Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Never go for double denim - with Sally Wainwright

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Jane and Fi ponder their fashion icon status and discuss the upcoming 'Spring Thor' - a term which may or may not catch on.They're joined by screenwriter Sally Wainwright, the mind behind Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack, Scott and Bailey, and Last Tango In Halifax. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Kea BrowningTimes Radio Producer: Kate LeePodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is there anything it doesn't work for, turning it off and turning it on again? Well, I think it would be dangerous to turn something on again if it blew up and that's why you turned it off. Good grief, obviously not that. Can we have just a quick bit of... I think some relationships you shouldn't turn back on again. That's also true. If they've blown up, don't turn them on again.

Or if they've just switched themselves off. We've both been following the BBC drama Better, and I've now finished and you've also finished, so we don't want to do any spoilers, but if anybody is looking for something to replace the Happy Valley sized hole in their life

you could do worse than better Get it You could do worse than better I mean you could do better than better because that would be another series of Happy Valley but It's a shame isn't it that we both got to the end of it

and both of us felt that maybe they could have left something hanging so you could have series two which would be called Better Again Even Better Even Better of course, better and better after that but they haven't done that and it's an odd ending

if you've watched it you might want to get in touch but also can I just say it's another of those dramas with some house porn in it so there are a couple of spectacular houses some very farrow and ball wall colors it's it's i do slightly despair of tv drama in the sense that i very rarely see a real house portrayed real living conditions actually displayed on screen. And what was so great about Sonia Wainwright, who's our guest today, is that I think her shows do specialise in houses that look in some way attainable and possible and real.

So the house, Catherine Kayward's kitchen, for example, you felt you might have been in a place a bit like that. Yes, and all of the houses for that series. I'm just trying to think. I know what you mean about the house porn, but quite often we're watching dramas where one of the strands of the drama is, you know, somebody's done incredibly well, but it's from nefarious money.

So they do have to have those enormous kitchen islands. But wouldn't they still have clutter? No, because someone comes in to take the clutter away. I don't buy that. I quite like this. I think you're being a bit harsh here. I think it's one of my real, as you know, I write about television for the Radio Time,

and it's one of my recurring themes that I've yet to see, with the honourable exception of some dramas, which I think are more realistic. It's like every character you see on EastEnders. You can tell they've just taken their shirt out of the wardrobe. It's ironed. It looks ridiculous. People very rarely have stains down their shirts by the end of the day, and I quite often do.

In fact, I put this shirt on this morning, Jane. I only bought it in Bulgaria, and I've already managed to get quite a lot of thick biro on it. I don't think that's going to come off. You're celebrating Bulgarian fashion today, aren't you? I am. You want to take everybody through your... Well, I'm wearing your favourite.

Just kind of, yes, my favourite. But, of course, lest we forget, you and I are worth hearing on the subject of fashion and style because this is the weekend. I mean, how anyone is going to sleep on Saturday night, I do not know. Because... So we are featured in a fashion shoot in the Sunday Times Style magazine. Say it quickly and it might

not be real. We've seen it and both of us actually just had to look away. Yeah, we just couldn't look. So listen, if you're somebody who's riddled with self-doubt, take heart from the fact that we did it, we did it, we turned itoubt, take heart from the fact that we did it. We did it.

We were asked to do it and we did it. And we did it with smiles on our faces. Yes. Fixed smiles. Slightly fixed grins. You'll see. But they were lovely people. And the clothes were gorgeous.

Well, I'm not sure. I mean, yes. No, they were. I'm just never going to go for double denim. You did. You looked a little bit... Like you might have escaped from a cult and it was kind of your first day out.

Yeah, or I might be a sort of roadie who's hit really hard times. Somebody who worked for Status Quo in the 70s but has never had a good laugh since. Anyway, look, it's all about... As long as it makes you chuckle and I think it will erode it out seek it out

on Sunday in the Sunday Times style we didn't make the cover though I know we can't say who's on the cover for reasons neither of us understand but for some reason they didn't choose us leave it with a combined age of 118

what is it now? well I'm 54 and you're 58 Leave it with a combined age of 118. What is it now? Well, I'm 54 and you're 58. So that is 112. Yeah, gosh. Why didn't they choose us? There have been quite a few features in the Times and the Sunday Times recently about older women in fashion. So I'm grateful to them for that.

