Words: Nick Lockey
Photography: Elizabeth Gordon

World-beaters in the brave new world of Alternate Reality Gaming, the Hon brothers’, aged 26 and 29, produce work that has re-defined cross-platform media.

“Movies are great,” begins Dan Hon ardently. “They suck you into a story and can affect you in profound ways, but it’s only ever a selfish experience. You never learn anything about the guy sitting next to you.”

His dig at the cinematic arts seems almost sacrilegious given that he’s currently tucking into scrambled eggs in the members’ bar at Bafta, but his infectious enthusiasm for his craft makes it easy to forgive. After all it’s not every day you get to share breakfast with a creator of worlds.

Together with his brother Adrian, Dan helms Six to Start, one of the leading ARG (Alternate Reality Game) design companies. Since the firm’s 2007 conception they’ve spun their complex narrative webs for an enviable client list including Penguin, Channel 4, Disney and the BBC.

But it’s their players who are the real heroes – a supporting cast of thousands that would make Cecil B DeMille weep with envy. Sucked into these experiences through fiendishly conceived ‘rabbit holes’ left in seemingly innocuous places, ARG players quickly find themselves following breadcrumb trails of mysterious clues through complex, multi-layered worlds.

But these aren’t virtual environments or video games; they are experiences that play out over extremely familiar spaces: on popular online platforms, in real-world locations, through ringing payphones, blogs and classified ads. It’s as if you’re experiencing everyday reality but through a warped fantasy filter where anything is possible. “If you want to get to know a particular character,” explains Dan, “just pick up a phone and talk to them.”

Six to Start’s own story is pure ARG narrative in itself. We join our two heroes at key moment in their story: Dan is studying law at Cambridge, Adrian working on his PhD, both happily trudging the path of high-powered inevitability when suddenly they stumble upon a tear in the fabric of reality.

Whilst watching an online trailer for the Spielberg film AI: Artificial Intelligence Dan spots a curiosity in the credits – a young woman named Jeanine Salla, billed as the film’s ‘Sentient Machine Therapist’. Googling this bizarre job title, Dan falls down a rabbit hole and finds himself in the belly of The Beast – the most celebrated ARG of all time.

“It was such an adrenalin rush,” enthuses Dan: “It was like being there at the birth of cinema, a Wild West with no rules.”

Dan and Adrian’s role in co-moderating The Cloudmakers – a community of players collaborating to unlock the secrets of The Beast – brought them to the attention of the secretive team who crafted the game. Their subsequent invite to the States to talk about their experience planted a seed in their minds that left the two brothers teetering on the brink of a real-life rabbit hole – could their futures lie in creating these things, as well as playing them?

They took the red pill and plunged headlong into a new adventure which would see them turn their backs on years of university education to become ARG puppet masters themselves, first at British games company Mind Candy and then under their own steam as Six to Start.

It’s clear, however, that Dan isn’t precious about the genre that prompted their life-changing decision. “We’ve been called an ARG design company, but it’s more of a label than a definition. We want to move beyond the novelty and just get on with telling great stories.”

So what’s the secret of their success? “We’re platform agnostic,” explains Dan between mouthfuls of buttery toast. “Great narrative and great gameplay are the key elements in everything we do, and we just choose the most appropriate media available to convey them.”

Given the fact that they’ve crafted adventures utilising everything from Twitter and Google Maps to poetry hunts in St Pancras Station and urban chases featuring sinister black helicopters, I’m not about to accuse them of narrative narrow-mindedness.

Of course, not everyone gets to follow a breadcrumb trail as fortuitous as the Hons, so is there any hope for the aspiring bedroom puppet master? “It’s really easy to make an ARG these days,” beams Dan.

“If you know how to craft a story and have a basic understanding of online platforms, you’re halfway there. Just find a bunch of like-minded people, get out there and make something.”

www.sixtostart.com

Words: Ian Ravenscroft
Photography: Jade Sukiya

With a bold colour palette, striking graphics and a dash of playfulness, this duo, both 26, aim to change the face of hip-hop promos. And they’re not stopping there.

James Knott and James Curran didn’t just have a name in common when they met in the unlikely setting of an entrepreneurship course in Nottingham four years ago. They discovered a shared passion for music video, and have since produced promos for the likes of DJ Yoda, Toronto’s Wio-K and even trend-setting super-producer Mark Ronson.

Heavily influenced by graphic design, the duo use bold colours, playful movement and a blend of live action and animation to bring a new angle to the crowded promo scene. Main animator Curran, whose video for Californian hip-hop group Ugly Duckling scooped an RTS Student Award, points out that these style choices are no accident.

“Particularly in UK hip-hop, a lot of music videos tend to look pretty similar, so we try and make ours stand out from the rest,” he reasons. “We try to push the boundaries and produce a recognisable visual style,” adds director Knott, whose affiliation with hip-hop producer Baby J has been another reason for the duo’s relatively rapid emergence from the promo-producing pack.

“I was asked to produce a video for Baby J, and the video ended up getting played on MTV,” Knott explains. “Myself and Baby J then set up a small company called Baby-Knotted Films, bringing James C in on the post-production side of things.”

“Having Baby J helping to push the music videos from the very beginning was a great advantage,” Knott concedes. “As you begin to get noticed and your name starts to grow as a director, the phone starts ringing. We are lucky that everything fell into place at the right time.”

One of these calls was from Brit Award and three-time Grammy Award-winning producer, Mark Ronson. “He was a fan of Baby J’s production and wanted him to produce a remix for the Valerie single featuring Amy Winehouse,” says Knott. “It was through this we got the opportunity to make the video.”

However, actually producing their breakthrough promo wasn’t quite so simple: “We started work on the concept before the remix was even finished,” explains Curran. “Then from the shoot we only had a week to complete it.” Knott is clearly still exhilarated: “Seeing the video I’d edited in my bedroom on MTV was a magic moment.”

www.slimjimstudios.com
www.myspace.com/knottedfilms

Words: Louise Thacker
Photography: Roland Lane

Brought up in a family of business-minded bistro owners and fudge-makers, it’s clear that entrepreneurship has always run through the blood of this 27-year-old MD.

It’s a cold, dark Sunday afternoon ‘up north’ in Leeds. I step into a quiet bar on the usually busy Call Lane, eagerly early for my coffee-date with the winner of the 4Talent Innovation award. I call him, and within seconds of putting down the phone, I’m face to face with the man himself.

Attempting to ignore the fact that a Wham! record is playing rather too loudly in the background, I listen intently to how Phil’s inspiring games company first came about. “It was after I’d finished university in 2004,” he begins. “It seemed like a pretty good time to have a go at a bit of a dream of mine, which was making games. A few of us got together and started Creative North, and it developed some momentum from there.”

Based in Huddersfield, Creative North started off exclusively making mobile phone games, but since branched into Nintendo DS and iPhone – an impressive achievement in a field dominated by big players. “Our expertise is really in handheld gaming. If it’s portable and you can play a game on it, the chances are we’ve developed something for it.”

Creative North’s international folio of clients includes O2 and Hasbro, but they have firm roots in the Yorkshire creative community, running an on-the-job Academy scheme for local students with their eye on the gaming industry. “We take maybe three or four students a year, and bring them in to work on a part-time basis alongside our full-time team,” he explains.

As we near the bottom of our coffee cups the topic changes to family life, and it’s clear that Phil’s close-knit family share his enthusiasm for enterprise. “My youngest sister runs a restaurant in Newcastle; my other sister was a snowboard instructor, and then started up a bistro – and then there’s my youngest brother, who makes and sells fudge at a local farmers market. It’s his little money-making scheme while he’s at college.”

True innovators always approach conventional tasks in unexpected ways, and this 27-year-old entrepreneur recalls one client that approached them for an electronic alternative to a bag of leaflets and guides at a New York event. “We devised a way to put all the information onto a Nintendo DS,” he smiles. And who would have thought of that?

www.creativenorth.co.uk

Words: Simon Harper
Photography: Jannica Honey

A former finalist in Channel 4’s stand-up contest So You Think You’re Funny, Rose Heiney, 24, has since decided that the pen is mightier than the mic.

Published earlier in 2008, her darkly comic debut novel The Days of Judy B saw Rose – daughter of broadcasters Libby Purves and Paul Heiney – become firmly ensconced in the literary world that she was first exposed to at an early age.

“I was very lucky to grow up in a house full of books, to be taken to films, to plays, and introduced to good TV programmes,” she begins. “They’re the places that you go when the rest of the world isn’t looking so brilliant. I learned to have a lot of respect for television. A brilliant half-hour sitcom can inform your outlook as much as six miserable weeks spent trying to slog through The Brothers Karamazov.”

