Episode 94 - Zapped

Hello, welcome to sitcom geeks. I'm James Terry. Dave Cohen has stepped out for this week. He's at a very important meeting, but I'm with very important men too.

I'm with Dan Gaster and Will Ng and Paul Powell, who form a collaborative production company and they write together and they also produce their own material. I'm going to say hello to Will. Hello, hello, hello. Hello, Paul.

Hello, Dan. Hello, James. I just want to get their voices out. We're all disappointedly made.

Sorry about that. And these guys are responsible for two shows on your tely screens at the moment. One is a panel game called Insert Name Here and the other is a sitcom called Zapped. Let's start talking about Zapped because I remember at least one of you telling me about it at least 10 years ago.

Oh, God, it probably isn't nearly 10 years ago. It took us from initial idea to the first episode was I think seven years. Is that right? The first read was on the first one, it was in 2009.

Do you know that for a fact? Oh, really? I've had a daughter three weeks later. So I remember it well.

Yeah, so yes, so we can our production has been so long in gestation that we've had children quicker than commissions. They've gone to school quicker. Yeah. In fact, the idea predates that by a few years as well.

Well, it does because I remember talking to me and Paul for nearly 20 years, in fact. And you've been talking about it this sort of show for a very long time. Has it always caused that? Well, it came out on idea when the BBC were looking for some kind of red dwarf kind of substitute.

No, hang on, Paul. Because I'm going to say it's even predate. When did we do the Channel 4 sitcom festival? That was 1997.

Right. So 1997, me and Paul pitched a sitcom for the Channel 4 sitcom festival, which was one of those things, the BBC now do a slight equivalent in Sulfid. I don't know if they're still doing it, but it's good fun. So over three weeks, they did live stages of three sitcoms per week.

So it ran for something like a Wednesday to a Saturday with a sort of rip cast. Yeah. And that's where Black Books came from, actually. So Black Books was one.

We did one based on a TV chef, which was sort of all right, never quite hit. But Schangers Cassidy was at Channel 4 at the time called us in and said, got any other ideas? And that's where I think we should go. Yeah, you're right.

Yeah. And that idea was two mad magicians, effectively kind of a Rick and AIDS, kind of double act of rain-fried wizards. So they put their elements to that. So I think a fantasy world.

Yeah. Yeah. So I remember sort of pitching the idea of one of the characters being half to all half-giant, which is what Ken Collar's character, Stake, is. Yeah.

And Schangers' last thing at that, and then it all went, it wasn't me, did you wrong? Yeah. But that was the very, very start. Yeah.

And then the BBC came back, five years later, we looked at which, which led to hyperdrive, I believe. Yeah. So that's around that time. So that bounced back.

And then I think for some reason, back 2009, we went, come on, let's do this. Well, that's what that's what we had. We had Black Dog. Yeah.

We had Black Dog. We had it in. Black Dog is your production company. Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. You are Black Dog. Named after Winston Churchill's Black Dog of Despair.

Right. Because we know how depressing the process, the whole mission. Yeah. Yeah.

And so we'd formed it and we'd got to show away on Dave, in fact. And so we took this idea to Dave. We managed to cajole some people that we'd worked with, like Miranda Hart and Rick Mail, who Dan had worked with. Rob Webb.

Matt Hollis. Rob Webb. Matt Hollis. Steve Frost, who we were able to come and read through.

Yeah. They were, of course, terrific. And then it just, it's still doing quite take. We had to do another script.

And then we did a new video. Who are those losers on your channel? It's fun, isn't it? We did.

We did call together. Quite a stellar cast. I think that's what got them interested. But eventually they just, they didn't really have enough money to do that.

And that's one of the downsides of the cast, because we had such a good cast. They couldn't afford the cast. Right. Okay.

So that was the whole thing. So they sort of went, as we all know the question process, we're there, then, around the house, it went to channel four, at least twice. Yes. Yeah.

Into the BBC. But then Cromon, Dune, happened. Oh, yeah. So that's the thing.

That must have been horrible at home. Yeah. When you switch on the TV and you go, oh. Well, we pitched it to Simon Wilson, who was then at the BBC.

