TellyCast: Best of 2024 – Iconic Guests, Major Moments & Industry Insights | TellyCast Podcast

In our final episode of the year, join us as we reflect on the best moments of TellyCast in 2024. Featuring exclusive interviews with Guns N’ Roses legend Slash, Joe Sugg, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Omid Djalili, Jane Root, Evan Shapiro, Patrick Spence, and many more, this episode takes you behind the scenes of some of the year’s most talked-about productions.

From blockbuster TV drama “The Crow Girl” to industry game-changers, discover stories, insights, and the moments that defined the content industry this year.

Transcript

Welcome to TellyCast, the content industry podcast show featuring movers and shakers of the international content industry. For our last show of 2024. we're looking back at some of our highlights of the year, including chats with Guns N Roses legend Slash, Joe Sugg, Billy Boyd, and Don Monaghan, Omid Djalili, Jane Root, Evan Shapiro, and Mr.Bates vs. the Post Office producer Patrick Spence.
 They're all coming right up on this week's TellyCast.

Today we're diving into one of the most exciting new dramas of hitting the market, The Crow Girl, produced by Buccaneer for Paramount Plus and distributed internationally by ITV Studios. Based on the best selling Scandinavian noir novel, this intense psychological thriller promises to captivate audiences worldwide.

Joining me today are two key figures behind the project. First, we have Richard Tulk Hart, joint CEO of Buccaneer, whose vision and leadership, alongside Buccaneer's other CEO, Tony Wood, are driving this adaptation forward. And alongside him, we're thrilled to have rock legend Slash, who brings his unique creative talents as exec producer and musical contributor to the series.

Richard, Slash, thanks both for being here. Great to see you. Hi. Hey. How are you? How are you doing guys? Are you, uh, you're well? All good. Yeah. Yeah. No, good. Good. Okay. So, um, let's dive straight in and, and talk about what makes The Crow Girl so special. Um, it's based on a best selling novel written by Eric Axel Sund, which is a pen name for two Scandinavians, Jerker Ericsson and Hakan Axelander.

Can you give us a brief overview, Richard, of the show and the cast and what makes the story stand out? Sure. So, the show stars Eve Miles, Katherine Kelly, There's so much to the show, but we've got a limited amount of time. So, in short, uh, the bodies of young men start stacking up in public places in the UK.

Uh, and DCI Kirkland, played by Eve Miles, and Sophia Craven, played by Catherine Kelly, who plays a, uh, uh, a psychotherapist, um, come together in order to try and, uh, work out what's going on and find a murderer. So, over six episodes in, in season one, the implication being seasons two and beyond, of course, I've got to say that.

Um, there's, there's a number of themes in cover ups, uh, in lies, in abuse, uh, and, and, and many of these are themes that run through the show. Um, so as Kirkland and Craven get closer to uncovering who the murderer is, the murderer also gets much closer to us. Um, I think it's, you know, it's the sort of combination of the storytelling, the writing, Millie Thomas, who's a superb writer of the show, um, along with a number of other writers in a room with her.

Um, the location, and of course, of course, the music. Well, Slash, let's talk about the music. Well, actually, let's take a step back from that to the genesis of the project. So how did, how did you first of all get involved in this? Because this is something you brought to Buccaneer and, and, and spoke to Buccaneer around originally.

Right, well, so, I've been, um, in the sort of producer, movie and TV producer sandbox for a few years. And I'm always looking for new material. And I went to Um, my literary agent and asked her what she, you know, she always give me new stuff and whatnot. And she came to me with The Crow Girl and she's got to read this.

It's really good. And so I loved it. And she said there's a guy named Nicholas in Sweden who's sort of her counterpart, Swedish counterpart, and he's representing this book. So I got in touch with him and, uh, we pursued. And, uh, next thing you know, Buccaneer came up. And I'm very familiar with Buccaneer because they've got some shows I'm really fond of.

And so, um, they took an interest in it and that's how, basically, it started. Yeah. Well, they seem to be the perfect production partner. Oh, I was so happy, you know, if nobody else had come to the table, you know, just having them, you know, be interested was great. Yeah, of course, because Buccaneer are responsible for Crime and Marcella.

Marcella, yeah. Um, so what is it about When you read the novel, what is it about the novel that, you know, that really sort of, uh, sucked you in? Right. Well, I'm, I'm a, um, a horror and thriller. Uh, you know, that's, that's my, that's my bag. And, uh, this particular story had to have been one of the most, uh, darkest, Um, and it has a lot of, I mean, not until the very end do you really find out what's going on.

It's a really great twisty tale and the characters are great and it's very original as far as the subject matter. Um, I'm not going to get into that because you, you know, it's disassociative, all that stuff. So anyway, but, but yeah, um, and you know, so I, I, it's just one of those things that spoke to me.

Okay. And now Mipcom. Richard is obviously one of the most important markets in the world for television content. Um, what makes the Crow Girl particularly suited to an international audience? Well, I think it touches on a number of themes that is nothing to do with any one particular country, whether it's family, mental health, immigration, corruption at institutional level, and, and those things are always a good balance.

that's going to sell around the world, uh, and, and be relatable. I mean, the key is it's got to be relatable, um, with any show. And at Buccaneer, we always go on about this, any show you've got to have emotion, you're going to have great acting. And that really comes in spades in this show with the cast that we've got and with Millie's writing and the response that the actors had to that.

And so when it comes to. Other countries view what they want to buy, whether it's in the English language or other languages. Particularly if somebody is going to be watching a show in a foreign language, for many people English is a foreign language, um, and either they pick it up as a dub or a sub or whatever it may be.

If the acting is good, the story is good, people see through all of that. It's a thing of the past now. I mean, Netflix did a, you know, really did a great job on allowing us to not be stuck to a show that is in our own language. And this show, originated from Scandinavian writers and a Scandinavian book and it's translated really well over to being set over here but all of those points they make about what makes a good show if they're in there if and and genuinely I feel they are in there in in spades in this show.

It comes through for any audience, wherever they are. So I think ITV Studios will have a very easy time selling this. No pressure, ITV Studios. Right. Well, it's a psychological police procedural thriller. And there's lots of complex material, as Slash mentioned, within the show. How do you go about adapting that for television and making it Accessible or do you not do you not try and make it accessible?

Do you do you just stick as close as you can is to that source material? I mean the the the books are You know, it's a trilogy of books. I mean in the US and UK it was released as one book, but The the book itself on first reading Tony Wood, my business partner, and I really scratched our heads a little bit about how you go about adapting this for TV, because it did need a lot of work.

And, you know, Tony, along with Katie Barrett, uh, on our team at Buccaneer, went about pulling it apart with Millie Thomas and a team of female writers, uh, in a way, uh, that, uh, It was definitely the most complicated one we've ever done. It's a very dense book. Yeah. There's a lot of, a lot of different stories all going on at the same time.

And so I think, I think, uh, uh, Tony and Millie as well, did a great job sort of simplifying it enough so that it was easy to, um, sort of put into episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think equally in a, at a moment in time where the industry is, You know, it's had a rough ride, uh, whichever side of the business you're on, whether it's distribution, production, whatever.

It's, uh, it's been a tough, tough time. And a lot of, a lot of people are playing safer bets at the moment than necessarily the Kroger is. So for Paramount and ITV Studios to see what it could be. was, was refreshing. I mean, they've been great partners from the beginning, allowing us to, and trusting us to, to take the story and, and, and, you know, do with it as we did.

And having Slash as a partner and exec producer on it and knowing what the music was going to be alongside Lorne Balfe, it plays a huge part in this show. More than, more than most shows we've worked on, the music is a really important part. Yeah, well, let's talk about the music, Slash. I mean, how did you approach Slash.

Writing and scoring and let's talk about Lorne Bowth's involvement as well And and and how you're both approaching the overall soundtrack You know, I was really interested in in the score But at the same time I knew that I didn't have time to commit to composing an entire score So, Tony introduced me to Lorne, and Lorne's done, uh, pretty much all the Buccaneer, uh, programs.

And so, uh, he and I got together, and he really, uh, he, I mean, he's phenomenal. And so he just sort of took on the lion's share of, of, uh, of scoring the entire show and then I just started contributing pieces of music I would write on the road and then send them to him and he would um, sort of find the right, you know, I was just writing to the script and he was, he would write it into the scenes and uh, and then there was a theme song that, that uh, that is really good.

