Irene Shubik's strength was finding writers and getting demanding television drama made. We value that judgement, and the elegant writing of The Jewel in the Crown, even when its formality keeps the characters too far away.
Fi1m perspective
People speak elegantly in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), sometimes more elegantly than their distress seems to allow. Yet this is a series we recommend warmly: its fourteen episodes reward patience with superb acting and elegant writing. Shubik devised the series and contributed to its scripts, with the screenplay credited to her, Paul Scott and Ken Taylor. Her contribution deserves attention without claiming the whole achievement for her.
The route there began with shorter forms and quite different subjects. Shubik created the science-fiction anthology Out of This World (1962), then produced Out of the Unknown (1965), working with adaptations of published stories and new commissions. She also co-produced The Wednesday Play and oversaw its transition to Play for Today (1970). These programmes gave her scope to find and nurture writers, a less conspicuous contribution than directing an episode, but one we should take seriously.
On John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey (1978), she commissioned scripts, cast Leo McKern and produced the first series. Those decisions deserve a place in any assessment of what she brought to television. Staying On (1980) then provided a practical route towards a larger adaptation, securing Granada's approval for The Jewel in the Crown. Her literary interests came with a useful understanding of what it took to persuade a broadcaster.
The writing in The Jewel in the Crown does occasionally become stiff. When the phrasing sounds too prepared, the hurt becomes less immediate, and we start admiring the sentence instead of attending to the person speaking it. A sharper exchange or a shorter scene would sometimes help. The slow pace makes those passages harder to overlook.
The actors give us ample reason to stay. We were disturbed by Tim Pigott-Smith's Ronald Merrick because the performance makes him difficult to dismiss. That discomfort matters more than the stretches where the dialogue holds us at a distance, and it keeps our recommendation firm. Start with The Jewel in the Crown, but give it time and put the distractions away.
Biography
Irene Shubik (26 December 1929 – 26 September 2019) was a British television producer and story editor. She began her career at ABC Weekend TV as a story editor on Armchair Theatre, where she devised the science fiction anthology series Out of this World. She later moved to the BBC, working as a story editor before becoming a producer and creating the anthology series Out of the Unknown.
At the BBC she co-produced episodes of The Wednesday Play and oversaw its transition into Play for Today. She left the BBC in 1976 and produced the first season of Rumpole of the Bailey for Thames Television. At Granada Television she produced the television film Staying On (1980) and devised the 1984 miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, on which she also worked on the scripts; she received a 'series devised by' credit. She wrote film scripts and the novel The War Guest.
