of the Day"
