Bafta-winning tv director Otto Bathurst

A rising star in the world of television, director Otto Bathurst talks to Andy Richardson.

Ten years ago, Shropshire TV director Otto Bathurst had one thing on his mind: football.

It was the Summer of Lad, rather than the Summer of Love, and Otto was busy doing what most twentysomethings were doing: kicking a ball around a park and drinking continental lager.

Through the fug of Stella Artois and opinions of a national football team that employed three managers in a season – Glen Hoddle, Howard Wilkinson and Kevin Keegan – Otto was plotting.

He had been working in TV production houses, learning his craft, and was ready to shoot his first film. It was a parody on lad culture called A Man’s Best Friend, starring Andrew Lincoln and Lisa Snowdon, with a soundtrack by Blur.

“It came out when lad culture was on the rise,” says Otto. “It was the time of Blur and Parklife, when it was cool to be a lad and drink beer. It was a very light-hearted parody on lad culture. The idea was that if we all became lads the human race would disappear because there would be no reproduction – we’d be too busy playing football. It was 12 minutes long and it got me an agent. Then, away I went.”

Otto made new TV programmes, impressed his paymasters, signed with a better agent and started to make regular work. He made episodes of Urban Gothic, Teachers and Hustle, all popular dramas, before landing the job as director of Criminal Justice.

Otto – whose mother, Elizabeth Strachan, lives at Nash, between Ludlow and Tenbury Wells – says the quality of the script convinced him to direct Criminal Justice, the smash hit on last summer’s TV screens.

“It’s all about the script,” he says. “You can mess up a good script but you can’t make a bad script good. You have to have a good script and you have to have, as a director, the wisdom and insight to spot a good script.”

He receives scores through the post. “Once you make good choices you make better work, the better your work the more you get offered. So, for the last three or four years, because I’ve made a couple of good choices the work has been good . . ..”

Otto loved the challenge of working on Criminal Justice because he was able to do everything from scratch. Unlike Teachers and Hustle, which already had a cast and a set format, he was able to focus his attention on the detail.

“Directing is about two things, the acting and the mise en scène, a rather poncy phrase for ‘everything else’. The mise en scène involves the editing, the design, the make-up and so on. I’m very, very on top of make-up, design and wardrobe. A lot of directors tend to leave that but I’m very passionate about it. I do these things called mood books, so everybody is on the same page. Everybody comes together with the same idea. The wardrobe has to work with the design, so the colour of the wall is correct, for instance. It sounds very simple, but that’s when you start to create a piece that has an identity.”

Criminal Justice was based on reality but Otto was keen for it to be unlike any other crime drama ever made.

“Initially, the piece was set in a Victorian prison, à la Porridge, Bad Girls, etc. When I read that my heart sank. I thought ‘I’ve seen that before, it’s completely uncinematic and completely dull’.” Otto changed the set, basing it on a mental institute in South America. He also credited the audience with intelligence.

“The challenge in the story is to make it something special. You’ve got to credit the audience – that’s the thing that nobody does. Everybody wants to watch great stuff. Even the dumbest biggest telly slob in the world would rather watch a s*** hot movie than a bad soap. So if you can put a s*** hot movie into their living room, so they don’t have to get up . . .” Otto pauses and claps his hands for dramatic effect. “Well, you’re quids in.”

Otto is on a roll. He continues: “The thing about film-making is that it’s collaborative and you need brilliant people around you.

“You choose brilliant people and inspire them. That’s what I do. I choose brilliant people. It’s also down to the writing. There’s so little good writing out there. If you offer good writing you get Ben Whishaw, you get Pete Postlethwaite. You know, Pete is the greatest. He is the greatest, he really, really is. He’s an incredibly lovely man and a joy to work with. He’s awesome, awesome. And he isn’t going to turn up unless he knows it’s a great script. That’s what attracts these people. He’s an ace in the pack. Then you need a great crew. Everybody gets inspired by the writing. Everybody goes ‘wow!’.”

The future is bright for Otto Bathurst. His 90-minute BBC biopic on the ballerina Margot Fonteyn is presently being filmed and will be screened on BBC2 and BBC4. He’s also been in talks with major film companies in Los Angeles, having been flown there following his Bafta triumph.

So what ‘good choices’ will he be making in future?

“It’s going to be quality writing. That’s always the goal. Whether the best writing is for BBC4 or the Weinstein brothers, I’ll go to the best writing. Of course there’s an ambition to make movies but not to the detriment of the quality. I’ve been to Los Angeles, they’re wooing me, I’m wooing them. There are a lot of projects in development: I’ve got nine or ten ongoing. But I’ve turned down a thousand. You follow the writing . . . if you do that you’re made to look good.”

• For more on Otto, see this month’s issue of The Shropshire Magazine