That I contributed it to as well. And so, it was just, you know, um, it's such a moody piece and he, he put this great bedrock down for me to be able to sort of bounce off of. And, and put my ideas into. Yeah, so what it was interesting, you say there you, you were writing to the script. I mean, even before you saw the script, and actually thinking back to the actual novel.

Did you have, A mood in mind? Yeah, it's, it's, I get musical ideas from, from, you know, books and, and stories and, and, and as well as scripts, so I can read something and start to imagine a musical, you know, sort of a melody for that. And that started pretty early on, so when I started working with, with Lauren, I had some definite ideas already.

And has that changed? Because presumably you're starting to see, Bits of the production now and I know you've been on set has that changed the The, your approach to, to, to the music as, as the projects developed. Um, I mean, it doesn't really change the melody so much, but I think more importantly, when I start to hear what the instrumentation is that, that Lauren's doing, then it starts to change the idea of the certain sounds that you're going to use.

It's hard to explain, but, um, and when you actually see something, you just start to get more ideas or there's a little bit more depth to the ideas that you get. Yeah. You know, Okay, and, uh, will we ever see, will it see the light of day in its own right, do you think, maybe one day? Yeah, I don't know, um, that's, that's a good question.

I mean, the theme song's great, and I think, I, I have a feeling that they're gonna wanna do something with that, because it's, it's a song in its entirety, and it's really cool. Um, as far as the, the soundtrack to the show, that's hard to say, but we'll, we'll pitch for it. Yeah, alright, okay, well, uh, watch this space.

I mean, have you seen YouTube? change over the years, you know, because you were real, one of the real pioneers and now extraordinary amount of content, as you say, being uploaded and so popular. And, you know, and we'll talk again about that in a second, but the way that the TV industry and YouTube seem to be merging in many, many ways.

Um, and certainly the attention economy, everybody's, you know, everyone's looking at YouTube and getting rid of subscriptions and what have you. Um, have you seen it change? And have you? It's, it's changed a lot. I mean, I always say if I, if I tried to do the route that I got into YouTube, if I tried to do that now with the content that I made back then, I don't think I would have ever have been picked, like seen.

I don't think, I think it would have just gone and no one would have watched it. I think I was, I was very lucky to have started when I did. And, and, um, because back then there was, There was nowhere near as much saturation as there is now on the on the platform, but also the it's just rising levels I think I think I feel like youtube is is a competitor with television.

I think in that in that sort of space I think that's probably what their intention is to be obviously They want as many people to watch youtube probably over tv as possible over any other streamer. Um, And I do think that production levels are going up on YouTube. You look at the likes of what the Sidemen are doing and Mr.

Beast and a lot of these big, um, sort of bigger YouTubers. Now they've got full production crews for their content. Um, and it, it seems to be the way that it's going, but I think you also need to have the right ideas as well. And to sometimes to come in with original ideas, I think is still key. It's hard to come across now an original idea, but, but when they do come through and they do get picked up and seen by the right people.

Um, I think YouTube is a fantastic place for an idea to, to take off and grow and, and, um, be successful. Yeah. So you, you talked earlier about editing. Uh, you still, so, I mean, you've got, uh, nearly 9 million followers across YouTube, across your channels. You're still editing your own content. I mean, do you, do you have a, uh, you, you have a team or?

No, do you know what? I, I, um, up until. I was probably up until like 2016, so from 2012, 2016, I did everything myself. And then from 2016 to like 2019, um, I had a producer slash editor who worked with me. Um, and he was brilliant. He, it did massively help my workload. I was, at one point I was uploading 11 videos a week.

Um, which it was like, it'd be like at least seven gaming videos a week and then two vlogs and then like a main channel video on a Sunday. So it was a proper regimented, like routine type thing, which, which I loved. And then, um, and then I did Strictly and that sort of then took me off to a slightly different direction.

Then I went on to Waitress. So then the timing wise, I just wanted to sort of try something a bit different and get on a slightly different route. Um, but I, I have been sort of, um, In discussions, I'm still editing now and I do feel like it's probably a good time for me to start looking to, to, to get, uh, like a, at least an editor and sort of help that workload because it does take up a lot of, a lot of my time.

I did, um, this thing called Vlogmas, which is where you try and vlog every day of December and nearly up to Christmas and, um, it was a struggle. I did, I did manage to do it, but it was a struggle because you, you film all day, but then you've. you basically sort of either edit really late at night into the early hours of the morning, but then the next day or that, I think as I'm getting older, maybe it's an age thing.

I don't know. I feel like as I'm getting older, it's getting harder to stay awake trying to edit, especially when it's my, my voice I'm editing. I feel like whenever I edit myself, it naturally makes me quite tired. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. That's a good thing, but it's, um, but yeah, so, uh, so definitely, definitely in the future, I would like, I would like to slightly sort of, um, Go, go back to sort of how I was a few years ago with, with having like that sort of producer, editor sort of role again.

And, and all of the, um, we've, we've had a few shows on TellyCast recently when we speak to the guys at little dot and lots of other experts who talk about the importance of metadata and your descriptions and your tags and all of that stuff. I mean, do you sweat the small stuff as well when it comes to that?

Do you know, I never really have, I've, I've. I do, this is where it goes down to I do say I think I've been very, very lucky to sort of to get to where I got to in the YouTube game because I've always been sort of like, I like to sort of do things my way and I'm sort of slightly when all these new like rules come in and people go, Oh, this is now the new way to to crack the algorithm.

I'm kind of like, I don't, I think it's a part of me that doesn't want to follow the Yeah. Yeah. the herd, if that makes sense. And it's the same with video ideas. When there was a tag that would go along, I used to, but then I went through this phase where I was like, I want to be the one creating these challenges and these tags.

I don't want to be the one that just jumps on any YouTube tag or YouTube challenge that's there. And I think that kind of like, I admitted, I probably should pay a bit more attention to the sort of nitty gritty details of how YouTube works now and how social media works and how to properly crack it.

But there is something, I think, above all, you could, you could do all that stuff, but there's something about authenticity. And like I said before, coming across like you are in doing something that you genuinely are passionate about and enjoy. I think that I still think that given the right circumstances will trump all the smaller metadata sort of tiny little bits, especially with your fan base as well.

They can always, uh, that your content will be coming straight to them anyway. So yeah, you don't need to be discovered. No. Yeah. And, and in a way, like I, I'm, I'm in a position now in my career and, and where I'm at, where, and a lot of creators that were from my sort of era that don't do YouTube as much anymore now are in, we're all in the same boat where we're sort of like.

I love the fact that I've, I've got this like slightly smaller audience now, but of people that are very like engaged and like, uh, grew up watching us and that they're, they're very like, they are there for like, they, they're sort of like day ones almost. They're very like, um, what's the word? Like they're just, they've just been there for a while and they're just like, it's just a regular smaller audience.

It's something that just feels more sort of comfortable about that than going out to like, millions of people where you're then much more open to people coming across your content for the first time and not particularly liking it or wanting to leave like a nasty message or anything like that. So when you've got your own sort of smaller, loyal community, in a way that, that's something that I kind of prefer.

I mean, I wouldn't mind getting 10 million views on a video again, but maybe not. I don't know. It's been a while since I achieved that. We'll see. This one might be the one. You never know. Yeah, exactly. Um, so you mentioned Strictly. I just want to touch on that before we go on. Obviously, um, there's been, uh, there's been a lot of, a fair amount of controversy over Strictly in the last couple of weeks and lots of stories have come out over the last few years about, uh, people's experiences.

You obviously had an amazing experience and which changed your life. Yeah. I mean, uh. Uh, that must be, uh, that must be something that you, you know, you, you take enormous comfort from, you know, and seeing, seeing how that changed your life in many different ways. Yeah. I mean, it was, um, yeah, I was very, once again, very fortunate that my, my experience on the show was, was great.

And, um, the amount of people I met for that show, and even obviously from doing the podcast after. as well. So I sort of felt like I sort of stayed part of the sort of strictly family. It is, it's difficult. I mean, I couldn't, I could not dance before, um, before doing that show at all. So I, I did find it, um, tough.

