Simon Blackwell

I opened the door and f****** exploded.” Dreams can be wild – stories that our minds involuntarily create as we sleep. While most of us forget them the next morning, Martin Freeman had one five or six years ago that became the inspiration for a TV series.  

“I knew I had gone through this many times in real life… I was going up the stairs to go and shout at my children,” he recalled. “With each step, I was talking myself down: ‘You know you’re better than this, and they won’t respond positively.’  

Viewers have been kept waiting for a second outing of Back, David Mitchell and Robert Webb’s bitingly funny Channel 4 sitcom, which returned to our screens at the end of last month.  

The delay had nothing to do with a lack of commissioning courage – how could anyone find fault with the filth and comic fury of Simon Blackwell’s scripts, the ever-watchable Mitchell and Webb or the fantastic ensemble cast?  

The dream occurred five or six years ago. “I knew I’d gone through this many times in real life. I was going up the stairs to shout at my children,” he recalls.     

“With each step I was talking myself down ‘You know you’re better than this and they won’t respond positively.’  

“I thought I’d got the better of my temper before I opened the children’s bedroom door, but I opened the door and exploded.”