McGovern shows city’s Street paved with talent

Nov 21 2007 by Alan Weston, Liverpool Daily Post

SCREENWRITER Jimmy McGovern last night hailed the Liverpool-based creative team behind his hit TV drama The Street after it scooped two International Emmy Awards.

It was named best drama series at the New York ceremony, while Jim Broadbent shared the best actor award for his portrayal of a dedicated warehouse foreman forced into early retirement.

A second series of the acclaimed drama is currently being screened on BBC1.

It again features six stand-alone stories of individual characters who happen to live on the same road.

Mr McGovern, who did not attend the awards ceremony held at the Hilton New York hotel, said: “I was in bed when the phone rang at 1.45am, with a text message to say we had won.

“I was pleased and celebrated with a cup of tea.”

Executive producer Sita Williams accepted the best drama prize at the awards ceremony, which honours TV programmes produced outside the US.

“Really, this award goes to the creator of The Street, Jimmy McGovern, whose characters have to face the inconvenient truth of their lives with honesty,” she said.

Mr McGovern added: “The team behind it are all good northern people and it must be a shock to the BBC – it’s a drama about ordinary people in the north-west, there’s no posh people in it, no posh bird getting her kit off and no posh mansion, and yet it has won all these great awards.”

The first series, which also starred Timothy Spall, Jane Horrocks and Sue Johnston, won the best drama Bafta earlier this year.

The drama, filmed in and around Manchester, was launched with the tagline “behind every door in every street, there’s a story waiting to be told.”

As he did with the original series, Mr McGovern has mentored new Liverpool-based writers, working with them to create storylines.

He said: “We find a writer with an idea that we like. He’ll write many drafts and get lots of input from me and others, he’ll hand it over and then I’ll start writing it.

“There’s always an element of a single authorial voice because I’m the one doing the final draft, but it’s a successful way of working.

“The scripts are bloody good because they are labour intensive and so much hard work goes into them.

“Terry McDonough is also a great Liverpool director and he will be in even greater demand from now on.”

One of the writers to benefit from Mr McGovern’s mentoring skills was Arthur Ellison, a former plumber from Kensington who contributed a script to each of the two series.

Mr Ellison, 51, a father-of-three, said: “The International Emmy awards are brilliant news.

“It’s just great drama.

“Jimmy McGovern acts as mentor for me and the other writers. I write the script, send it in, and you see the way he makes changes to make it perfect.

“It’s a big change from when I used to work as a plumber.”

alanweston@dailypost.co.uk