Fittingly, much of Rose’s humour comes from exposure to a raft of British sit-coms, name-checking the likes of Hancock’s Half Hour, Drop The Dead Donkey and People Like Us among her favourite touchstones, alongside more recent triumphs such as Peep Show.

“I’m evangelical about the programmes I find funny – if I were braver I would be running down the street thrusting box-sets of Ever Decreasing Circles into the hands of strangers, shouting, ‘Episode three is life-changing!’ and then sprinting off to spread my message.”

Describing her own working habits as “haphazard”, Rose wishes she’d prepared another draft of her novel before it went to print – but she needn’t have worried. Her first offering won over readers and critics, with Victoria Hislop [The Island] lauding it as “one of the funniest, most profound book’s I’ve ever read.”

“It actually got turned down by an awful lot of publishers,” says Oxford graduate Rose. “Looking back, I can see why. It’s obviously a very ‘young’ book, and the draft on submission was by no means ready. I dealt with the rejection through a well-moderated regime of incandescent rage, hysterical sobbing and alcohol abuse. I was very, very lucky that a publisher saw fit to take a punt on it in the end, and that relief was incredible.”

Rose is keen to dabble in other media too, and is in the early stages of developing an online comedy. “It’s a bit of a departure for me,” she confesses. “I’m the kind of person who thinks that computers have eyes and that you can scoop up broadband in a bucket. Trying to explain widgets and platforms to me is like teaching a dog to play poker, but I’m doing my best.”

“There’s so much I’d love to try,” she goes on. “I’d love to write radio comedy, contribute to other people’s shows, and ultimately help create good television. It’s very early days, but if someone opens a door, writing-wise, I will happily peep through it.”

rose.heiney@googlemail.com

Words: Simon Harper
Photography: Sanna Charles

Perhaps best known as the eponymous tank commander in More4 satire Gary’s War, this Edinburgh-born, 28-year-old actor has a true gift for character comedy.

“It’s interesting what tiny things in life you just pick up on that can work,” begins Greg McHugh, on the issue of writing material: “I try not to sit down and go, ‘Right, I want to write about the credit crunch.’”

Topical gags about financial hardship and global economic meltdown might be near the top of the to-do list for several comedians, but Greg draws from a much more personal well of inspiration. “I’ll just sit down and think about small things that have happened, or people that I’ve met. I must admit, I think of people more than situations; I’m character-driven in that way.”

Greg studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama before appearing on the stand-up circuit. He’s already garnered widespread acclaim for his army officer character, Gary: Tank Commander, with More4 commission Gary’s War picking up a Scottish Bafta.

His earliest forays into comedy were behind a microphone stand, but Greg considers himself primarily an actor, not a stand-up. “I think you’re a good actor if you can do comedy,” he explains. “A lot of actors say, ‘Oh, I do straight stuff,’ and I’ve worked with a few that are good straight actors, but they can’t really get a grasp of comedic roles that well.”

“I see myself as an actor who’s done stand-up, but then even in stand-up you’re acting,” he points out. “If you have to do the same material each night, but still make people laugh, you have to act your way through that.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Greg has since found a fruitful outlet in sketch comedy – particularly with regular collaborator Will Andrews in The Incredible Will and Greg, and the award-winning Blowout – as well as a well-received run of short, sharp and delightfully silly sketches at the Edinburgh Festival.

Citing Coogan, Connolly and Whitehouse as inspirations, Greg has been commissioned by The Comedy Unit to write Gary: The Sitcom and increasingly finds himself being sent scripts to peruse as well as writing his own material.

“It’s worth trying new jokes even if they don’t work, because it’s the only way you get better,” is his advice. “Often it’s useful to think, ‘What is it that makes me laugh?’ Doing pilots is an essential way of getting people to see you, to meet commissioners and to understand the process of how things are made.”

Greg’s quick to point out that the daytime isolation of being a writer-performer can sometimes get too much, but there’s always room for distractions. “I’ve got one of these cinema cards where you pay a monthly amount,” he confides. “If I can’t concentrate, I go and watch three films in an afternoon with the other lonely, unemployed men that tend to do that. That’s my hangout.”

Words: Martin Anderson
Graham Linehan photography: Adam Mattison-Ward
Buy Issue 10 here

If the British studio sit-com is as dead as Victoria Wood suggested in 2005, no-one’s told Graham Linehan or the legions of fans awaiting the third series of award-winning geek comedy The IT Crowd. Declared in 2007 to be amongst the top 100 living geniuses, this Irish writer loves to ignore good advice in his relentless pursuit of the perfect mainstream comedy show.

Click to enlarge/shrink. Left/right arrows cycle through images.

“I’ve always been a contrary person. Roy’s based on me to that extent, with that whole ‘music snob’ thing – the idea that if more than ten people like something, it isn’t any good anymore,” says IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan.

Graham enjoys resistance: the ‘Ted and Ralph’ sketches that he wrote with long-time collaborator Arthur Matthews were the slowest entries in The Fast Show - and the most popular; Father Ted turned the deadest concept in British sit-com - the ‘clerical’ - into the most revered comedy show since Fawlty Towers; and Victoria Wood’s 2005 declaration that the studio-based sitcom had been killed by The Royle Family and The Office only served to fire Linehan’s efforts on the first series of The IT Crowd, which went on to garner praise, ratings and awards.

“It’s good business practice that if everyone is going in one direction, you should go in the other,” he declares. “I believe that audiences get bored with things before they know they’re bored with them.”

No-one’s bored with The IT Crowd yet. As we talk, only a couple of days remain before the beginning of exterior shoots for the third series, and many fans fear that in his creative thrift Linehan will afterwards abandon the neglected and neurotic denizens of Reynholm Industries for pastures new; predecessors Father Ted and Black Books both bowed out at series three, though it’s not a decision Graham has yet made for The IT Crowd.

“If you look at something like Friends, series nine or ten, I think people are saying to themselves, ‘I’ve had too much of this delicious food, and I’m really getting sick of it,’” is his diplomatic way of putting it. Even the increasing number of exterior shoots for the series hallmark Graham’s determination to follow his own path. “I kind of know when something does or doesn’t work myself, and I tend to go my own way.”

“For instance, a lot of people were saying really early on that I shouldn’t take the characters out of the office; then I did The Work Outing – and that’s been the most popular episode. So you can’t really pay attention to what people say, because they might be wrong. Really I’ve just got to follow my own instincts, and in the end I just go with what’s funny.”

Graham gets to hear more of other people’s opinions than most writers who reach his level of success, as he maintains a very popular blog where fans of his work can interact with him when he opens a comments thread every Friday. It was at this venue that the self-professed computer nerd appealed for authentically ‘geek’ items to adorn the basement set of the third series.

“I’m hoping it will look just a little bit more super-charged this year,” he reveals. “I always wanted the kind of people the show was written about to look at the set and go, ‘Oh my God, they’ve got a Sinclair Spectrum!’ or, ‘There’s an old Amiga in the background.’ I wanted them to constantly find things.”

Though praising the production design team on The IT Crowd, Linehan admits that only authentic nerds could possibly have the right knowledge to dress the set. “Up until this point, I had to be the one suggesting items. This year I thought that even I don’t know everything about nerd culture, so it’d be better to turn it over to the public, and that’s worked out great.”

Like the reclusive techies in The IT Crowd, geeks are very protective of their territory, and the show has had to walk a careful tightrope between accessibility and geek credibility. “I don’t want my comedy to be enjoyed by just the people that it’s about,” laughs Graham. “I want to reach as wide an audience as possible, but without losing any intelligence.”

“Some people complained that there weren’t enough ‘geek’ jokes in the show, but that’s never what I wanted the show to be. I didn’t want it to have loads of jokes about Linux. I wanted the show to feature these characters but not be aimed at them, but rather at everybody. I don’t like TV shows that polarise audiences and atomise society even further. I want to try and create TV that a large group of people can sit and watch in a room and laugh at.”

The IT department at Reynholm Industries are the typically idle or insane residents of a Linehan show. Graham often posits that grumpy central figure Roy [Chris O’Dowd] is his alter-ego, whereas social-reject savant Moss [Richard Ayoade] is him at age twelve, and their frustrated and computer-illiterate boss Jen [Katherine Parkinson] was inspired by the effect that meeting his wife had on his own life.

“No, Jen’s not based on my wife’s character,” Graham chuckles as I suggest it. “She’s just based on the effect of a woman in a male environment. Jen is much more into the idea of being a businesswoman than my wife is. Also, my wife knows a lot more about computers than Jen does.”