Can I just say, I am an old woman. I'm not in fashion. And actually, I'm not that old. I should say my mother is 89 on Sunday. So, you know, the good news is the Garvey women, my mother's not a Garvey woman, of course, really, we just keep going. So I'm nowhere near my peak.

That strikes fear into me. I know. Can we do emails? We can, but can I just set in motion? Set in motion. Best ever tribute band names. Yes, okay. Oh, and we must honour Jim Dale,

Britain's leading meteorologist, who came on the radio show today. He has coined the name of the, if you're not listening in Britain, this won't mean a lot to you, but hopefully it will make you laugh. Britain, as you know, is very poor at dealing with any extreme weather conditions. We can only basically cope if it's sort of cloudy and about 14 Celsius and there's a possibility of rain.

And then we're at ease with ourselves. Anything, either side of that, colder, hotter, we can't cope with it at all. And next week we're expecting what everybody's calling a weather event which is uh what you want me to to name jim's name well we're we're hoping well not hoping we need to be careful here we're anticipating some snow oh yeah we're not hoping for it well no be blooming miserable we should be having spring the daffodils should be out not cut ones but you know actually in the ground and we should all be able to get daffodils should be out, not cut ones, but, you know, actually in the ground, and we should all be able to get our ankles out.

So we set Jim the task of coming up with a name because he was the man who coined Beast from the East a couple of years ago. And? Oh, the Troll from the Trondheims. Yes. And this time? This time, and he gave us this as an exclusive. But rightly, I think, believes this will be everywhere by next week. Oh, he's right.

Spring Thor. Yes, but how's Thor spelt? T-H-O-R. Yeah, you have to be slightly brainy. Well, you have to see it in print, don't you? Yes. That's what you have to see. Yes.

And then you maybe get it even less. I don't know. Look, it might catch on, it might not. But he has given it to us first. So we're grateful for that. So let's just start a tiny theme of tribute bands for the older person. So this is, I'm nicking this from a friend of mine who came up with the Grey Stripes, which are a big good band to be in.

And also Blurry, which is blur for the older viewer. I like them, Jane. Oh, we just call them the very first. Please, for once. Just a small animal news. I thank you to the, I think it was Deborah, do forgive me Deborah if I got that wrong. Deborah tweeted to say

the reason that there are hedgehogs in New Zealand is that utterly really quite irresponsible British people when they emigrated for some unknown reason took hedgehogs with them as a reminder of home and unfortunately they have become really quite ginormous in new zealand and very predatory to the natural so it's our fault most things are as ever our fault yeah now we've got some very very

long emails we probably won't be able to read out all of them but I tell you what has got people going is talking about loneliness and I'm really glad it has because I think it's one of the hardest things to admit to and one of the hardest things to cure so we just need to keep saying thank you to Olivia who started all of this off by admitting that she came back from a friend's wedding feeling right old blue about the fact that everybody else seemed to have coupled up. And that hadn't happened to her yet. And there have been some very, very good suggestions on how we might approach the singledom of particularly kind of older and middle age with a little bit more verve and a little bit more success. So this one, which I'm going to try and sub as I go along, is almost like a kind of radio presenter's test, this one.

It comes in from Eleanor, who says, my middle brother wrote in to suggest my littlest brother, currently working slash travelling in Australia, might be a potential partner for Olivia from Brisbane. And that was on yesterday's podcast or the day before? I can't remember. Anyway, Eleanor says, I hope that Olivia is feeling better after her wedding blues

and I wanted to say that I know you suggested someone from outside the family as a reference, but my younger brother really is one of the best possible people and he and Olivia and all of your listeners deserve the best possible happiness. Also, I wanted to say that actually John, the middle brother who wrote in, draw a diagram, himself is also very eligible. And if there are any female listeners in the Leeds area. Come on, Leeds.

He's just kind and wonderful and a caring and brilliant human and would be a fantastic friend or partner to many off-air listeners. or friend or partner to many off-air listeners. And on the point Richard Reeves was making, yesterday's big guest, about how society might be going backwards when it comes to male role models currently, I'd like to give a shout-out to kind men everywhere. And yes, while being a kind man is perhaps a low hurdle, as a mum to two boys, I really wish it were actually something that society at large would value much more highly.

