Post by Alex Hancock

In a chat about film-making, journalist, screenwriter and director Dave Nath discussed his transition from making documentaries to drama and answered his critics over the ending to Channel 4’s The Watchman.

The seemingly endless possibilities in creating plot can often be an obstacle for writers. Eliminating choices to reach the ones with the most authenticity, that propel the narrative, is essential according to Nath. A journalist turned dramatist, he admitted that writing fiction “can be paralysing when you’re faced with a blank page. But it’s useful to get material down even if that means getting it wrong at first”. He praised his training in journalism for giving him the ability to summarise a story quickly and concisely and with his first foray into drama, The Watchman, he had the core details of the story formed early on. From there it was a case of fleshing it out, working on dialogue, texture and tone and crafting it into the film, with some guidance from his older brother, Westminster University’s Michael Nath.

The 2013 documentary series Bedlam won him a BAFTA and was followed by another BAFTA-winning series last year, The Murder Detectives – part fly-on the wall documentary, part CSI – which explored the tensions and transmutations of real life murder investigations as they unfolded. His reward for moving into fiction was “absolute control over the storytelling”.

The Watchman, filmed in just 10 days, gave him the opportunity to take the reins of the narrative. The film portrays a CCTV operator up against a vicious and uncompromising street gang, part of a generation “anaesthetised by violence on the screen”. 

After The Watchman aired on Channel 4 this year, the public took to social media to respond to the film’s finale in seething fashion. People were taken by surprise, some were upset, felt cheated or were loathe to discover there was no follow-up, while others found value for money in the open ending. Explaining his intent, the director said “What I wanted to ensure with the ending was that the character’s integrity stays intact. He’s a moral person, a father-figure who looks out for people. He buys his dignity in the exchange at the end.” The ending also opens up the possibility of a reboot in the future: “people were talking about the possibility of Carl working for them, running the cameras for the gang”.

There’s a nod to British gangster flick The Long Good Friday in the closing sequence, a reference perhaps lost on younger viewers, and Nath found his Bob Hoskins in an actor, who, ironically, has often been cast on the wrong side of the law – “Stephen Graham was my first choice.” Before The Watchman was filmed, the actor had performed in Boardwalk Empire and Pirates Of The Caribbean and it’s hard to imagine a setting further away from Chicago in the Roaring Twenties or CGI-heavy seas than a dark, singular monitoring room location – “It was all low budget but he was interested in doing it. He’s one of those actors who cares about supporting British film.”

Keeping to 45 minutes in length, The Watchman’s compressed action gives it a momentum exclusive to the one-off television drama format. Nath aimed to deliver as much as possible in that time-frame by trimming off the excess: “for the characterisation to work in that time there’s no room for the breathing space you’d find in a series”. As a storyteller he’s not one for giving too much away, which allows him to re-frame the characters later on – a writing technique that he relishes. An exposé on Carl’s relationship with his wife is revealed later on in The Watchman but it’s left to the viewer to infer how it developed: “I wanted it to be ambiguous, for people to think “is this the cause or effect of his detachment from the family?”

The filmmaker’s manifesto on writing drama is about being “counter-intuitive, driving it with the unexpected”. He wants to turn things on their head and to treat the audience with intelligence as much as he wants to grip and entertain. And as he found in the murder investigations he covered with the beat, real life often comes packed with surprises.

Nath is currently writing another single drama for Channel 4 due to be broadcast later next year.

Alex Hancock, 12 December 2016

Post by Michael Nath

As the first fogs of autumn rolled down Regent St, I saw a figure take shape, and it was an agélaste.  Agélaste is a word invented by a great and very funny writer called François Rabelais (pictured); it means a person who does not laugh, and affects gravity. You probably know a few.

Consider what we want as writers …

‘Would like’, you mean – want is bad manners.

Very well. We ‘would like’ to make our readers feel, think, worry, fear, hope, fall in love, know themselves better. And see truth. Not much to ask, what? … Well laughter’s the wind that freshens thought, and feeling; and it may be a way to the truth. But for a long time, our culture’s been down on laughter. Look what happened to Parson Yorick, in the novel some of you are enjoying this autumn.[1]

Yesterday, or thereabout, the winner of the Man Booker Prize was announced, and it’s caused a stir. For why? Because the winner (The Sellout by Paul Beatty) is funny. Must be some mistake! The judges of the Booker, and other of our splendid literary prizes, never pick a funny book. The truth’s grim, right? History’s a nightmare. This is the worst year ever. So your judges have been afraid of seeming frivolous. Then they read The Sellout.

Now, you can be funny and win the prize! Maybe it’s the grim books that were frivolous, or hypocritico-sanctimonious. And for why? Because they were taking advantage of pain; because there’s more to being serious than wearing a long face … Meanwhile, the laughing books are doing what they’ve always done: making us think, training us for truth. At long last, the judges have understood the most famous sentence in philosophy …

‘Truth is a trouser word.’

What the hell’s that supposed to mean?

Seven times seven are the meanings of the sentence, friend Agélaste. But today’s is as follows: as the leg to the trouser, so truth to hilarity … you can’t keep them apart. Especially in novels.

Think of Dickens, laughing so loud he kept the family awake, in those late-night sessions at his desk: he’d just invented Jaggers or the Golden Dustman. So what if your people move to another town because they’re sick of the sound of you hooting and slapping your thigh? You’ve been writing the truth! Take Franz Kafka. We think of Kafka as a fearful prophet, and he was too. But when his friends came round to listen to his drafts and Gregor woke as a beetle, or Josef K was arrested in his bed, they laughed till their moustaches burned off in the backdraft (which is why Kafka, Max and Felice, have smooth faces in photos).

Back soon with more nonsense, amigos …

But for the moment,

Beware of the agélastes!

[1] Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759-67)

Michael Nath, 1 December 2016