Philip Saville had a reputation for making trouble — though he preferred to think of it as “innovating”. When, for example, he was chosen to direct the BBC’s adaption of Edith Wharton’s novel The Buccaneers (1995), he upset the literary purists — and offended the sensibilities of Middle England — by introducing a homosexual episode as well as a rape scene. Neither appeared in the book. “I’ve always been drawn to sticking my head on the block,” he noted. His additions were justified, he said, because the screenplay was based on the notes the novelist was making when she died.
Innovation? Troublemaking? Either way, Saville’s approach worked, and with edgy, Bafta-winning dramas such as Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) and The Lives and Loves of