Engineering drama

Now that senior politicians want to re-balance the economy the climate might now be right for a technology-based drama series

Ann Armstrong wants engineers to feature in soaps (Letters PE November 11). She may not know that nearly twenty years ago the IMechE, working with the Writer’s Guild, sought to encourage scriptwriters to do just that. At the same time I had already drafted the treatment, characters and storylines for a drama series about an engineering consultancy practice whose main protagonist was a female engineer.

However, several discussions at the BBC Television Centre led nowhere. In the final analysis the will was just not there. At that time of course we had senior politicians who did not believe that manufacturing mattered. Thus the prevailing climate was against a drama series of that sort.

Given the current skills crisis in aerospace reported in the same issue of PE as Ms Armstrong’s letter, the invisibility of engineers in popular drama is clearly damaging. Now that senior politicians want to re-balance the economy the climate might now be right for a technology-based drama series.

A body called PAWS (Public Awareness of Science and Technology) does useful work in bringing writers and scientists and engineers together and this has led to some good science programmes but not a drama series. Perhaps the IMechE might launch a new initiative, ideally with PAWS, aimed at addressing the debilitating gap in popular drama to which Ms Armstrong refers.

Clive Bone, Bideford

Next letter: The IMechE then and now