RBS Part 2

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The SHOESTRING Story

Recently, Robert Banks Stewart, "Shoestring's" creator, producer and writer, answered our questions at length. His thoughts on "Shoestring", as well as information on his background, can be found in this two-part interview. In Part One, Mr Stewart talks at length about his work in television prior to "Shoestring" and the genesis of that series.

That same afternoon Graeme and I went to see Bill Cotton (then Controller, BBC 1) in his sixth-floor office at the TV centre. Alasdair Milne (then the Managing Director, BBC) arrived as well. I gave a hasty, but enthusiastic, verbal presentation of how I thought such an idea would shape up.

DK/NS: What were your initial descriptions of the programme's format? RBS: There was a name in my head - I still can't think why - which was 'Eddie Shoestring'. I believe I had an idea that he was actually 'Eddie Schusting', a Jewish guy, and that people would make fun of it as a 'shoestring' radio programme, and would end up calling him Shoestring. Also, I suggested the radio station should be located well away from London, preferably in Bristol, which would give us (within a thirty mile radius) great scope for locations…. Bristol itself, the surrounding countryside, the Severn Estuary, the seaside (such as Western-Super-Mare), Bath, and even over the bridge in the Wye valley and South Wales. Bill Cotton argued for Slough (to save crew and artists' overnights and travelling costs), but I won my point: Slough would just be another featureless cop-style location, we might as well be in Greater London…. The decision was taken there and then: the green light! DK/NS: After that, how did you expand on this initial premise? RBS: Richard Harris and I got down to the serious work of creating a character called Eddie Shoestring, his background (the so-called back-story), plus a rattling good yarn to lead off with. From the very outset I insisted that we should treat this, and every subsequent episode, as small-screen films, and that all the other actors, not just regulars - should contribute more than just pushing the plot. The small-part characters must all have (as top-rated Hollywood tv series like Rockford and Kojak displayed) even just the tiniest moment to comment or complain about their own lives, their jobs, their husbands or wives, their children, their back-pain or ulcers, their wages, etc. This was a dialogue technique that distinguished good American films, and had carried over into the best of their tv series. DK/NS: How did the back-story make the transition to pilot script? RBS: Richard was commissioned to write the opener, from the story we'd hammered out together. When he delivered the first draft, he had diverged, to a great extent, alas, from the story, events and, much more importantly, the concept of "Shoestring", which was to have a Raymond Chandler-style ambience, rather than, put simply, a British domestic thriller. But from Richard's point of view, why not? A gifted and honest writer, Richard had mostly resisted doing any American pastiche (yet he wrote some scenes with echoes of that). But the total result wasn't quite what the BBC had in mind, or me, come to that. We were, after all, intending to make a tv film series to match the current USA series in style. Call it what you like, but these American series were admired - and getting big ratings - in the UK, for their grip, their punch, their literacy and verve. DK/NS: How did you solve the problem relating to Richard Harris' script? RBS: Graeme McDonald said that the BBC wouldn't go along with Harris's draft "Shoestring" script as it stood. It was not, as he said, what they had been promised. I contacted Richard, to say that it would be back to the drawing board, but he refused to rewrite, and suggested that I should write the opening script myself. To be honest, I think he was flogged out from his spell on"Hazel", where he had spent an enormous amount of energy to make that series (devised by an odd, amateur pairing of Terry Venables and sports journalist, Gordon Williams) actually work. With so little time left (I was already about to brief and commission other writers), I went home to script an alternative opener, within a week - 'The Private Ear'. So I sat in my study in Putney, thrashing out a new version of "Shoestring", giving his oddball character all kinds of quirky corners (was I thinking of Rockford?), such as his rotting old river cruiser (which was actually my own boat, moored at Richmond), or his ability to sketch cartoon-like figures while interviewing people (suspects), even in such locations as a swimming pool, a Chinese takeaway, or a football supporters' vandalised railway carriage in a siding, with its windows steamed up by the threatening visit of the villains who'd arrived to do him over. Always, we wanted to portray Shoestring as an eccentric, slightly zany sort of bloke, caught up in his new role as a radio station's private-eye. When the script was finished, I suggested to Richard co-authorship, having incorporated a number of his ideas and, indeed, lots of his dialogue. But he said no, he didn't want anything to do with it, considering it to be an inferior script to anything he personally would have written, and that in his view it was full of Chandler-style cliches and why didn't I just go it alone, since it was my baby, and good luck? And we still continued to play golf together! A couple of dissenting pros, I guess. Even when Shoestring became the No.1 in the UK ratings for the first season, and again for a second year, Richard declined to write a script (despite my pleas - but I understood). Richard Harris is, if nothing else, a man who sticks to his own principles (you have to admire that) and his reckoning at the start, I think, was that since he didn't like what was being done with the series and not beginning with his script, it might be a failure.

For me, for the BBC and, inadvertently for him, it wasn't! Still, he was always credited on screen as "Series created by Richard Harris and Robert Banks Stewart". H, after all, comes before S, and I felt bound to stick to our original partnership deal. Richard would eventually graduate to being not just a journeyman tv writer, described then as a 'foot-soldier', but he would soon become a tremendously successful West End playwright - "The Business of Murder", "Outside Edge", "Stepping Out", etc. I was genuinely delighted by his success, and after a bit of a blip, we still played many friendly, competitive rounds of golf. Damnit! He lowered his golf handicap lower than mine!

DK/NS: Now that the series was in pre-production, can you tell us a little about the regular sets and locations used? RBS: 'Radio West' was located in the centre of Bristol, using the exterior of a modern Post Office phone- exchange building, on the basin called the Welsh Back, where a former lightship had been permanently moored and turned into a floating bar/restaurant.

In Part 2 of this interview, Robert Banks Stewart discusses the casting of "Shoestring's" characters, and the various people involved with the production of the series.

RBS Part 2

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