I couldn't agree with you more, Eleanor. And actually, in a little book, what Jane and I wrote a couple of years ago now, still out there, certainly is. And if you got yourself a copy now, it would be in time for next Christmas. We do talk about this, actually, just being able to be in praise of the beta male rather than the alpha male. We discuss whether or not that would just be a great starting point. So the alpha male is just ridiculous, isn't he?

He needs to win everything. He needs to shove people out of the way. He quite often sees a woman for the value that it then gives him rather than anything that it might give her. for the value that it then gives him rather than anything that it might give her. You know, these are all just really odd things that seem to cause the world quite a lot of harm. And the beta male is often the subject of derision, and particularly in film and literature. But sometimes from women, which doesn't help.

I think from women more than men, actually. They're belittled. But those qualities of not needing to come first, not to be victorious, not to see yourself in every situation as being the person who needs to come out of it best. You know, that's that just makes families, relationships, workplaces tick on a little bit better. So your brothers sound absolutely lovely, Eleanor. And let's just start this and try and amplify it and see where we go. Lovely, Eleanor. And let's just start this and try and amplify it and see where we go. And can I mention this email too? Because this is from somebody else who just says,

Olivia's email, basically, it struck a chord. It brought back all the memories of the endless conversations with my mum about how about trying something new or join a club in the vain hope that I would happen upon my Mr. Right. I was living in France, I had a well-paid expat job and spent my days either working or taking part in some other active event or adventure. And this listener had a fantastic life, I mean, truly fantastic. Climbed Kilimanjaro, went to the Maldives, numerous other countries on foot, bicycle and boat. I had a full life and I was so lucky to have the income to have all that fun,

but it still didn't quite lead to that elusive Mr Right. As a single 30-something woman living abroad I also had my fair share of interesting situations and this is good well not good it's intriguing. The cycling club wives cornering me at the annual club meal to make sure I wasn't about to steal their husbands and the colleague's wife who phoned me to accuse me of having an affair with her husband, she clearly not looked at her husband recently as I wouldn't be going anywhere near him. I also recall the aching loneliness of Sunday afternoons in family-focused France. I must add it was also the post-Bridget Jones era of life, with smug marrieds and the checklist for the ideal Mr Darcy.

So it's quite a long email, as Fee says. So this listener, I want to check, hang on, what's happened to her? I resolved to get on with my life no matter what. I focused on just making friends when I moved to my new home, still travelling loads and all the active adventures. Also going to weddings as the single friend or cousin, sitting at the singles table or the one in the distant corner. These are all memories now as I'm 40 and I get married in six months today. Six months today, congratulations. I threw the Mr Darcy checklist in the bin and one of those

friends I focused on making when I moved into my new home became my very best friend and the man I am marrying. He isn't tall or wealthy or without baggage, but what he is, is kind. And in the end, this is me speaking, does anything else matter? No. It really doesn't. So somebody once told me, Jane, that kindness is close to wisdom or next to wisdom. And I remember thinking, oh, I'm not sure about that.

I think you can be wise, but also not necessarily kind. But the older I get, the more I think that's bang on. Yeah. Because kindness is about always thinking outside of yourself, isn't it? And wisdom is always thinking outside of yourself, isn't it? And wisdom is always thinking outside of yourself. You know, seeing things and having a good old think about them. This has really got people talking. I hope Olivia has heard some of the responses to her original email.

And I hope it's not excruciating, because sometimes, you know, you might pop an email off or put something up on Twitter, and you don't want a massive reaction. If you want to see excruciating, Olivia, check out the Sunday Times style on... Then you'll know what excruciating is like. Share in our pain.

But there are lots of very helpful suggestions and actually quite a few people on Twitter said that we should really think about that idea that was suggested yesterday with the married couples always taking a single person along. Single friend, yeah. Because there's safety in numbers there as well isn't there and the knowledge that whoever it is you're meeting uh has kind of been vetted by somebody else and that's important too because

the world of the dating app has jeopardy in it jane jeopardy there's jeopardy everywhere you look to be fair i mean i have been set up by one or two friends and I just hope they're not listening to our fair. Let's move on. We'll do dating experiences later, maybe in a live setting with only two or three people with us. That's what I'd do. I'm not going to start talking about it here. Right. Shall we do something that involves somebody else and not us? Yes, thank goodness.

Yes. Let's talk about our big name guest today, an absolute cracker. It is Sally Wainwright. So she is behind so many great TV dramas. Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack, Scott and Bailey, The Last Tango in Halifax. I cannot wait for what she does next. Do you know what it might be? Yes, I do actually. What is it?