It was, it's, it's difficult to learn to dance, especially when, for me, I remember the first day of thinking like, I do not want to go home on this show. So I, I've, I think I'm like quite a, Subtly like undercover, what's, what's the word competitive, like very, very competitive, but like you wouldn't know it sort of thing.

So like I work hard behind the scenes to, to make sure that I could get to get to that final. Cause you don't want to miss out on like a, you don't want to miss out on a dance because there's always dances that you can learn. So I just didn't want to miss out on anything, any of it. So, um, but yeah, it was, it was a great experience and it's, I definitely think that helped.

sort of spur my interest in production, the production side. Because I remember when they asked me to go on the show, um, it was when Louise Rainbow was the exec, the producer on the show, um, and Stefania, who's still there, who's the, who was the, um, talent, who finds the celebs of the show. And, uh, I went along to the meeting, um, for them to try and convince me to, to, to do it.

And I remember going in thinking, right, I'll take the meeting and I'll go along, cause I, I, I also, cause I kind of really want to pick. their brains about how, how the TV world works and like, what goes, how a show like strictly, like that's such a behemoth of a, of a show that does so incredibly well on TV still, how, how How is it put together?

Like who does what and how, yeah. How, how do they go from like the initial day one of doing the show to then. The rap party at the end, you know what I mean? And, um, and then I left not really knowing too much about that, but I ended up leaving going, I think I might actually do it, you know? So it worked out quite well in a way, but I think from being on the show, I got to sort of see a lot of the the ins and outs of, of sort of how it's made, and it did pay off.

It did definitely sort of ignite that sort of interest, um, in me with, with sort of the TV world as well and how, how good TV is made. Yeah. Well, we're going to touch on your production company in a second, but, um, coming back to what we were talking about when it comes to YouTube and digital first production versus traditional TV, I mean, how do you see that, um, uh, those merging, um, Sectors going forward.

Um, I think the way I sort of see it is like, it's kind of like, it's like, um, each both want a bit of what each other have. So it's like YouTube, I feel like the way YouTube's going is it's getting more TV. Like you look at some of the most popular videos that the, that the Sidemen do, for example, and they're, they're TV formats that they're just sort of doing at, but they're putting their spin on it and doing their version of like, what's already established format, but they're.

But they are also putting in More of a TV sort of style production into that as well. Um, so I feel like YouTube is sort of slightly going more TV. Um, and then TV is trying to, I think in the TV space, a lot of them are sort of thinking, well, how can we tap into that YouTube audience? So they're adopting, um, sort of tactics and things that they picked up from YouTube to try and make shows appeal more to a younger demographic or a YouTube watching demographic.

So it's kind of like they're both sort of. almost slightly naturally going into this sort of era where there is a bit of like a cross section. Um, that's what I've sort of observed so far from it. I think, I think the reality is that I mean, for the, for me, I, I still love like Saturday night TV. I still watch Saturday night TV as there's something for me that feels, I think it's because I grew up watching Saturday night television.

So I, that's something that's very comforting about it, even if it's a part program that I'm not that interested in, sometimes it's nice to have it on just so it feels like a Saturday evening, whereas the younger generation growing up, they don't necessarily know that a lot of them are growing up with iPads in their hands and they just, they, they have what they want on demand when they want it.

So it is going to be interesting to see like when that generation is. How that's going to work with traditional television shows and are they going to be able to sort of capture that audience? Yeah, which is going to, which is going to dominate, right? Because the viewing habits have changed so much over the last 10 years.

Exactly. You would imagine that, um, uh, you know, that an infrastructure and a platform as big as YouTube and the power of the algorithm and everything else. Might, um, might be the one that might come out on top, who knows, I would think like for me, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm like diehard YouTube, YouTube for life type thing.

I love YouTube. So I always like, although I grew up with television, I still will always like, I just think YouTube going absolutely nowhere. I think it's only going to get bigger and bigger, especially like the idea that you could be interested in trains and you can just find a, you could probably find four or five different formats now based on train, like trains.

I mean, there's, there's so much out there. I don't know if that's a good analogy or anything, but there's like, there's so much to be able to find right there, then search done. Whereas TV can't necessarily provide that. yet, whether or not I change the future, I don't, I mean, it's when I really wish I had a crystal ball so I could sort of really sort of get in there.

And I mean, that's kind of what I'm hoping final straw will sort of inevitably be a part of when that, when we, that does happen. But, um, but it's, yeah, it's a, it's a super interesting Space to sort of watch and see what is going to happen happen there, but I can't see youtube going anywhere I think it's there to stay and it was getting bigger and bigger

Looking, you know back to how you met, uh, and was it a lot of the rings was did you know each other before? No, no, it was just and how did how did life change for you then? You know when when you after that first day on set On the first lord of the rings movie. I mean, how has life changed you because you both live in california now, right?

Yeah. Yeah, we both live in los angeles and One of the episodes we wanted it to be a california for you know to kind of show Why we're there and what we like about the place because I live on the west side and don lives in the east and We wanted to show the differences there And before we went to northern california and that sort of amazing, weird place where sort of, it's like they've let people have crazy ideas and big ideas, you know.

Oh, iPhones and it's always Northern California. Somehow it's allowed. So we wanted to look at that, you know. But yeah, how's the things change? I don't know. I mean, I don't know if You ever feel that things change, you know, because it becomes your life. Mm-hmm . Yeah. You, you, it's a sliding doors thing, isn't it?

That you're now, that's now your life. I don't know what it would've been if we hadn't done lo rings, you know? Yeah. But it's, it's nice to have Dom in my life, I'll tell you that. . . Yeah. Yeah. I agree with Billy. You, you never really think it's weird or really tune into it being weird, because that would maybe throw you off kilter a little bit, you know?

If you're a clown and every day at work you're getting custard pies in your face and the car's falling apart, that job must be strange. And you're like, well, I do it five times a week.

So I think you just get used to it. I'm obsessed with the Beatles, Billy and I are huge fans of the Beatles. And one of the things that that they all talk about was feeling sorry for Elvis being a musical artist on his own and not being able to share it. And I do think that that rings experience would have been much harder to navigate if I wasn't experiencing it with Billy and Elijah and Sean and Orlando and Viggo.

And you know, this real kind of hardcore group of, of nine, unfortunately, men, there wasn't any females in the fellowship, nine men. And I think almost all of them were single and almost all of them didn't have a huge amount of ties and Enjoying their life and dinners and drinks and and everything else that came with it So if you two have had that similar experience, but it was only you and you couldn't share it with anyone Maybe that throws you off a little bit more.

Um, But you know, I I wanted to be an actor since I was a kid since I was probably I don't know, seven, eight, something like that. An actor in, in however way it was going to show up, and of course any actor, including myself, would be delighted to have done something that was able to cross over in such a way.

I mean, we knew it was a great project, we knew that it had been received well by people, but the further we get away from that project, the more you come to terms with the fact that it, It very quickly kind of rose into this kind of classic moment in cinema and we were lucky enough to be along for the ride.

It was a huge cultural moment and, and you obviously reunited, didn't you on, on zoom on a podcast, I think, Josh Gad, um, end of May, 2020, I've got written down. Yeah. What was that like then? I mean, how, how long had it been, I mean, I guess you'd seen different cast members at different times since, but, um, what was that experience like?

It was great. We were in the middle of COVID. So I'd gone insane. You know, I'd been living on my own throughout all of COVID and hadn't seen a person who knew me for like 10 months, you know, going to the supermarket and just seeing people, but not someone whose face I knew and whose face knew mine. And I, I'd gone mad, you know, I just really enjoyed the madness, but definitely gone mad.

So to see, you know, What ended up being, you know, 14, 15 people who I loved in front of me. It was like an amazing moment for me during COVID. Um, Really special. And I think a lot of that, uh, we raised a lot of money for charity as well, which, which was a great feeling, you know. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was a strange time, wasn't it?

Because everyone was trying to reinvent art or something and put it online, you know. So there was a lot of people asking you to do. Plays online, and I kind of avoided all of it. Did you get involved in the Imagine song, you know, with Gal Gadot? No, I didn't. LAUGHS You know, all of that stuff was, you know, and that was the first thing that I did.

