Stephen Garrett to give first 2010 News International broadcast lecture
25 Jan 10
Television and film producer Stephen Garrett will be giving his first lecture tomorrow as Oxford University’s News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media.
Oxford alumnus Professor Garrett read jurisprudence at Merton College and is now Executive Chairman, of Kudos Film & Television Ltd., one of Britain's premier television production companies, which brought Spooks and Life on Mars to our screens.
The free lectures will be given tomorrow (Tuesday January 26) and February 2 at 5pm at St Anne's College and on February 9 and 16 at Green Templeton College at 5pm. Those wishing to attend do not need to book but are advised to arrive early to ensure a seat.
The role is associated with the English Faculty and Green Templeton College and Professor Garrett succeeds Paul Gambaccini, holding the Chair for the academic year 2009-10.
His lectures will explore the relationship between creativity and commerce through the prism of late 20th and early 21st century TV fiction on both sides of the Atlantic, concentrating particularly on the primetime TV series. He says: 'With its returning characters, its “precincts”, its sometimes epic longevity and its ability to capture audience loyalty for weeks, months and sometimes even years, the TV series does something that reaches beyond their nearest rivals - movies, plays and novels.
Professor Stephen GarrettI want to explore the extent to which the relationship between art and business can be mutually satisfying as well as uncompromised and uncompromising.
'TV drama production occupies a strange landscape where commerce and creativity meet. This is one of the themes I want to explore in my lectures, the notion of art and business in service to each other, and the extent to which that relationship can be mutually satisfying as well as uncompromised and uncompromising.'
This Tuesday’s lecture is entitled How to Grow a Creative Business According to the Laws of Chance and will introduce the rest of the lecture series as well as describing his background and using his shows to illustrate themes and ideas.
His second lecture is called Why the Only Rule Is That There Are No Rules explaining that ingredient unites the great TV drama series: they have all broken rules and generally ‘given the finger to what has gone before’.
No More Heroes will argue that the vast majority of great dramas of recent times have had at their centre protagonists who are ‘at best morally ambiguous, at worst monsters’ and explore why that might be and what that says about the world we live in.
And finally Tomorrow Got Here Yesterday will look at the impact technological, sociological and economic change has had on TV drama series and what the future might hold.
