Hello and welcome to SickCon Geeks, I'm James Carey, you'll be hearing Dave Cohen's voice in a minute. We're back with Danny Peake, we spoke to him in episode 187, that was part one of the interview, and this is part two where we finally get to talk about Big Top and also his Sky Comedy Code 404. But we're assuming a point in Danny's career where he's really riding high. Presumably round about now you're starting to get interested in this a bit of excitement because you've got your first audience sick on what's about to happen after the success of I've got a stupid one of the water things.
But here we go, you must have been so excited. Yeah, I could do no wrong with everything that I turned to gold. Go on, I know what you're about to say. So we're going to talk about Big Top, which was a BBC One mainstream studio, SickCon starring Tony Robinson of Blackadder.
It's like Tony Robinson from Blackadder and Riff Madict from Heidi High, which is another of my all-time favourites. I don't know why Heidi High isn't considered one of the pantheon models anyway, yeah comedy heroes. So what's the gear is this, this will be 2009. Okay, so how did that show come about and what did you learn from it?
Okay, it came about, well I've been working, I've been writing studio audience sitcoms, namely My Hero and Two Pints. I think just those two up until that point. And I mean, well for one thing, I really, really wanted to write a studio audience BBC Family Pre- Watershed comedy course I did who doesn't. And you probably still do and I still do.
Yeah, and it is the thing ever since Blackadder or whatever, it was the thing that I wanted to do. I never particularly aspired to sketch writer and I never thought I would be a movie director, I would write studio audience sitcoms with BBC One. And then we've got, just got the chance. I think, as I said, I think I'd written a couple of shows that were successful.
And so it was time to give me a go, I guess. So I thought the story from the ground, it isn't one that was brought to me, we want to show that sitcom, we want the vehicle for it, and under hold on who was the central actor in it. We really did start with the blank piece of paper and I wanted to do something. So my aspiration was to write something that was a Peri and Croft sitcom basically, I was like, that's army, I went to write Heidi High.
I want to do something that was, it was an ensemble, funny big, warm ensemble comedy with strong characters, but a kind of family vibe to it. And data in the sense of just having tons of jokes on it and have the joke rate, something like the Simpsons or the rest of the development, but in that kind of warm and enjoyable dance only world. So I can't remember the exact process, but I know we wrote a pilot script for the BBC, we say really lights, they cast it with the cast who were finally in it on TV, and we did a kind of rehearse read through it, the BBC. The people stand there with scripts and they're walking through.
And it was brilliant, honestly, we blew the roof off, it was so good. Everyone's telling how great it was, it was the funniest rehearsal read through that anyone had ever seen. And I think the series was commissioned on the spot of it the next day, went off, wrote it, the writing process was terrific, I was full of confidence, best thing ever written by Miles, and he was living up to all those things that set for me. I had really clear characters and really clear dynamics between all the characters, different dynamics between each, put any two of them in a room and you'd get different dynamics in its own way.
It's loads of jokes, every now and then when there's not much going on in the news, it's announced that someone's discovered the formula for the perfect sitcom. Okay. You read those stories and it's like, there's no real characters. It's a lot of news these days, so you don't get those stories very often.
No, but it has, I absolutely want to. Maybe that's why there hasn't been any brand new studio sitcom on. There's been too much news and that journalist hasn't written that article. Damn.
My show totally conforms. It takes every box. It's about, we've not even said this show, for anyone who's forgotten the show, I'm like, I've barely heard everybody else forgotten the show. It was, the reason it was copied is because it was by circus, it was set in a small family run traveling circus.
So it's about families, about an actual family, but they also all work together and they all live together in this very distinctive environment of, and currently there's been some caravans and every night they put on a show, so the stakes are very high because every night they put on a dangerous show. So it was all working pretty well. I thought and we had the read through of the series and again, went, just went really, really well, loads of laughs, really good. And then the wheels came off and then it was, it became, then it was voted for.
It was voted the fourth worst television show of 2009 in the internet. Well, there were three, three worse than that. Another one in the charts was then Derek Acorna's live channel five, Silence to Contacts, the recently departed spirit of Michael Jackson. Okay.
Apparently that was worse than Big Top, but not many other ones. That sounds brilliant. Yes, that's right. I'm probably very heavily scripted.
But what point, I mean, you've cut to the end there very quickly and said, I haven't had that. I was just trying to happen in the middle. At what point did you think, you know, so in good faith, you'll think and Paul, make you arch our mutual friend as it were, has said very similar things about chalk and we spoke to Stephen Moffat about that. Stephen Moffat said that.
