Tara Prem (Producer, Director)

Tara Prem was born in London in 1946. She worked in theatre before gaining a position as a trainee script editor at the BBC in 1972. She completed her training at the newly formed English Drama unit in Birmingham. It is here under the leadership of David Rose and Barry Hanson that she wrote A Touch of Eastern Promise (BBC 1974), the first British drama with an entirely Asian cast. She went on to script edit over sixty dramas for the BBC as well as a produce and direct dramas in the Second City Firsts (BBC2 1972-978) series for English Regional Drama before launching (with Adrian Hughes) the independent production company St Pancras Films.

In this interview, Tara discusses the great influence that her mixed-race parentage had on her life and career. She discusses wanting to be an actor like her father, who was one of the first Asian actors to be employed by the BBC in the 1930s. She recalls her time in theatre including being cast as Greta in Sport of My Mad Mother (Ann Jellicoe) at the Royal Court in 1970. She discusses her subsequent move in to television in 1972 as a script editor and the production context that led her to write A Touch of Eastern Promise in 1974. She discusses the supportive environment of English Regional Drama in the 1970s and suggests it is these qualities which have been lost in the contemporary period. She engages with the ‘diversity agenda’, becoming the producer of English Regional Drama in 1975, her desire to direct and the factors which contributed to her remaining as a producer of television. She discusses with great affection producing the works of new writers in the Second City Firsts series and her decision to become an independent television producer in the more commercial landscape of the 1980s. She discusses producing in the 1980s and her strained relationship with the union (ACTT) during the production of her first independent commission, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Thames Television 1983). She discusses juggling parenthood and producing for St Pancras Films. She contrasts producing She’ll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas (Channel 4 Films 1985) Resurrected (British Screen Productions/Channel 4 Films/ST Pancras Films 1989) and Stolen (LWT 1990) as an independent production company with her experience of producing series such as So You Think You Have Troubles (Alomo Productions/BBC 1991), Love Hurts (BBC 1992-1994) and Hearts and Minds (Alomo Productions/Channel 4 Television/WitzEnd Productions 1995) as a freelance producer. She contrasts the recent academic interest she has received regarding her forty-year career in television with a contemporary television commissioner’s lack of knowledge about her work.