ScreenLit report: BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum

THE second night of the Broadway's impressive ScreenLit Festival ended with another first - the first BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum ever held outside London.

The format - in which new film and TV writers watch extracts from works-in-progress acted out by a team of actors, and then listen to them being analysed by top industry professionals - demands nerves of steel from those submitting work. Thankfully, the organisers chose last night's star guest well: David Morrissey, a familiar face from the likes of Blackpool, State Of Play, The Deal, Doctor Who and the recent Red Riding Trilogy, was a goldmine of informed, intelligent, down-to-earth and useful advice for the three newcomers with scripts under scrutiny. He was also very funny.

The subjects of the scripts couldn't be further apart. Matthew Clark's feature film Victoria's Champion is a sprawling period piece set in Victorian times, with a massive cast of characters ranging from street lowlife to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It's based on the true story of bare-knuckle prizefighter Tom Sayers, whose ground-breaking world championship fight with an American opponent made him a national hero and attracted the interest of the royal family at a time when his sport was under threat of abolition.

Matt Hurst's TV pilot Walking On Wire was set in an entirely different world. A comedy drama based around a hyper-logical academic who loses his job and becomes an eccentric homeless crime investigator with the aid of a young female Big Issue seller, it revolved around sharply cynical dialogue and the objectionable character of its anti-hero.

Finally, Andy McCoy's sci-fi look at love and technology, his short film script The Look Of Love, was set in a near-future society in which the computer-driven state chooses marriage partners for all its oppressed citizens, focusing on the unhappy Jake - the one man in the world for whom it doesn't.

Morrissey was enthusiastic about them all, but also had words of crucial, yet positive, criticism. Warning Clark about the financial requirements of his production, he advised him to pare down his dialogue ("The characters are saying too much - they should be saying less but telling us more") but also stressed the massive potential of the story, its parallels with the current economic downturn and our relationship with America and its possibilities for both large-scale and intimate scenes, linking the worlds of politics and sport with the family drama of Sayers' personal life.

Hurst's central character, tramp academic detective Hope, also had tremendous promise - so long as the stories avoided "crime of the week" cliches to concentrate instead on character and Hurst's "brilliant" dialogue. Morrissey's commentary on this script also provoked the biggest laugh of the night when, in answer to an audience member's doubts about the abilities of a down and out to mix with the various types of people he'd have to when solving crimes, he replied: "Most academics look like they're homeless anyway! You walk into a university and they all look like that!"

For McCoy, Morrissey's advice was even more clear-cut. The actor found the script's themes of relationships and technology a fascinating commentary on people's increasingly complex attitude to new technology and their work-life balance. He urged the writer to focus on them, rather than his all-seeing half-computer "Registrar" and his futuristic society.

The actors who heroically performed the extracts with less than a day's preparation were Aaron Smith, Jarrod Cooke, Joe Doherty, Kevin McGowan, Lauren Carse, Melissa Simpson and Sharlene Whyte, directed by Susan Jacobson. Each extract also came with music composed by Tom Hill and a backdrop designed by Gemma Latimer.

Afterwards, Morrissey took part in a good-natured Q&A session about his own writing and direction work, including three short films and an upcoming feature film, his early inspiration from the films of Ken Loach and his varied career as an actor. A fascinating night.

SEAN HEWITT