Part of the hope fans retain for a fourth series is that Linehan won’t feel he has quite perfected the show in series three. He retains that the first series was overly confrontational, and despite my suggestion that Jen is one of the few genuinely funny female sitcom characters output by a male writer in recent years, that there’s work to be done there as well.

“I think that it’s only now that I’ve even started doing an OK job with Katherine’s character,” Graham confesses. “I’m very embarrassed about the first series, and that episode to do with shoes - what a bloody tier-one idea that was for writing about women! I think the reason a lot of male writers aren’t very good at writing women is that they’re nervous: a funny character often has negative characteristics, and men are worried about being accused of sexism.”

A total absence of respect - though not of affection - for his entire cast of characters in The IT Crowd helps Linehan sideswipe the comedy-killing influence of political correctness without becoming overly mean.

“Often you’ll find that if there’s a so-called ‘minority’ character in a TV show, they’re not allowed to be funny, because you can’t say anything negative about them,” he proposes. “That’s why men write so many male characters - they can just slag them off ’til the cows come home. But if it came to a woman, or a guy in a wheelchair - not to say that the two are remotely similar - they pull back a little bit, scared of being attacked.”

Graham decided some time ago to disregard these considerations. “I said to myself that if I had a disabled character, or any kind of a minority character, I’m going to make them as negative as any of the other characters. I don’t really have any admirable people in my show - they’re all foolish, and they’ve all got their problems in one way or another. You just have to bite the bullet, and not worry about people being insulted.”

On the surface, it seems that Graham now has to make such judgement calls by himself. Since he and Arthur Matthews went their own ways after the first series of the surreal sketch show Big Train in 2001, the writer has experimented with new collaborations, but writes all of The IT Crowd solo. Does he now prowl parties looking for the funniest person to forge a new writing partnership?

“That makes me sound like some kind of comedy rapist,” Graham grins. “It’s a very precious, magical thing, and it doesn’t really happen if you deliberately try to make it happen. Comedy partnerships are born, not made. What happens more is that you’re sitting in a pub, someone starts speaking, and everything they say is funny. Well, that’s someone you should possibly think about getting to collaborate with you. But if you have a funny writer and you say, ‘Hey, do you want to do something?’ – I think that’s probably a recipe for disaster.”

These days Graham gets creative feedback from Robert Popper, once Commissioning Editor for Entertainment and Comedy at Channel 4, but perhaps best-known for co-creating the Tomorrow’s World take-off Look Around You.

In his new capacity in his own sub-company within Talkback Productions, Graham is himself looking forward to the chance to nurture and encourage new talent. “At the moment I’m trying to do some work with Steve Delaney, who does Count Arthur Strong,” he can reveal. “I would be so proud and happy if I helped him make a sit-com out of that.”

Since there seem to be more funny people in pubs than there are first-rate comedy shows on TV, I ask Graham to explain the difference between being funny and writing funny. “This is something I’ve only found out through doing it,” he explains. “But writing is something that’s often misunderstood. You can be as funny as you like, but sitting down and creating characters from scratch is difficult, and putting them into storylines is difficult. It’s much harder than it seems to be. I worked with someone who thought like that. While we were collaborating, I asked him how he structured his shows. He went whaa–?”

“Like a lot of people, he thought to write a show you sit down and write, ‘INTERIOR… blah blah blah’, and then start writing dialogue. He didn’t realise that you actually need to have a plan. You have to think about it, make sure that you’re on the right track, and that all the characters will bounce off each other. You write scenes to test that out, you experiment a bit, and then finally you come up with what might be the best plot to show the characters off. Then you structure it.”

“Then at the end, there’s this long process of looking at tiny scraps of paper and notes you’ve written on your computer… all sorts of different things. And at the end of that process, you start to write ‘INT. PAROCHIAL HOUSE. DAY.’ Or whatever.”

According to Graham – dismissive of his well-publicised 2007 ranking among the world’s top 100 living geniuses – the most common mistake the tyro comedy writer makes is to go straight from concept to script. “A funny person will sit down with a couple of vague ideas, and they’ll start writing dialogue,” he suggests. “You can only get to about two pages with that type of planning before you start thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t really know how to get this character into the room.’”

Despite his strong association with the ‘Golden age’ of Brit comedy in the Nineties, Graham remains enthusiastic for the quality of current and recent comedy output, such as Peep Show and The Thick Of It, although less enamoured of another staple comedy format: “I hate the way the definition of ‘sketch-show’ seems to have changed recently, so that a sketch-show is now about four characters who are repeated every week until you want to smash their heads against a wall. It used to be that a sketch-show was about variety: different sketches and different ideas.”

If Graham were to return to the format he last dabbled with in Big Train, he’d choose a more classical approach. “It certainly wouldn’t be a character sketch-show – it would be one where every single sketch is different. More along the lines of The Two Ronnies or even Smith And Jones.”

Coming from him, you believe it would work. With only the relative failure of 1994’s Alexei Sayle comedy Paris to de-emphasise in an otherwise glittering CV, one wonders if Graham Linehan could have an idea too risky or off-beat to get commissioned these days.

“No,” he refutes. “The opposite happens; people commission me to do things, and I find that it’s actually beyond my talents. I tried to write a film based on Radio 1 disc-jockeys in the Seventies, and everyone was very enthusiastic about it. We did a good pitch. Then I sat down and found that I didn’t really know how to write it.”

Graham believes that despite appearing to be a creative powerhouse, he often comes up against the brick wall of his own inexperience. “Writing’s a very mysterious thing. Now, when I pitch, I tend to say to people, ‘This might not work, but we can give it a shot,’ rather than, ‘This is going to be the best thing you’ve ever seen in your life.’”

“But I guess the only advantage of being in my position is that I can say that, and people will still employ me,” he admits. For the outsider, the route into television writing remains as mysterious as it ever was. Despite new initiatives and schemes from Channel 4, the BBC and other broadcasters, the de-centralisation of production leaves potential talent not necessarily knowing where to begin. Whilst waiting for the annual contests to roll round and scrounging contact details and meeting-time with the ‘right’ producers, many end up hoping that a ‘high-concept’ comedy pitch might be more fruitful than a conventional one.

“Here’s the thing,” Graham contends. “The ‘high-concept’ script has a better chance in treatment form, but the low-concept one will have a better chance in script-form. I would always suggest to people that they don’t do treatments. Treatments are just cheating. Anyone can say, ‘The Heroic Five is a brilliant new comedy show’ – well, it’s not – it’s nothing yet, just a title. But if you actually sit down and write the script, and it’s flowing out, and there’s jokes and situations and the characters are alive…”

“Look at Seinfeld, the lowest concept you can imagine. Even Friends called itself Friends, whereas Seinfeld was basically the same concept - a bunch of friends hanging out, but they didn’t even go for that angle. Write the funny script; let someone else worry about how saleable it is.”

“Being funny is a surprise in itself, so innovation really isn’t that important. I think Metrosexuality - if you remember that show - would prove that. You shouldn’t write the script until you’re absolutely sure of what you’re doing. That should come at the end of the process, not at the beginning, which is a time for collecting all your ideas and notes and writing things on little pieces of card. If you hold off on writing till you can’t bear it anymore, you’ll write much faster.”

As someone who confesses to nudging a deadline in order to reach maximum creativity, Graham has particular disdain for the power that a poor first draft has to discourage writers. “Your worth as a writer is not measured by your first draft, which is just some notes that will help you write your final masterpiece. A first draft is something that should be changed unless, as sometimes happens, you accidentally write something perfect, which does happen every so often.”

This is the third time this year that I have spoken to Graham about series three of The IT Crowd, and I feel I know by now the painful desk-banging involved for him in getting each script ready, and working out problems during the rehearsal process. Might it not be less stressful to go the Ben Elton route and turn his comedy talent to novels?

“I used to write a lot of prose,” he recalls. “I used to be a journalist. But my prose muscles are a bit weak at the moment, because I haven’t been writing enough of it. Maybe that’s something for the future. It’s also a good thing to be older when you write novels – I don’t know why, but I just think there’s less chance that you’ll make an absolute arse of yourself.”

As we pause our chat for a production person to ask Graham about the casting of a walk-on part in The IT Crowd, I realise that I should let him get back to Reynholm Industries. The rehearsal week is over and it’s time for Roy, Moss and Jen to take their neuroses on the road again before studio recording in the early Autumn.

This year Noel Fielding has too many commitments to reprise his role as gentle goth vampire Richmond, but Matt Berry will be taking up the slack as the morally-challenged company head Douglas Reynholm, following a hugely popular insertion into series two.