Yeah. And we also, he also said that about Johnny Vaughn's sitcom called Orrible, where he said, in the read throughs, people were absolutely picking themselves up for the floor laughing. It just felt like the funniest thing. So at what point did you go, oh, hang on, this isn't, this isn't what I thought it was going to be.
Or this is what I thought it was going to be. But this is not what, where people are at the moment, where did you start to smell red? I can pinpoint the second actually. So the, the first, when the first studio recording took place, I was, I was not there.
The reason I was not there is because my daughter had the bad manners to be born that way. Yeah. And in Manchester as well, to make things worse, this show was in London. So I wasn't there, I wasn't there for the first recording.
But obviously I was told, well, give you a call and let you know how it went. And so, and the night wore on and I was thought, this phone call seems to be later and later in coming. And the phone call came and I said, how did it go? And the producer of the show said to me, it went well.
But there was a big gap between the word wence and the word well. So the conversation was, how did it go? It went well. And that in my memory, that is where the demarcation line is between the four times and the other times.
It went full stop. Well, it's what happened. Yeah. And I did, I went to the other recordings and actually it was, it was, it was fine.
I mean, you know, the audience did respond to it. It did go down on the street. It was not one of those stories that I've heard very often about failed shows where the audience on the night loved it and everybody was a hundred percent convinced it was going to be a success until it went out on TV. That wasn't the case.
I already knew that something was a mess before then. And I mean, you're going to ask me quite rightly, so what, what did go wrong? What lessons did I learn from it? I kind of wish I had some clear answers to that.
But part of me just thinks it's just second law of thermodynamics. You know, it's just things get easier for things to go wrong. Yeah, it's for them to go right. One difference that very, very much happened a few years before that, which was, it sounds like you didn't do a pilot's effort.
You didn't record a pilot. We did not. I wish I think maybe things would have been different if we had maybe. Because it's one thing to go from a read through, a read through a table read through whatever to a non-audience show, I think, because there is less, there's less stuff in the way.
But to go from a read through to a live reconstruction, you know, like the one at one at play in a theatre effectively for opening night, which is also, you know, opening night is also the finished product. And I think that I wonder if that's also why one of the reasons why sitcoms, I mean, it is a chicken and egg thing as well. I'll sit comes to it. Audience comes to it expensive to make.
So it's cheaper to, if you're going to make it, don't make a pilot, but maybe you're not making a pilot, you are really making it difficult for yourself. That's right. I mean, I actually, I'd like to backtrack a little bit, because I mean, where that I think what I just said could be read as my saying, well, it's not my Fox, I wrote at this brilliant show. And then they just made it wrong.
Yeah. I don't think people, that's not what it sounded like. It sounded like the planets aligned and yet somehow the magic didn't turn up. Yeah, that's right.
I mean, I think one thing that I perhaps learned is that it's not, as a sitcom writer, it's not your job to write a funny script. It's your job to write a funny TV show. And although those two things are very closely related to each other, they're not quite the same thing. Yeah.
And if it's funny on the page, well, that's fine, but only 100, 200 people are actually going to read that. If they have a nice time, that's fine. But the fact that I didn't write a funny TV show. And I think there are probably all kinds of reasons for that.
The one that I can put my finger on, the one I kind of liked to point to is that I think I made a pretty rookie mistake in writing an ensemble that was centered on one character, which was a Mandelholdens character who was not a funny character. And that's no reflection on her. She did a really good job of it. I just was underserved because her job as a character was kind of to roll her eyes and say, oh, you guys, so all the crazy, literally the crazy clowns that she was surrounded by.
Descent statement is the least funny character in a rest development. And he's holding it all together. You could say the same with Seinfeld. He is the least funny of the four.
So in a way, I don't think that's, for me, I wonder if it's more of a question of public taste and what people actually wanted. And it feels like they were commissioning what they thought people wanted and delivered it, but actually taste of change to the point where people were thinking, what is this? They don't feel... Maybe.
Do you know what there might be no matter that, however, when I look at what the most successful studio artist comes with the following years, there was Miranda, which did all right, which was the big silly show. And then Mrs. Brown. I'm not going out.
Yeah. Yeah. Very soon. I'm fairly soon off.
Was that going out? Not going out. I had already started, although I was not. I was not on it.
Yeah. Right. But it was around. And I think you did Miranda slightly before, big top, I think.
Wow. I did. And Mrs. Brown was after.
