New Statesman Interview

"Working on Brookside taught me some important lessons. You don't hit the producer when he changes the script; disappointing means crap; and when an actor tells you the script is wonderful, he wants a job." There are luvvies, and then there's Jimmy McGovern.With two series of Cracker and the critically acclaimed Hearts and Minds behind him, and with the award-winning film Priest going on general release today (17 March), McGovern has written himself an open invitation to Ken and Barbara's, but come the weekend it's the Irish club in Liverpool where you're most likely to find him. McGovern is a man without affectation; he's remained loyal to his working-class Catholic roots, without feeling the need to wear them as a badge. The current run of success has made McGovern one of the country's most sought-after screenwriters, but he is predictably realistic about it. He knows he's good, but equally well he knows that, when it comes to TV and films, it's money that speaks loudest. "Like many writers, I always said yes to every interesting project that came along because I knew that nine out often would come to nothing," says McGovern. "After Cracker there was suddenly money available for nearly all of them."

Priest is a case in point. McGovern had been hankering to do a story about a Catholic priest ever since he tried to work the idea into Brookside in the early 1980s. A few years later, his proposal for a series on the Ten Commandments was turned down, and when he finally persuaded the BBC to commission a three-part drama about a priest, the script lay around for a long time in Michael Wearing's desk. Until Cracker. The urban working-class settings and the brutal realism offset with humour - all delivered with a populist touch, have inevitably inspired comparisons with Alan Bleasdale, but McGovern is quick to deflect any talk of a northern school of writing. "It's very tempting to say that we've had it much tougher up north and that this has inspired a certain kind of drama, but I've seen a lot of poverty down south, too. Historically, northern writers may have needed more persistence and stamina to succeed because, 15 years ago, it often seemed as though you had to sweat blood to get your work performed up here, but it's equally difficult for everyone now. In any case, the way to encourage talent is to give opportunities not to deny them, so maybe me and Alan are just one of those strange coincidences - like leukemia clusters."

McGovern came to writing comparatively late in life; after an education he describes as "truly awful", he had a series of nothing jobs before training to become a teacher. He soon became disillusioned with that, and took up writing full-time in his early thirties. His first play, an adaptation of Can't Pay Won't Pay, staged at the Liverpool Everyman, was panned by the critics, but caught the eye of Phil Redmond, who was looking for writers for Channel 4's new soap Brookside. McGovern laughingly remarks that he was only chosen because "Phil had come to some arrangement with the council about using local talent" but, whatever the truth, McGovern spent the seven years from 1982-89 learning his trade, writing 80 episodes of the soap. In the next two years, he wrote two BBC 2 screenplays, Needle and Traitors, before starting work on Cracker in autumn 1992. His background has been the springboard for much of his work, and McGovern makes no apologies for that - "writing is a lonely business, so you might as well write about what you know and excites you" - but his scripts never follow a simple class or party line. There is no easy point-scoring in a McGovern script, and all hypocrisies, be they left or right, gay or straight, black or white, Catholic or non-Catholic, come under attack.

McGovern is a passionate man; his extremes of anger and warmth, melancholy and joy have taken him close to the edge at times and made him a nightmare to live with, but it has done wonders for his writing. He has found the cynic, bigot, alcoholic, idealist, rapist and neurotic within himself, and has written them into characters with real motivations and explanations. While they all have their separate lives, one thing unites them. Gub Neal, the producer of the first series of Cracker, commented that McGovern was never happier than when torturing Fitz. And the same is true of Drew, Father Greg and the others. McGovern puts his characters through hell and doesn't let them get away with anything. Such conflicts are the basis of much drama, but few are written with such energy and pace. Brookside taught him how to mine a story, but McGovern feels that it is what he has learned since that is critical. "Most British writers get so fed up with getting kicked in the teeth by producers that they start to write solely for the microphone. TV drama has to be more photographic than that, and the writer has to trust the director, cinematographer, and actors to get the feel and look just right. It's hard work finding that trust, but Cracker and Hearts and Minds speak for themselves." So does Priest.

McGovern cut the text so severely that the original three-parter became a single feature film. Scenes with dialogue became silent, and the result is a breathless, challenging film that knocks spots off The River Wild and Disclosure. There's always a danger that a writer will burn himself out, for, as McGovern acknowledges: "A writer always uses his best stories first," but there are still plenty more he wants to tell. At present he's working on a third series of Cracker and he's been given money to develop a heart-transplant story that he originally intended for Cracker. And then? "I've got an idea about northern working-class lads working in a hotel in the Lake District that might turn into a soap for the BBC." Hollywood eat your heart out.