Tara Prem

Interview Number: 
784
Production Media: 
Duration (mins): 
50

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Interview
Tara Prem,Writer, Script Editor, Producer, BBC English Regions Drama.
Transcript
Biographical

Tara was one of the first Asians to work in mainstream British television.

Her first job was as a trainee script editor at the BBC in London on  Play of the Month, a strand of programmes based on theatre classics.

She knew Barry Hanson, who had just gone to work for the BBC in Birmingham with David Rose, and they both wanted to do ‘modern, new, regional work’ so she left her job in London and joined Rose and Hanson. That’s how the story of multicultural TV drama began.

Based in Birmingham in the early seventies Tara said she became aware that there was a substantial immigrant population and felt that if TV should reflect what was going on outside the studios.

She  wrote the first drama on British television to have an entirely Asian cast in 1973, ‘A Touch of Eastern Promise.’ 

Tara went on to produce a variety of TV shows and films for her late husband, the celebrated British actor Brian Glover.