The rewrites will continue until the last moment, even potentially impinging upon the studio recording with the audience. “Suddenly you notice that even if a scene has always read well, there’s too much dialogue before the first plot-point gets introduced, or there are three scenes where there should be two. Things like that, for some reason, don’t really present themselves until you’re actually rehearsing. Then there’s a lot of jiggery-pokery involved.”

“The actors help: sometimes they’ll say to me, ‘We don’t need to actually do this in dialogue – I can just look over at him and it’ll convey that information.’ In the final week, it’s like working with a writing partner made up of the four other actors, and it’s just a pleasure, really.”

Though tight-lipped about storylines in The IT Crowd 3.0, Graham admits that even if the characters and situations at Reynholm Industries play themselves out a little, the show might have further renewability as a comedic reflection of the rapidly changing pace of technology – which was his original vision for the series. “It became its own thing for a while, but I think it’s finally becoming what I always wanted it to be.”

Words: Nick Carson
Photography: Anastasia Taylor-Lind
Buy Issue 10 here

Cult British comedy hails from a cloistered isle where subtlety, eccentricity and surrealism can thrive. US shows may surge across the Atlantic but only a select few wriggle back against the tide; established big-hitters like The Office and Little Britain that are checked in fully-formed before being re-packaged. A Brit writer pitching a fresh idea exclusive to the US market is virtually unheard of, so what happened when Green Wing creator Victoria Pile landed Stateside?

Click to enlarge/shrink. Left/right arrows cycle through images.

“It never happened,” muses Victoria with a wry smile, when asked when she realised she was funny. Given that the four-times-Bafta-nominated creator of Green Wing and Smack the Pony started penning broadcast-worthy sketches for the Beeb while still at Uni, surely that switch must have flicked earlier than most? “I’m constantly surprised when my work is appreciated by other people,” she continues. “That sounds fake, doesn’t it? But comedy writers need a lot of stroking, and positive feedback - me more than most.”

It doesn’t sound fake. We’re sipping water in her spacious North London front room: it’s comfortable, but clearly a well-lived-in family home where this writer can squeeze in some precious keyboard time before the kids get back. She’s rented some space above a shop to use as an office, she tells me, but the decorators are still in so it’s a working-from-home job ‘til they’re done.

“I get fearful of expectation,” Victoria’s prepared to admit. “I prefer to do a low-profile project and see if it makes a ripple than go out all-guns-blazing. I’ve always abhorred publicity: I don’t like people seeing stuff until it has to be seen.”

So it was an intriguing career curveball, following Emmy and Bafta-winning hits and mounting public anticipation for the next, to plunge into a notoriously competitive overseas market and produce a pilot, set in a US police precinct, rather than risk dropping the bat in Britain.

“America lured me, partly because I didn’t have to recreate something else immediately here: I went to avoid the second-album syndrome,” she goes on. But far from burying her head in the sand, she’d buried her head in a goldfish bowl. “Over there you’re exposed so completely; you can’t just say, ‘Let me do it, and then you can have a look.’ Every step of the way, you’re naked.”

Dismantling the tight-knit Green Wing team in 2006 - cast and crew largely handpicked by Victoria herself - felt “like breaking up a family unit,” she admits: “A lot of the cast spent more time with us than with their own families, and that was the hard act to follow, not whether we’d do something funny again.”

Of course, ‘funny’ - more than perhaps any other creative goal - couldn’t be more subjective. “I struggle, because people say I have a slightly perverse view; an unusual take on things. I never understood that. I always assume I represent a large number of similarly minded people; it’s just how I see the world. You can’t choose how to approach something comedically; well I can’t, anyway,” she goes on. “Vogues change, and when I started out I was very much into the style of comedy that I’ve since developed, and other people weren’t. Now we’ve gone about-face and there’s more trend for big studio-based comedies. But I’ll always go for what I instinctively find funny.”

But protestation aside, it was for idiosyncrasy rather than conformity that Victoria’s agent and manager, who had existing positive relationships with US networks, “hoiked” her across the Atlantic. “Now, I’m not a ‘networks’ person,” she begins, settling back into her chair: “I prefer HBO and cable; they tend to be more off-centre.” It’s already clear that this will be no pleasant fiction where a saucer-eyed Brit skips through bountiful fields of cotton candy.

“I don’t want to slag America off,” she’s keen to stress. For while it’s tempting to snuggle you down with a dustbin-sized vat of popcorn and sensationalise this cautionary tale like a gravelly-voiced Hollywood trailer, the simple truth is that the studio-driven US market is an acquired taste for a British writer. Especially one whose devoted creative control at the helm of her own complex shows have attracted monikers like “visionary” and “genius” from cast-member Tamsin Grieg and fellow Green Wing writer Fay Rusling respectively.

“You have to be prepared to have a lot of top-down input,” is her delicately democratic way of putting it. The fact that American networks can pay extremely well is no secret, and Victoria draws attention to various fellow writers who have sustained a healthy trade contributing scripts to other shows. Suffice to say that getting a fresh one off the ground is somewhat different.

“There’s a certain hypocrisy in saying, ‘We want you because you do something different; we love your work; we understand your process and we want you to do it over here,’ when that’s the very thing that they cannot let happen,” she declares, frowning slightly as a shadow of that past frustration crosses her face. “They crush it, and crush it, and crush it, and crush it, and you end up with something that’s neither my choice nor their choice.”

“I was treated fantastically well, with a lot of respect, and actually given a lot of freedom according to other sources,” she reflects; perhaps proof positive that incompatible personalities and working practices were at least partly responsible. “It was a strangely enlightening experience. We did do a pilot; I’m going out there to pitch something else, and I’m trying to do co-productions at the moment. But the things you hear are absolutely jaw-dropping: until you’re immersed in it, you don’t quite believe it’s possible.”

“I spent most of the time either in hysterics with laughter, or in tears with disbelief at how they conduct themselves. Considering that it’s the epicentre of the entertainment industry, I was horrified at the outmoded, archaic, hierarchical, creative-crushing things that went on.”

By way of example, Victoria recollects a memo that was passed her way encouraging producers to perpetuate the influx of British talent, but not to sign any deals: “It recommended reinventing the format with your homegrown crew,” she explains. “Rip the idea off, in other words. It was an article in an American publication. They’re not embarrassed about it: ‘We don’t need to buy the formats; we’ll just do it ourselves.’ It makes you slightly fearful of sending things ad-hoc as a writer. As an actor there are some brilliant people there; lovely casting directors; in fact everyone’s brilliant apart from the system.”

And what a vast system it is. The same year that she was in the midst of it all, the network commissioned eighty scripts - a quarter of which were produced as pilots. Three went to series, and all three of them were pulled. “There was not one success out of the whole season’s production,” laments Victoria. “What I didn’t realise was that there’s a rush of British actors coming out every year to do the pilot season: if you get picked up, you’re made forever.”

“I fought tooth-and-nail to get Stephen Mangan out there, but we were also forced to have two ‘named’ stars from their stable - Jason Alexander [Seinfeld], who’s fantastic but wasn’t right for the part, and Orlando Jones [one of the original cast members of Mad magazine's late-night sketch series MADtv], who again is a tremendously talented comedian, playing completely the wrong part.”

Half-an-hour in, and Victoria has already demonstrated pretty transparently how involved she expects to be when getting a comedy show off the ground, and it’s similarly clear that this approach won’t transplant well to US soil. But there isn’t a flicker of a toy-throwing tantrum in her voice: frustration, yes, but she’s not precious for the sake of it. Her talent’s rooted in a more temperate climate, where tight creative control happens to be what she’s very, very good at - and taking that away can mean letting a project sway off course.

My timely reminder that, for her seminal creation Green Wing, she’s credited as creator, producer, casting director, script editor, film editor and writer - albeit one of several in many cases - is met with a mixture of a smile and a wince. “I didn’t choose those titles,” she points out, “but as a description of the job description then yes, it’s accurate. You need somebody trying to achieve what they want, or don’t know they want. Quite often all I know is what I don’t want.”

It may take a couple of seconds to unpick the sentence, but it does make sense. And for commissioners, collaborators and cast alike, it boils down to putting your trust implicitly in someone else’s creative vision.

“You have to have quite a loyal and tolerant group of people to contribute to something blindly,” she agrees. “But as a ‘tame’ writer you’re exempt from some of the difficult decisions that rack us all. You’re in a childlike state: write as freely as you like, and we’ll take the best bits. All the writers on Green Wing had careers in their own right, but as a unit we were like a different writer.”