And he said, oh, is this exactly what it's going to be like? Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit similar to something else.

And you kind of go, well, we know quite a lot of sitcom writers. Surely we know if someone else, and we couldn't get to the bottom of who was pitching this idea, how we hadn't heard of it. Then of course, it turned out to be an idea that was an American writer that was being co-funded by the BBC and maybe comedy sentiment. And you go, oh, that's why we don't know what it is.

And that's why they don't. And they had the money. I mean, it really created the country. Flaming sort of fire?

Yes. Funny title. Yeah. I remember particularly because Matt Lucas and Alex McQueen were very familiar.

Yes, but they were sort of, yeah. So they were sort of baddies. Yeah. Overall, it didn't quite take quite a bit.

It didn't take quite a bit. I think it was at this point, you know, does that make you feel better or worse? Which they basically co-eared the pitch for your show. They did.

They did. And they did. But as you know, nothing ever dies. It just went into hibernation for a number of few years.

And then we pitched it again to Channel 4. Phil Clark was known for radio for 20 years. And he is the nicest man in the world. And he paid for a little bit more development.

And why did this business for 20 years? And not one person has ever said a single negative thing back to him. I saw him. I did see him kill a cat with a shovel on his butt.

In a nice way. Oh, yeah. They wanted to do it. Yeah.

Phil gave us a bit more development further and then it went all the way up to Channel 4 again. And then it stopped. It didn't get picked up. And so we thought, OK, forget it.

It doesn't really matter. Because it's now looking like a form of madness. Yeah, yeah. And you are doing the same thing and expecting it to be a result.

It wasn't we weren't spending, fortunately, we weren't spending all day, every day, on zapped and pitching it and rewriting it and everything. But it's a bit funny. It's a bit funny. It's a bit funny.

Then there was quite an interesting thing. So by then we had a script. And I think this is interesting looking back. It was demonstrably better than the first script we'd even done as a read through with.

Because we'd made a rewrite. And we'd written a lot of other things. And we'd written lots of other pilots. And we'd just got better.

There's no doubt about it. So it became quite a useful spec script. And everyone that read it said all this is really funny, but most people said it's not for us. And then we got a call from Henry Normal, who wanted us to write a book, who was looking for fantasy writers for a completely different project.

And our agent said, oh, well, these guys have written a fantasy script. Have a look at that. So we sort of gave him that script. And then we got involved in his fantasy project, which came to nothing.

And he said, but meanwhile, is anyone trying to get this script away? And we said, Henry, just so charged. We've been all said, no, no, no, no. Just don't worry.

Just don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it. Just have a go. And he did.

He got it up and running. He told it back to day. He said he had written a story, and he said, oh, well, these guys have written the fantasy script. Have a look at that.

So we sort of gave him that script. And then we got involved in his fantasy project, which came to nothing. And he said, but meanwhile, is anyone looking at this script away? And we said, Henry, just don't know.

Everywhere they all said, no, no. Just don't worry about it. He said, let me just have a go. And he did.

He got it up and running. He told it back to day if you were originally interested in it. And of course, in the intervening time their scripted side had sort of matured. He dropped the bombshell that he wanted to make it a non-audience show because we'd written it to be recorded in front of an audience I remember the silence in the room and he went, yeah, I just missed a single camera And we kind of fought it and kicked back, but actually of course he was right.

It was a major picture of some of the fantasy cheers. Yeah, yeah. So it's all set in a while. Yeah, yeah.

Which is why Matt, who was the first episode, he kind of got that there's not much apart from Hell, Shop and the Club. You go, no, no, no. Yeah, it's written for, you know, live audiences, written for minimum sets. But it has that studio feel to it in a good way, I mean.

I don't know, does it? But I don't think that's the worst one. It's one of the things I worry about because I like that studio feel and that media see. I sometimes think that it gets very film-exapt and there's a lot of effects.

Oh yeah, it does not. And if you put too many of those layers in front of it, it gets a bit removed. The actual performance. Yeah, I don't know.

I literally watched episode one of series three last night. Right. And I didn't find myself thinking, ah, this is just in part of the studio audience. Yeah.

It just, I just thought, yeah, this is what it is. It's great. Yeah, yeah. And obviously the office stuff would have been harder to have done.