Yeah. About to know. Similar time, I think. Very similar.
I just remember having kind of an eye on Miranda when it went out, thinking, this is a big, this is a big death show. Yeah. See if people like it. And they did.
Yeah. So I thought the signs were quite good. No, in a way, therefore, let's learn one lesson, which is just to be a bit humble about what we know and what we don't know. And you can do everything right.
You know, I was very fortunate that my big sitcom, Problematic sitcom, was on Radio 4, and literally nobody noticed. So I did a show called The Pets, which was set in the English National Opera or the British National Opera, whatever. And it's this comedian called John Oliver. I've never heard of him since.
I don't know what he's gone on to do. Yeah. I don't bump into him in London anymore. So John Oliver, Lucy Montgomery, Phil Cornwall.
Phil Cornwall. Phil Cornwall. Yeah. And Paul Laffes, somebody.
Paul Lefox. And Radio 4 didn't like it. It wasn't the audience seemed to like it. But after the series, Radio 4 just said, we've got anything else.
In the days when they tended to recommission most things, actually. And I've done, I think, I think I've always said, really liked. And so I just thought, oh, and I was genuinely surprised that people didn't think it was what I thought it was. I thought it was perfectly good, fun, interesting thing.
But I don't know, maybe when it came down to it, fundamentally wasn't quite about anything. I don't know. I mean, maybe there's that kind of, what's this really about? And why are you writing this now?
And it may be that there's that personal connection missing, I don't know. There's possibly a... Because Perian Croft could write Heidi Hight, because they were both red coats. Do you know what I mean?
It's like... That was true. I certainly had no lived experience as a... A circus performer.
A fiery, yeah. I mean, dozens of scripts later now. Do you have a kind of con... Are you consciously thinking as you're writing, how is this script going to be funny for TV and not just funny on the page?
Is there anything that you do now to kind of help you in that direction? No. No, I just probably don't have to say that. So, I previously did.
And also, I wouldn't try things, I suppose, in front of an audience. Well, as you know, every knock-off going out scripts before it goes to the rehearsals is at least red out in front of an audience to see whether they like it and to see what they like and what they don't like that. So, by the time it goes to the studio, there's... Well, you know, as well as having had 12 series worth of indication of what the audience might like.
But you... But you stick to the processing perspective, because on one note, again, it's just what I'm really hearing again and again is just how unbelievably difficult this job is, even if you know what you're doing. So, you've already got a show on with Lee Mac, very famous comedian who just... He is funny, you know what I mean?
There's a limit to how not funny the show's going to be given that Lee Mac is in it. And you've got to sit come around it, which works. We've got super experienced Danny Peek also, you know, working on the scripts and getting them right and all that kind of stuff. And even then, you don't just film it, you check it in front of an audience and then you re-write it and you steal over shoot and you take a bit out and you might have to do a few pickups.
Yes, that's right. Yeah, you write at 40 minute scripts. Yeah. So, yeah, so you can clear out the bits that people don't like.
Yeah, so I think the lesson I'm learning here is just it is monstrously difficult and natural talent of which you clearly have a lot, because you literally wrote a script straight out of the thing which won and then you did another competition, then you didn't want that. It's still not enough, is it? It's like it's so much graft. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a lot of work. Yeah. That's the same response to that. It's really hard, isn't it?
Yeah, it is. And I think maybe people think that once you're experienced and it's your only job, it gets easier, in a way, it really doesn't. You now know how much more work it is. I think that's what I always say is one of my advantages is that somebody else with much experience than me, they can write a really frank script in So Can I.
My advantage is I know it's probably going to take me 80 hours and they think they can do it in 30. Well, okay, that more full then and they may be funnier after 30 hours than I am after 30 hours, but I'm going to be funnier than them after 80 hours. I mean, if they've stopped at 30. Yeah.
My little story about that is I've got a nephew who's a big fan of not going out for a history, which I've written on with Dave. And I've always felt I've got some kudos from him from being his cool uncle about horrible histories. And then he said one day he said to my brother, he said, what does Uncle Daniel do as a job? And my brother's quite puzzled, said to him, well, you know what he does, he's a writer, he writes horrible histories, so which he replied, yeah, but that can't take all day.
And like in one second, I went from being a cool uncle to figure him to get kind of pity really. That's what I do for my life to do. Wow. Yeah.
Is that it? I mean, we all got those wings as well, because we were saying before we started recording that your kids could frankly take all the horrible histories. Yeah, Dave's as well. And my kids would much prefer if I was John Finnemol, because they think having fresh is the funniest thing that's ever been.