Her confession that she once associated each member of the team with a body part - the kidney, the little finger and so-on - prompts the obvious question: which was she? “It depends who you ask,” she smiles darkly. “Probably the stick up the arse. Although the real answer, of course, is the c-word.” Whether this refers to gestating and giving birth to her precious creative baby, or something infinitely more self-deprecating, we both decide to leave hanging.

A likely byproduct of building a tried-and-trusted team of bodily organs is that you’ll want to work with them again, and shipping Green Wing stalwart Stephen Mangan across for the pilot season is a case in point. Mark Heap, too, was penciled in from the outset, but replaced at the studio’s behest by Jason Alexander. Does she often put pen to paper to shape a character with a favoured actor already in mind?

“Since Green Wing I’ve done that… three times,” she reports after a moment’s thought. “I put Steve and Mark in all of them, in my head. But Mark didn’t get the part, and Jason wanted to do slapstick, drop his trousers and show his bum. There was a line in the script where he opens a drawer and there’s a portable vagina inside, and he wanted the prop to be made. You don’t need to see it,” she emphasises, sounding slightly exasperated as the voice of understated British comedy: verbal humour that conjures vivid mental images, rather than literally and figuratively shoving a vagina in someone’s face.

Setting aside comic preferences however, Victoria is quick to praise the talents of the lead actor that was dropped into her production from above: “Jason has incredible comic planning, hilarious timing, and knows a lot of martial arts so there were some incredible visuals,” she points out. But as she’s already made clear, it was the system, not the individuals, which crushed the project.

“They cut all those bits out, including some gorgeous nonsense with putty,” she reveals, with palpable regret that said putty-play won’t be lighting up our screens anytime soon. “He could equal Mark in many ways; in terms of physicality he was great. There’s a scene where he’s almost grooming the new boy: he comes round behind him, puts his hands round his neck and gobs on his cheek. The executives cut it out; they said it was leery and unattractive.”

Another “cracking scene” where Steve attends a lesbian meeting, shot with a gay female stand-up, survived right up until the wire: “They ripped it out the night before,” reveals Victoria, as if they’d torn the still-beating heart from her already maimed project: “They were too ashamed to take it out earlier.”

It’s revealing that when asked how the show was compromised, she recalls very specific episodes; vignettes that made her chuckle, but failed to crack a smile on the execs further up the command chain. Of course, even the pioneering hour-long format of Green Wing - with its series-long plot arcs that seemed so far removed at first glance from the self-contained skits of Smack The Pony - was built around sketches, expertly woven together as part of a wider narrative. Individual episodes are the blocks that make Victoria Pile’s comedy work, and sliding them out one by one is like a high-stakes bout of Jenga.

“You can cover more material with sketches,” she affirms. “Your territory’s wider. If you’re out to make a really comedic experience, you want the freedom to go hither and thither, to cover as much material as we do in our real lives.” She landed on a police precinct as a setting for the untitled pilot we’re discussing for much the same reasons that a hospital became the setting for her last hit show: you can find all sorts of people under one roof. Green Wing was originally intended to weave the lives of car park attendants, canteen staff and everyone else alongside the medical and admin staff, but it never quite happened that way.

“This pilot followed four detectives and their lives and loves: it wasn’t really to do with policing, but there was some procedural stuff in there because that’s what they wanted,” Victoria explains. “This body within the department is there to check up on procedures, and they’re so litigious. We developed a potentially fantastic relationship between the slightly anal character trying to catch everyone out, and normal detectives with their everyday lives. But it was the lack of interest in those peripheral things that screwed it for me: I wanted to indulge in the little idiosyncrasies of the characters; they wanted the story.”

From the off there was a lot of “slipping and sliding” and top-down adjustments, which as Victoria readily admits, was “exactly what I do, but done by someone else.” With very different sensibilities pulling in opposite directions, the chances of the comedy kernel surviving intact were slim to minimal. Pressing on, her team wrote two new blind scripts that impressed another network, and they commissioned a fresh hour-long script. Then the writers strike happened, and it all ground to a halt once more.

“Ultimately, in America all your experiences often come down to one person, and everyone’s curtailing to them,” she explains. “Over here, you cast someone and say to the broadcaster, ‘I’ve found some great talent, here’s the tape, have a look.’ Over there, you have to make a deal for two series before you can pass them. You need at least two other options, then you go to the studio - not the network - and they all perform in front of 40-odd people on stage, up against each other like gladiators. It’s The X-Factor, basically. Then if the studio executive agrees with you, you go forward to the network and do it all again.”

An observation that’s hardly worth making to a British audience - that a talented small-screen comic actor won’t necessarily take well to a live stage - is the final, forceful reminder that things are untouchably different over there. Victoria shrugs. “I’ve learnt a lot, and have less belief that they want what works here,” she concludes philosophically. “If I make a decision to do something that works there, that’s another matter.”

Following on from our finalist announcement for Radio HaHa, here are some short biogs of the chosen 9. Many thanks to all those who took the time to submit their moments of comic genius.

Daniel Jamieson
Daniel is a 17-year-old film student from Edinburgh. His submission, AJ and Finnegan, is a spoof American cop show following partners AJ, a young hot-shot rookie, and Finnegan, a gritty old-hand maverick as they fight back threats to national security while constantly arguing about it. It was created in his college’s recording studio, and Daniel directs, storylines, edits and adds sounds to each episode, while allowing actors to improvise some real comedy gold.

Jenni Armstrong
Jenni is a stand-up comedian who writes sitcoms for radio and television, and makes comedy shorts. She uses a DIY aesthetic to enhance the surreal comedy of her work, and has filmed a mini-series called Jenni Shows and Tells which can be viewed on YouTube. In May, Jenni did a comedy review in the style of this show for 4Laughs. Jenni’s submissions for Radio HaHa include Lebacuppacoffee, a mock promo for a Lebanese coffee shop, and the surreal skit The Adventures of Gok Wan.

Lauren O’Reilly
Lauren is a 22-year-old postgraduate student in scriptwriting and drama school graduate who aims to write scripts for radio. Her idea for Radio HaHa, The Race, is an inner space-style comedy skit following sperm as they compete to fertilise an egg following a drunken encounter. Lauren’s inspiration for the piece struck following a night out where Lauren found herself watching a group of drunken men dance terribly and asked herself, “You were the one that reached the egg first?”

Madeleine Brettingham
Madeleine is a radio and television comedy writer whose work has featured on several Radio 4 programmes, including Recorded for Training Purposes, Fordham and Lipson and The News Quiz. She’s interested in comedy that provides a new take on the world, and her submission, Goth Town, poses questions such as ‘What’s it like having to exude satanic majesty while you’re buying bogroll from CostCutter, or visiting your nan?’ Goth Town follows the story of a misfit brother and sister who live in a grimy townhouse near Morrisons, and their struggle to stand out in a grey world.

Richard Cray
Richard is a former radio commercial producer who, in his words, “Left the industry to get a proper job.” He’s been a regular on the London comedy circuit, produces podcasts for Comedy 365 and is co-producing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. Richard’s submission is a compilation of spoof radio ads and promos: The Dogs Must Be Carried, Top 50, and Liar News.

Nicola Depuis
After studying Radio & Theatre Production, Nicola worked as a journalist for seven years, during which time she hosted a weekly radio show. A finalist in the Galway Film Fleadh pitching competition this year, her first screenplay was recently optioned and she’s currently working on a studio assignment. Tubescent is a radio sitcom that gives a comic insight into the lives, worries and conversations of teenage friends aimlessly riding the public transport systems of their city.

Richard Kelly
Richard is a former teacher who is now focusing on a writing career. His sit-com, The Good Defenders, is a comical take on the traditional superhero story following a team of B-list heroes that protect Earth from rogue celebrities, with some hilarious consequences.

Andy Ward
A recent Keele University graduate, Andy Ward presented, produced and wrote several popular university radio shows while studying there and has recently been trying his hand at stand-up comedy. His submission, Spooky Times, is a surreal ghost story that follows a man who encounters particularly bad problems whilst attempting to prepare a barbecue, juxtaposing the presentation style and atmosphere of a serious ghost story with a comic writing style.

Stephen Yorke & Ben Harris
Stephen and Ben are a duo who write TV radio and press ads at separate advertising agencies in London. The pair recently decided to collaborate on their own comedy pieces. and came up with the idea of creating podcasts to bring their comedy to the world. Their programme, Funpot, is recorded at home on their computer and comprises 5-minute slots of the pair ‘trying to make each other laugh’ by creating comic situations and playing off one another.