Yeah, you'd have to have, you know, used to have a percentage of your budget to record stuff that you play in on the night. Yeah. One of the big differences for us was moving to a single camera, suddenly writing a 15 second scene. Right.

Because that was the big liberating thing actually. I think came to Institute with Noun Series 3. Now we know that we can write something that's literally one line. And that's fine, whereas of course when you were in an audience show, it's like, OK, try and milk this, please.

We paid a lot of money for this. In fact, if you look at the first episode, the first series, there's probably like 12 scenes. And then we were coming in at 14 in the last series. 14 in the last series.

14 in the last series. I've got shorter and shorter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's interesting. So you're learning a lot as you're going. So the show eventually landed. They bought it and he started making it.

I mean, finally, in a way, it feels like you've suddenly been given the keys. You know what I mean? Yeah, it does. Well, they're done because they commissioned three pilots effectively.

So they kind of think, well, there's no point in making one. We might as well get some value out of this. So we did three, which was so good. Such a great system.

So you get to write your set up episode and two episodes. So by the end of it, even if it comes to nothing, you've had a crack at it. It's been on telly. You've done three.

If it didn't work, you can't really say. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially since episode one or something like that, it's always going to be the set up. It's always going to be OK.

We got Brian into the other world in two minutes, seven seconds. Yeah. That's our first set up. Yeah, in the original version.

Yeah, it's only five minutes. But it was something that was great because we could then tell a story episode. Yeah. And also, you know, you can get to know the characters and it now's it's bed in.

So that's what's great about Dave. Yeah. They gave us a proper run at it. Especially, especially as the first time we had the cast together and heard them do the words out loud, including James Buckley, speak any of the lines at all was the evening before we started filming.

Wow. So yeah, a bit hairy. Yeah. Was there much rewriting last minute as a result of that?

There was a bit. A little bit on the hoof. I was going to say one of the things I was just jumping back, one of the things about doing three episodes was great. It's allowed you to get that kind of cast.

This is not a massive commitment. It was a three year shoot. And it was Monday to Friday for three weeks. Three weeks.

Yeah, it was three weeks. Yeah. So that's why we got, I think, such a good colour of cast. Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah. And actually, yes, the first time we heard them was pretty much on set. Yeah. It's quite exciting.

So, you know, it's also terrifying. Yeah, you've just no idea. And you've held these ideas as well. As you know, you've been imagining what it's going to look like and sound like and everything.

And then it's not quite that bad. But then, seriously, of course, you go up a level because now you know them. Now you can write for them. Yeah.

Oh, I'll call it will be funny. But I think that's actually the case with the third series. We really knew our characters pretty well. And it was a lot more fun to write for them because we just thought, obviously, it's really funny.

They'll enjoy this. Yeah. This is really a very James Bond. Whereas in series one, they're kind of going, oh, I was expecting that.

OK, let's go with that. You can do it like that. Yeah. I think it's been three of us.

We have been more panda at times when you can basically say, no, not like that. Stop it. Don't make me say the line how you should say it. Yeah, don't do that.

Do you mind if I just give you a reading on that? Oh, no, no. And he said, they can't say no. Yeah.

And then you said it how you want them to say it. And they almost can't ignore that. It's a very good thing. Do you mind if I just give you a reading on that?

Yeah. And that's killer with politeness. Yeah. That's the worst thing you can do, isn't it?

So much as apps, we write by reading it. You know, we will sit and read out scenes. We will app them out. I mean, obviously, not in costume, although Dan likes to say.

But, you know, we develop the rhythms of it all. And comedy is all about rhythm. And it's all about, you know, phrasing. I think that's something that we're really trying to do more of.

Because I think you can spend so long in development that everything exists just on the page in your head. And I think one of the events that's being three of us, but also trying to make it like a thing that's actually on telling not a script that's being read out. So things that look actually sometimes a bit loose on the page. But will perform up better.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something that's sort of performing background as well.

So I guess an unsuccessful one. The same as a successful one Dan. You kind of divided that. I thought you were saying the last before you grabbed around.

