Docudrama: Words of docudrama wisdom

On telling the story of Pompeii:
"Frankly, the biggest character was the volcano... we were following the mountain and what it was going to do next. It's like Ridley Scott's Alien, [the audience] knows the alien is out there, but the characters don't know what it's going to do next. There were lines in Pompeii's narration that would say 'By now, the pressure had been building up to...' and you think 'God, it's going to blow, but the people are still trying to figure whether to go in or out of their house.' It's classic drama telling around a real event."

On the boundaries of poetic license in docudrama:
"The key thing is that you don't deceive the audience.... You can make things up if it doesn't matter to make them up, and if the audience would not be distressed about the fact that you have made them up. One of the key things about dramadoc is that you must never turn the narrative on something that didn't happen, or else the whole thing falls apart."

On promoting docudramas:
"If you're going to do them, you've got to support them fully with all the marketing. It's very simple: if something is going to be a big noise, you have to make a big noise about it. I do have some sympathy for the broadcasters in that if something doesn't stand out in the schedule because it's more of the same, is it worth putting the financial commitment into?"