My Sitcom Hell
Not Going Out ... Gone!
It all started on Tuesday, April 28 2005, when I first met Lee Mack at the offices of Avalon, who manage Lee and were developing the sitcom that would become Not Going Out, but at that tender stage was still called The Lee Mack Situation. Since then, it has been my life. Not for the whole of that time, as we were working on the pilot up until September, which was something of a breeze, but certainly since December, when we began work on the next five episodes. As you may know, we were locked in a Central London office from Tuesday, January 2 this year until Tuesday 20 June. Why the Tuesdays? I don't know. It all ended on a Sunday, at Teddington Studios, where, for the last six weeks, we've been filming the finished episodes. Last night, the last one was put to bed.
Avalon gave me a bottle of champagne, which was nice. I think they gave everybody else one, too. And so they should. A lot of people make a TV programme. It was always Lee's baby. He stars in it, as a character called Lee, and the show will live or die on whether the great British public find him an engaging fellow or not. I suspect they will. I do. He was terrific in the pilot, which landed us the series, and, watching him on and off over the last six weeks, I believe he retains that X-factor needed to carry a mainstream sitcom. It's in the lap of the gods now - well, it's in the edit for the next three weeks - but I am as proud of punch to have played my part, even if it did become My Sitcom Hell along the way.
During the actual filming, with studio audience locked in for what usually took about three hours per episode, I took up my position on the studio floor, basically loitering by the monitor where the producer, Alex, does his fraught job, and following it around for each scene and each new camera set-up (the open-plan flat and the pub were permanent sets, with addtional ones, like the funeral wake, the acupuncturist's, the therapist's, even a car driving along in darkness, being built around them). As the writer, or co-writer, you are essentially a spare part during filming, but then again, you have every right to be there, to watch your child take its first steps and says its first words. I ended up seeing three out of the six being shot, and I enjoyed every one. I wouldn't have wanted to be in the audience, and yet a loyal knot of people seemed to attend every recording. God bless them. Mum and Dad came last night. It took from about 7.20 to 10.45pm, quite a marathon, but they said they enjoyed it. It really is a treat to hear an audience laugh at jokes you wrote in a stuffy, soulless rented office on Oxford Street in March.
Three cheers to co-stars Tim Vine and Megan Dodds, and, last night, to 15-year-old actor Rupert Simonian, who was the computer whizz son in The Constant Gardener, and 14-year-old Nicky in the episode of Not Going Out subtitled Kid. I won't give the story away. An enormous sense of relief fell upon the entire cast and crew when the final "pick-up" was in the can. It's only after the recording of a TV show, chilling in the Teddington canteen and eating nibbles, that you understand why actors tell each other they were marvellous, darling. Because they need to know that. It's impossible not to be sucked into saying it too.
Looking at the photo above, taken way back in February, it seems so long ago. I'm almost nostalgic, but then again, not. To think, five episodes of a BBC1 sitcom were dredged up from the pits of our two souls and tapped, agonisingly, into that PC. Some days it was like drawing comedy blood, especially when we fell into Lee's experimental system of writing five jokes each and then choosing the best one. For every joke. (I worked out that we were, in effect, writing nine spare sitcoms at that point. I wonder what happened to all those unused jokes?) I think Lee was still detoxing at that point, so dried fruit, nuts, bananas and nettle teabags abounded. That soon went to the wall, and he was back on hot chicken sandwiches, Danish pastries and lattes, the real food of the comedy writer. (I don't think I ever tempted him into a Nairn's oat cake, which I'm masochistically partial to. Prisoners have rioted over less.) It was not the easiest six months of my life. I gave up my desk job in 1997 so that I wouldn't have to go into an office five days a week. Oh, the irony.
Not Going Out goes out in mid-September, possibly on Friday night, possibly at 9.30, on BBC1. I hope you like it. I hope I like it.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 6:39 AM
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23 Comments:
Did you not give yourself a cameo within the sitcom at any point then?
Good luck with it all, although I hope people are patient with it, too many good sitcoms are dumped before they become great. The first series is all about the public getting to know the characters, okay, I'd expect this period to be entertaining but too often sitcoms aren't given much of a chance.
I enjoyed Grass so I'll look out for this new one, not that I expect Lee Mack to be playing a guy on a witness relocation programme.
Good luck with the sitcom Andrew, I am sure it will be a hit!
Interesting stuff! You don't subscribe to the "the sitcom is dead" theory then? Good for you. There will always be need for comedy with a situation, I think.
I had a bash at wiritng an episode of a sitcom last year, myself. Part of a competition thing it was. Did you hear - they turned me down.
Quite right too, it was dashed-off nonsense.
What's this one called? Not Going Out? Okay, I'll look out for it. Good luck.
I too enjoyed Grass. I hope Not Going Out is a success for you and Lee, and I hope it is a success for our sakes - we need something new occupying the Friday night slot to be good, otherwise they're going to keep sticking with stale old favourites like HIGNFY and Alistair Macgowan.