It's The Ballad of Renegade Nell. And it's on Disney+, and it's about a feisty, good word, young sort of highwaywoman figure. In fact, a friend of mine is doing some of the styling for it. So I've got a show for the house. Excellent. She won't be listening, so I won't mention her name. Hello, Sophie. Anyway, carry on.

So we talked to Sally, obviously, about Happy Valley because it was such a water cooler drama but things that you might need to know in order for this interview to make sense she also drove a bus it was quite early on before her career really took off it was the 202 between Richmond and Hounslow in West London and we do get to that in the interview too but we asked her in the beginning if she was pleased by the reaction to the ending of Happy Valley. Yeah, I mean, it was extraordinary, the reaction. I mean, I don't do social media at all these days just because I can't be bothered.

But I do appreciate the wonderful things people were saying about it. People kept ringing me up and saying things like, oh my God, this is amazing, do you realise how fantastic this is? And I was like, yeah, that's good, yeah. But yes, yes, it does seem to have gone down very well and obviously that's very easing. You put a lot of work in and it's good to know that people appreciate it. Yeah, I mean it is relatively rare these days to have what they call, I don't

know why we call it this, because we don't use the expression normally, but water cooler television. So moments that everyone is watching, actually on terrestrial television, and loving it and having a conversation about it the morning after, anticipating it on the day of broadcast. That is relatively rare these days, isn't it? Well, yeah, because the way we watch telly is just so different now to what it was five, ten years ago. You know, the BBC made a very conscious choice to release it slowly, week by week.

And it was quite a debate, you know, it went on for quite a long time, the conversation about whether it should be done or not. And so it has to be my opinion, and I didn't really have one because, you know, I'm not a broadcaster i don't kind of know the intricacies of you know of how these things work and what the ups and downs of you know you know the pros and cons of why you would choose to do it or not to do it indeed but it was quite a big conversation that was had yeah it did seem to pay off it did seem to i think if it had gone out you know if it had been streamed straight away um you know i hope people still have appreciated it but I wonder if it would have built up quite so

I doubt if it would have built up quite so much momentum. Did you ever have any doubt in your mind about the ending with the alternative endings written? Yeah I mean it was you know I could have done anything with the ending is the truth you know it could have gone any way but i suspect that there was probably only one really good ending and hopefully that's the one we arrived at sarah and i had a long conversation because i handed the first draft in and everybody else seemed very happy with it but she wasn't we had a very long conversation about it and she she wanted to push things much further i can't i honestly can't remember the intricacies of it my memory is terrible and it's a long time ago it's it's over a year ago but my memory of it is that she just wanted to push everything a lot further than I'd pushed it

and she was right to do that you know she the great thing about actors and talking to actors about the scripts is that no one knows them as well as they do because they have to learn the lines you know it's not rocket science they know them incredibly well they know them better than I do because I don't have to learn the stuff I just have to write it well I hope I know it as well as they do at least I should say but it was interesting the process of coming up with that scenario of how he could possibly end up in her house and that they could have a very private conversation together without anyone else realizing that it was happening and it reminded me that in the first season there was a conversation about her killing him at the end of season one

you know we should beat him up on the barge. Part of the conversation then was that she murders him and got away with it. And we came back to season two knowing that she was this police officer on the beat who was a murderer and no one knew, which would have been a different kind of show altogether. It would. But is that what you're alluding to in Sarah Lancashire's desires, that she might have wanted to actually go out as a murderer um i can't remember having

that debate i know she wanted to dispatch him i i think you know for me there was a really clear kind of choice between having a pessimistic ending and an optimistic one and obviously the pessimistic one was that he murders her it just felt very wrong to go down that route i like the idea that she's going off into the sunset and she's going to be OK. I don't think the nation would have recovered if she had died, Sally, so we're all very grateful. Very grateful. I mean that.

It's been a very bad couple of years. We just couldn't have done that. Can't take that. Can we just talk a little bit about your amazing female protagonists and the fact that, I mean, it really intrigues me that men, on the whole, still don't read books by women but so many people were completely invested in this series and in other programs that you've made where women are absolutely leading the action and are more or less entirely center stage. But what do you think's going on here?

