[2] Watson attempted to make his drama feature debut as writer and director with A Fine and Private Place but the film was abandoned during production.
In the following decade, he worked with Egyptologist John Romer and made singles for Real Lives and 40 Minutes strands, including The Fishing Party in 1985.
[12] In 2002, Watson formed his own production company Priory Pictures, making one of his most acclaimed films Rain In My Heart.
[16] “…no account of how observational documentary has developed in Britain could leave out Watson’s The Family…The Family, as well as Sylvania Waters (which depicted the life of an Australian family and is often referred to as the first docusoap proper) are generally positioned as key examples of observational documentary’s domestic gaze”.
[3] On presenting Watson with the 2008 BAFTA Special Award for Outstanding Creative Contribution to the industry, John Wills described him as "...one of the giants of documentary film-making.
Over several decades he has created a string of memorable and often controversial documentaries, always striving for innovation in both form and content and invariably succeeding.
"[120] Louis Theroux’s curated documentary list for BBC iPlayer includes Watson’s Rain in my Heart.
“Many viewers were genuinely shocked at the way ordinary people could open up their most intimate - though usually minor - secrets to the public gaze”.
[125] During the broadcast of the series, Watson reported that “We had lots of obnoxious letters from the middle classes saying how dare you show these people…here were the Wilkins, with a love child, living in overcrowded conditions, teaching their children to fib to the council about getting housing points.
Watson said, “I was accused of wrecking a family…But they [the couple] said, ‘Paul, look, we have just watched ourselves for 12 weeks and we can see perfectly easily that we are just chalk and cheese together.’ I put a big mirror in front of them”.
"[124] It later transpired that the programme had been 'referred upwards' to senior management because of queasiness about its depiction of four extreme right-wing apologists.
Noeline, described as the “loud-mouthed matriarch of the nouveau riche Baker-Donaher family” claimed that she was scorned when the programme was shown in Australia.
[78] "They told us our address wouldn't be used, then the name was changed from The Family to Sylvania Waters and we had helicopters above our home and reporters all over our garden".
[132] There was further controversy in 1993, when Noeline appeared at the Edinburgh International Television Festival and took part in a face-to-face conversation with the programmes Directors Brian Hills and Kate Wood.
[67]] She told the audience of television professionals that, "I've cried, I've wept, I've wailed, I've screamed…and I'd like to put my hands around the producer Paul Watson’s neck”, adding that she had been driven to the verge of suicide.
[131][133] After hearing of Watson's difficulties at the BBC, she reportedly said ''I'm glad that he's hit rock bottom.
[132] Watson’s response to Noeline’s remarks was, "Bollocks…I left her with an agent, a manager and an accountant because she was becoming famous, and it was the only way they could think of to make money.
[134] Described in Channel 4’s programme listings as capturing “the end of the 1979–1997 Conservative era through the opinions of a group of Home Counties dinner party guests”.
[136] One journalist noted that, “Carefully orchestrated advance publicity makes the mood of the programme clear – the…(e)ight are shown as mad, stupid, bigoted members of a doomed middle England whose booze-addled brains are good for little more than fitful dreams of Margaret Thatcher”.
"[133] Watson denied the guests had been exploited while drunk, adding: "Some of the most excessive forms of expression were said sober".
Controversy arose when a press statement released ahead of broadcast stated that the programme included footage of Malcolm Pointon's death.
[141] Events took an unexpected turn when it transpired that the sequence purportedly showing the death of Malcom Pointon, in fact, did not.
[143] After some tense, behind-the-scenes negotiations between Watson and ITV, both parties acknowledged publicly that the programme did not feature Malcolm Pointon’s actual death.
It doesn't alter the fact Malcolm died of this illness…And that's the message I wanted to get through - that Alzheimer's kills”.
[146] There was support for Watson among media commentators, one arguing that while his mistake had been in “allowing an ambiguity to develop before transmission…it's not as if he tricked the audience into spending millions voting on the moment of death”.
When I came into television I was a boring young lefty and I was tired of the Oxbridge brigade talking to camera.
Because of reality TV, 80 hospitals turned down my request to make (Rain in my Heart) - refusing television access to institutions which are spending taxpayers' money”.
In 2006, he stated that he'd “held the camera for my last six or seven films…It's so liberating…Camera crews are great for dramas and they play with the f-stop brilliantly, but they don't see your point of view.
"[155] Regarding the editing style that typifies his later work, of which Rain in my Heart is an exemplar, Watson said: "The development of this 'triple layering' as I call it, started in other films I've made.
There are no cutaways at all in Rain [in my Heart], for example, no meaningful shot of the mantelpiece or the bill behind the clock, unless it was integral to the story.