He didn’t pull his punches as the socially inept Doc Martin on ITV. And now star Martin Clunes has issued a pretty dire prognosis for terrestrial TV drama: it’s being killed by streaming giants such as Netflix.
Clunes, 62, says that a drama he has just finished filming in Wales only survived because the actors’ strike in America meant production crews were available to work in Britain.
He adds it was unlikely that the show would have gone ahead otherwise because workers would have been lured by jobs on a high-paying streaming platform.
Clunes, pictured below as grouchy Dr Martin Ellingham in the Cornish comedy-drama he starred in for ten series over 18 years, reckons that lack of finance has killed most one-off dramas for TV stations. He adds that full series often only get the go-ahead by selling the content to foreign broadcasters in advance to be able to afford to start filming.
Martin Clunes, pictured with Caroline Catz, right, played Dr Martin Ellingham in the ITV drama set in Cornwall for a decade
He said streaming giants such as Netflix are willing to throw money at a project, pricing terrestrial TV stations out of the market
Clunes says: ‘It costs a fortune and the trouble, certainly for ITV, is that these streamer platforms, international platforms, have got really deep pockets and they have said their modus operandi is that we’re going to throw money at this’
Clunes says: ‘It costs a fortune and the trouble, certainly for ITV, is that these streamer platforms, international platforms, have got really deep pockets and they have said their modus operandi is that we’re going to throw money at this.’
The star, who didn’t name the drama he has been making in Cardiff, adds: ‘The job we’ve just finished, thank God there was that actors’ strike in America because Cardiff is a big centre for filming and it would have been tough getting a crew together because they’d all chase the dollar and an ITV budget doesn’t allow for it.
‘An ITV budget doesn’t pay enough for us to make the programmes we make – we have to pre-sell them overseas as well to get enough to make them nicely.
‘It is an expensive process and the better you do it, the more expensive it is. The most expensive thing is time – you’ve got 100 or so people and the meter’s running.’
Clunes, who found fame in the 1990s in BBC comedy Men Behaving Badly, has starred in a host of ITV shows including Goodbye Mr Chips, William And Mary, Arthur & George and Manhunt
Clunes, who found fame in the 1990s in BBC comedy Men Behaving Badly, has starred in a host of ITV shows including Goodbye Mr Chips, William And Mary, Arthur & George and Manhunt.
Asked if creativity suffers in the face of commercialism, he told the Beyond The Title podcast: ‘I don’t think commercialism halts creativity – and harnessed correctly it can encourage creativity.
‘I work almost exclusively for a commercial TV station so I like the clarity that if nobody likes it, then it won’t happen again, so you’ve got to make sure people like it.’
He joked: ‘But then you run the risk of getting rumbled eventually – and I will be rumbled eventually, you know.’
