home | downloads | scene listings | non-scene listings | links | advertising details | contact us |
Click here for the graphic version of this page
Series three of Doctor Who starts this month, with more gay connections than you can shake a rainbow-coloured stick at. Mark Michalowski talks to producer Phil Collinson about how he became part of it all.
A Leeds lad, Phil Collinson started his career at Bretton Hall College near Wakefield (home of Mark Gattiss and the rest of The League of Gentlemen) and right from childhood wanted to be an actor.
‘I was an actor for four years,’ he says, ‘mainly on stage. Part of the problem was that I loved the theatre and I hated the screen, so I never went for the auditions. And you can’t sustain a career like that.’
He auditioned for - but didn’t get -the part in Queer as Folk that Anthony Cotton eventually got, and very quickly decided he wanted to go into TV direction and production, rather than acting. He admits that there’s an element of control-freakery in his choice.
‘Of course there is!’ he laughs. ‘As an actor, you’re the sum total of a lot of other people’s work - they give you your lines, your costume. Often brilliant actors will walk into an audition and within two minutes you’ll know that they’re not right for the part. For me now, as a producer - and I’ve been lucky to work on some fantastic projects - I’ve gone into an interview and you’re there because people have looked at your CV and your work, and the actual interview is probably only twenty percent of getting the job.’
Collinson has been very lucky - or skilled - in that, unlike some producers and directors, he hasn’t been involved with many turkeys.
‘I was very lucky in the first job I did. I’d been acting with an educational theatre company in Liverpool and a friend of mine had got a job as a writer on Springhill. And by some miracle I got a job there and ended up script-editing Russell T Davies, Paul Abbott - some really, really fabulous writers, quite early in their careers. Then I went on to Peak Practice when it was still made on film and had a big budget. I stayed there a couple of years, and I think that was the turning point for me. It was a good show to produce at the age of 28, and I was able to go for other jobs, sounding like I knew what I was talking about.’
Collinson admits that he’s not a particularly ambitious man: ‘I never have been. I didn’t set out to become a producer, particularly. I started out because I enjoyed the scripts and enjoyed drama and by default, almost, I became a producer.’
It follows that he has no ambitions to move over to Hollywood: ‘No, no: film producing, in lots of ways, is much more difficult - and much more difficult creatively because there are a lot more hands involved. And the emphasis is often on you to raise the money and to keep it going - it’s a way to an early heart-attack! I love my job and I love how hands-on I get to be. In terms of where I go next, I don’t sit here wanting to be the Director General of the BBC, I just want to produce great drama.’
Surprisingly, perhaps, he hasn’t been head-hunted yet.
‘That’s not happened,’ he laughs. ‘If anyone’s reading this and wants to, they’re very welcome!’
The third series of the new Doctor Who starts later this month and jdging by the first three episodes, it’s shaping up to be the best. ‘Obviously, we want to keep making the best show that we can and I’d hope we get better as we get a better understanding of it. And there’s a new dynamic again this year [with the arrival of new companion, Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman]. She’s fearless and there’s a very different relationship between her and the Doctor compared to Billie [Piper, who played Rose Tyler, the previous companion]. She’s nearly a medical doctor herself, so there’s more of a shorthand that the two of them can have together.’
When Piper decided to leave at the end of series two, was there ever a temptation to put a very different sort of character in as the companion, someone who didn’t share Rose’s enjoyment of travelling in the TARDIS?
‘No, we’d never want to put a character in there, long-term, who didn’t want to be there, he says. ‘Part of the success, for me, is that we have characters who absolutely love to be there. From an audience point of view that’s so important. For the Christmas special [The Runaway Bride] we had Catherine Tate, who obviously didn’t want to be there at the start, but she got drawn in so that by the end, even though she didn’t want to go with the Doctor, the audience really wanted her to. We’ve certainly got no plans [for Donna’s return] at the moment, but the door’s open for her and I love her as a character, and it’d be lovely to see her again.’
Collinson’s latest project is the children’s drama and Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures
‘It’s still at the scripting stage and we start filming in a couple of weeks. That’s going to be very interesting - producing something aimed at a slightly lower age range.’
Collinson splits his time between Manchester and Cardiff and is, surprisingly, single at the moment: he laughs heartily when I suggest that he’s ‘open to offers’. His ‘dream date’, he says after a few minutes’ thought, would be actor Matthew McConaughey. And whilst we’re on about queerness... there’s been much discussion about whether there’s a ‘gay sensibility’ to Doctor Who? Does Collinson see that?
‘I can only talk for myself, and when I was a teenager,’ he says. ‘For me, as a young boy and a teenager, growing up in the north of England, in a world where I could never imagine being a gay man, let alone settling down and finding somebody, I think Doctor Who was really asexual. There were programmes like The Sweeney which were very much about men chasing women, men getting women, whereas with Doctor Who you had a show that never really dealt with that.’
Nowadays, of course, we have the up-front bisexuality of Captain Jack Harkness (played by equally up-front gay actor John Barrowman) and all the shenanigans of the team in the recent smash Torchwood. How times have changed: at this rate, The Sarah Jane Adventures will feature some hardcore girl-on-girl action before the year is out.
And for those of you wanting to get in touch with Collinson for a date, in case Matthew McConaughey can’t make it, his mobile number is
Stories from the magazine this month:
Related pages:
Click here for the graphic version of this page
home | downloads | scene listings | non-scene listings | links | advertising details | contact us |
visitors since 1 Aug 03