Sita's Secret Story

BEHIND every door, in every street, everyone has a story to tell. That’s the central premise of The Street, the award-winning BBC 1 drama series written by Jimmy McGovern.

So naturally, when I met Sita Williams, the Executive Producer and co-creator of The Street, I wanted to know what her story was.

“It’s quite simple really,” she tells me, “it’s to make great drama with believable characters, with whom we can all identify.”

During her 32-year TV career, Sita’s certainly succeeded in doing that, an achievement which has culminated in a clutch of impressive awards. Last year The Street picked up a Best Drama Bafta, RTS Awards and two international Emmys. And even as 2008 begins, her award-winning reputation continues.

Today, Sita has been named January’s Crew Of the Month by Northwest Vision and Media, which works on behalf of the region’s film, TV and digital content industries.

“It’s always thrilling to win an award, and I’m always very grateful, because it shows you’re producing programmes that people want to watch,” says Sita, who is justly proud of The Street’s brilliant ratings of around six million viewers per episode.

The ITV Granada production follows the lives of the inhabitants of a terraced street in Salford. Filmed on location in Rock Street, Higher Broughton, the second series recently ended its run. But already plans are afoot for a third, cementing yet again Sita’s rock solid reputation to produce original, high quality drama.

Initially, though, she began her career in radio, before switching to light entertainment and a stint as a researcher on Parkinson. But when the BBC re-launched its Graduate Trainee Scheme in TV Production in 1976, Sita was first in the queue. “I was determined to get on it,” she tells me.

There then followed a series of researcher and assistant producer roles in London, before Sita decided to re-locate to Manchester and take a job at Granada TV.

“Although the job I took was in light entertainment, what I really wanted to do was drama and I thought Manchester would be the best place to try and do that,” she confides.

Occasionally, however, Sita was able to indulge her passion for drama while still doing the day job; most memorably she produced a drama-documentary for World in Action about the John McCarthy/Terry Waite hostage situation in Beirut.

But it wasn’t enough. The drama bug persisted. So after waiting patiently in the wings for long enough, Sita picked her moment - and pounced.

“At the time, David Plowright was MD at Granada, so I marched up to him and asked if I could please move into drama now. They were the great days, when you could do things like that!” she confides.

Her pertinence paid off, for within a week Sita had been offered the big break she’d been hoping for.

“I was asked to produce Crown Court,” she says. “It was a fantastic programme, a studio set, three acts and the biggest actors in the world who didn’t have to learn any lines.”

The series also allowed Sita to introduce new writers to the small screen – a mantra she maintains to this day.

“I had John Godber, Guy Hibbert and Deborah Morrach working for me on Crown Court, then when I moved on to other projects like After The War I brought in Frederic Raphael.”

When she then began producing Children’s Ward, Sita introduced more new writers, like Paul Abbott. “And Russell T. Davies was my script editor,” she says.

“Working with new writers is not only a joy for me, it’s essential. That is where the talent is going to come from. There wouldn’t be any new drama if we didn’t encourage new talent. So even though people like Jimmy (McGovern) and Paul (Abbott) are great, they can’t go on forever, and we have to encourage new talent of the future,” says Sita.

That’s why The Street holds such a special place in her heart. “Because the most important thing we can do is give an opportunity to new writers, Jimmy and I decided the best way of doing that was to give them the opportunity to tell the one story they’ve always wanted to tell, and we’d put that story into a format called The Street,” says Sita.

The emotionally powerful series proved an instant hit with both public and critics alike when it first aired in 2006. And although new writing is at its core, Jimmy McGovern over-writes each episode, ensuring the wit, intelligence and compassion which is central to the series is maintained.

But The Street is not the only drama on Sita’s agenda right now. “I’m thrilled to be working on a three-part drama called Wired, which is written by Kate Brooke, whom I originally worked with on The Forsyte Saga,” she says.

Wired is due to start filming across the region in March, with transmission scheduled for Autumn this year. “I do about 12 hours of TV a year, which is a lot of drama. But I love it. I couldn’t do anything else.

“That’s why I’m always very involved with all my dramas, especially the scripts, because if you get the script right everything else falls into place.”

And getting the scripts right in The Street is exactly what Sita has done.

For the show’s tagline may declare that “behind every door in every street, there's a story waiting to be told.” But behind every successful series, there’s also an executive producer who shines.