Irvine Welsh's fears for Scottish culture if River City ends

The Herald Scotland

28-04-2025

Welsh, whose wife Emma Currie has starred in River City, is one of the most high-profile Scottish cultural figures to back the campaign to save Scotland's only soap opera.
The writer, whose work has been adapted for film and TV debut novel Trainspotting was released in 1993, said he had personally visited the set of River City and had been 'very impressed' by the scale of the production.
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The BBC has defended its decision to bring production on River City, which first aired in 2002, to a halt next year, claiming the move has allowed it to commission three brand new drama series.
Welsh has found huge success in recent years with Crime, the TV adaptation of his books about the troubled Edinburgh detective Ray Lennox, who is played by Dougray Scott on screen.
The three new shows announced by BBC Scotland, which are all set in and around Glasgow, include legal drama Counsels, created by Bryan Elsley and Gillian McCormack, James Price's darkly comic gangland thriller Grams and Graeme Armstrong's adaptation of his debut novel The Young Team, which was inspired by his own experiences of teenage gang culture.
The cast and crew of River City secured cross-party backing from MSPs for the campaign to save Scotland's only soap opera.
However Welsh insisted one-off drama series would not be a substitute for the opportunities offered to emerging talents by an ongoing production like River City.
Speaking at the Paisley Book Festival, he suggested authentic Scottish storytelling was vital to ensure Scottish culture and identity was kept alive.
BBC Scotland has faced mounting opposition from actors, union leaders and politicians since March, when it announced plans to bring River City to an end with a final series in the autumn of 2026.
A petition demanding a rethink has since attracted nearly 12,000 backers, while a 'Save River City' campaign has received cross-party support in the Scottish Parliament.
BBC Scotland has insisted that growing audience demand for short-run drama series were behind its decision to end River City and has suggested it will increasing spending on drama to £95 million over the next three years.
Welsh said: 'The important thing about River City is that it's on the go all the time.
'It gives people their first credit, whether they are actors, writers or directors. It is a big training ground.
'We really need these kind of institutions. We won't train voices in drama unless there is something that is there and ongoing. You don't get that if there is only a show here and a show there.
'I've been on the set of River City. It's very impressive when you see all the technicians and crew that are involved in it. It's a very good thing to have basically. I can't see any good reason not to have River City. There are a lot of good reasons to keep it.'
Welsh, a long-time supporter of Scottish independence, told his sold-out festival audience in Paisley that a unique culture of Scottish storytelling had been developed even though Scotland was not a 'proper grown-up or independent country.'
He added: 'We can't really express ourselves politically. We do it through our stories. We keep our culture alive through storytelling and fiction.
'It is really important to have Scottish writers and Scottish storytelling. We have to keep telling stories about ourselves. If we don't have that in Scotland, we don't really have an identity.'
Meanwhile Welsh admitted he had suffered frustration at the hands of the screen industry when his 2007 film Wedding Belles, which starred Michelle Gomez, Shirley Henderson and Shauna Macdonald, did not get a proper cinema release.
He said: 'It was shot as a feature film. There was then a dispute between Film Four and Channel Four about who owned it, and whether it going to get a theatrical release or go straight onto TV.
'I think it was screened once on TV after the watershed and about seven or eight years later it was dragged out and put on again.
'It's a major bugbear for me, because there are some great performances in it. It was a very hard-core working-class film that we put our heart and soul into, but it just never got the profile that I felt it deserved.'