ABSTRACT
Television drama has always been, and still is, the most expensive type of programming in Britain (ITC, 1994). Since the beginning of the 1990s, the drive to decrease the costs in drama production has resulted in pressure to create low-cost, high-volume drama which will leave enough of the overall production budget of a company remaining to fund more expensive drama projects (Brown, 1998). Economies are usually being achieved by trading-off location work with purpose-built sets (producing what is known in the trade as “precinct drama”), or moving production to out-of-London locations, where resources are cheaper (although lack of local facilities may create problems of their own).