I guess it's historic and I hope it's changing. I think, I don't know, it comes down to things like, I know my mum, bless her, who's just recently died, she always talks about she'd always prefer to see a male doctor rather than a female doctor and I was like, why? And she just thought men knew what they were talking about and women didn't. You know, we're led to believe that men know what they're doing and women don't. I used to work with a detective inspector on Scott and Bailey and she was a fantastic police woman.

And she used to give talks. And she said she often came across this thing whereby if a man stood up to talk, the men in the audience would decide if they liked him based on what he was saying and whether it was interesting. And when a woman stood up to talk, they would decide first whether they liked what she looked like, and then they'd decide whether they were interested in what she was saying or not. You know, I think historically, that's been the case. I hope things are changing. I think things are slowly changing. You know, there's so much fantastic literature and drama written by women now. I mean, I don't know if things are changing. I don't know. I haven't got any facts or figures.

Neither have we. So don't worry. It doesn't hold us back, Sally. It's not a problem. It's only consolation. I tend to read novels by women and I tend not to read novels by men. I guess it's often the subject matter

is more appealing to me. I do read novels by men, but I don't consciously not read novels by men, but I just find myself reading more novels by women. And from my own personal point of view, that is often the subject matter. I'm not particularly interested in books about war and battles and espionage. And I'm more interested in the day-to-day of people's lives and the intricacy of people's lives. And I guess there's a bit of a division there between men and women.

I've just talked a right load of books, I box I'm sorry no we enjoyed every second of it we're usually the ones asking I'm on loan box my question wasn't all that helpful Sally can we go right back into your earlier life please Sally were you a good bus driver yeah I was I was really good I love driving I really like driving so when you're driving a bus, it's just such a glorious machine. It's got a Rolls-Royce engine. They're really beautiful things to drive. And I was nice to the part. I drove smoothly. You know, I didn't brake harshly. I read the road ahead and I like to think I was giving people a nice smooth ride. And occasionally you did get a nice comment from little old ladies that sometimes you get a little sweet and you cash trade and give you sweet and say that was very nice and that's why and I've

tried to be polite to the customers but there were the the downside of the job with the customers because you got a lot of abuse which I always took very personally obviously I was a bad bus driver in as much as I occasionally went off route by accident do you I'm so glad you said that because I've often traveled on London buses, obviously, and you were driving the 202, weren't you, around south-west London. Would that be right? Yeah. Is that where the 202 went? I can't remember now. I did drive the 202s, but I can't remember where they went.

So just tell me about the thing that goes through your mind when you're driving a bus where you just think, I've been sitting in traffic too long. I'm just going to take my own little kind of route? I mean, do the passengers notice? Did it give you an enormous... I mean, it's such a cheeky thing to do, isn't it, to go your own way as the driver of a bus? Well, it wasn't quite like that.

It was an accident. I didn't do it to be cheeky. I didn't think, oh, I'll slip through here. Because I'm from Yorkshire, obviously, because you can tell tell from my accent and I didn't know one end of London from the other is the truth so every new route I had to learn none of it was familiar whereas a lot of the other drivers they were actually driving along bits of you know Hounslow that they knew and I wasn't it was all brand new to me and it's you know one one bit of London is much like another so it was easy to um I think

you've got to your turn and you turned and you realize oh this is the wrong street and you can't just do a ui with a double decker you've got to find somewhere where you can turn I once had to do a 17 point turn to get out of a cul-de-sac oh oh Sally please this is I'm gonna dream about this um how long did you drive a bus for? 18 months. Right. You probably have lingered very fondly in the memory of your passengers, I would have thought, after that. I think I'm completely unmemorable as a bus driver. I went back to Hounslow Bus Garage and nobody knew who I was. That was quite exciting. And what stage in your creative career was the bus driving? So I'd finished university.

I'd taken a play to the Edinburgh Festival and I'd been a sort of unofficial writer-in-residence at the Old Leeds Playhouse for six months. Then I went down to live in London and I'd got an agent by this time from the play that I'd taken to the Edinburgh Festival, but no work. So I drove buses because I thought it would keep my brain free. So I read a lot of plays while I was a bus driver and I kept writing.

And then I got asked to do a trial script on The Archers. So I resigned as a bus driver on the strength of being offered a trial script because I was young enough to not care. I was young enough to think, I will just get some other job if this trial script doesn't work out. But I was kind of arrogant enough to think that it would.

