Film-makers get back in the picture with the industry that refused to die

At first glance the assembled caravans and flatbed trucks look like a fairground is just moving in. There's little glamour either in the surrounding streets where student flats are squeezed in between the occasional garage and cornershop, but every so often a couple of luxury cars pull up and occasionally someone appears clutching a blackberry and whispering into a walkie talkie

For the last few weeks the makeshift car park has been home to Left Bank Pictures and the cast and crew of a new adaptation of Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks novel, Aftermath, for ITV. It's where the production staff meet to discuss that day's schedule, it's where the extras are ferried to and from the set and whenever he has a break in filming, it's where the drama's star Stephen Tompkinson goes to look over his next set of lines or grab a quick cup of coffee.

It's a big operation and the fact it's there at all is sign that some new life is being breathed into the Yorkshire's film and TV industry. Last year looked set to be something of an annus horribilis for the regional sector. While The Damned United, filmed in and around Leeds was doing brisk business at the box office and Red Riding, set and shot in the city, was doing nicely on Channel 4, elsewhere the industry seemed to be hanging on by its finger tips.

In March, ITV announced it was to shut its Kirkstall Road studios, the ever-popular Countdown was moved to Manchester, filming of the long-running show Heartbeat was suspended and the BBC later followed suit shelving any future production of Last of the Summer Wine. The announcements came like a set of falling dominos and as the bad news spread there was talk of a devastating brain drain of Yorkshire talent to Manchester and London.

Yet the infrastructure built up over many decades of programme has survived. It might be slimmer than it once was, but the North remains an attractive proposition for TV companies.

"I think those who wrote the obituary for regionally produced dramas were perhaps a little premature," says Francis Hopkinson, executive producer on Aftermath and Married, Single, Other – another of this year's homegrown hits. "I've worked in television for 20 years and never once in all that time have I ever been on a production where people have said, 'You know

what, we've got so much

money, we don't know what to

do with it'. Budgets are always

tight and while the last 12 months have been difficult, you work round it.

"There is a real breadth and depth of talent here and that makes the filming process so much easier. I'm probably tempting fate, but we've only got a couple of days left on Aftermath and it's all been pretty seamless.

"We've worked a lot in Yorkshire in recent years and I always look forward to jobs up here. When it came to Married, Single, Other, we did consider filming it in Bristol, but we kept coming back to Leeds. The characters just seemed to fit better against a northern

backdrop and it's the same with Inspector Banks.

"I first came across Peter Robinson's books when I worked at Granada many years ago. He's a Leeds-born author and he writes with a distinctive northern voice, so why film it in London when you can film it in the place it was set? We've mostly been based in Leeds, but we've also been out to the North York Moors. Banks is quite introspective and that landscape completely captures that sense

of isolation."

The two one-hour dramas won't be screened until the autumn, by which time Tompkinson will be back in South Africa filming another series of Wild at Heart. He's already looking forward to six months in the sun, but Aftermath has brought him back at least a little closer to his Lancashire roots.

"I'm loving it, absolutely loving it," he says. "Leeds is great, being up on the moors is great. There are some scenes we've shot up here that we just couldn't in London because of traffic and I've worked with a lot of the crew before so it feels a little bit like coming home.

"The proof will obviously be when it goes out, but it feels good, really good."

Drama is costly to produce and in an age where reality television is often seen as dominating the schedules some quality will be pushed out in favour of quantity. However, Francis, who cut his teeth in television on The Bill, another long-running series which has recently been axed, and has also worked on Wallander, insists there will always be a place for well-made dramas.

"Drama series tend to come to the end of their natural life and I think The Bill has come to its," he says. "But it's a mistake to think that audiences don't want more police dramas, they do. Crime has always been a staple part of the schedules and I don't see that changing any time soon.

"What I think we all have to get used to is that the way people watch television has changed, it has become much more fragmented. There are still some people who want to watch a new programme the first time it is broadcast, but there are growing numbers who will pick it up a few days afterwards or who will even wait until a box set comes out."

As well as Aftermath, ITV's Yorkshire base also has a drama with James Nesbit in the pipeline, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, dubbed the story of the first modern lesbian, filmed in North Yorkshire, goes out next weekend and Left Bank Pictures has just produced a pilot for BBC3, which which will be screened next month. Billed as a supernatural drama, Pulse follows central character Hannah Carter as she tries to uncover the dark secrets which lie behind an apparently eminent teaching hospital. It was all filmed on location in Leeds and is one of three new pilots commissioned by the channel for this year.

Left Bank Pictures is also keeping its fingers-crossed for a second series of Married, Single, Other

and if Aftermath goes down well with viewers, there are another 18 Peter Robinson books to keep them in work for at least the foreseeable future.

With ITV's Kirkstall Road studios also saved and undergoing a 5m revamp, the future looks much brighter than anyone dared to predict 12 months ago. However, reasons to be a little cautious remain. Screen Yorkshire's four year funding programme, which allowed it invest in films like The Damned United, Red Riding and the BBC two-part drama A Passionate Woman has come to an end. The organisation is working to secure other funding, but a statement posted on its website admits that "in the current climate this is much more difficult" and that "funds may be tighter than

of late".

Yet despite the inevitable challenges ahead, Francis and others like him believe the quality of British drama is something to shout about.

"There has been a lot of talk about the series coming out of America," he says. "From the West Wing to The Wire and everything else in between, some great stuff has been made in the US, but sometimes I think we forget about the really good stuff we do over here. Naturally, we are quite self-depreciating when it comes to shouting about our successes, but as much as we take shows from America we also export them. Shows like Prime Suspect and Cranford were lapped up by US audiences and Wallander was Emmy nominated alongside 24.

"Hindsight is a wonderful thing and people always look back on programmes of the past with a large helping of nostalgia, but you know what maybe this is the golden age of drama."

Given the amount of programming which looks set to emerge from Yorkshire, he might just be right.

[email protected]