After a few years working on dramas like Heartbeat, Nottingham writer Michael Eaton is returning to the topical territory where his heart lies. A new play commissioned by Nottingham Playhouse for June will revisit an emotional subject he pieced together with some success for ITV 20 years ago – Lockerbie. JENNIFER SCOTT reports.

HE has never shied away from plunging into the most current controversies, be it the Harold Shipman conviction, Northern Ireland's policing or the Lockerbie bombing.

And yet Nottingham writer Michael Eaton has handled each of these emotional heavy-hitters with an astuteness and sensitivity that has won him more plaudits than put-downs.

During the early 90s, Michael's dramas and docu-dramas like Shoot to Kill, Why Lockerbie? and Signs and Wonders (about a religious cult) were ever-presents at awards ceremonies like the Baftas.

But his 2002 ITV drama Shipman – starring James Bolam as the Sherwood-born killer doctor – divided the critics and upset some of the victims' families.

Since then, Michael has gone in for gentler fare – a few episodes of Heartbeat and New Street Law – but he couldn't eschew raging topicality for too long.

He was sitting in Nottingham Playhouse a few months ago, in talks with artistic director Giles Croft, when he picked up a copy of Private Eye.

Giles noticed he was absorbed in an article about the release of Al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of involvement in Lockerbie released on compassionate grounds.

Together, they decided Lockerbie remained a subject worthy of examination – this time for the theatre in a piece called The Families of Lockerbie.

Michael's original docu-drama Why Lockerbie? examined the build-up to the tragedy. "I did that film 20 years ago," he explains. It was written the year after the disaster. This time, I wanted to do something that caught up with what had happened in the past two decades but from a more emotional, reflective standpoint.

"I was very struck with the different responses of the American and British families to the release of Al Megrahi."

The TV version had stunts, spectacular car crashes and was filmed over two continents.

"The stage will be quite a bare production," says Michael. "There will be four actors, playing a number of roles."

The Families of Lockerbie has been scheduled for the Playhouse from June 10-19. Michael, who lives in The Arboretum with his Australian wife Kerri-Anne, has worked with the Playhouse twice before on The Leaves of Life and Angels Rave On.

"Since then, I have mainly written for TV and radio," he says. "But for me, a Nottingham-based writer, it's great to be writing for the Playhouse.

"I'm still compiling my sources and haven't started writing it yet," says Michael. "I usually speak to people who have been involved in the incidents I write about in some way. I'm not far enough into the process to know if I'll do that."

Michael won't be adopting a stance on any of the material. Instead he plans to illuminate each different aspect.

As with Shipman, accusations may fly of cashing-in on others' loss and manipulating the truth. Yet, at no point will the disaster itself be dramatised.

"The TV work ended in an air traffic control office as the plane disappears from the screen. In a way, that's where this story starts," says Michael.

He keeps returning to hot topics as subjects for his scripts, despite the tabloid bashings that have accompanied previous ideas. What's the fascination?

"I often wonder that myself," he laughs. "I don't know what it is. I didn't have a literary background as a writer. I wanted to be an anthropologist. [He has a first class honours degree from Cambridge in the subject.] People have talked about me having this ability to look at raw material and see where the drama is.

"With Shipman, I wonder if it's because he grew up locally, in the Sherwood area, in a family not too dissimilar to my own.

"With Lockerbie, it's the way in which this terrible event has exposed all sorts of global politics and the clandestine way in which they work. It lifted a corner of the curtain and showed how things get done. And it wasn't a very nice picture that emerged."

The dramas that fascinated him as a young man were pieces like All the President's Men, about Watergate, and 10 Rillington Place, about mass murderer John Christie. Nowadays, he's interested in Peter Morgan's more speculative work like Frost/Nixon and The Deal, about a supposed meeting between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to settle the Labour leadership.

"Insiders in Labour tell me that meeting never took place," he says. "But then there are others who believe it did."

Aged 55, Michael began writing 30 years ago. He became interested in writing drama-documentaries after collaborating with veteran director Leslie Woodhead on Why Lockerbie?

Leslie's background was on World in Action during the Cold War years. If the crew wished to portray stories from behind the Iron Curtain, they had to stage intricately-researched dramatic recreations since they were unable to gain access to their subjects. The drama documentary was born.

Michael still considers it a useful form. "I think drama documentaries talk to us about the world we live in," he muses.

"And if I know a meeting has taken place, I've talked to the participants, I know the outcome and what was on the agenda, I feel entitled to make up what people say."

jennifer.scott@nottinghameveningpost.co.uk