McGovern regrets Cracker return

Robbie Coltrane

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Cracker creator Jimmy McGovern has admitted he was wrong to bring back the Robbie Coltrane drama last year because the lead character was too old.

McGovern, the creator and principal writer of the series, told The Guardian that Coltrane’s
Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald “was of a certain time and place” and should never have been brought back.

“I'm a granddad now, and he was a granddad too,” McGovern said. “Despite the fact that [director] Antonia Bird did a wonderful job, as did Robbie, and John Chapman was a great producer, the fault lies with me.”

However, McGovern, who last year described ITV drama as “crap”, said he was currently optimistic about ITV’s fortunes, although it still had a long way to go. 

“At the time I believed what I said. At the time, if you found out there was a drama on at 9 o'clock on ITV, your heart sank. It's undeniably true, what I said, but it got me into a wee bit of hot water.”

However, McGovern said ITV boss Michael Grade would eventually get it right. “ITV management in its crassness and its stupidity increased the supply of advertising at the point at which the price of advertising was plummeting,” he said. “They [ITV] ended up devaluing the advertising space, and ruining the drama. Every time you turned on a drama there was an ad in it.”

He added that he has a “hunch” that there will come a time when dramas written for ITV only face one advertising break in an hour. “It's a very strong, informed hunch,” he said.