And it did. It did work out. And I loved writing The Archers. Well, I am a massive fan of The Archers. Fee's in denial about the appeal of The Archers. Is it true, Sally, that you introduced violent crime to Ambridge? Oh, it is, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did a raid on the shop. Clive Orobin held up the village shop

and I think Debbie Aldridge and Kate Aldridge were in there at the time. Our guest today is the screenwriter, Sally Wainwright. I'd like to see you, Jane, actually. This is a little test for you. Try and get in a mention of The Archers in every big interview we do next week and see if you get very much take-up

because I know it frustrates you that you can't discuss it with me but it's just I don't listen to it. I never going to start listening to it I never did listen to it I don't know what you're talking about okay that's the that's the reaction anyway let's get on with Sally uh she also recently expressed concern about whether she was being paid equally to men of her stature if indeed there is such a thing so we asked her if she's got a way of finding out what they might be making comparatively. Well, I asked my agent, but she wouldn't tell me, obviously, because it's client confidentiality.

Could you not play higher, lower, or at least get an indication? No, she wouldn't do that. But do you think that you're not being paid the same? I don't know is the truth. I honestly don't know. I like to think that I am. Well, Sally, how does it work? I mean, you've written Happy Valley, Gentleman

Jack, Scott and Bailey. Could you really not be as well paid as a man? And as V says, there isn't really a male equivalent of you at the moment. You are the country's leading writer of TV drama. Well, you know, the people who are kind of at that level

are all doing different, you know, we've all kind of done slightly different things and I don't know that there's ever an exact equivalent. So it's difficult to quantify. And as I said, my only way of finding out is to ask my agent who represents a lot of other quite people who are doing all right at the moment. And yeah, can't get anything else about but i'll keep trying yes and keep us in touch on that one yes please do because we've still got uh we've got banners we've got braziers

they're ready to go in the cupboard uh do you find it harder or easier to capture those extraordinary pieces of realistic dialogue which I know you've said in the past, you're a great eavesdropper. And you'll write down things that you hear people say. But sometimes with success comes a bit of kind of isolation from the real world, because you can just afford not to live in the same place that you were before. So does that change at all for you? I do worry about being out of touch. Yeah, I do worry about being too reclusive. I like being reclusive. I am quite private

and you might find yourself getting out of touch and your only way of sort of keeping in touch is to watch telly and that telly isn't often real life. You know, you forget that telly isn't real life and real life is actually more interesting than that. The big thing for me is finding stories. It's never dialogue.

Dialogue is the funniest thing. I don't think I'd ever not be able to write realistic dialogue. It's more about finding stories that are of the moment, stories that reflect how people are behaving and being affected by things now. And I think you do worry that you live in quite a privileged bubble, and it's good to just keep grounders. For me, it's just chatting to friends is like the biggest source. You know, hearing little gems and snippets of things

that you couldn't invent and you could never dream of. And then having the kind of brain that just then develops it to the next level of what would happen if this, that and the other happened to this in this situation and that kind of thing. Do you visit the set? Do you get involved when your programmes are being made? Well, I direct often. The first block of Happy Valley, the recent season,

I mean, I've always directed Happy Valley. I directed episode four of the first series. I directed episodes one, two, five and six of the second season and I ended up directing the first three of this not by design it was more because the director we took on board wasn't quite delivering what we wanted so I had to step in on that I often visit the set when I'm not directing but but not during Covid obviously that wasn't possible because hardly anyone could go on the set during Covid but yeah I mean I like visiting the set and I like being involved I'm always an exec producer on my shows now because

I think you've got to be across you could've got to be across the detail, you know, and the devil's in the detail and God is in the detail. You know, things work when things really work. Well, it's because people have paid real attention to the detail. Can you just give us an example of that? When you talk about detail, what do you mean? Okay, so in the first season of Happy Valley, the director, who was very good on the whole, but there was one scene that I'd written where I'd worked really closely with a police officer on how a raid would happen it was a raid on the ice cream bar and we've put a huge amount of detail and thoughts into how this raid would happen to show that catherine was leading from the front and that she got stuck in and that even though she's in her 50s she will get her man she will chase people down And the director kind of didn't really pay attention

to those stage directions. And it appeared that Catherine, the whole raid was a bit willy-nilly, that the cars were arriving here, you know, kind of quite randomly. Catherine appeared to turn up last. And then the guy she was chasing just handily ran past her car