And I said, all right, that's I didn't write that one. But it's just it's always the way, isn't it? It's always the way they keep us humble. Hope you're enjoying this episode.
It's pretty raw, isn't it? Staring failure in the face. Well, coming up in future episodes, we've got an interview with Ashley Farrow, co-creator of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes to really, really big successful shows. And he went straight on to make a show called Bone Kickers, which was panned by critics and only did one series.
And we talk to him about that, as you know, we love to talk to our guests about failures as well as successes. Our page runs a bit access to that interview very soon. They've already got access to our interviews with Jimmy Marlville and Fergus Craig and access to our private Facebook page and the extra podcast a month we do on Zoom where you can ask us anything and we will answer. Just wanted to let you know that I'm running a webinar on the 26th of April about plotting pilot scripts.
And you can join that if you want to know more, best join my mailing list, the Situation Room. Why don't you go to my website, sitcomgeek.blogspot.com and find out more where you'll also find links to my YouTube channel where I make short punchy videos about writing sitcom scripts. And Dave will be running an eight-week comedy writing course in May, so to find out more about that go to DaveCohen.org.uk. We'll put all those links in the show notes.
Okay, back to the interview. So generally about the audience sitcom, you are in a good company here, you are, this is an audience sitcom, Love In Here. And I know you have written loads of other shows as well audience sitcom shows. And not so much at the moment, but I mean, are you still trying to get audience sitcom made?
And is it a struggle? I haven't pitched anything for a while, because I'm not going out, I've been kept going for so long. And also, I haven't got any ideas to pitch. And having been burnt in the past, I don't think I would have to be pretty damn confident about something or very passionate invested in it.
Or an idea that can only be done in front of an audience. You have to be fixed on that idea where you just think, no, no, no, it has to be. And there are some ideas that are specifically like that, aren't they? But yeah, I think it has to be, you have to have a real strong conviction for it now.
It's not the default by any means, is it? No, no, no, no. I'm having said that, I would love to do it because they're the best. They're the best shows that other than the kids still do.
I just think as a delivery system for just firing joy directly at an audience, there's nothing, maybe pop music is better, but nothing else is an art form. And it's just a shame that only about 17% of them are really, really good. But no, I'm going to, as long as people will, as I have a chance to keep making them, I will do. And I'd love to come up with a new idea that I was excited about.
And hopefully I will go one day. So let's say we have a quick chat now about Code 404 because that's the show you're on to now your series three on the sky. Is that correct? That's right.
So we're in the post-production at the moment. So that'll be on some time later this year. For those who haven't seen it. And that's your loss because it's really funny.
But sadly, it's on the sky. So neither one has that. But tell us the premise for Code 404. Okay, so it's set.
And in the near future, it's about two cups in London, one of whom is shot dead before the opening credits of the first episode. And then is brought back to life by a pioneering police AI scientist. So he's back in business, he's partnered back up with his old partner, who's quite surprised to see him back from the dead. But the problem is that this being a comedy show, the AI hasn't worked terribly well.
And so he's come back as quite a glitchy, less effective version of his former self. It's played the two main characters, I had pinched myself every time I say this, but the two main characters, the playwright, Stephen Graham and Daniel Mays, who are so good. They're doing just incredible. I don't know.
I don't know how we got them anyway, we did. And they are obviously they're famous for lots of things, including line of GT. And they kind of play it as if it were a new series of line of GT. And I think if you turn the sound down on it, it kind of looks more or less like a line of GT type shown, for 80% of it.
But with a big dose of Heidi Haidt from him, I mentioned it again, a big dose of Heidi Haidt from him. Daniel Mays has described it as like Robocop meets some of the stuavam. I kind of, the first, I think that's the best description of it. That is a really good way of putting it.
Really good way. I was thinking an element of like an update of like, Randalin Hopkirk deceased as well. You've got the love triangle angle to it. Oh, yeah, that's the other thing as well.
Yeah, to mention is that during the year that Daniel Mays is character was dead, Stephen Graham's character began a relationship with his wife, which becomes embarrassing when he returns. Yeah. So it's kind of, it's a bit sci-fi, but not really, it's kind of a crime show, but it's a sitcom really. It's a long way though, isn't it from the flins or it's not going out.