So we could take a look at a fringe level for many years. We spoke to you down with Edwards. Yes. And recently, the interview we got out is currently on our Patreon page.

I'll let you join us. But he produced some of your earlier words. Oh, yes. As writer, performer in a show called Stuff the Week.

Yeah. Which I actually remember being an ITV concert. We were in an interview down in there. I'm in there.

Yeah. And again, I can tell you that was September to December, 90, just got married. OK. Just got paid off for three months.

So that big tower on the South Bank. That was something that came slightly out of me and Will and another guy, Ben, who used to have a sketch group that came out of our Edinburgh Sketch Show. And then you know. It was called Curry Go, which was, you know, then we were talking to people after that.

Yes. It's funny when you look back, you know, it was an absolute, you know, inconsequential show. We were on 11.40 on a Monday night. But, and this will make us sound like old bastards, but it was in an era of only four or five channels.

So at 1.40 on a Monday night. We sometimes got either side of a million people somehow. You know, which now we would be very happy with on our... Yeah.

And I'd like to recognize it in Indian Restaurant, which was pretty much the highlight of my career. I got recognized for it. I don't even exist anymore. So yeah, coffee, coffee, co-and-eeling.

Yeah. We thought they all became Starbucks. Or coffee republic, as well, wasn't they? Yeah, yeah.

So that's what it takes then. You were... I mean, but that, presumably, wasn't... You've done live stuff before together.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we did. So Dan Paul did a sketch show on radio. On radio.

Before me. Dan and another guy, Ben, who used up the week with... I said, we went up to Edinburgh quite a few years in the 90s. We had a radio show.

And then the combination of that ended up in this TV form. That's the series. It's sort of slightly on at the same time. Was it on at the same time as the ever concert?

We were slightly lacking a sort of a Ricky Gervais or an Alleg in terms of breakthrough potential, I would say. Although, actually, I think, joke or joke, you probably were punching... Maybe. Luckily, it was before YouTube, so no one will ever know.

Yeah. It's just remember it as being brilliant. No one had just used it as a pleasure. We've got a lovely rose filter on that.

Oh, absolutely. In our minds, only. Yeah, no one... We'll absolutely cause palpitations, cos he transferred the opening credits of...

Was it a VHS you had? Yeah, yeah. And I just opened an email from him and said, Hey, look at this. I wasn't just braced to see myself 20 years ago doing the title sequence, and it was thought seeing any of the actual show would be horrific.

Absolutely. That's not legal. We had to do it as live. We had no water queue.

We had no water queue. We did it the night of the three year old cast. We did the worst of all possible worlds. We did at eight o'clock in the evening, but as live.

So without the excitement of actually going out live, with no room to mess anything up. Wow. Yeah, it was weird. Look at the dream.

Yeah, kind of. Well, we were happy. Yeah, we were happy that we were on. You were happy that we were on.

Yeah, we did a TV series, so take that off. Yeah, but having said that, you did a TV series, and then you didn't. So that avenue of pleasure was closed off. Yeah.

And by my quite... Yeah, absolutely. And we have it. Yeah, absolutely.

And we opened up again, no, you go. It's there. I said the TV industry. It's a luxury to think about, but I think sometimes people think, if I write a script, I'm basically made, I'm away.

I've got a winning lottery to give you. And the answer is no, what you've won is the chance to do that five more times. Yeah, yeah. But in about a fifth of the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you spent two years honing this one 30-page script. OK, can you write five of those now? In not quite enough time.

You've got four months. Yeah, yeah. And again, having three people is incredibly useful. I mean, it makes you even more impoverished than...

Yeah, yeah. But ever, to kind of try to divide the money three ways, I mean, literally, it's ridiculous in that part. But in terms of getting a script made, we always back ourselves now to make them quick quite quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When we wrote, it was actually two in five months. Four to five. Four to five. But you always run out of time in the end.

I mean, we'll be writing on the set. But I think we turn around series three and about the same. I always feel like we've always loved our time. What you want to do is get to the point of the first day of recording and then be told, it's all gone back a month.

And then go, you know, because if they told you that at the start, you wouldn't have got there. But for the last series, we did have an early... We had an early early reading with the cast, didn't we? Which was probably a month before we started filming, which was really felt like a luxury.

