1 Jonathan Bignell Talent for Fact: Performers and Performances in TV Docudrama NOTE: This paper was delivered at the 19 th Annual CDE Conference, ‘Narrative In Drama’, University of Paderborn, Germany in 2010. It was written as part of the research project ‘Acting with Facts’, led by Dr Derek Paget in collaboration with me, Prof. Lib Taylor and Dr Heather Sutherland at the University of Reading, 2007-10. For related publications see http://www.reading.ac.uk/ftt/research/ftt-actingwithfacts.aspx This paper analyses the role of what the UK television industry calls ‘talent’ (high-profile performers, writers or directors) in television docudrama since 1990. Focusing on lead actors, the paper argues that yoking recognised ‘talent’ to fact-based drama has divergent motivations and effects on television narrative. After sketching an account of the changing pressures on broadcasting institutions, the paper shows how ‘talent’ can facilitate the commissioning of expensive one-off docudrama projects, enhance channel branding, and guarantee publicity and export sales in conjunction with narrative components that may already be publicly visible. But ‘talent’ can also interact problematically with the factual base, inasmuch as the actor’s prominence seems counter to historical veracity. Actors playing a historical figure also contend with other media representations of the person they perform. The paper weighs the significance of performers and performances in high-profile docudramas. The growth in television docudrama in Britain since 1990 was caused by several factors. The Broadcasting Act of 1990 affected existing television institutions by increasing competition and budgetary pressure. The Act reduced budgets for television programmes originated by BBC and the commercial broadcasters, because it required them to commission 25 per cent of programme time from independent producers. The effect was to place greater emphasis on ‘value for money’, and to increase internal competition between the departments within the major broadcasters, now competing against outsiders as well as each other (Born 2004: 172-3). Even in larger institutions such as Granada, support for conventional documentary waned. Referring to Granada’s docudrama output around 1990, the company’s head of current affairs from 1987-93, Ray