Over the past couple of decades, production company Monkey has made some of TV’s most innovative entertainment shows. Love or loathe it, no one can doubt the pioneering success of, say, Made in Chelsea. It’s a show that, along with Lime Pictures’ The Only Way Is Essex, rewrote the script for reality television.
“We are in the middle of a revolution of creativity,” according to Luke Hyams, who commissions documentaries for YouTube Originals. His aim is to nurture mould-breaking films that appeal to the platform’s young demographic and which don’t get lost in the deluge of video content available to his audience.
Bad Wolf co-founder Jane Tranter shoots back with a rapid reply when asked what her Cardiff-based production company is up to: “Dealing with high-level anxiety all the time, probably emanating from myself.”
If so, Tranter – speaking over Zoom – hides it well. Any stress would be understandable. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, Bad Wolf has brought the second seasons of fantasy epics His Dark Materials and A Discovery of Witches to the screen, and launched two acclaimed contemporary dramas, Industry and I Hate Suzie.
John, who uses gender neutral pronouns, had previously phoned the station to share how they had been struggling during the lockdown of 2020, to the point where they had planned to end their life. Then they happened to sit down and watch an episode of Hollyoaks, coincidentally the traumatic conclusion of a depression storyline featuring two characters Kyle and Darren.
Everything is cryptic; minor characters from three series ago suddenly pop up on screen; and half of the dialogue is in acronyms. Yet viewers still can’t get enough of Jed Mercurio’s perplexing police procedural.
The series delights in plunging viewers into the darkness as they fumble to their own (often wrong) conclusions. Luckily for us, BBC Sounds’ companion podcast Obsessed with… Line of Duty is on hand to offer illumination.
What does your job involve?
Development starts with finding an idea and generally finishes when the drama goes into production – that’s a bittersweet moment, because that’s when I have to say goodbye to a show.
To create a successful sitcom is one of the most difficult tasks in the TV firmament. To create a successful British sitcom that survives for 12 years, nine series and 54 episodes is staggering.
Unlike in the US, producers rarely have writers rooms on this side of the Atlantic, where teams of wordsmiths endlessly hone scripts to keep a show up and running. Remember, Fawlty Towers closed its doors after just two six-part series.
When I drove to Sussex University to start my BA journalism course in September 2018, in my mind’s eye I saw a heady montage of hypothetical events and experiences that would fill my three years in Brighton. My imagination did not stretch to wondering what it would be like to do half my degree during a pandemic.
The show must go on” runs the showbiz saying, but even this old cliché has been turned on its head by the Covid-19 pandemic. Numerous dramas have temporarily halted production in recent months following Covid outbreaks among cast or crew. Sky thriller Cobra, for example, started shooting its second season at the end of September, but returned from the Christmas break to find that 15 of its cast and crew had tested positive for Covid.
Robson Green has done it. Professor Alice Roberts has also given it a go. Darcey Bussell tried it in Scotland recently. Kate Humble did it naked. Susannah Constantine took an axe with her when she did it. Barely a week goes by without someone from either Countryfile or The One Show doing it. And Port Talbot resident David Bryan credits it with helping to save his life.
