From budget cuts to rising costs: Can the BBC compete anymore with the likes of Netflix and Amazon?

More than a few eyebrows were raised when the BBC teamed up with Disney to secure the future of Doctor Who three years ago. That the fortunes of this quintessentially British icon, and BBC crown jewel, would at least partly lie with the House of Mouse would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. But BBC director-general Tim Davie held it up as the “horsepower” boost that third-party funding can give to UK drama. 

That deal – 26 episodes, including several specials and a spin-off series – somehow already feels like a bygone era, with the latest series’ bold storytelling and dazzling production values overshadowed by questions of whether the Disney dream, and the BBC’s soft power as a maker of globally loved TV, is over. 

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A show once gently derided for its wobbly sets might have become too expensive to justify, a low priority for a co-producer that’s just splashed an estimated $300 million+ (£225m) on its latest series of Star Wars spin-off Andor. 

Drama producers talk of a glut of shows stuck in “soft development”, with the BBC leaving them to piece together up to 70% of the budget to get them over the line. Even bankable BBC period drama sequel Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light only made it to screen with large cuts to both its outdoor scenes and the salaries of its key creatives. Patrick Spence, producer of Mr Bates vs the Post Office, has said that neither that domestic megahit, nor his latest real-life ITV drama The Hack, would be funded today. 

At last month’s Broadcasting Press Guild awards, veteran producer Jane Featherstone declared that the crisis had effectively become its own high-stakes drama: “We are in the 45th minute of the pilot episode, and we’ve got five minutes left to stop the bomb from going off.” 

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Featherstone estimates that a toxic brew of Covid, the US writers’ and actors’ strikes and rising energy costs have pushed production costs by 40% and above-the-line costs – actors, writers, producers – by up to 60%. 

With the public sector broadcasters priced out of the market, streamers like Netflix and Amazon, whose UK commissioning teams are largely staffed by former public service broadcaster (PSB) executives, have stepped in – and, crucially, have little interest in co-production. 

As the only PSB not to carry adverts, the BBC was arguably the only potential UK non-streamer that could have offered the uninterrupted viewing experience that the makers of Adolescence craved for their one-shot drama. But thanks to years of Conservative governments’ ideologically motivated cuts, its version of what became Netflix’s biggest-ever British show would surely have been limited to the two-hander scenes of episode three. 

With this and fellow Jack Thorne drama Toxic Town – a shoo-in for ITV or Channel 4 in a previous age – Netflix has fully parked its tanks on the PSBs’ lawn. For UK broadcasters, it’s one step forward, two steps back: the BBC and HBO are making Richard Gadd’s latest series Half Man, but Netflix has the cash to hand the Baby Reindeer creator a first-look deal, just as Amazon did previously with Phoebe Waller-Bridge. 

There are some bright spots. A BBC partnership with German broadcaster ZDF has brought us A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and upcoming Killing Eve spin-off Honey. But without serious interventions, the future looks bleak. 

Featherstone and Wolf Hall writer Peter Kosminsky are telling anyone in government who might listen that higher tax breaks and a 5% levy on streamers would protect our domestic television. It seems a small price to pay to protect British stories, from the domestic to the far reaches of the Whoniverse. 

Robin Parker is a freelance writer and editor.

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