I'd forgotten about that. So, as Dom says, it was kind of weird to, like, see everybody in. It was intense, yeah. In their little rooms somewhere. Everyone's growing big beards, right? All the men are growing big beards, yeah. Nobody did any trousers on the waist up. Um, talking about the Beatles and obviously Peter Jackson went on from Lord of the Rings to do lots of other amazing, amazing projects, but one of which was the, uh, Beatles.

I mean, that must have been, you must've been looking on in, uh, uh, in envy of what it was. We both, we both were, you know, we would, I mean, I think Billy and I, it was probably our favorite documentary of the year when it came out, wasn't it? We watched it so many times and Um, Pete's a huge Beatles nerd and there were times, you know, before it came out quite close to the release where he would, you know, send a couple of emails of hints.

Oh, you're going to like this. You're going to like that. And, you know, I've always been a little annoyed with this narrative of Yoko breaks up the Beatles. I mean, Yoko didn't break up the Beatles. The Beatles are big enough and smart enough to break up their own band. They don't need Yoko to come in. And.

You know, all these things of like, you know, whatever, Paul's the hard worker and George is the spiritual guy and John's the kind of lunatic and Ringo's the actor and all this kind of stuff. And you see, these are fully rounded humans and they have faults and they have foibles, but they clearly love each other and they're clearly in a pressure cooker.

And I mean, that moment where you see Paul start the genesis of Get Back and then Harrison kind of helps out and Ringo's in the back just kind of following along. I was like, what am I watching here? This is magic. And you try to help him write it. Because we know it. We're like, no, it's not that. Oh, that's amazing.

I just put it all in his background. Yeah. It's one of the best things I've ever seen. Yeah. Brilliant. Um, and you've just recently done a theatre production together. Yeah. In Canada. Yeah. Tell us about that. So when Dom and I were up a tree in, in the second of the Lord of the Rings movies, Treebeard, we were stuck up there quite a lot of time.

So we're always discussing what we wanted to do. And, uh, one of the ideas was to do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which is a play that we really liked. And I was working in Halifax doing a TV show and got to know the theater and got to know the The director, and he'd asked me to do a couple of things and it never worked out.

But I really love Halifax. I love it as a, as a city. And he said, do you think Dom would think about doing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? I said, we spoke about this 20 years ago. I said, I'll run it past him. And then we'll start going, you know, could we fit it into our diaries at the same time? Could the theatre fit it in?

And then it all just worked out and I said to Dom, I think you'll love Halifax. And then we put on the back of that, we went to Toronto with it. And, uh, it was great. It's as good a play as I thought it was. And it was a really nice production. And, you know, we played in Halifax. Dom got to know the town a little bit.

Which will be a great location for Billion Dummy of the World Season 2. Yeah. Halifax. Oh, wow. Great people, great restaurants, really fun, you know, they're doing their own thing, they're in their own little lane. Yeah, great for a season 2. Yeah, ones that have been there, like the Bicycle Thief that's been there forever, and then there's the Highwayman that's just opened, and the guy's passionate about making food.

So yeah, I mean, again, Just all these places are great for the show, but the, it was really fun to do a theatre piece together because we're By the time we die, we're going to do every piece of art together. Yeah. And what about Beecake? So you're in a band called Beecake? Yeah, I am. We've done a few albums together.

Three now. Sadly, one of the guys passed away a couple of years ago there. So we do have one other album recorded, but we're just working on when's the best time to release that. And, you know, but I was just up in Glasgow. I just saw the guys there. And they're all doing very well. We went out for a nice Italian meal.

Oh, I thought you were going to say an Indian, because you would assume that in Glasgow with you guys. I tell you what, I did go for an Indian, Tom. And it was fantastic. When in Glasgow? Have you had Indian food in Glasgow? Um, I must have done. Um, very good. Yeah. Because obviously you got, you know, London, I'm sure, Bradford and Manchester and Birmingham and stuff.

But Glasgow. Yeah, and the kind of thing that we're talking about in the show, Which we love. Where, you know, a restaurant like Mr. Singh's in Cosgo. Great Indian food. And then slowly they add haggis. So you can get haggis pakora now, you know, they're taking what's from that community and then that changes it and, uh, it kind of changes the community because of that, you know, it's all really interesting.

Proper fusion, real fusion. Yeah. So there's a restaurateur up there, um, Sharon Gill. Who's daughter just opened a new Indian restaurant that I went to and it is some of the best Indian food that I've ever had. Not quite the sort of Glasgow, you know, classic, um, Indian food, but we must try that when we go there next time.

All right, there's another location there. Um, Dom, I've got to ask you about Star Wars. So you've appeared not only in Lord of the Rings, but Star Wars Rise of Skywalker and X Men. You Oh yeah, he's sent them all. And, uh, what was that experience like? Oh, you know what? That was just kind of a boyhood dream thing.

It's this kind of thing that you can't turn down. It was the last Euros. So we're currently, uh, tomorrow England are going to play Holland in the semi finals of this current European football competition. The last Euros. We were in a quarter final against Colombia. Uh, and I'm friends with JJ Abrams, which sounds like a name drop, but we're just friends from doing Lost years ago.

And he sent me an email before the match begun, JJ and I like to kind of tease each other and have fun with each other. And he said, if England win this game, I might have a role for you in Star Wars, but if they lose it, he was joking. I hope he was joking. So we went to a penalty shootout. It was the first penalty shootout that England have won in a major competition for like 30 years or something.

So by the time we got to the penalty shootout, I was like, Oh no, I'm, it's not going to happen. It's from the use of the force. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we ended up winning the penalty shootout and then, you know, JJ got on the phone with me and said, I'm back in LA in a week, let's have a chat when I get back. So we got back.

He said, look, you know, everything's under lock and key. Obviously John Boyega and Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaacs have a script. But he said, you're going to do four or five scenes and there's no real script. I'll, I'll get you something to read when you get to London. And I said, like, of course, you know, this Star Wars is the reason I'm an actor.

It's, I mean, it's not my favorite film. I think Apocalypse Now is probably my favorite film, but Star Wars is certainly the most influential film because it was a thing that made me want to act. So you just, or I am personally just never turning down. Of course, I would, I would want to play a bigger role or be in the entire trilogy or be in the original trilogy.

We all would, but if someone comes along, especially someone who, you know, who's directing it and says, can you come and do a little favor for me? I mean, I was delighted, you know, and I mean, I was a real nerd because they were giving out Star Wars jackets and all this kind of stuff. John and Daisy and I and Oscar who I became pally with they were like, ah, no, we're good We don't need a jacket and I was like So I'd like four or five jackets.

I'll take it. I'll take it caps and you know sign this and sign that so I was a real nerd but I think my favorite moment was we were on set a huge set in um, Was it Shepparton? No, it was Pinewood. This was Pinewood and something had gone wrong with, with the lights. Massive set of lights above. So JJ got on the megaphone and he said, guys, it's gonna be like a 35 to 40 minute reset.

But there was a bunch of actors on the stage and he said if you could just do me a favor instead of us Resetting all you guys as well and then bringing you back which is gonna take another 20 minutes getting in costumes You messed your hair up. You've had a nap. You've got sausages, you know gravy falling down your face and stuff He said if you could just wait Have a chat, sit down, do your thing.

It would just be a much faster turnaround. And we were like, yeah, okay. And he said, great. And then he said, cue the music. And they played intergalactic by the Beastie Boys. Really? Really loud. Yeah. In the studio. And all the rebels were dancing with all the storm troopers. And I was like, ah, come on. It's just get better than that.

We seen that footage. I mean that's, it's gotta come out one day. Yeah, at some point.

We've talked about the films, or at the beginning of the introduction, we talked about the amazing films that you've been in, and, uh, some of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters, and who were made by some of the greatest Hollywood talent. So having worked with, uh, amazing talent behind the camera over many years, is there anything you can pinpoint that you've learnt over those many years?

many years of being in front of the camera that you're now going to put into, uh, put into action in your own company? That's a very good question because I'm very lucky to have been part of so many amazing productions where you've seen things, you know, often you're called in at 3. 30, four o'clock in the morning.

So you see how things are from the very beginning and you learn work ethic. I never forget working on a film called Spy Game with Tony Scott, who's Ridley Scott's brother And you're on set at 4 4 30 and you see he's already there He's with Robert Redford with Brad Pitt. They're already discussing shots And I would I just ask him how long have you been up?