As you may have noticed, over the last few months we’ve been calling for up-and-coming comics to fling their funny bits in our direction for a unique competition with E4 Radio, called Radio HaHa. The response was incredible: we had literally thousands of audio clips and scripts snippets piling into our inbox.

It took us a little while, but we have our 9 finalists. They’ll be wending their wily ways to the Edinburgh Comedy Festival next week for a day of intensive workshops, followed by a nerve-racking pitch to a panel of E4 Radio commissioners, who have pledged to match at least one of them with an independent production company to take the idea to broadcast.

So here they are:

Daniel Jamieson for his shrewd spoof of US police drama
Jenni Armstrong for her delightfully surreal Gok Wan adventures
Lauren O’Reilly for her sticky sperm sketch The Race
Nicola Depuis for teen-public-transport-com Tubescent
Madeleine Brettingham for Goth Town’s dark humour
Richard Kelly for his off-the-wall take on the superhero genre
Stephen Yorke for some witty on-air banter
Andy Ward for his dryly hilarious Spooky Times
Richard Cray for taking off local radio cliches with tongue firmly in cheek

You can also read more detailed biogs of all of the above.

More to come from the finalists: watch this space. We’ll be following the ideas through the development process in the next issue of 4Talent magazine, and they’ll even be featuring in a special episode of The Fix podcast, which launched with the first episode yesterday.

After pitching a behind-the-scenes film about the workings of Channel 4 to a panel of big wigs, Summer School placement Catherine Madden reflects on how it felt.

So you’ve worked on an idea that you feel passionate about. You know it has potential, and the thought of anyone ripping it to shreds and making you feel stupid is terrifying. But realistically, how many commissioners ever say, “Wonderful, I love everything about that idea, here’s £10k to develop it?” I went into the boardroom knowing that it wouldn’t be perfect, but prepared to learn something so that next time, I’d be better.

Each of the four ideas we were pitching was very different, but hopefully shared the following characteristics: challenging, insightful, funny, visual, intimate, and the list goes on. You’d almost think I really knew what I was talking about.

I felt confident that we’d come up with great ideas, but that’s what everyone thinks before going into a pitch. But more than anything else, this experience taught me that while there’s no such thing as the perfect idea, presenting your pitch perfectly is a good start.

I was given several tips, all of which are simple to follow. Make things as visual as possible when you describe them: a commissioner wants to visualise the story. But definitely don’t hand out paper before you start: they’ll spend their time reading that rather than paying attention to you. And to introduce your pitch, sum up your idea in one line.

But the best bit of advice was to be yourself. Commissioners are only human; they’re not waiting for you to slip up. If you’re not quite sure about a certain aspect, ask for advice. Don’t try to sound like you know what you’re talking about when you don’t: they’ll see right through you. But providing you’re passionate about the idea and you prepare well, all you can do is learn - even if you don’t get the commission.

Watch this space for updates on how the Summer School placements get on.

We’ve taken our sweet time, but we can now proudly announce our top-level judges for this year’s 4Talent Awards - our showcase of the UK’s hottest young creative talent.

Our latest scoop is legendary trance DJ Paul Oakenfold, co-creator of that notoriously infectious Big Brother theme, for the Production Music category.

Victoria Pile, creator of Green Wing and Smack the Pony, is on hand to judge your Comedy Writing skills.

Charlie Pattinson, who exec-produces multi-award-winning hit series Skins and Shameless at Company Pictures, will be casting his eye over the hotly-contested Dramatic Performance category.

Double Bafta-winning This is England producer Mark Herbert at Warp Films will rate the Directing entries, while T4’s exec producer Richard Cook at Eyeworks is hungry for new Presenting talent.

Exciting animators: get your painstakingly-crafted work on the desk of Helen Brunsdon at Aardman. And for innovative cross-platform producers: who better to see if you have what it takes than digital marketing guru James Kirkham at Holler, the agency behind the groundbreaking Skins campaign.

Not to mention senior Channel 4 commissioners across the board: Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Film4, Radio, T4, Music, New Media, 4Creative and Current Affairs.

For those in the know, these include Shane Allen, Caroline Leddy, Sarah Mulvey, Kate Vogel, Liza Marshall, Peter Carlton, Sam Steele, Debbie David, Cath Lovesey, Neil McCallum, Matt Locke, Adam Gee, Alice Tonge and Dorothy Byrne. Oh yes: we’ve been busy.

So if you’re under 30 and hungry to get your finest work under the noses of some of the best in the business, you have until 5pm on 29th August 2008.

“We are thrilled by the success of our two very British films currently in the cinemas – Mike Leigh’s charming Happy-Go-Lucky and Martin McDonagh’s irreverent In Bruges. Martin, famous for his playwriting, initially made a short film with Film4 so we were delighted to work with him on his first feature. Each year we strive for a mix of first-timers and experienced film-makers returning to Film4.

I am desperate to find a brilliant, ambitious and yet low-budget British sci-fi. It’s also really hard to find incredibly taut British thrillers that are not just aping US films – we would love to find one not set in the usual environs: perhaps an NHS hospital, or a boarding school?

Film4 is all about innovation, supporting the film-maker’s voice, coming at British stories from new perspectives, finding stories that resonate strongly with our contemporary British audience. We’ll continue to be driven by these principles, building on our already strong focus on new talent and film-makers from diverse and regional backgrounds.

We offer many of the best opportunities for new talent in the country, in terms of the films we produce – both short films (through the Cinema Extreme scheme), low-budget first features (via Warp X), and other first-time film-makers we support outside these schemes. We also run projects with new theatre writers via Paines Plough and the Traverse theatre; have a new writers’ lab for writers from diverse backgrounds with B3 Media, and back one or two projects in development from film-makers at the NFTS every year. We’ll continue to concentrate on our new talent initiatives for both directors and writers to secure our position as the home of new film talent in the UK.

There’s already an increasing awareness that British films telling contemporary British stories can work for British audiences in the cinema – look at This Is England – and it would be great to see more contemporary-set films taking risks coming from the industry as a whole. Certainly the US is more than aware of the huge talent pool in the UK film industry right now, so our job is to keep supporting new voices whilst trying to entice our successful British film-makers home now and again!”

Katherine Butler: Head of Development, Film4

“I’ve commissioned something called The Great Sperm Race, which demonstrates the science of conception using thousands of extras shot from helicopters.

C4 science is distinctive in that it’s a breeding ground for completely new forms of television. For years the science output has been groundbreaking and controversial, from Jump London to Autopsy, The Human Footprint to Animal Farm. C4 science rarely feels like a school science lesson.

The environment is very hard – it often feels too worthy – but it’s something we should tackle more than we do, and I’d love to find a C4 way of doing it. I’d also like to find a way of doing medicine.”

David Glover: Commissioning Editor, Science, Channel 4

“We’ve produced a week of programmes on Islam, including a two-hour documentary exploring the Quran and its impact on the world, and a lavish series called The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World – which takes in incredible places such as Jerusalem, Mali, Istanbul and Mecca and explores the basic beliefs of a faith we know so little about.

Our latest challenge is to get multicultural commissions that are not religious, and that can work at 9 and 10pm. The bar will be high, and the projects will have to compete with what’s already in the schedule. Look at the schedule, think about how you can compete story-wise and casting-wise and we can talk.

Channel 4 Religion is more inquisitive, more diverse, and we keep religion at the core of our output rather than try to hide it. We don’t wallow in historical nostalgia nor do we shy away from tough areas. Priest Idol, Cult of the Suicide Bomber and Make Me a Muslim sound obvious commissions when they’re a success, but were all major risks. The output has to stay in primetime or it will die in the long run: we have to market it and make it accessible. This is real risk: it’s not just the subject matter; it’s also about sending out the signal that we care enough to get behind the output.

Being in primetime makes working with new talent more difficult, but it doesn’t stop me trying. We have to be prepared to fail. We’ve given young directors a break, and Robert Beckford and Tazeen Ahmed are two on-screen successes I’ve broken on the channel – but they had to be given a chance to flourish. To anyone who thinks they’re the next talent, on or off-screen, get in touch: my door is open to any suggestions.”

Aaquil Ahmed: Commissioning Editor, Religion, Channel 4

“I have an upcoming project, codename Sam I Am [update 27/06/08]. I’m busting to tell you about it but I can’t yet; it’s necessarily under wraps. It’s a very entertaining concept and interactive experience which still manages to convey a substantial meaning – in this case about the diversity of Islamic culture, and the narrowness of most of our experience and understanding of it.

