What’s involved in reality TV
Jerome Monahan speaks to Simon Rockell, the man behind reality TV shows such as Lads’ Army and That’ll Teach ‘Em.
It is late May and the TV and radio magazines are promising schedules packed with history shows celebrating D-Day. On offer are documentary items and programmes of every shape and size – drama reconstructions; anachronistic news broadcasts; ‘what if?’ formats fleshing out the implications for Europe had the landings failed; in-depth examinations of key figures and (much beloved of cable and Channel 5’s growing history content) similarly tightly focused evaluations of key pieces of warfare kit associated with the Normandy campaign.
It is an appropriate time to be interviewing Simon Rockell – a major player over the past ten years in the ever-expanding world of TV history documentary. He has been involved in the back-room work both as researcher and producer on a wide range of programmes. Last summer he even took a role before the cameras as a history teacher for That’ll Teach ’Em a five-part series for Channel 4 exploring how 30 sixteen-year-olds would cope with the rigours of a state boarding school circa 1955.
This was not Rockell’s first experience of such a ‘reality’ format for a history programme. 2003 also saw the broadcast of his Lads’ Army on ITV – a ‘10 x 1 hour’ series that examined the demands placed on those once destined for National Service by filming the experiences of a unit of contemporary young men being taken through basic training. And this summer, That’ll Teach ’Em Too repeated the first series formula – taking a group of teenagers back to the early sixties to experience the kind of practical curriculum reserved for those who failed their 11-plus examinations and ended up at secondary modern schools.
Rockell agreed to speak to MediaMagazine about this new kind of format and the broader world of history documentary making.
MM: Before examining the kind of ‘reality’ shows with which you have been associated over the past two years or so, is it fair to say that you have had experience of most kinds of TV history documentary?
Yes, I’ve been involved in a broad range of history programmes, ranging from one off subjects for the Secret History strand on Channel 4, to multiple-part series such as Canterbury Tales (Channel 4, 1996). This last series was very much in the mould of the older generation of history series, with a charismatic presenter to act as our guide to a complex story – in that case Ian Hislop offering an account of the development of the Church of England. This format has endured a long time and continues to be popular thanks to a new generation of exciting historians such as Simon Schama and David Starkey. However, I am not sure it would be possible to get a three-hour show about the Church of England commissioned today – the need for immediate youth appeal has become so much more pronounced.
MM: How did you first become involved in TV history documentaries?
Back in the early 1990s I was the head of Humanities at Camden Girls’ School and studying the propaganda of the First World War for a doctorate. My supervisor had made documentaries himself with the independent producers Hart Ryan Productions. I met them and they ‘sold me’ as a consultant to the National Geographic Channel and Central TV who were then planning a Network First documentary The Last Voyage of the Lusitania (1994). In that show we secured interviews with survivors and the first person to dive and film the wreck.
After that I decided to offer my services free of charge to Hart-Ryan for two days a week. It was an idea of mine that developed into a two-hour Secret Lives documentary for Channel 4 called The Traitor King (1995) investigating the links between the Duke of Windsor (Edward VIII) and the Nazis. It won two Indie Awards. After that, I gave up teaching and went full time.
I was then invited to join Twenty Twenty Television working on a huge variety of programmes, first as associate producer and then as full producer, with overall responsibility for putting documentaries together. Occasionally I have directed interviews and sequences for such films as Blood on the Altar – a film for the Channel 4 Secrets of the Dead series about the Phoenicians, and whether or not they carried out child sacrifices (2000). The first ‘soft format’ reality style history documentary I produced was Lads’ Army (ITV, 2003).
MM: Can you explain the term ‘soft format’ programmes?
Terms like that get bandied about a lot, but it refers to reality shows which have some basis in history and the actual circumstances people found themselves in. So That’ll Teach ’Em is soft format because we were endeavouring to re-create a set of conditions and experiences that a previous generation faced. Big Brother on the other hand is deemed a ‘hard format’ show because it makes people go through something that is utterly contrived.
MM: What do you feel has made the time right for this kind of show?
Broadcasters are always on the look out for accessible means of presenting history. This is particularly the case for stations like Channel 4 which predominantly aim their content at a much younger audience demographic – the elusive 16-24 age band. The success of such shows as The 1900 House (2000) also paved the way for Lads’ Army.
MM: The vast majority of your programmes have been commissioned by Channel 4. Is there any reason for that?
It is to do with relationships. Over the years we have established a good rapport with Ralph Lee and Hamish Mykura – the people with commissioning power at Channel 4 for History programming. We understand their need to create a schedule that’s appealing to Channel 4’s teenage and young adult audience. The BBC is a far harder nut to crack, mainly because they have such a powerful in-house stable of producers to draw on for ideas.