He goes Well, we we finish and we go back to my room and we discuss the shots at 11 and we We go to bed and we wake up at three. So I said, you've only had four hours sleep. He goes, yeah. He goes, when you're filming, you haven't got time, man. You know, they're all from South Shields. He goes, I haven't got time to mess aboard, man.

You got to get on with it. Like, you know, and I said, yeah. So it was very funny to work with him and to see his work ethic, first of all, and how collaborative he was. Like, because Robert Redford was a big director, they would often discuss, the shot for a good hour before we shot things, but I saw the respect they had for each other and also how, I suppose, on top of it they were.

With everything and they were planned and prepared and you see these big productions and you know, you get I said, how did you find this guy like the first on gladiator? They've had this amazing first first assistant director that first ad a guy called Terry Needham who I didn't realize was a huge Legend in the field who could deal with 5, 000 extras.

He could deal with everyone like one minute saying Oh, you look why you look you are the shot Everything get out of the bloody shot. All right, I made you want a cup of tea, like a biscuit, lovely to have you here. Oi! Piss off out of it. So I would see him work and he was a real legend in the business. So I could see how they dealt with stress.

I could see how they, I suppose, uh, were working. And, and when you see that at the highest level, They're all extremely, I suppose, socially intelligent, emotionally intelligent people at that level of the film business. They're all tremendously, um, with it, people and very focused. So when you see that level, the first thing I wanted to do for my production company is when we had a, we've got a first scripted, um, project and I really wanted to get them to learn as well from the best in the business.

So as far as scripted comedy is concerned, having worked with him a couple of times and seen the way he works, Matt Lipsy, I felt was, um, the best person to handle this particular project, which is semi improvised, uh, and also for my team to learn from him. And I was very lucky we spoke, I pitched the idea to him and he was very kind to say, Um, it's not very often I get tremendous projects land in my lap.

Sometimes I do things, um, because you feel I have to do them. And this one is like, out of nowhere, you've given me such a wonderful project that I can't wait to get my teeth into and to see that level of encouragement from him. And then the team met with him. He liked them and they absolutely loved him.

So for me, having, having worked with people like Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, and all these amazing directors, I really wanted to have a direct in place and that as a producer only you can do that only you can approach the people Who you think and they had to trust me that it was the person I thought would be the best for them for the first project.

And Matt Lipsey, um, Little Britain and Ted Lasso. Yeah, he's amazing. Amazing credits. But I, having seen, I worked with him on, um, Lenny Henry and Pieces, which was a sketch show Lenny Henry did back in the 99, 2000. And I'm just watching the way He worked, uh, he was the calmest person on set. He had a great comedy idea.

He would have an idea and goes, can we shoot that again? But can we only go and whisper something in my ear or whisper something in Lenny's ear and we should try it again. And then we do it and he goes, got it, move on. And then you watch it back and it's hilarious. So having seen his work, which is, looks great.

And he had such a great, Eye and ear for comedy. I think that's the, that's the most difficult thing. You can always be someone who's good at creating things that look nice and are dark, but to actually create funny is scientific and requires real talent. And he was one of the few people I've come across who just has that ear and could fix things and never was a very calm person.

We said, try this in again. Didn't work. Okay. Um, how about we do it like this? So he was always very, very proactive in, in finding the comedy. And so I know we can't talk too much more about that project. Um, but you're going to be focusing on As well as scripted comedy, unscripted as well. And, um, and your submission statement is to explore society's big questions through a hopeful lens.

Yes. Can you just expand on that a little bit? It just means that, you know, when you're doing comedy, we want, you know, And I think most TV companies and channels want this as well. People are tired. They come home from work. They want stuff to make them laugh. They want things to uplift them. They don't necessarily want dark.

Yeah, there's some people want dark and there are crime dramas you can watch. There's some channels you can watch dark comedy on. But to, to deal with the big questions, which is relevant to the people at home and to actually make them laugh, we felt it's, it's, it's such a contribution to society because comedians have to serve their audiences.

When I go out, I want them to laugh and I want them to go away uplifted. So it's a service industry. And, and the reason why it's a service industry is because if you do make people laugh and people watch comedies, the idea is that you're in a better mood, you're in a more hopeful state. Therefore. You can deal with life better.

You can make better intellectual decisions. Whereas depression, you know, begets more depression. And then you start making mistakes. Then you start making terrible decisions. And life is about decision making. And I was talking to the great rude Hulett who's a, the Dutch footballer who was manager of Chelsea once, and he said, when you're playing football, when someone passes you the ball, by the time you've received it and looked up, you've made four decisions.

How do I receive the ball? You look up, what am I gonna do within my next touch? Next touch. Do I pass there? Do I pass there? You've, you're making four decisions a second, and decision making is the most important thing. in football because that's when the crowd goes mad when you should have passed it and you shot and you missed.

Why didn't you pass the ball? Decision making is the most important thing. And I really feel that if you can be part of a process where people are laughing, they're more hopeful and uplifted, which helps them in their life choices and decision making. That's the most tremendously enlightening, honorable, and privileged profession to be in.

And so, I don't think it's a generational thing as much as it is a, a, a cultural thing. And, and I think it's, you know, true on both sides of the Atlantic, which is, that's not premium. That's social video. You know, we don't. Do that by the way, I I get the same thing from filmmakers of all ages. Well, I have to be in cinema I can't go direct to the consumer.

That's just not the same thing. Yeah, i'm like What huh? Yeah, what why? If the consumer sees it as premium Then it's premium You don't get to decide what is and isn't premium. The user, the audience, gets to decide that. And I think the discomfort that people feel is, I studied an art form and now I have to change the way I distribute my art form or make my art form and I don't wanna.

I don't wanna is not a real good reason. Yeah, it's a bit of snobbery as well. It is very much snobbery. I mean, the conversation that I do have with a number of producers talking about social first and going digital first on projects and it's just, you know, there's an immediate sort of looking down their nose kind of attitude towards it.

And it's like, well, why wouldn't you cultivate your own audiences? Why wouldn't you You know, build your own brands direct, you know, if you can make, if you can make the finances work and obviously it's a bit of a leap into the dark sometimes, but as you said, it's about experimenting and no more of a leap than spending a hundred thousand euro on a sizzle tape to try to sell a show to a bunch of people that aren't going to buy it.

Yeah. Because they're not buying. Yeah. Right? That's the big gamble is I'm going to bet on selling to the big gatekeepers who are all going out of business very slowly or they're all getting fired one by one. Yeah. And by the way, most of the money from the big gatekeepers is moving towards sports. And I had David Eilenberg on, on stage from Roku earlier today and I said, what's the big trend?

Where's the money going in programming? And he said, sports. Yeah, there are going to be fewer and fewer shows made every year for the next couple of years both factual and scripted and So, you know the idea that you're above building your own audience on tik tok or YouTube Yeah, you can find the economics for it.

Yeah, you know, not that this is the greatest example in the whole world But mr. Beast just got a hundred million dollars to make a game show Jake Paul got 20 million to fight Mike Tyson on Netflix. Um, the, the reason they did this is because they bring their audiences with them. They actually have the leverage with the gatekeepers in a way that individual producers no longer do in any way, shape or form.

And we are in the user centric era. The users are in complete control of the media ecosystem. And if you don't build your own community, you will lose to all the producers. Who do? RuPaul's Drag Race is a terrific example of this. This is a show that's been on the air, I don't know, a hundred years?

RuPaul's like 200 years old. It's a vampire, clearly. Um, but one of the big reasons that show is so successful is because Randy and Fenton at World of Wonder started talking to their audience on day one before there was social media. Yeah, yeah. They have, they have a direct relationship with them and they have their own platform as well.

Right. Correct. You want another good example, Reese Witherspoon. One of the reasons why Reese Witherspoon is one of the most successful producers of content in the world is she has a email list of book club that is the most powerful piece of IP generation in the world. She buys the rights to books. She turns them personally into bestsellers and then she options those bestsellers as television and film.

Yeah. Taylor Swift. has the most powerful army of fans on the planet. She self financed and self distributed her own film last year, which became the single largest concert film in the history of cinema. Yeah. Ryan Kaji started his YouTube channel when he was four years old. He now does a quarter of a billion dollars a year.