So they all got a chance to read it out loud, which was terrific for us. And, you know, we got to make some good fixes. We got to make some real... We realised a couple of them just working properly.

So we went back and sort of just took them apart and read it. And that was really... When we worked that hard, you hear, we heard episode two, I think, which was gone out a couple of weeks ago, go out. Just going, oh, it's already really got James Buckley's first thought very much.

Yeah, how did that happen? And we just had to go back and read it and get your main character fun. And then it was great. But yeah, it was great.

It was amazing. I don't know if there was any credence in the theory. I think we've created one some twice an interview with someone I heard on a script and they'd written a lot of comedy. And they just thought, you know what, I've been doing it for 20 years, and I don't actually think I've got any better at it.

I just keep making the same mistakes. The only advantage I have is I now know that I make the same mistakes and it still takes ages. I don't get to the funniest version any quicker than I used to. Well, my legendary status in Black Talk is to write the twice as long script.

Oh, God. I still have this thing. Every time, they hand in their 35 page first. So what we tend to do is we tend to sort of work collaboratively, collectively on ideas and plots and story and then we get our outline.

And then the outline to that stage, our outline stage, and only then when they're pretty well filled in, do we go away and write them up? And you have to kick to a certain amount of scale, because otherwise it makes it too miserable for other people. You have to make some decisions. And then Paul goes a bit quiet, he doesn't answer his emails.

And he goes, oh, it's good though it's good. And it's like, that's 20 pages, we're going to have to now sit and jump. So this year, what Paul did is he wrote it at that moment, just went to Portugal for it. Yeah.

You saw that? I'll leave it with you guys. Take care. But I can't not put it all in.

And then of course I add stuff, because I'm writing it. I'm acting as an idea. That's a lie. But that is the way, in a way, though, one of the things that we are learning on this podcast is just knowing what sort of a writer you are.

And you're a writer. You write long, Paul, presumably. Mark Evans. Oh, he writes down a lot.

He writes down a lot. He's die-identically long. And that's just the way he does it. And it works for him and it drives him up the wall.

But equally, some people are driven up the wall, because it's an anatomist hand in a long script. What do I think I heard this from you, though? Or I read you saying this. Well, only that that's partly what your job is, is to make the decision.

Yes, no, that's true. So the work that you'll freak, right? Right, as I think, tend to play it close to their chest. So why would you invite someone else to decide what of all your stuff is funny?

That's your job. I think we can. Within that, you might even be wrong, but you can always change it. But things don't work.

Things work in a different way at 48 pages to 35. So a plot that doesn't work might not be working, because it's so long and disjointed. And you wouldn't really know if it works, until it's closer to the right length. I remember with the sitcom festival, so we'd be first in that.

Tell us what's wrong. It came in about 22 minutes. It's so funny, because we were the second half. Actually, we would barely set that down and it was back off again.

So they're back in the vlog. I can learn half out. Yeah, so we were right. It was a run-around.

It was a time when I wrote too little. A cozy 20 minutes. Yeah, yeah. But no, it's true.

And I remember that one of the worst days of my professional career was when I handed in a script that was too long. And the people who read it, the producer, the script, said it's in the show, Creator, on My Hero. All were basically like, why have you sent this? Yeah.

60 pages. This is, yeah. That's what I was supposed to do with it. What was it that I wasn't quite sure?

What was it that I didn't do with it? Yeah. So I agree, I wouldn't send a double-length script again, like that to be to grown-ups. But if you're among friends, you can't.

Why don't me and Will get to be the grown-ups? And say, why have you given us things? I was just saying that. I'll just say that.

I'll just say that I cut Paul's script down to LinkedIn. I'll say you'll find his thing. I'll say you'll find his thing. I'll say you'll find his thing.

This is actually a very polite version of what happens in all ages, in most days. But the other thing is, of course, you can't beat being on the set to realise when you've ever written. Because you look back at the six weeks we had to film, Zapp's going, yeah, I mean, literally, probably day and a half was stuff we cut, because the shows were too long. And that hurts.

I don't know. I don't know. But you can't. It's part of the process.

I know. You have to be a buffer. You have to be a buffer. You've got a bit of buffer.