The commission I’m most proud of: The Big Art Mob. It applies new technology and media behaviours to a worthwhile public task: mapping the best of Public Art (from bronze geezers on horses to Banksys) across the UK. Interested people from all around the country and beyond (we’re big in Brazil) are photographing artworks on their mobiles and uploading them to the map, having a good online natter about arty stuff along the way. You can interact wherever you are – I’m particularly proud of the WAP (mobile) site at bigartmob.com/mobile. It’s been nominated for 3 Baftas alongside the likes of the iPlayer and Dr Who, so it’s punching above its weight in true C4 stylee.

In the way that Big Art Mob finds a worthwhile purpose for moblogging (mobile blogging) I want to find missions and purposes for other emerging interactive tools and technologies like, say, Twitter – in itself geek masturbation and possibly the end of civilisation as we know it, with a creatively conceived context perhaps something exceedingly good.

I’ve spent the last 5 years at Channel 4 exploring what public service means in a digital world – from Big Dig to Big Art Project, and one or two projects that don’t even have ‘Big’ in the title like Picture This and Empire’s Children. But Big is important: ambition, scale and impact are all vital.

Cross-platform and interactive media is what’s pumping the nads of the telly industry right now, and it’s vital to its future. All the creative and entrepreneurial energy is welling up in these areas and Channel 4 is ready for action.”

Adam Gee: Commissioning Editor, New Media Factual, Channel 4

“I’m looking for a commission for older children: drama that genuinely appeals to 11-16-year olds. This is a completely unserved audience.

Drama on C4 should continue to help define the channel as provocative, original and genre-busting. Our successful long running series – Shameless, Skins and Hollyoaks – are the perfect training ground and springboard for new talent, on and off-screen.”

Camilla Campbell: Commissioning Editor, Drama, Channel 4

“China’s Stolen Children just won a Bafta, but Undercover Mosque runs it close because of the way it fended off so many attacks on its journalism to come through as the stand-out investigation of last year.

We dare to say difficult and sometimes unfashionable things. Channel 4 is fearless in its support of investigative journalism: we’ve led on multicultural issues, for one example – Iraq is another – and have produced a body of work that has confronted some of the key issues affecting the country over the past five years.

I’m always on the look-out for stories and new areas to investigate – the bigger the subject the better – and always looking to meet new producers and journalists. Good producer-directors with a hard journalism background are hard to come by.”

Kevin Sutcliffe: Deputy Head, News & Current Affairs, Channel 4

“Channel 4 has a rich heritage in representing on-screen those voices rarely heard before on mainstream television. Spooling forward to 2008 we are renewing our commitment to reflecting the diversity and richness of modern Britain, both on and off-screen.

So what does this mean for our programming? A £2m budget will be ring-fenced for multicultural programmes at 9 and 10pm, and a dedicated Commissioning Editor will be appointed. We’ll be looking for programmes that inform, excite, surprise and examine what contemporary British society looks like. But in the same way that Coronation Street appeals beyond a working class audience from Manchester, these programmes will have universal themes that appeal to a wider audience.

Off-screen we will be expanding our existing schemes, including the Researcher Trainee Programme and Deputy Commissioning Editor attachments, and introducing exciting new initiatives to better reflect all kinds of social diversity including ethnicity, disability, nationality, regionality, age, gender and beyond.”

Ade Rawcliffe: Diversity & Talent Manager, Channel 4

“I want more disabled people on screen across all genres and channels, from Vanity Lair to Hollyoaks, Grand Designs to Shipwrecked. And more disabled talent behind the camera – via new talent strands (3MW, Comedy Lab, Coming Up) and targeted series like New Shoots (2007) which gave 12 disabled directors their first half-hour documentary credit. This year The Shooting Party brought together a group of nine disabled directors to make short films, and follows their progress as they carve out a place in the demanding world of film-making. What’s next year’s challenge?”

Alison Walsh: Editorial Manager, Disability, Channel 4

“Routes is our first ARG, or Alternate Reality Game. It’s ambitious, and we’re going to make something wonderful that captures the imagination of our audience, taking them on a huge treasure hunt via themes like medical ethics, junk science and genetics.

Our educational messages are often covert, and exist within wonderfully entertaining products that engage our audience in their spaces – social networks, games, on the web and on phones. What the British public think of education programming in relation to our public service responsibility is important, but the benefit that young people gain from our commissions is much more valuable. That should be how we measure our successes.”

Jo Roach: Commissioning Editor, Education, Channel 4

“I’m excited about everything – we’re trying so many experiments this year. But to pick a few, The Insiders is an online comedy about the world of work; YearDot is a huge, innovative experiment to follow a group of teens for a year across various media; Phantasmagoria is a collection of widgets for social networks and Slabovia.tv just makes me laugh out loud.

The key topic for me is transitions. We’re focused on the transitions that 14 to 19-year-olds go through, how they find the information and the people who help them through this critical time in their lives. When you start talking to teens, you realise how many really huge decisions there are to make – about work, university, your identity, your relationship with your family – when you’ve had very little real experience of life.

Making the right decisions is really down to the networks you have around you: family, friends, teachers and work colleagues. I’m very interested in how teens are using new media platforms to build these networks, and how these networks influence the decisions they make about their lives.

At C4 we’re all about getting you to ask questions about your life, whereas the BBC is more about giving you the ‘answers’. The BBC is homogeneous – it tries to talk with the same ‘voice’ in all its programming. C4 is really just a collection of voices, a lot of which can be very contradictory at times, and this isn’t a problem. We show people different ways of looking at the world around them, and challenge their assumptions and prejudices. I’m interested in getting people to ask questions and participate, rather than just presenting ‘knowledge’ in a didactic way.

The barriers for new creative talent to get their projects out there aren’t the same as they were in 1982, but there are still some big problems to sort out. If anything, its a more level playing field in cross-platform commissioning, as it’s much newer – you’re not pitching against a grizzled industry veteran as you would be in, say, docs or features. If you understand what people are doing online, and think you’ve got an idea that can be a real success, then you’ve got as much chance of getting commissioned as anyone.”

Matt Locke: Commissioning Editor, Education, Channel 4

“Many of the most familiar faces on TV got their break on Channel 4. I’m really looking forward to the return of The Charlotte Church Show this summer: Charlotte has proved herself to be a TV natural, with the rare talent of being able to turn her hand to comedy, presenting, interviewing and, of course, music.

I commission all types of entertainment, from star-studded studio shows to high-concept reality shows. Nothing is ruled in or out: it’s about the originality of the idea and the talent (on and off-screen) behind it. Other channels would certainly regard many of our shows as too risky from a commercial point of view – new sitcom in particular is very expensive and rarely pays its way in terms of viewing figures.

But we’re also after shows that might be considered too risky because of their irreverent, edgy and occasionally shocking content. Overall we’re aiming to make television that feels distinctive, young and talked-about.”

Andy Auerbach: Commissioning Editor, Entertainment, Channel 4

“We’ve started filming on a new thriller written by Charlie Brooker, which is unlike anything that’s been done before. Can’t say too much, but it’s really original with an amazing cast.

We need a healthy varied mix of ideas all the time, so are open to anything that’s different to what we’ve already got. Besides sitcom, most other ideas are usually quite talent dependent – if someone discovers an amazing new talent we can always work with them on the vehicle.

We take risks and try to find fresh new ways of making shows. Chris Morris embodies the kind of pioneering spirit of doing challenging work that other broadcasters might shy away from. Something like Fonejacker has a dynamic inventiveness that makes it feel perfect for us.

We still run Comedy Lab (6 x 30’) on C4, and now have Funny Cuts (10 x 10’) on E4 as entry-level shows for people to cut their teeth. The more opportunities we have to create stars and production talent of the future, the healthier our TV industry will be. Bring it on.”

Shane Allen: Commissioning Editor, Comedy, Channel 4

“We’ve always taken huge risks in arts, and will continue to do so with series and one-offs, commissioning new work that will last beyond the screen. I’m most excited about The Big Art Project. It’s the craziest and most ambitious project we’ve ever done, and has with it an amazing website – Big Art Mob – C4’s first real arts community online.

Over the next two years we’re going for more volume in programming, focusing on single docs: 60-minute and 90-minute. Because we’ll have more volume, I hope this will also create more opportunities to bring on new talent.”

Jan Younghusband: Commissioning Editor, Arts & Performance, C4

“I’m very excited about ideas that exploit both broadcast and online opportunities. I’m working with multiplatform company Somethin’ Else to create a really new and exciting raft of programmes for August in 3MW – a bit too secret to talk about yet. There’s also a week of films around Domestic Violence from the very talented director Ruth Carslaw.