He's 12, by the way. He does a quarter of a billion dollars a year in merch sales. He self financed and self distributed his own film. Yeah. Cat face productions. They make animated videos on Minecraft, and then they release them on YouTube. They employ 80 people at their studio. I can go on and on and on and on.

You are missing the wave. Yeah. And if you want to be a producer, as Quentin Tarantino once said when he was premiering Reservoir Dogs at the Sundance Film Festival, just make it. Just go out and start making it. Find your fucking audience. But if you're not prepared to do that, I'm telling you, you will lose to those who do.

And a final question to end on, Evan, and thank you for being so generous with your time. My pleasure. You know, we're, Interesting that you, you talked about that, that sort of reality of fewer and fewer programs being commissioned. I mean, we're already seeing that we have done for certainly for the last year.

Yeah, and it started before the strike. It started, this was happening already. Yeah. And therefore the, if fewer and fewer shows are going to get commissioned, uh, that means that fewer and fewer people are going to get employed both on the production side and presumably the, the, the slimming down. We keep seeing.

week after week, you know, different announcements from Paramount and various other, uh, uh, networks and, and media companies that they're shedding staff. And I know this is something that's very, you know, uh, you are very, uh, uh, passionate about. Mm-hmm . You know, helping people to think who work in the industry in a different way rather than waiting for this sort of ax to fall.

Right. Um, what is the one single piece of advice you would give anybody watching this who works in the media industry and is thinking. I'm not sure if I'm going to have a job in a year's time. What would be your piece of advice to them? The biggest piece of advice I can give you is wake up stupid every day.

Learn something new about something new every day. If you want to future proof your career, you have to understand where the money is going. So the corporate gatekeeper content economy is going to continue to contract for the rest of this decade. It's not done getting smaller. There's going to be not just layoffs, but there's going to be mergers and acquisitions.

There's going to be tremendous consolidation in the next 36 months. Paramount's first, Disco Brothers, Warner Brothers Discovery is next. Who knows what's going to happen at Disney? They just pushed off their successive planning, planning for a year and a half, succession planning. So, you know, but this money is going to the creator economy and I know this because Google and Amazon and Meta.

And Apple and Microsoft, the biggest companies in the history of the world, need the creator economy to continue to expand, right? I know this because all of the advertising agencies and all of the brands are much more reliant on the creator led content economy to sell their products than they are the television economy.

Meta will sell more advertising this year than all traditional television on the planet Earth. One company, 60 percent of all advertising on the planet, not all digital advertising, all advertising goes to Meta, Google and Amazon. So go where the money is going. Also there's a tremendous amount of great content and marketing and innovative things being done on the brand side.

So go work at companies who are making content. Look at what is going to happen when Walmart finally gets to buy Vizio. Look at what's going to happen in this, in this, Well, brands are going to be kind of entertainers, essentially, aren't they? They are. Uh, Chick fil A just started a fast channel in the United States.

Yeah, Starbucks Studio and, yeah. Correct. So there's going to be a tremendous Retail media is now the fastest growing segment of the advertising economy. So there is a lot of money flying around. Yeah. And there's a lot of Um, really fun. Remember fun? Remember when working in media was fun? Yeah. It's not fun anymore.

I, I'm having a great time, but I talk to the people who work in media and they are not. Yeah. There is fun being had. There's joy being had. There's lots of great stuff being made, but it's not in the big gatekeeper economy the same way that it used to be. You have to look at where the future is going, where the money is going, and frankly, where all the good work is being made.

Where's a bit more freedom. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. That's exactly right. Evan, thank you so much. It's been a joy to speak to you as ever. so much.

Talk us through your career journey today. Well, you want to start at the beginning. Uh, when I was 17, I did a journalism course. I decided not to go to university straight away, and I did a one year journalism course at what was then the London College of Printing. And that was the best decision I ever made.

And I then went to college, but after that, I worked as a freelance journalist and including doing some stuff for the British film Institute. And that led to working on an independent production with Michael Jackson, who went on to run channel four amongst other things. And we set up a little company. I worked for him as a researcher, and then we set up a company together and that we did a show called, which became the media show.

And we did that for a few years. And that kind of became water wall TV. And then I got to a point in my career where I kind of got really frustrated by the fact I didn't know what broadcasters, how they really worked. You know, I know, I remember making a list of all the things I didn't understand. I didn't understand about research or about scheduling, which was still very important then, or about budgets for big things.

And Michael, the same Michael, had been pestering me to go and work with him at the BBC, and I'd always resisted, but it got to a point where I thought, I'm gonna do it. So I left Walter Wall and went to the BBC. And what was the main change, being on the other side of the fence, if you like? Um, after World War, when you were at the BBC, because obviously that was that initially to be BBC two controller.

No, I did an intermediary job, which was called the ICG, the independent commissioning group, whose job was to buy things from independents. And at that point in time, the BBC were really making a mess of working with independents. By law, they were supposed to get 25 percent of their shows from independents, and every year they failed to do it.

And so, because I'd worked on that side, my job was to. Find, uh, find the good ones and also, and we had this amazing team. Kevin Ligo was in charge of entertainment. Um, Tessa Ross was in charge of drama. Uh, and so really brilliant people, Nicola Moody, who I still work with, was in charge of factual. And we were like, we used to say to the channel controllers, kind of like anything they wanted, we could find someone who could give it to them.

And it was like a different attitude in the BBC that we were. We were able to get them what they wanted, and independents were more than happy to work with us. And did it feel a little bit, in those days, a little bit like us and them? Oh God, completely. We were like, we were absolutely like, not loved by BBC in house people.

We were definitely, we were the bad kids, who we were seen as wrecking the BBC, because we were bringing on all these outside companies, and we were, we were not popular. And then you moved on to become controller of BBC Two. What was that experience like? How long were you there as a controller? I, uh, I can be, it was wonderful.

I was kind of, it's like one of the best jobs in the world. I was also working for Greg Dyke most of the time, which was amazing. And although we never felt it at the time, with hindsight, we had lots of money and incredible freedom. We just did things, you know, uh, the weird thing about the BBC then was that it, you had to be really radical to do new things and get rid of things that people really hated you for, which was sad.

We managed to do just really great, fun things. You know, the office in comedy, we did Coast, we did Who Do You Think You Are?, and The Apprentice, and We just had fun. We had a really great team. We had fun. Yeah. Well, there's a huge number of hits that you've just mentioned there. What was, what was the show that you're most proud of, do you think, uh, when, that you commissioned at BBC Two?

I don't even know if anyone will remember it, but I, I, we did a thing called Greatest Britain, which was about a kind of interactive search to find the greatest Britain of all time, which kind of people got really obsessed by for one summer. And that felt like really like connecting the whole country together.

And that was exciting. And the office, I think is the one that's kind of people remember, although that was a little teeny show, it wasn't, people say, Oh, it was, must have been such a huge thing to commission. It was really cheap. It was like, you know, we had all these big stars, like. Steve Coogan and people and Victoria Wood and, you know, and Ricky and Steve weren't, were cheap.

And, and, uh, did they come to pitch directly to you? Tell, tell me about the, the time when that, that pitch process for the office. It was a really good, I remember it very clearly. It was at the end of an entertainment, uh, session with the team and John Plowman and his amazing team. And they said, oh, we've just got something to show you at the end.

And it was this little tape That Stephen Merchant had made on a trainee assistant producer's scheme. And it had Ricky standing next to the photocopier, being the David Kent, Brent character. And the two of them just like, talking to each other. And it was really funny. And we were all kind of just like, oh god, we've got to do a pilot.

And it all sort of started from there. And that was based, just based on their chemistry, essentially, and, and It was based on the fact of this thing about like, really taking the piss out of kind of management speak. Which kind of we, we all lived in the middle of that working at John Burt's BBC, you know, and we all knew exactly what he was, you know, performance targets and kind of all of those things and the kind of making fun of the dullness of office life, you know, the photocopy and ever working and all those things.

It was just inherently brilliant. And so when you moved on from the BBC, that was to Discovery, is that right? I moved to America for Discovery. And tell us about your role at Discovery because you were president, weren't you? Yeah. Uh, I was running the Discovery channel and I was also running a few other smaller channels, but it was completely different.

