Christine Langan (born January 1965) is an English television and film producer. Her career began in the late 1980s when she worked for an advertising company. She soon moved to Granada Television where she produced three series of the comedy-drama Cold Feet. In 2003 she produced the television play The Deal and later, in 2006, its theatrical follow-up The Queen. She frequently collaborates with Andy Harries and Peter Morgan and took up a position at BBC Films in September 2006, where she continues to produce feature films. In October 2007 it was announced that she had been appointed commissioning editor of the company, following the resignation of former head David M. Thompson.
Langan was born in 1965 as the fifth child to a bricklayer and a dinner lady. She had an Irish Catholic upbringing, attending a Catholic grammar school and later read English literature at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Langan lives with her partner, playwright Christian Spurrier, and their child Constance (born 2005).
After graduating in 1987 she worked as a copywriter in the advertising industry, before becoming a freelance magazine journalist. She was also a film critic, and contributed to BBC Radio 2's Cinema 2 programme.
Her first job in television came when she worked for Tessa Ross as an assistant developer at British Screen. In 1993 she moved to Granada Television's comedy department, where she worked as a script editor on such programmes as Rik Mayall Presents... and September Song.
In 1996 Langan began working with Andy Harries on the pilot of Mike Bullen's comedy-drama Cold Feet. Her responsibilities included overseeing casting and editing Bullen's script; he had produced only one screenplay before. The broadcast of the pilot was delayed for a year and did not achieve a high audience figure but ITV commissioned a full series after the pilot won the Golden Rose of Montreux. The style of the series was "to move away from a tired and dreary formula " with Langan saying, "It's not all about one-liners and quick laughs. It's got emotional depth. And it looks different." The difference in look was achieved by recruiting new directors who had done little television work before, such as Nigel Cole, who came from a television advertisement background. Langan's duties briefly extended beyond producing the series when, after filming a scene for the second series, she distracted a man from jumping off the roof of a multi-storey car park by speaking to him in a Manchester accent that she based on a character from Band of Gold. The police took over the situation 45 minutes later.
After production on the third series was completed, Langan was offered a post at the BBC. Industry newspapers suggested that, in order to keep her with the company, Granada's Director of Programmes Grant Mansfield offered her the position of deputy controller of drama, operating under Andy Harries, who had recently been appointed controller of the same department. She did leave Granada when she took up a position at Tiger Aspect as a producer and director. Her first project was developing and producing the romcom Rescue Me for BBC One. Langan's style was to use the setting of a magazine office as a medium for a character-based series, avoiding clichés from similar series. While the series was not a critical success, it did form a small fan base, but its ratings averaged only 3.4 million, leading BBC One to pass on commissioning a second series.
In September 2002, Langan returned to Granada when the company merged Granada Films into its main drama department. Her first project was Watermelon, a comedy-drama starring Anna Friel. Shortly afterwards she, along with Andy Harries, Stephen Frears and Peter Morgan, began work on a dramatisation of the alleged deal made between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair shortly before the 1994 Labour Party leadership election. ITV commissioned it but abandoned it before filming began. During production of the film, Morgan sought verification on the facts from as many people involved as possible. When Peter Mandelson denied being involved in any of the events depicted, Langan described his reply as "an arse-covering letter".
Langan's feature debut was the biographical drama Pierrepoint (titled The Last Hangman for American release). The film gained Langan a nomination for the Carl Foreman Award for Most Promising Newcomer at the 2007 British Academy Film Awards. A follow-up to The Deal began development before the original was broadcast, with potential plots being the Labour victory at the 1997 general election or the controversy surrounding Peter Mandelson's first resignation. A clause in Frear's contract allowed him to return as director for any sequels that were made, but Langan took the decision to postponed release until after the 2005 general election. Eventually, the production team settled on the events surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales as the plot for the film, and Helen Mirren was cast as Queen Elizabeth II. Before Mirren's casting was announced, Langan scouted Balmoral Castle for potential location shooting. The film was produced in co-operation with ITV and was released in late 2006 to critical acclaim, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Film and being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Of her work on Pierrepoint and The Queen, Variety wrote that "both pics are a tribute to her tactful skill at working with tricky but talented writers and directors to take stories that could easily have been confined to the small screen and give them real cinematic depth and breadth".
In September 2006, Langan left ITV, in a departure she described as "without any fanfare whatsoever", to take up a post at BBC Films as a producer and executive producer of new and existing projects. She began work on an adaptation of David Peace's The Damned United, a fictional account of Brian Clough's real tenure as manager at Leeds United A.F.C.. Peter Morgan is due to write the film, with Michael Sheen playing Clough. Sheen previously played Tony Blair in The Deal and The Queen, and starred as Mark Furness in the BAFTA-nominated Dirty Filthy Love, produced by Langan. On why she continues to work with the same people on her projects, Langan said, "The reason I return to working with the same people is that you have invested time, energy and thought and care into these relationships and that can pay dividends - The Queen is an example of those relationships paying dividends". An adaptation of Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin has also been announced.
Following David M. Thompson's announcement that he would be retiring from the post of head of BBC Films in September 2007, Langan was widely-expected to take over his duties. Confirmation was made the following month when it was reported she had been appointed commissioning editor of the company, taking over the day-to-day duties of BBC Films and reporting to Jane Tranter, the controller of fiction at the BBC.
