ITV director calls for more 'happy' dramas

The Durrells, based on the books by Gerald Durrell, became a Sunday night ITV hit

ITV's director of TV, Kevin Lygo, has called for "more fun and lightness" in TV drama, saying he's "a bit tired of endless murders" on the small screen.

Speaking at a Bafta event on Monday, Lygo said he wants more "happy, life-affirming" dramas like The Durrells and The Good Karma Hospital.

"I bet you well over half our drama output will always have in some way crime at its heart," he added.

But he said such programmes "don't have to be quite so brutalised".

"I'm a bit tired of endless murders where in the first five minutes someone, always a woman or a child, is abducted, raped, knifed, killed or bludgeoned," said Lygo.

'Restraint'

"In comes a hard-bitten cop with a drinking problem or a woman who never got over the fact that her parents were murdered and couldn't solve the crime, and in six weeks they find the killer and it ends up being Pauline Quirke around the corner.

"There are brilliant versions of that show and not great versions and I just feel: enough. They will always be around but the success of the Durrells was a positive thing, a sweet, happy, well-made brilliantly performed show, perfect for a Sunday evening."

There has been lots of debate over the last couple of years about the prevalence of rape and sexual violence in contemporary TV drama, including a recent opinion piece by Radio Times TV editor Alison Graham, who suggested "the brutal opening scene in ITV's new crime drama Paranoid is one murder too many".

One column in the Daily Mail described BBC Two drama The Fall as an "invitation to share an extended rape fantasy".

But the programme's writer, Allan Cubbit, defended the programme in an interview last month.

"There has been one female death in The Fall across the first 11 episodes and that was the character of Sarah Kay. The other ones are reported, but I only showed the murder of one woman on screen, which I needed to do to show what it was that Paul Spector [Jamie Dornan's character] was about.

"I don't expect to be applauded for my restraint, but I do think that compared with a great many other dramas I could mention The Fall has never indulged itself in that way."