MM: Could you explain the process involved in securing a commission for That’ll Teach ’Em?
It was a good idea first of all. It was perfect for Channel 4 since it featured sixteen-year-old protagonists but also touched on a subject annually debated about the relative standard of GCSEs compared to O Levels.
We presented it at a meeting alongside about three or four other ideas. Happily, the initial pitch went well and I was given the development money to spend 3-4 weeks fleshing out the structure of the show over a number of episodes. This resulted in a 10-15-page development report. I tried to make this as readable as possible but it also needed to show as clearly as possible how the series would work.
Finding the Royal Grammar School – a more or less intact school boarding house of the period – was a major bonus and enabled me to feature photographs in the report. I spelled out some of the key issues that would present modern youngsters with the biggest challenges and make entertaining TV – food; department classes for the girls; sport. I also outlined the main events that would feature in each episode: sports day, the end of term ball and that sort of thing; the events that would provide a focus and resolution in each programme, alongside the ongoing episode-to-episode preparations for the mock O Levels.
MM: To what extent do you feel That’ll Teach ’Em is more convincing than many other similar shows that require modern day groups being placed in past circumstances?
It comes down to the kind of experience that we were asking our cast to undergo. In both Lads’ Army and That’ll Teach ’Em the events were still within living memory of many of those advising us, and the circumstances themselves were something that large numbers of people commonly encountered: National Service and 50s schooling. In the latter case, our participants also had their own current school-life to draw on. If you ask modern-day people to try to recreate a Regency house party or even life in a First World War trench, you can’t make these comparisons. The important ingredient is to create a credible environment; with the best will in the world, you can’t subject people to the rigours of The Somme or expect them to behave like young early-nineteenth century men and women.
MM: You are busy auditioning for That’ll Teach ’Em Too at the moment. The first show also involved careful casting – does this not immediately militate against the programme’s authenticity?
Well, it was essential to see whether or not they were suited to what we were going to ask them to do – they were only 16-year-olds. The pupils in That’ll Teach ’Em (One and Two) had two interviews prior to a final set of interviews, after which they saw a psychologist. So in fact they had been interviewed by the production team three times; it was a very rigorous process. It was also important to find out whether or not those we were going to feature would make interesting participants – this is always far from being a precise art. In the end it often comes down to those people who manage to stand out after a day of interviewing, those that have an indefinable something that makes you want to know more about them. We also asked them to do something to camera. We needed to feel that they might be able to forget the cameras were there during the filming of the actual show. It is certainly true that we had certain character types in mind – the sporty one, the quiet one, the extrovert etc. In our defence, these are just the types you’d expect to encounter in a classroom anyway.
MM: Within this structuring, what room for spontaneity was there?
There is absolutely no going back over things to make them more interesting in That’ll Teach ’Em or Lads’ Army. I had no idea I was going find one boy’s smuggled sweets under his mattress and when another stormed out, it was up to the film crew to chase after him. The crew has to be fit!
MM: Last year a survey conducted by the magazine History Today highlighted the fears of some academics that TV history shows were doing young people no favours by presenting history always as ‘story’, without giving them a sense of the rigour and discipline expected of historians. Other academics celebrated narrative history, saying that ‘telling stories’ is just what historians should be doing. What is your position in this debate?
TV is designed to entertain first and foremost. If it manages to educate too, then that is clearly a bonus. This is very much our order of priorities with shows such as That’ll Teach ’Em. Alongside the footage of last year’s group confronting our re-creation of life at a 50s state boarding school, we also put together a number of more conventional history documentary ‘packages’. These were sequences of narrated archive and interview film which provided the context for what our modern 16-year-olds were going through. These explained, for example, how selective and gender-specific the education system was then. And the pressures the system came under when, following the launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957 – the first satellite to orbit the earth – it was realized how far we were falling behind the Russians in terms of science and technology.
MM: And is that the only way in which history documentaries should be judged – as entertainment?
No – clearly, the best documentaries entertain and manage to get across some serious points about their subjects. For instance I co-produced a one-off 75-minute show about the National Health Service, Pennies From Bevan (Channel 4, 1998) which highlighted the kind of healthcare ordinary people had to rely on right up to the Second World War. It featured amazing accounts of horrible home remedies in use right up to the 1930s – such as putting pee in people’s ears and sending children out into the street to smell freshly laid tar. It also highlighted the treatment available in municipal hospitals – women being examined in wards without screens – that sort of thing. Some of the testimony was very moving. TV is very good at catching such testimony.
MM: What are the constraints that govern the making of history documentaries?
