Lights, camera, inaction: women directors cut out of British TV
by The Daily Eye Team May 17 2014, 11:07 am Estimated Reading Time: 0 mins, 58 secsNew report finds that a third of popular TV shows have never hired a female director – and the total may even be falling In a recent research project, Directors UK analysed 142 of the most popular shows on British television and found that nearly a third of them had never employed a female director. On top of this, the number of women directors being hired fell between 2011 and 2012. The report looked at 28,200 episodes across a variety of genres.
Most multi-episode shows employ a range of directors across their run. The report shows that production companies are more inclined to hire men, with less than a quarter of shows featuring an equal number of women directors. This is not due to a lack of talent. Directors UK, the professional association for directors in Britain, says that women make up a third of their members.
Shockingly, there were 28 shows that between their launch and 2012 had not used a single female director. These include Benidorm, Luther and The Inbetweeners. Several long-running favourites, such as Dr Who, Spooks and Agatha Christie’s Poirot, had only had 5% of episodes directed by a woman.