Just don't take the piss balls once. When I come to the side, who's really gets on your nerves? Will's in the middle. I'm the glue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. With now me, it's chaos in there. I have to go in the stage in dimensions. I want to sit next to each other.

Normally what happens, as soon as Paul comes in in the morning and puts his feet on the desk, I'm in a fucking furious mood. That's like five past ten. I've already lost it. I think it's got to be above my head.

That's basically a rule. Exactly. Paul claims he can't think unless his feet are on the desk. And he just drives me mad.

It's so funny. When we go into an office, to begin our writing, we take seats around the table. You know, writers are all somewhere on the spectrum. We don't move from those seats.

We would never ever go sit in someone else's seat. They'd become our seats and as they formed in the first ten seconds when we go into a room, we're sitting in the same places. We always do the same thing. Paul puts his feet on the desk.

I normally am marching up and down. I get on with making a huge mess on my desk. There's papers far left. Dan smears paper everywhere.

Everything that occurs to me. Everything that occurs to me. I'm not allowed to talk to Paul while he's doing something. So if something occurs to me, I'll just go right it down.

So everything goes on post-its all over the place in cards. And then I don't throw anything out, because I know someone on the desk is all the great ideas I've had. No, it's true. You don't want to throw anything out.

We also have a lot of plastic cupery. We have various sort of napkins for bread. That's the only thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One of the best investments was having a coffee machine in the office. That's good. That made life a lot easier. That's our baby.

That makes it so good. That will make us all get together on the coffee machine. We'll get together on the coffee machine. We came in and discussed that.

We talked about having coffee. You know, that's the best thing. No, I think it's on the cycle. We've tried to make the character in Zaps after our coffee machine, but we'll start it out.

The Derek Smalls has brought us back together. The one we'll do. So what did you learn in a... Do we even learn?

Or do we just keep making some mistakes? What did you learn through? Eventually you've been handed this. Here you go.

Here's your own show. How did it turn out? How did it turn out? How did you think?

Were you not ready for it? We've got to give credit to the team we've got around us on Zaps. We've got A plus lucky with us. Let's say first of all, Dave Lambert, who was going to have a blind date to a baby counter.

He's got to meet Dave. He was a love-towing normal. The last thing he did before he left was to get this zapped over the line and then say, I think Dave should be your director. And you can't go on against literally.

We don't know what he's saying. He's going to direct our show that we spent 4,000 years crafting. We were just lucky, though. He was really, really into it.

He loved the stuff. He's very, very collaborative. As was Kerry Waddell, who was the original producer, and Candy, who was the more recent producer, they've just all been very, very easy to work with. I think we possibly, sometimes, we overlook how lucky we've been.

Because that relationship is so pivotal. When you talk about when you're trying to get something on screen, who's vision is it? And of course it's the writers, but there are lots of other people involved. But when you're actually on set, the director is in charge.

The writers are not in charge, and it's hard for the writers. So if you have a director that doesn't mind you being on set the whole time, which I think you have to be, and going to the director and going, can we brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, and not freaking out? Because the actors will all look to the director. The first lady will be wanting to kill you.

Because they're job to bridge our entire lives. They've got to go through their step pages. They do not like to do it. And if the director is willing to kind of just listen to you, and I think that whole transition from a script that you've controlled to a collaborative process is tricky.

I drink one actually, there's a lot of luck involved sometimes for people. And we've got really, really lucky. And I just think that the collaborative element is all right. I mean, it just looks great.

And you've got to cut it to Dave there. We've got a great costume designer. We've got a great makeup. Oh, I saw it.

When I saw it last night, you had an orc jumping from a high into it. That costume's a really good job. The makeup's gone. We've really challenged the makeup this year.

There's a couple of episodes where they were absolutely strapped. Because it's very easy to write everyone into a watery green makeup. And then forget that means not only will the actors have to come in two hours before their cool time, but the makeup two hours before that. And then after it's the end of the day.

And if you want four characters like that, all in the first scene, you'll need four makeup people doing all of that. Has it given you, therefore, I mean, a bit of a newfound respect for producers in the past where you may have cursed their name because they don't know what they're doing or what they're ruining or whatever. And now that you're producing and writing, is it's worth it. You're now realising there's actually much more.