It was like real amazing culture shock going from the BBC where kind of anything you do at the BBC, that you're proud of as a channel controller. People know about, people see, you know, you've got, BBC's still got amazing reach of people on every, you go to Discovery Channel and you can make amazing shows and zero people can watch.

You're also dealing with advertisers and affiliates. It's like a whole different world and a very narrow group of people for whom Discovery Channel was their home. Very different from the BBC where you're big, broad church of Yeah, almost everybody must have been a bit of culture shock. There was the not.

Oh, yeah. It was like it was also helped by the fact The day that I went to get my visa to move to America, I discovered I was pregnant and I didn't tell anyone at Discovery for nearly six months. They just, they didn't know what I looked like. And I wore these voluminous clothes and didn't drink. And yeah, and so I kind of, that was an additional bit of culture shock that went on.

Yeah. And, um, how long were you there then at Discovery? Four years. Right. Okay. Um, David Zaslav became, uh, the CEO halfway through that. And I stayed on for him a couple of years. And what was, what were the key points in your time there do you think now you look back at your time at Discovery? Because obviously it must have informed much of what you were doing at Newtopia when you moved on to launch Newtopia.

But what were the key takeaways that you took from working at Discovery? Well, The best show we ever did at Discovery is still on, which is Deadliest Catch, which was about, you know, fishermen in near the Arctic circle catching crabs. And it was kind of when you did a show like that, that people really, really cared about that it actually, and you could do it loads and loads and loads of them.

And that thing of adrenaline plus knowledge, that was our kind of keywords. It adrenalized information. And We managed to kind of not in everything, but in a few things, we managed to hit that on the head and kind of deliver on that, on that, on that beat, really. I think with hindsight, I should have done it a lot more, but we did it for a range of our shows.

It was, yeah, we, we got to places in, which would now be called red States or. Trump supporting states, um, which people in TV didn't get to, uh, certainly BBC2 wouldn't have really got to, and that was kind of exciting. Yeah, and you started Newtopia 2008? I think so, I can't quite remember. Yeah, well, my research tells me that, so.

Um, and, uh, you really have been credited with creating a new type of show, the Megadoc. Yeah. Um, and, uh, what does the word Megadoc or the term Megadoc mean to you and, and, you know, what was the thinking initially behind creating that as a, as a piece of research that I saw at the BBC, which has influenced my whole career, which was, it compared the numbers of commissionable programs for particular slots.

And for single documentaries, there was like, 60, 70 great films for every, every slot, like we would commission three or four of them a year, uh, our part of Storyville. And quite honestly, they were all, once they got to me, they were all great films by great people who really cared about them. And you could have like thrown darts at post it notes and they all would have been great.

And then when you, at that point in time, the BBC had billboards and posters and huge marketing campaigns. And I realized it was my job every year to kind of have three press conferences with three really big deal things in, in. And you hardly ever got offered any of them. Like network defining, we called them.

And they just weren't there. They were, you know, you, you, we made them up ourselves. A lot of the big things we did at BBC two. But you were looking for them as a, as a, as a commissioner and as a channel controller. You wanted people to come in and go, you know, I want to do this thing. The whole country is going to be talking about very rarely did that happen.

People were focused on the one off or the six parts or the small thing. So it's a lower ambition. Really? You were finding from Indies, I suppose, and in house and you wanted things that were going to be huge. And I remember, I remember one instance of that where Keith Scholey, who was running the NHU at that point, he came in and said he wanted to do, I think a day devoted to spring.

And we said, we won't do a day, but we'll do a month. And it became spring watch, but we were like, how do we do something that everyone's going to talk about? And really that Newtopia was based on that idea that doing the hardest things and the biggest things is that you're in, you're in your, often on your own, you're only competing against yourself or one or two others.

There's very few people out there. And that was really, that was the basis of it. We did, um, planet earth at discovery when I was there. And it was just, it made Discovery so much money, so much money. Uh, and I was like, and I, but then. I had to go and see all of the sponsors, like Ford, I went to Detroit to try and explain to them why they couldn't have another one the next year.

And they were really upset with me and disappointed. Takes a bit longer than that to actually make stuff. I said, it's taken seven years and they're like, yeah, but you can do another one quickly. And I was like, and We're Ford. We're Ford. But he's like, we have cars to launch. We have trucks to sell. Come and see the assembly line.

And if you can't give us a show, then somebody else will. Um, but that was like, yeah, looking at these ring of Ford executives, I think I was the only woman in the room kind of trying to say, it takes quite a long time to make these natural history things. And you think this is, you know, doing really big things.

And I suppose I've always been. like that. I mean, it's like, look at, look at movies at the moment, you know, Barbie and Oppenheimer, you know, you do really big things and people respond to that.

So, Patrick, tell us about how this series came about then, you know, where's the gestation process of Mr. Bates versus the process? When did that start? 2020, a brilliant factual producer called Natasha Bondy and her colleague Ben Gale from Little Gem Um, had been working, I think, for about six months on, um, What probably started as an idea for a documentary, but they very quickly realized, no, this would work better as a drama, a story that they had been out there for a while, as we all know, but no one had really paid attention to.

And they did. And they went out and they, uh, talked to Nick Wallace, the journalist who, whose podcast was soon to come out. They talked to Alan Bates, Nick, immediately pointed them to Alan. They discovered Alan Bates and his role in the story and they went to meet him and they met Joe and they, Joe Hamilton and all of the characters that you got to know in the drama, they went to meet, except obviously their post office execs who remain in hiding.

And she built relationships with them. She built trust with them. She, uh, she got them kind of all on side and said, would you like a drama made? And they went, yeah, because no one's paying any attention. Um, and she, and I was lucky enough that we were the door that she walked through and said, I've got something.

Do you want to, are you interested? And I'd never heard of this story to my shame. And I'm one of many people who had never heard of this story. So there's never a documentary made. Absolutely. There was, it was all out there. And, and she handed me this kind of, um, pitch document. She sent it by email. Bet, I think, Ben and Natasha sent it together.

I could, you know, I can't quite remember. All I remember is reading it for the first time and going, this is, this is made up, right? This can't be real or it's exaggerated. And I went online and I realized it's not at all. It's real. And I phoned them up and said, Oh my God, this is amazing. Let's, I'd love to work with you on this.

So we teamed up and formed a gang and Um, they brought their factual expertise and their relationships, and we, um, made the show with them. And do you think the show's worked because of that factual expertise in terms of I mean, there's lots of reasons why. Amazing performances, amazing script, et cetera.

Um, and it looks fantastic. But that's the amazing thing to me, is the factual aspect of this drama really tells this remarkable story. I mean, how do you see it? Well, that's about the 10th factual drama I've worked on. So, I have a, I had a team at ITV Studios, I think it's one of the reasons they came to us, who have a track record in making factual drama.

So, that helped, I think, for us to be the ones that were offered the first choice. Um, when you, when you make a factual drama for a, a broadcaster in this country, you, you got one of three, uh, tags that can begin the show. It can either say inspired by, which means, As far as I know, I've, um, you know, you've, you've used the name of the character and maybe the right city and basically made up the rest.

And all you can use, you can get based on a truce theory. And that means you have to jump very high hurdles to qualify for based on a truce theory. That means that, you know, it needs to be as close to a truce theory as you can reasonably make it. but presumably there are some bits that have been invented, but still in the spirit of the true story.

And it needs to be signed off on by compliance and it needs to feel fair and representative of what actually happened. Okay. And you, you'll often see that, uh, some of the characters or situations are, are, you know, are made up and it's very clear that that's, that's based on a true story is what most dramas get.

And then there is, this is a true story and very, very few dramas qualify for that. And others have done it, but we did. And there's a reason for that, and that is that not only had Natasha and Ben already done a lot of research, but then when we got our hands on the material, we went off and did another year and a half before we even started developing the script.

And we did that partly on our own, and a brilliant executive called Joe Williams, um, uh, wrote a hundred and thirty something script. thousand word research document. It's a book, um, of all the stuff that we learned along the way as we researched what had happened and why it had happened and how Horizon worked and what the post office had done and the timelines and all of that stuff.