It really tickles me when 3MW spills into the real world. I was delighted with our collaboration with the Saatchi Gallery last year: a competition called New Sensations, which launched the careers of four young graduate artists.

Part of 3MW’s charm (I hope!) is its eclecticism. It should feel diverse and ever-changing, socially relevant to a broad audience but attuned to subcultures and movements outside the mainstream. 3MWs should be provocative, filmic – and the trajectory and narrative should feel absolutely unique to those three minutes. It’s about short-cutting the 40-minute preamble and getting to the heart of a subject.

The connection between 3MW and FourDocs will continue to get stronger, and I’m continuing my commitment to commission films directly from there. In June we’ll transmit the best four films that have been uploaded in response to the theme My Family and Other Animals – and there will be another theme posted up during the summer which I hope will inspire and encourage people to make shorts.”

Kate Vogel: Editor, 3 Minute Wonder, Channel 4

“I’m very interested in a film coming from Joe Bullman. He made last year’s film The Seven Sins of England, and this time he’s going to use his innovative technique of connecting history with present tense documentary to look at the Muslims in Britain. He’s found out that over a hundred years ago there was a plot to blow up the London Underground by foreign radicals, and that obviously throws up interesting parallels.

It’s always a challenge to find new territories – or re-invent old ones – but I do feel that our documentary output should be political and angry at times. I think we should be looking at the wealth divide in Britain; we should be looking at the way in which our public institutions are now overwhelmed by demand; the way in which we’ve been seduced into becoming a nation of debtors.

I feel that while good films can be made about extraordinary individuals, the greatest power that television has is to make us think again about how ordinary lives are lived. I think the public has a hunger for real world, uncomplicated stories having been served up so much constructed television. Meet the Natives, The Seven Sins of England, The Secret Millionaire and The Doctor Who Hears Voices are all strong powerful films about the real world that use simple but exciting devices to bring life to their subject.

Channel 4 is on the way to being the place where film-makers know they’ll get encouraged to be bold and ambitious; where they might get backing for their most innovative work. I’m desperate to find more young and new voices to make our films. I’m going out of my way to use young directors on Cutting Edge, and to make sure we spot the best people making First Cuts and 3 Minute Wonders. We have a talent ladder and it’s vital it works – and the rungs reach to the top.

Meredith Chambers: Commissioning Editor, Documentaries, Channel 4

“I’m most excited about The Family – it’s big, it’s original, and it’s absolutely what Channel 4 is all about. Our docs are confident; authored; unafraid. They seldom look like your dad dancing. Will they continue to develop? They had better: or I will be in trouble.

I’m very comfortable with the idea of my department being recognised as the ‘home’ of British documentary. If we continue to come up with the best ideas, and attract the best up-and-coming talent, I see no reason why we can’t continue to punch above our weight, creatively and in terms of audience ratings.

Will we take more risks? Yes, where the subject requires it. The audience is less shockable than ever before. We need to surprise them by making programmes that inform and inspire. In an age of dull, predictable ‘me-too’ factual television, that really would be controversial.”

Simon Dickson: Deputy Head, Documentaries, Channel 4

“I have a one-off film coming up called Working Britney, where young up-and-coming comedian Buddy Dolphin (I suspect that’s not his real name) will live as a paparazzi photographer, working to get a photo of Britney Spears. As Britney faces custody battles and a drink-driving hearing, Buddy will experience the crazy LA scene that‘s worth millions. Hopefully this film will provide an intelligent and honest account of an infamous subject and her even more infamous press entourage.

I’m most proud of I’m Spasticus. Wittily entitled after an Ian Drury song (he had polio, you know), this was a little half-hour Comedy Lab – a hidden-camera stunts show starring disabled comedy actors, poking fun at the able community. Like an amputee running out of the Brighton seafront screaming ‘Shark!’ or a blind man asking a delivery woman to read out an embarrassingly pornographic letter. It was silly and fun, but more importantly it created a bit of a ripple in the comedy world, and a huge splash in the world of disability.

Non-derivative formats are a must; presenters who have opinion (and the authority to possess valid opinion); a sense of social purpose; and a dash of attitude. It’s hard to find suitable slots, but I’m committed to trying out new people in all areas. I’m always interested in presenters that don’t necessarily come from the perfectly-preened presenter’s mould, or are famous for being famous.”

Ruby Kuraishe: Editor, Factual Entertainment / E4, Channel 4

“My first two big 10pm series since I joined the channel are both exciting projects with big-name talent. One sees presenter Mark Dolan searching for extraordinary individuals like the smallest man in the world and the tallest woman in the world, in order to find out the truth behind the images of oddity. The other follows Neil Morrissey and his chef friend Richard Fox as they try to set up their own brewery. They should set a great new benchmark for the kind of tone we’re looking for in that slot.

I really need another series of 3 or 4 x 60 for 10pm for this autumn. It could be an authored journey, but I’m also interested in looking at forms we haven’t tried there for a while – perhaps a docu-soap, or even a multi-item show.

Everything we do in factual entertainment has to connect with a broad audience. It has to be wide-ranging in its appeal, but also rich in content and purpose. It has to be about something.”

Alistair Pegg: Editor, Factual Entertainment, Channel 4

“I have a series coming up called (w/t) Boys and Girls Alone. Ten boys and ten girls aged between 8 and 11 live in their own separate, adult-free villages. With increasing concerns about Cotton Wool Kids, the series creates a safe environment for them to rediscover their freedom.

Ambition and scale mark the work of this department. If I hear an idea and think, ‘I can’t imagine how we’ll be able to pull that off!’ then I immediately want to know more. I was immensely proud of Jamie’s Fowl Dinners; it was an innovative combination of entertaining event television and hard-hitting journalism.

My most pressing need right now is for another popular 9pm series. I’m interested in building formats around stories that are a marker of the current time. Grand Designs tapped into a genuinely new trend of self-build – where else are the middle classes exploring their dreams?

Over the next year we also want to launch a new generation of on-screen authors. Who are the new faces we should be considering to take on provocative stunts, immerse themselves in a world or tackle subjects with subversive wit? And what are the entertaining journeys they can follow to reveal real content and purpose?”

Dominique Walker: Commissioning Editor, Factual Entertainment, Channel 4

“I can’t discuss details, but we have a series coming up using immersive factual journeys as the backdrop for a primetime studio chat show. We’re never looking for ‘the next’ anything: ideas and approaches should be genuinely fresh.

Talent is the core of everything we do, and we’re constantly on the lookout for exciting, passionate individuals. A distinctively C4 features programme – like Embarrassing Illnesses or Supersize vs. Superskinny – isn’t afraid to tackle complex or difficult issues, generate debate and challenge viewers to re-assess their take on modern life.”

Walter Iuzzolino: Deputy Head, Features, Channel 4

“Big Chef Saves Little Chef is a new doc series in which Heston Blumenthal aims to turn around a much-loved but somewhat derided national institution. It’s a great experiment, a brilliant clash of cultures, and it’s real.

I like ideas that have purpose, but are also provocative, entertaining, audacious and subversive. I’m always on the look out for new off-camera talent, and there’s also a great need for new on-screen talent at 9pm.”

Liam Humphreys: Commissioning Editor, Features, Channel 4

Next on 4 is Channel 4’s vision for the future. Fresh talent, fresh perspectives, youth, diversity and innovation in all its forms will lead and shape the channel’s content in the years to come. So with our readers in mind, we asked those at the commissioning coalface what’s pushing their buttons in 2008.

Who we spoke to:

Liam Humphreys, Commissioning Editor, Features | Walter Iuzzolino, Deputy Head, Features | Dominique Walker, Commissioning Editor, Factual Entertainment | Alistair Pegg, Editor, Factual Entertainment | Ruby Kuraishe, Editor, Factual Entertainment, E4 | Simon Dickson, Deputy Head, Documentaries | Meredith Chambers, Commissioning Editor, Documentaries | Kate Vogel, Editor, 3 Minute Wonder | Jan Younghusband, Commissioning Editor, Arts & Performance | Shane Allen, Commissioning Editor, Comedy | Andy Auerbach, Commissioning Editor, Entertainment | Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor, Education | Jo Roach, Commissioning Editor, Education | Kevin Sutcliffe, Deputy Head, News & Current Affairs | Camilla Campbell, Commissioning Editor, Drama | Adam Gee, Commissioning Editor, New Media Factual | Aaquil Ahmed, Commissioning Editor, Religion | David Glover, Commissioning Editor, Science | Katherine Butler, Head of Development, Film4 | Ade Rawcliffe, Diversity & Talent Manager | Alison Walsh, Editorial Manager, Disability.

Browse all the responses >

Image by Tom Gaul