These are numerous. You are always faced with the need for accuracy, and for that you rely on your historical adviser. Sometimes what they demand can appear to militate against what, as a filmmaker, you might want to include. So, for example, during the filming of our four-part series on the 1899-1902 Second Anglo-Boer War (Channel 4, 1999) we were presented with two possible routes taken by one of the British forces involved: a picturesque one, and the actual one now lined by fast food restaurants. Thanks to the rigour with which we were approaching the subject, the decision was to film what was historically accurate rather than more photogenic.
MM: There were some other fascinating issues raised by the interviews you recorded for that series.
That’s correct. We had a problem to overcome when filming black veterans of the war. Many of their homes were without electricity and so we were required to film them out of doors. It occurred to us that this was setting up a worrying convention: white interviewees were filmed in ‘authoritative’ settings – beautifully lit and surrounded by books and elegant furniture – while black witnesses were in danger of being seen always in less flattering circumstances. For this reason, we decided to film them in nearby libraries or museums – places that would give their accounts extra gravitas.
It was also problematic when it came to accounts of war crimes committed against the Afrikaans women as part of the scorched-earth policy adopted by the British army and their allies in the later part of the war to smoke out the Boer commandos. We had interviews with black witnesses to rapes, but were determined that the only mention of such events should not be limited to them. It took time and we had to overcome a lot of resistance; but it became clear that white Afrikaner allies of the British had committed such crimes too, which made the series more accurate and the story even more complex. The fact that the conflict had elements of a civil war hung on details such as that.
MM: Archive material is rightly regarded as the most authentic part of any historic documentary. Yet it would be very wrong to think that this cannot be manipulated too.
That is true. This has most recently come home to me while working on the Channel 4 programmes broadcast last year about the First World War. It was amazing how little archive film footage there is prior to 1915. I had to rely on a lot of still images to cover the early part of the conflict. It was extraordinary to see how steel helmets only came into wide use in 1916, and how the French were still going into battle in that year in red trousers and blue jackets. This led me to reflect on the other great documentary history of the period – The Great War (BBC 1964). This was an amazing achievement, but clearly the makers had been prepared to splice in archive whether or not it was accurate. So you get images borrowed from one battlefront to illustrate another, and shots of convincing-looking British Dreadnoughts which are actually American battleships. That was the big challenge for us creating the 2003 show, ensuring that when we were discussing the fighting in the Alps between the Austrians and the Italians that the accompanying archive was of that time and place, and not of Snowdonia or somewhere!
MM: And archives are expensive. A few years ago there was a scandal about how much certain German archives were charging filmmakers wanting key bits of footage of the Holocaust – do you find yourself being restricted by the royalties or fees associated with archive material?
A good illustration of this came up the other night in a documentary about Britain’s new aristocracy. It was discussing how the likes of Posh and Becks are the new elite. It featured footage of the Rolling Stones in concert to demonstrate that since the 1960s pop stars, models and sportsmen have come to enjoy the prestige that was once enjoyed by the titled. However, the footage was screened completely without the accompanying music. That was a decision probably determined by the royalty costs associated with broadcasting a Stones’ song.
Documentary producers make money out of retaining the world rights to their programmes, in the hope of securing multiple sales abroad to foreign TV stations, but these profits are quickly reduced once worldwide permission for using expensive archive material or music rights have to be secured. They can add ten-fold to the cost of a documentary – sometimes more.
MM: Another big issue for history documentaries is the frequent use of re-enactment. Is this something you have had to employ, and what are some of the tricks of the trade?
The quality of recent film reconstructions has really raised the bar in terms of what audiences expect of dramatic portrayal of historic events. Think of Band of Brothers orSaving Private Ryan. More recently, I thought the two-part Dunkirk documentary that relied entirely on
re-enactment was well done, but you learn to look out for tight shots taken on a long lens during such programmes – this is a key way of ensuring you can control the authentic look of the immediate environment.
A documentary that I worked on that relied on a lot of re-enactment was the film about Phoenician child sacrifice. We travelled to Tunisia and worked with a local film company. They were able to secure us local people who were happy to manufacture the necessary props and costumes and even perform roles for very modest fees. Other tactics involved the use of lots of smoke and filming at night. This latter approach is another important way of controlling the conditions. In the end I think we only spent about £7,000 for all the re-enactments on that film – a tiny amount.
MM: What are the main expenses or challenges associated with a programme like That’ll Teach ’Em?
The production team is larger on such a programme than on many history documentaries. There’s recruiting the children and the teachers; researching the archive material, filming the back stories for each participant and, of course, setting up the conditions and equipment needed to make the school scenes realistic. Books of the period were hard to track down, but in the end the toughest thing proved to be laying our hands on authentic 50s school fountain pens. It was essential to expose the students to the delights of blotting paper and ink on clothes and fingers.
This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 9, September 2004