And then we approached, uh, Gwyn Hughes, the writer, and said, Will you come and work with us on this? And she did know a bit about the story and she said, wow, that's a lot of work and that's a lot of time and it's COVID lockdown and it's, this is complicated stuff. It's the second lockdown, I think. But we presented her with the book and she went, wow, okay.

You've done a lot of work. And that allowed her to see what the story was as she chose, she made those decisions. Alan was obviously the first and most obvious decision being the protagonist. And then she herself, then, did the same thing again. She got on trains and she got in a car and, and she went and saw all of those people and spent days and days with them, talking to them and getting to know them so that she could honour their suffering and their stories properly.

And that meant that when it came time to write the script, it was essentially a true story. Everything that you see happened. I mean, literally, everything. everything. And we could stand it up from three or four different angles. And that's down to quotations as well, right? I mean, obviously there was, uh, I think there was a select committee hearing, one part.

Word for word. Yeah. Yeah, we had to. And the, the post office are so litigious. And so unhelpful, and so ghastly. I use those words wisely, but I really feel that. That we were determined to offer them no opportunity to stand us down. No opportunity to stop us from transmitting. So we simply used the facts as they existed.

Every single day. The word that Paula Vanelles spoke in the drama was taken for emails that she'd written or, uh, minutes of meetings, despite their attempts to redact every document that we got our hands on. Um, and we, it's just all true. Everything you see is true, which is why our compliance team at the end went all out.

you get to call yourself a true story. And, and I think that's just testament to Joe and Imi and Natasha and Gwynn, um, for the lengths they went to tell the story as it happened. Because the facts are so ghastly that It's that journalistic rigour, back to the point about being factual drama. It's, it's, uh, yeah, it's really And, and Gwyn came from a journalistic background, and Joe, in another life, Joe should have been a journalist.

And it was that appetite, and I have to say I love journalism as well. Um, it's that appetite to, Tell it like it is that I think the world kind of responded to I think they could sense that it was real and also People did come after us and try and kind of poke at the story and figure out if it was true and very quickly They discovered it was so, you know, we didn't get everything right, but we did get the facts, right?

yeah, and just I think it's because a general sense of Exasperation or disbelief really that this whole investigation or the process that uh, Mr. Bates and all the rest of the uh, sub postmasters that were wrongly accused and uh, and charged. This has gone on for 20 years and we know tragically some people have taken their lives, some people have passed away, some people never, never seen justice and there was really only computer weekly.

and Private Eye that picked up early and were campaigning on this. And it was, it was just almost in plain sight, wasn't it? I think everybody, I certainly was aware of it. I'd heard the odd piece on Radio 4 Today every six months or so. And it's like, oh, that thing's still going on. But it really took your drama to completely shift the narrative and move things forward, which is, you know, Uh, which is fascinating, even though there's an inquiry still going on, isn't there, right now?

There is, and let's hope more truths come out. You're absolutely right about Private Eye and, uh, Computer Weekly, those brilliant journalists on both. I think it's also worth a shout out to Nick Wallace, who came in relatively early, and was reporting on it for a while, and then did the seminal book.

podcast, which we really were inspired by, and he became a consultant on our show. I think it's also worth talking about James Arbuthnot, the MP played by Alex Jennings in the show, um, who was there talking in government all the way through, shouting about it, saying, come on, guys, help me here. Something terrible has happened.

He was joined later, I think, by Kevin Jones. So there are real heroes in this story who were, you know, beating their drums and telling people what had been going on for years. And, and they deserve a lot of respect because they never stopped. I, when I went to meet James Al Battinah, I, I won't deny feeling a shred of apprehension because I'm, shred of apprehension, whatever the right expression is, I'm, I'm not a Tory, and I was not expecting to like a Tory MP, and, um, and I'm in awe of him.

I'm, I, I was completely mesmerized by him and, blown away by how much he cared and how hard he'd worked and how angry he was and how determined he was and it really helps to inspire us and give us kind of, you know, there are times we worked on this show for three and a half years. There are times when you definitely think, is it worth it?

And people like James Arbuthnot were the ones who made us go, we have to keep going. He's been doing it for 15 years. We've only been doing it for three. And, uh, he just showed there are some really good MPs out there. And there's actually a line, isn't there, uh, uh, I, I think it was something like, you know, I never expected to like a Tory MP.

There's actually a line in the drama, isn't there? I think we all, I think, you know, a, a lot of people who work in drama are probably more left wing than right. And, and I think people like James L. Buthnot would appear to be the sort of people that we'd normally go after. Not him. He's amazing. So let's talk about the outcomes and, uh, the reaction, first of all.

Well, even maybe let's take a step before that. What were the expectations on the eve of transmission? Uh, cause obviously this came out on ITVX and also on the, uh, uh, on the linear channel, what, what were the expectations of the team as you were running up to Well, let's go one step further back, actually.

Let's go to the point where we've been working on the show for two years, we've been in conversations with ITV network about it, and, uh, Polly Hill, I had pitched it to as a drama, um, and she said, immediately, I want that. That's amazing. We should be telling that story. She's always on the lookout for true stories that are not crime.

I mean, obviously this is a crime, but not, you know, murder true stories. She got very worked up about it as well when she read the research. So we were working on it, but we hadn't delivered a script to her. And then Nick's podcast came out and then the, I think I'm getting my timeline, right. And then the court cases happened and the court of appeals.

And as soon as that happened, a lot of other producers started to get get a sense of this story and started to phone up the sub postmasters to say, hey, can we tell your story? And we didn't own them. We can't option the life rights of 750 people. We'd persuaded them all that we were a good thing. We'd shown them that, that we were working hard on the project, but there was nothing to stop them going with somebody else.

If they felt they had a, Uh, kind of a faster route to a green light, frankly. And there was every possibility that other broadcasters would commission a show or a script or whatever. And we turned to Polly and we said, We are three months away from giving you a script, and there's a fear that we might lose this.

So Polly looked at how hard we'd worked and knew that the writer was Gwyn Hughes, and she greenlit it without a script. And that, in my world, is pretty unheard of. And that's kind of what we're doing. bravery and commitment. And that's because from day one, I think she saw that this was a story that her audience, their audience would respond to.

If I'm being honest, I, I'm not sure I did. It's not that I didn't, it's that I don't know, who knows. And, um, and that all I knew was that I, we all wanted, I think I speak for the team when I say our stated intent was we wanted this, this, our postmasters to feel heard. There's not a number of viewers in that statement.

There's not a number of newspaper articles. There's not a social action. There's not anything other than we wanted them to feel like we might God in our dreams be part of lessening their sense of shame and, and then trying to help their sense of healing. And even that, as I say, that loud sounds um, pompous and, and naive and, but that was what we were trying to do was allow them to feel heard because it felt like they hadn't been.

So that's all we hoped for. And Polly all the way through kept saying, I think this is going to be a hit. And then when she saw it, she said, this is definitely going to be a hit. I didn't know that I've worked on shows that I was pretty convinced would be a hit that weren't. And I've worked on shows that I wasn't sure have turned into big hits.

And on the morning of transmission, If I'm being honest, I wrote an email to my team saying we're up against The Tourist on Monday and Tuesday. We're up against the second season of The Tourist, which is a monster hit. The first season was a monster hit. We're up against the second season of Traitors.

That's a monster hit on Wednesday and Thursday. All four episodes could be wiped out. And I said, when I call you in the morning, tomorrow morning with the overnights, um, please don't be dismayed. Please trust in the idea that even if we get killed, which we probably will, this show is good enough and important enough and moving enough that it will find an audience.

Maybe over weeks, not days, but I think we'll find an audience and I think we'll do what we set out to do, which is to allow these subpostmasters to feel heard. I don't think any of us had any idea except Polly. And when she called up the next day and told me the overnight, I thought I'd misheard her. And, um, and she said, I told you, I told you.

Well, that's about it for our last show of 2024. Thanks to everybody for watching and listening to TellyCast this year. Subscribing to our newsletters and coming to our events. We really appreciate your support for videos featuring the movers and shakers of the content industry Subscribe to TellyCast TV on YouTube We'll be back in January with more shows more events Some surprises as we continue on our mission of making sense of the international content industry Until then have a fantastic Christmas a peaceful New Year and stay safe