Steve McQueen: An instinct for the electrifying

Yes today was the big festive Christmas Radio Times cover reveal. But let me introduce the issue that always gets overshadowed by that big beast.

Delightfully, Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse grace the cover, while inside they select each other's perfect Christmas gifts, open up on the joy of the show and its contribution to men's mental health. (A spillover podcast could be in the offing...) It's wonderful to see them make such a connection with viewers and I'll always treasure chatting to them both at the show's launch.

But I want to talk about the big Steve McQueen interview. Yes, he was everywhere ahead of the launch of Small Axe, but I'm proud of what this piece brings to the story as the series comes towards its end.

Getting this piece nailed occupied most waking moments of my first month in the role and I realised that's because Steve, instinctively, needed it to be right. We offered some potential names for interviewers, people with whom I knew he had some connection or rapport. He came back with one of his own, without specific explanation: BBC reporter Chi Chi Izundu. Hardly a regular Radio Times name - and when I spoke to her, she was both gobsmacked and confused. They'd met precisely once before in an interview during the junket for Shame a decade ago and, as she says, it didn't go well. This was to be no cosy natter between old chums.

But as part of his drive to amplify new voices by bringing them into the mainstream, he'd clearly felt a rapport and, possibly following her work since, wanted her to have this platform. McQueen doesn't like repeating himself and in seeking this fresh perspective, he became re-energised towards the end of a long press campaign.

The result: an hour-long Zoom, with Izundu calling in from Lagos, that swung round many subjects and challenging ideas. It was a privilege to listen in live to this conversation, the electrifying kind of on-stage talk you'd be glad to have paid good money to hear at a public event, and I found myself messaging colleagues with one-liner after one-liner, headlines and pull-quotes already fizzing in my mind.

As a commissioner, it's the feeling I often strive for but rarely hit at this level without writing it myself: of being all over every part of the feature from deep research and briefing to a frequent to-and-fro with both subject and interviewer, being in the moment for the interview and then batting many discussions and edits back and forth to get it just right. To bookend this absorbing and powerful series with this interview - which covered many personal issues related to the final film - with six pages of editorial at launch, was an immense privilege.

It was its intimacy, and the sometimes shared and often wildly contrasting views and experience of its participants, that above all made it electrifying. Much like the best of McQueen's work.

I urge you to seek it out.