Life of Riley, it's very far from the kind of things that you've written, what do you say? Yeah, I suppose so, you're like, tonally, I suppose it is, but I do think of it as a sitcom and I write it as a sitcom. And because it's got this, it has a crime narrative going through the whole series and it's got this relationship stuff going through the whole series. So it does have drama arcs, I suppose, but episode by episode, I absolutely write it as if it were, as if it were a sitcom.
Every episode has a sitcom story that's set up and that pays off at the end of the episodes and that's never really referred to. And the story is, yeah, the story is absolutely crucial, isn't it? The individual story for the episode and the series arc as it were because the story has to matter, because the characters need to care. They don't think it's funny.
This is real life for them. Yes, it's literally life or death. Yeah, and so therefore you can't just have it go from goofy police procedural scene to another goofy police procedural scene. Everything has to have that reason and it sounds like maybe Lee's done your bit of a favor there and really kicking you into saying, I know you want to get to the bit with the identical stuff, I know you want to get to the interrogation scene, are we getting from here to there?
Yeah, so I kind of, I guess you can double plots each episode in some ways and like once for drama and once for comedy. Although the comedy I think takes precedence and anything that dramatic that happens, any scenes of real emotion or anguish or pain are there to serve comedy. Yeah, I think even though it's played very, very straight. Well, I can highly recommend it.
I don't have to go but I paid to watch it on iTunes with my own money and was very glad I did. And my wife said, my wife wants to buy the whole series and so I think I'm going to give in on that one. So we can subscribe to Nogtivi for a week for free. Okay, and just watch it before the subscription kicks in.
Okay, well, I tend to forget those things and end up end up paying through the record. So but no, I mean, I'm just thinking of the of the sort of the 78 pence that will eventually come your way in two and a half years time through those, you know, when your agent sends you this sort of thing, which has got these kind of runes on it, what you just think, what is this again? And you just think, yeah, no, I don't let you know when that comes through. Yes, yes, it's right.
And then you can buy me half a pint. Let's wrap up with just one last question then for those listening to this podcast, many of whom are writing sitcom scripts and would just literally love to have a third of the career that you've had so far. And you know, you're any half way through, you could be the Roy Clark of the 2030s, Dan, or can you imagine, is we were looking at the list of then Lee and I were looking at the list of the longest when he was actually sitcoms because yeah, I've been getting up there now. Yeah, and last of the sum of one, I think he's 273 episodes at some way off.
I think we're going to have to walk past him in the street. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. We need to still need to try and get out of him because he's still. No, I'm working on it.
Okay, what's this about every day that passes that I don't get hold of him. It's getting a bit harder. But to those writers, Danny, do you have anything where you might want to say, you know, maybe you've read volunteer scripts or you get asked to do this sort of thing and I don't have any hot tips or bits of advice you give? I think the thing I just that we talked about earlier about planning, I just think it's all in plotting and planning.
I think if you 50% of your time needs to be spent on working out what the story is, or rather that's my experience. I mean, you might just sit down and write it from scratch, it might be fine. But I think that it's jokes, jokes last, I suppose I would say. Right, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes, it's jokes last as in they last a long time, but you need to go that as well. Yeah, that's what you meant, Danny.
That's what you meant. Yeah, yeah. Great. I think what you're basically saying is, you know, we do say this a lot, but you have proved it in practicality.
You say, you know, you put in the hours, you just have to keep working at it and keep working at it. And it is hard. It isn't, there isn't a sort of magic formula for all this. It's it.
And I'm glad also that you said, you know, I'm glad that my first one wasn't the one that went out. Yeah, I'm pretty convinced that I wouldn't be talking to know if the book boys have been conditioned for a series. What was that very first one? The one was 18.
Yeah. It was called you love this. It was called where there's a will because it was about a contested will. But the idea about it was 18, right?
So the idea was it was looks like a conventional sitcom and so deliberately was all fashion that respects, but then it was kind of it all went a bit young one halfway through and it was very anarchic and things crashed in and then halfway through the broadcast was hijacked by terrorists who came on and then they disappeared. And you know, there were bits where they started to watch the TV and the show went into the TV set. Oh, wow. Things like that.
And we watched what they were watching on TV for a bit. So obviously not very good. But I think it had a lot of good jokes in it. Yeah.
So it was probably unbearable to watch it. You won and you got to meet Angus Deaton and that's something I did. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And I remember. Great. Well, thanks very much Danny.
We really appreciate your time. Listen, I appreciate it. Thanks for being one of those resources that wasn't available to me when I was starting out. Yeah.
I'm really happy to have done it. Oh, thank you. And thanks very much to you all for listening and we will speak to you next time. Cheerio.