British TV has too many serial killers says top scriptwriter Andrew Davies

Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House and Mr Selfridge writer bemoans TV's obsession with grisly murders at today's Broadcasting Press Guild Awards and says we need "more human heart stuff"

Ben Dowell, 28 March 2014

Radio Times

He was once known as TV’s Mr Sex for his racy adaptations of period classics such as Pride and Prejudice and Fanny Hill for the BBC.

But now scriptwriter Andrew Davies has said that TV drama needs to calm down a bit: there are, he believes, too many dead bodies and serial killers on the small screen.

Collecting his lifetime achievement prize at today’s Broadcasting Press Guild awards, the writer laid into the current vogue for grisly drama.

“Why is it always genre now, didn’t there used to be a section called drama? Does it all have to be…serial killers?,” he said after collecting the Harvey Lee award for an outstanding contribution to broadcasting.

Adding that “there is a corpse in every episode” of many dramas he joked: “I don’t think people should be allowed to write serial killer drama until they have killed at least three people themselves. Let’s have more human heart stuff without killers.”

Davies did not specify which shows he was referring to, but it seems that he has in mind shows such as the acclaimed The Fall which chronicled the grisly killings of a Northern Irish killer played by Jamie Dornan.

Davies was given the prize for his work on more BPG award-winning programmes than anyone else in the Guild's 40-year history.

These include the adaptations of House of Cards, Pride & Prejudice and Bleak House.