Being good and funny isn't always a guarantee though - Trevor's World of Sport anyone?
Just had the press release through - "Not Going Out is a brand new BBC ONE sitcom co-written by BAFTA winning comic LEE MACK and Sony Award winning writer and broadcaster ANDREW COLLINS." TX date is September 15 ... the Friday night slot!
Actually, if I can reply to my own reply, that's tricky week to be hitting the telly - if you're after column inches, that is. Midsomer Murders returns, Peter Davison's new sitcom starts on ITV1, Martin Clunes stars in the one-off comedy drama Losing It and - what I'm most excited about - Celebrity Masterchef kicks off. A busy TV week indeed!
Yes, we've already got everything in place for week 37 - there's so much on. I'm sure someone, somewhere will cover it.
Thanks for the insider info, Graham. Terrific piece on the listings magazines in Off The Telly, by the way! (How did you manage to get an interview with that Jon Peake?)
Tried an oatcake today. In retrospect, I don't know why I was surprised that they taste like dried out, week old porridge. I love rice cakes and rye related savoury biscuits, but yuck, is there anything you can put on them that improves/covers up the taste?
I'm looking forward to the sitcom, hope it's a big success.
Oat cakes are delicious, I have such a fixation. Try them just with tomato sliced on them (proper tomatoes, not flavourless Dutch specimens that don't even smell of anything), or with cream cheese and banana, or with smoked salmon, or get the flavoured ones- cheesy, black pepper, fruit and spice. All gorgeous. I love the roughness of them which yields to a creamy mouthfeel. For that though, you need plenty of hydration. You can't just eat a bunch of oatcakes without a drink.
Congratulations Andrew.
Apropro of nothing I was flicking through some old copies of Empire Magazine for my dissertation this afternoon and found an article you wrote about spending a week watching TV movies, which was hilarious and educational. Oddly enough, it was filled with clippings from the film section of the Radio Times...
Congratulations Andrew.
Apropro of nothing I was flicking through some old copies of Empire Magazine for my dissertation this afternoon and found an article you wrote about spending a week watching TV movies, which was hilarious and educational. Oddly enough, it was filled with clippings from the film section of the Radio Times...
Yes, Stuart, I found that article when I was filleting my old Empires prior to putting them out for recycling last month. That was quite an ordeal. And what great accidental product placement for the healthy foods I was, at the time, first getting into. I actually wrote to Dove's Farm, the organic biscuit and cake makers, to draw their attention to it afterwards (not expecting their product to be so clearly displayed) and they sent me a box of goodies. This was accidental corruption, I should point out. Now I've stopped eating wheat, Dove's Farm are no good to me.
I like a boiled egg, sliced, on my oat cakes, with a dob of Omega Butter, a sprinkling of chilli and a dash of mayonnaise. Mmmmmm.
thank you for recipe suggestions, I will endeavour to finish my box of oatcakes rather than composting them immediately ;-)
We have the same sort of tea in our offices...
Beth - oatcake recommendations. Savoury - Stilton. Sweet - Scottish Heather Honey.
Andrew - Looking forward to seeing the new series. Getting the Friday night slot must show how much faith the beeb has in what you've got to offer. Out of curiosity, as the recent practice seems to be to start on BBC 3 and then move to bbc 1 once an audience is established, was this an option at any point? From a writer's perspective is that sort of thing important? (Sorry if you've blogged on this topic previously)
David, the show was piloted for BBC2, but once we'd made it, a decision was made up at White City for it to go to BBC1. It was among the first comedies new controller Peter Fincham commissioned. This channel-hop put an awful lot of pressure on us, writing the rest of the series, as clearly you're expected to entertain a bigger audience. Having seen Grass go from BBC3 to BBC2 with limited success (although that was a very different sitcom, if it was a sitcom at all), I was acutely aware of the added expectation. Not Going Out is certainly mainstream enough for a wide audience, but I hope it has an edge that isn't there on, for instance, the hugely popular My Family ...
Andrew - Thanks for explaining that genesis; very interesting. I'm sure you'll surpass My Family by quite some distance.
Poached egg worked really well on the oatcakes. Yummy, I am converted.
Do you still look at blog notes this late in the day? Anyway, this is a hopeless name-drop, so allow me to drop it, but I'm just back from interviewing Boycie and Marlene in Hammersmith. They were sharing a giant raspberry pavlova when I arrived and seemed in fine fettle. I mention this because it was part of the promotional drive for series two of The Green Green Grass, the debut of which has been brought forward to ... September 15! Thus it looks like Not Going Out will be back-to-back with John Sullivan's homage to Grass. That's not a bad position to be in, though, cos apparently their audiences last year were around 6.5million. I mentioned NGO to Marlene, who asked me for a precis. I did my best. She says she likes Lee Mack, so she'll be tuning in. So there you are ... it's all about word of mouth these things, right?
Andrew -- you've got a better constitution than I have - I ate some chocolate tonight that I had left over from Easter and my stomach's doing back flips -- although it was in date ... I think ...
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