TRIX WORRELL. Born in St. Lucia; immigrated to Britain at the age of five. Educated at the National Film and Television School, London. Writer and actor, Albany Youth Theatre, Deptford, South East London; winner of Channel 4's Debut '84 New Writers competition for Mohicans; Like a Mohican aired on Channel 4, 1985; writer and director, Desmond's, Channel 4 situation comedy, 1989-94; executive producer, science fiction film, Hardware, 1990; co-founder, Trijbits-Worrell, film and television production company, 1994.

TELEVISION SERIES

1989-94 Desmond's

TELEVISION PLAYS

1985 Like a Mohican

FILMS

For Queen and Country (with Martin Stellman), 1989; Hardware (executive producer), 1990.

STAGE

School's Out, 1980

Trix Worrell has lived in Britain for most of his life, having moved there from St. Lucia when he was five. When he began his acting career, he also started writing because there were so few good parts for black actors to play. As a teenager, Worrell worked with the Albany Theatre in South London, where he wrote and directed his first play, School's Out, in 1980. Eventually, he enrolled at the National Film and Television School, initially as a producer, but soon decided to concentrate on writing and directing. Even before his NFTS course, he had already achieved recognition as a writer.

In 1984, Worrell won Channel 4 Television's "Debut New Writers" competition with his play Mohicans, which was broadcast on Channel 4 as Like a Mohican in 1985. At that time, the young Worrell was a more modest individual and it was a colleague rather than Worrell himself who sent in the script to the competition. When he won, his pleasure was somewhat dulled when he realized that despite his success, the small print of the competition meant that Channel 4 did not have to actually broadcast his work. Showing the determination which would stand him in good stead for subsequent battles with commissioning editors, Worrell fought to have his play broadcast and successfully challenged Channel 4's insistence that single dramas were too expensive to produce. Having leapt that first hurdle, he then argued forcefully for the play to keep its original language, including the ubiquitous swearing which is an intrinsic part of polyglot London's authentic voice. Fortunately, his persistence paid off, and after this success he went on to co-author (with Martin Stellman) the feature film For Queen and Country (1989) before returning again to the small screen.

In the late 1980s, Channel 4 was interested in commissioning a new sitcom and Worrell contacted the producer Humphrey Barclay with a view to working up an idea. Though he had never written television comedy before, he had penned various satirical works for the theatre and felt confident, if slightly anxious, about entering this extremely difficult terrain. Worrell tells the story that he was on his way to meet Barclay to talk through possibilities when his bus pulled up at traffic lights and he saw a barber shop with three barbers peering through the shop window to ogle the women going past: suddenly he had found his comedy situation. The subsequent show, Desmond's, was one of Channel 4's most successful programmes, producing seven series in five years, from 1989 to 1994. As with all good sitcoms, Desmond's was organised around a particular location, in this case, the inside of the barber shop, with occasional shoots in the world outside or scenes set in the flat over the shop which served as home for the eponymous Desmond and his family.

Although this was not the first British comedy series about a black family, Worrell was keen to work through a number of complex issues which are important features of black migrant experiences in Britain in ways which would make sense to both black and white viewers. Desmond's was always intended for a mixed audience, and Worrell wanted to expose white audiences to an intact black family whose members experience precisely the same problems and joys as those of white families. At the same time, he wanted to reflect a positive and realistic black family back for black viewers as an antidote to the routinely stereotypical portraits which more usually characterise programmes about black people in Britain.

In talking about the production of Desmond's, Worrell has revealed the considerable antagonisms he faced from black colleagues who regarded writing sitcom as an act of betrayal, or at the very least as a soft-option sell-out. But this type of criticism is to miss the point: powerful sentiment and subversive commentary can be made by comedy characters precisely because their comedic tone and domesticated milieu is unthreatening--the viewer is invited to laugh and empathise with the characters, not to scorn them. In later series of Desmond's, programme narratives were pushed into more controversial areas such as racism because identification and loyalty had already been secured from the audience and more risks could be taken.

Worrell is very aware of the limited opportunities which exist for black writers wanting to break into television. By the third series of Desmond's, he had brought together a team of new writers to work on the show, enabling him to concentrate more on directing as well as providing valuable production experience to a new cohort of black writers, many of whom were women. Despite the considerable success of Desmond's, Worrell believes he still has to fight much harder than white colleagues to get new programme ideas accepted. There are significant problems in trying to negotiate new and challenging territory which questions the cosy prejudices of the status quo, and British broadcasters now tend towards the conservative rather than the innovative in their relentless battle to retain market share. While there is a continued interest in series which reflect the assumptions and preconceptions that white editors have about black communities, Worrell is keen to explore the diversities of life as it is actually lived by Britain's blacks. His work breaks out of the suffocating straightjacket of dismal (racist) stereotypes, instead exploring the complex realities of black experiences, which are as much about living, loving, and working within strongly multicultural environments as about the hopeless crackheads, pimps, and villains who inhabit London's ghetto slums. There is no one story--there are many.

In late 1994, Worrell teamed up with Paul Trijbits to create the film and TV production company, Trijbits Worrell. With corporate backing from the Dutch-based Hungry Eye Entertainment Group, Worrell is currently working up a number of new ideas for both film and television. Two TV projects which are already considerably advanced are Quays to the City, a post-yuppie soap opera for the BBC set in London's Docklands and Saturday Dad, a sitcom about a group of single fathers who only see their children at weekends. Although Worrell is quite pessimistic about the future for black writers, producers, and directors trying to penetrate the industry, the continued success of his own work ensures that there is at least one act to follow.

-Karen Ross