It is more of a game. This is where we argue a lot. But I would say you've got to let people have the space. We like to control.

We really like to have our say. But at the same time, it's really important to let people bring their own contributions to the table and let them have some ownership. But what if they're wrong, Paul? This is the problem.

Okay, you had your chance. That is the thing. That is the thing. Of course, with actors on set.

Sometimes they say, oh, I've got an idea to do something. And it's actually much funnier than the thing that you wrote. You have to be open to that. You have to allow them to do that.

And sometimes it's not so good. And then what do you do? You say, oh, well, actually, can we just go back? How do you get there then?

How do you go from, okay, we've got to do six episodes. You've got a rough arc, presumably, because it's dark. It's a little bit dark with I'm running away. The joke at the top really made me laugh, which is I live in London.

Well, I just started to get a fast trade. It's not an hour. Something used to be in Wimbledon a long time ago. With that person.

It's zone three. That's really not far. That's roughly where I live. On the other side of the A316.

That's why it's a lot of A316 references. Absolutely. How do you go about going from, okay, we've got six episodes. What are we going to write about from sort of race based ideas to, okay, here is draft three.

Okay, so the main thing you need is lots of multi-colored three by five cards. Okay, do you need them or is it just you? No, no, we all operate off of cards and two big pinboards and white paper on the walls. Okay.

So stage one is anything that could be an idea for a plot, however vague, or an idea of an image or an idea of a scene. So it could be a sex egg we had at once. Yeah, I'm not going to say that. That was a...

That was a... A sex egg has an egg or a hatchet or something. That sex egg becomes like a father to the egg. But then also...

I've also started as a sex egg. Those two words pin on a board. And Paul had another one in the first series which just said profaning the sacred. Which sounds like a rather high flute thing.

But it was just like, is there a sort of important sacred thing in Munty that Brian would wreck? Eventually became... So then you have fun thinking about all the backstory. What could it be?

So it became like, oh, there's going to be this sacred pear tree and maybe there should be a pear fair. And how would Brian be in charge of the sacred pear tree? What should it be like? And how should it go?

And then that was basically the whole of the fourth episode and second series. And in fact, even the concept of the pear fair, we had not been arrived because we'll wrote it in the background of a poster in the first series. And the first series we needed to come up with six poster ideas or something. So I just said, oh, there's a pear fair in the details.

And then our head was that the pears would be an exciting thing to have in Munty because they'd say it became their national fruit or whatever it is. But we would cover a board just with those cards. And then look at the ones we want to work on. That's what this guy's...

That's harder. Because you get through your favourite cards. You blow your obvious ones straight away. Then the second series you go, let's go through all the stuff we didn't use for certain things.

And then there's a sort of terrible silence. Yeah, I think what we found to our relief in the third series is that we're going to be able to do. And the relief of the third series is you just not to get too stressed by it and just to dig deeper. Were you influenced?

So there's a sense in which, here's the other thing, going back about pitching the idea, is because you come up with an idea and these things sort of have their time and then they sort of go away again. Well, as a show, it shows. So in a way, when Claude Mandoon came out, that was a bit of a Lord of the Rings moment, wasn't it? Because the movie...

It's more about ourselves, it was more a bit more parroting than we ever wanted to be. But then that sort of receded a little bit. And then we had a bit of a game of thrones. And your show is not Game of Thrones.

No. Because Game of Thrones is actually not particularly fantastical. There were sort of dragons. Yeah.

I mean, there are literally dragons. Yeah, but there are dragons, but that's about it. You don't really have so much. That's a little bit of magic.

It's a minor mild magic. Yeah. But it just felt like there was enough there, that there was stuff in the ether where suddenly doing this sort of show. When Phil Clark commissioned a sort of rewrite when Channel 4 were interested and he gave us some money, we decided to take it seriously enough that we would properly really look at the scripts and take it apart and put it back together again.

So we actually did a slightly odd thing of going away for a few days together. Okay. So we thought, well, what we'll do in the evening is we'll start watching Game of Thrones from the beginning. And actually that was kind of quite interesting.