as she was opening the door. And it's little things like that where, you know, the average viewer isn't going to care or notice hopefully because you know it was broadly very well done i don't i don't want to be too critical but it's just an example of exactly what you've asked me so you know in my mind it was it was it was meant to be a really well planned katherine had planned this really well so that the ice cream van was completely hemmed in that i had nowhere to go instead of which the cast arrived a bit skew if and random and the ice cream van could actually have driven away so it's little things like that you know and that's a one example but and the things that go wrong when they felt

when we're filming the things you could never dream of otherwise you would try and um cover them um but you know um i remember once i was filming season two of Happy Family and it was the scene where Kevin Doyle threw himself off the railway bridge and there was a whole sequence before that. There was a car chase. I don't know if you remember. There was a car chase outside Sorby Bridge Police Station and it ended up with Kevin running up to the railway station, running along the railway line as Sarah ran after him

and they ended up on the bridge where she tried to talk him down and he threw himself off. And we were shooting that across three Sundays and we were really lucky with the weather because it was really bad every time. It really, really rained heavily across three weeks. So we were lucky with the continuity on that. There was one day when the guy the stunt guy driving the bmw crashed the gearbox on the bmw so the get the bmw that we were

doing the stunt thing with that we just wouldn't go at all and we had to wait about four hours for a replacement and i think sarah did a back in on the same day and so it's things like that go wrong all the time and you just have to deal with them and you just have to get on and you just have to think well what can we shoot at the moment with the limitations that we suddenly have had inflicted on it? Oh, sorry, Sarah did actually hurt her back while you were doing it. Sorry, I didn't get that. She hurt her back.

Got that now. Do you think it was a technical thing? I think it was a technical job. A back in. It was separately the BMW crashing. Sarah was like, but how do we stand up? But these are things, you know, something goes wrong all the time. It's like, oh, my experience of filming is

you never get a day when everything just goes exactly as planned. Or if you do, it's like, yay, that happened. Sally Wainwright, who I think it's fair to say has been responsible in the last couple of years for some of my favourite telly. I loved Last Tango in Halifax. And I think loving Happy Valley. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was such powerful television.

It wasn't always the easiest thing to watch, but it was fantastically powerful. And that scene, I think that will go down as one of the best scenes in recent contemporary TV drama just between Tommy Lee Royce and Catherine Kaywood at the end of Happy Valley. We were waiting for it when we got it and it was really satisfying.

And, yeah, I think she's absolutely brilliant, Sally. And she's very much a woman who does her own thing in her own way and lives a life according to her rules. I do really admire her, actually, for everything. Don't you think that's exactly why she is such a good dramatist? Because, actually, her dramas aren't really swayed by fashion. They stay true to, you know, universal things about people, don't they? And as you said, just about house sets and stuff like that, that's not what they're about.

They're not kind of flashy, aspirational dramas at all. There's always a brilliant, sly humour in everything she does. So Gentleman Jack, there's this sort of character of the Timothy West character, he plays Anne Lister's father, I think. And he's just, he's a brilliant actor. But I love those scenes around the breakfast table with him. I mean, there's so much brilliance about her shows and I just think she is properly fantastic.

And there's that opening scene isn't there in Happy Valley way back in season one where Catherine Kaywood goes into a local shop because there's a man threatening to set himself on fire and she buys her fire extinguisher and sunglasses and she says to him you can take yourself off to Nirvana or heaven or wherever you're going to be not taking my eyebrows with you. That's brilliant. I've paraphrased it, but that's the gag. So she was a delight to talk to and we appreciated her time.

And also, do you know what? It was really nice to talk to her when she wasn't in the kind of direct PR world before Happy Valley. It was nice that we talked to her after it had all settled a tiny bit. But it's hard, isn't it, to get hold of, let's be honest about it, most people who make themselves available for interview have got a flogging or something in the mix they want to talk about and we would never do anything

like that. It's very tawdry. It's really ghastly. What a ghastly business. It's like we wouldn't do a photo shoot just to amplify our personage at the times. So let us know your thoughts, particularly, would you ever go out in a pair of silver leather trousers?

It's a question my children will probably be asking me. Right. Have a very good weekend. Certainly we should help you through Sunday, if not the rest of it. And we'll reconvene on Monday.

Take care. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this but live, then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye.