The Rest Is Entertainment - Fame, Fortune and Marina's New Show

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

*** BIG NEWS - The Rest Is Entertainment Live is happening at the iconic Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday 4th December! Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for a very special ticket pre-sale for members from 10am on Thursday 24th October before general tickets go on-sale 10am Friday 25th October. Expect Christmas treats, live questions... and answers, and a whole lot of fun *** As Director General Tim Davie tackles the term 'talent' at the BBC, what does it really mean and how important are the 'talent'? Marina's new show, The Franchise is out now. What goes on in the writing room, how does a show evolve from idea, to pilot, to series, and to release? Marina takes us through all the stages. There is another release around the corner, a new John le Carré novel. Written by his son Nick Harkaway Richard has had an early read and it is the very essence of all that we loved from le Carré's writing. What goes into managing the legacy of a creative catalogue, and why are some legacies successful and others less so? Recommendations: Marina: Agatha Christie's Miss Marple (ITVX) Richard: Karla's Choice (read) / Sweetpea (Sky) Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport As always we appreciate your feedback on The Rest Is Entertainment to help make the podcast better: https://forms.gle/GeDLCfbXwMSLHSUHA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osmond. Good morning slash afternoon slash evening to you Marina. Wherever you're listening. How are you Richard? Yeah I'm not bad at all.

How are you? Nice week? It was very nice. I hope you're going to update us slightly on the old Boris Johnson sales figures as a tiny little item before we begin. Well we said last week that Blair sold 92,000, Thatcher sold 120,000, that he'd had a, Johnson had had a £2 million advance. So he would need to sell probably nearer that Thatcher figure, probably 120,000.

HarperCollins thought he was going to do Prince Harry numbers and he sold 450,000 in his first week. And he sold 42,000, which is so far below any of the expectations they would have had. They have overpaid massively talking to certain booksellers. There is a lot of stock in the shops. One of the things you do, you send out a lot of stock. If you've got a book you think is going to sell a lot, you send out a lot and there are piles and piles of that book in different book shops around the country. I told you that one mega central London Waterston said to me, we sold two yesterday. I see they've

spun it as a trial. Oh, a lot of people would kill for 42,000 books, but almost impossible not to sell that many when he's had that free adverse on things and he's very, very famous. But yeah, that's the Christmas bonuses at HarperCollins gone. I mean, not that Johnson cares he's very very famous. But yeah that is that that's the Christmas bonus as HarperCollins gone. I mean not that Johnson KSC has already been given his two million and his you know money from the Daily Mail but as so often other people are being left to pick up the can there. But in better news Rivals which we spoke about last week has debuted to unbelievable reviews and has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes which is extraordinary. And that's on Disney Disney Plus as a reminder, and so many great people are involved in that,

so that's great to see it going down and they've pulled it off. But anyway, that's just updates on last week's show. Yes, sorry. It's important to do. But what are we talking about this week? We are going to talk a little bit about relatives of authors taking on their books, Sometimes Living, Sometimes Dead. Nick Harkway, John Le Carre's son,

has got a new John Le Carre novel out called Carla's Choice this week. So we're gonna talk about that, which is more prevalent than you'd think of relatives kind of taking on books. We're going to talk about the franchise, which you can watch right now on Now TV and Sky Comedy. Is it gonna be a Boris Johnson

or is it gonna be a Rivals? Well, I hope it's a Rivals. What else are we gonna talk about? We're also going to talk about the idea of talent. Tim Davie from the BBC has said he's gonna ban the word talent, that idea that on screen people have, there's a slight differentiation between them and backstage people and we're also going to touch on Liam Payne when we talk about that as well about what it is to be talent, what it is to be othered, what it is to be sort of raised up by an industry and then left behind. So we're going to talk about that. In fact, I think we will talk about that.

We will do. I mean, there's sort of, in some ways, there can be two sides of the same coin. But Tim Davey, the director general of the BBC has said he would like to ban the word talent. Talent is a way of referring to people in front of the camera. So that can be presenters and it can obviously be actors. And I should say that it is sometimes by the crew used sarcastically. My understanding, having been someone who for many many years wasn't talent and then was talent, it's always been used

sarcastically I think. And also by the talent themselves. There's very few bits of talent that would use that word unironically. But on film sets there are things like, you'll see things like catering things that say for the talent only. Obviously, if you are a completely brilliant cinematographer or, you know, or carpenter or any of the myriad roles that come together to make television or films happen, it's quite, it's slightly offensive isn't it? Those are the talented ones, the ones who are absolutely impossible and are treated like golden gods and you who are doing what you might regard as a significant

amount of the work are not talented. Once on a quiz show we had the talent stairs which were just so you don't meet contestants before you go on the show yeah there's a different staircase. Just this staircase had talent stares written on the front of it. Now, yeah, it's an interesting one, this idea of talent. As you say, Tim Davey, he's ace, not your tongue in cheek, and he has talked about this before, and he's absolutely right. But we should say that he's doing this as part of, they've got a big review into workplace culture in the wake of the Hugh Edwards situation, Jermaine Jenis, possibly what happened on Strictly, I don't know whether that forms part of its workplace review, but there are various things that have made them re-evaluate their relationship with talent.

Yes, and have they become too powerful? Are they sort of untouchable? Is there a complaints procedure against them? And losing the word talent is an interesting first step into dealing with that. I would say that from years in television that the talent act like talent, but also the big exec producers and the big company owners and stuff like that are also, they act exactly like talent. They're not called talent. They're paid a lot more than the talent. But there is this culture, this idea that talent are somehow othered.

Well, the history of the term, this is a term from the golden age of Hollywood, of like lots of these sorts of things, but it's a bit of a sop, isn't it? Calling them the talent. Stars back then were huge, whatever, but 100% it was the movie producers and the people who ran the studios who had all the power and stars were, talent were contracted players and they often couldn't do any, they had to do films that they didn't want to do and they weren't allowed to, you know, be sold to other studios. You know, I mean, I don't want to say they were indentured, but they were, they were basically looked after well, but they were in, they were slightly imprisoned by

the nature of their contracts. So calling them talent was, you know, in talent agents and all the industries that sprung up around that. But as you say, again, it wasn't them that had all the power. This was not the era of star power. Star power comes later and star power gets bigger and bigger, but it requires the studios who came up with that term to sort of lose power for them to, for star power to happen. Yeah, so the question is what use are TV presenters, okay? That'd be my first. And I'm going to talk about TV presenters rather than actors, just because it's a world I know slightly better,

but I imagine you can draw similar conclusions from it. So what use are TV presenters? Why are they treated with such kid gloves? Well, a couple of things. Firstly, being a TV presenter, actually there is a sort of ego side to it, which there isn't to other roles. So on the day of a production itself,

you are actually working very hard, you're putting yourself out there and so there is a certain amount of handling needs to be done unless you've got a presenter who just loves being on TV which is like all comedians and things like that. So there is an element to which you do have to treat on screen people slightly differently I would say. But, you know, are TV presenters indispensable would be the question and if they're not indispensable why do we treat them as if they are? Well I think there's two different types right and you get TV presenters who do other things so if you're you know Jimmy Carr for example

think whatever you like of him but he has another job which is he is a comedian and he can go out into the world and earn an absolute fortune from lots of other people. So he has an actual job. And if you're Michael McIntyre, right, has an actual job, can go out and do whatever he wants. But if you're just a TV presenter, say, and there's lots and lots of them, then you just rely on the fact that the public sort of like you.

Being a TV presenter, a normal TV presenter who doesn't have another job, is sort of like being a singer in a band who doesn't write the songs. I mean, you look nice, you've got a good voice, people like watching you on stage, but I mean, could somebody else take your place? I mean, yes, almost certainly. And you talk to most sensible TV presenters and they'll say the same thing. They'll say, well, yeah, there are other people who could do my job. That's for sure. But the world of talent is so fetishized that actually the money people are paid is way above that Talent level so listen if you want to pay pay unto whatever you want to pay them because they are doing a job No one else can do and they are bringing a huge audience to your channel. They bring huge advertising to your channel

So whatever you pay them they are earning it back But we have to accept that an awful lot of TV presenters are not like that. They're doing a great job, you know, and people love watching them and, you know, you know, as a producer, I watch them and see what they do and see how they make shows better. But they are replaceable in a way that an Anton Deck or a Michael McIntyre isn't replaceable. And I think Tim Davey understands that that level of people that have been overpaid at the BBC and they're overpaid at the BBC because they're massively overpaid at the commercial broadcasters. So the BBC you get paid an awful lot less than you would do on ITV or Channel 4, but

still the money that is being paid to television presenters, to talent is quite high. So he's got that in mind where he talks about talent, but also this idea of people being on pedestals, things like that. And we went to the World Television Society day when lots and lots of sessions with very high up people in television. And I think in the first two or three sessions, three or four sessions actually, Alex Mahon from Channel 4 was there, Tim Davey was talking, lots of proper people who really know what they're doing. They all talked about, we have to slightly stop fetishising talent and imagining they're sort of somewhere above us and putting them on a pedestal. And then

the next session was David Beckham being spoken to and the whole room went mad. Yeah, executive producer David Beckham. Yeah, exactly. But the whole place went crazy. The whole place listened to every single thing he had to say about the shows he was making. And you go, we spent the whole morning saying that we're not going to do that. And now we've just done it. But you know, because it's hard not to. There's something about people who are famous. It casts a spell on people. Yes. And even if you are indispensable, and you know, you could, there's lots of sort

of acting things where you think, well, of course they're indispensable. I was trying to think of a funny story. And, and just while you were saying that, and I remembered that Wesley Snipes, okay, when they come to do Blade Trinity, right, I guess Wesley Snipes is indispensable because he's Blade. But by this stage, he's got some problem with the director. There was a scene where you're supposed to think

that Blade is dead and he's lying on a sort of mortuary slab. And then we found out he's not dead because his eyes open. By this stage, the relationship has broken down so significantly with the director that he will not open his eyes. Yeah, but you sort of have to open those because that's the scene, you're not dead.

He won't open his eyes, he's like, do it in post. So that scene that you now see in Blade Trinity, and by the way, I beg you not to watch the whole movie. Go look up the scene. That's amazing. And this is how you hear about all the, you know, when you hear about Robert Downey Jr.'s contract to come back to Marvel and to the Avengers and to whatever, and he's going to be Dr. Doom. This is in the published things of things, concessions he's been given. He's going to have a trailer encampment. That's in the published stuff he's been given. Okay, so we know that these people are given huge things. It's quite hard when you're given all this stuff not to think nothing can be done without me. I don't have to open my eyes in this scene, which is about me opening my

eyes. Listen, the word talent is ironic and it's always been ironic and most people understand it. But there is an irony. Say you're making a quiz show. For the month beforehand you've got a huge team of people working incredibly well to put this thing together and the month after the recording you've got a group of people doing that edit. On the day actually you can't do without the host. It's one of the few things you can't do without. That host might be the 17th most talented person on that production but on the day you can't start till the host turns up whatever it is whatever the talent wants

to do everything has to stop so yeah there is this thing that talent does get you know treated with kid gloves because you've got 80 people all working all working incredibly hard all trying to turn out a product and if the talent the show pony the show is an on form then you know the show is ruined or if the show pony is annoyed or doesn't want to do it yeah and so it's like actual ponies actually which you will see they won't do the jump they won't do this yeah you've got to make you know yeah oh it's a refusal oh it's yeah yeah sitters refused won't go in the won't go in the truck yeah And so it's that weird thing of you are definitively not the most talented person on that production,

but the production cannot work without you. There's very few people actually on the day that the show cannot go on without you. And if the director is late, occasionally the vision mixer can sort of take over or you know, you bring someone else in. You'll delay, delay for various people, but actually the day is completely cancelled if the talent isn't there and as I say honestly 95% of people who appear on television absolutely get the ridiculousness of that situation Jimmy Carr I just talked about there Jimmy Carr understands that he's working with a group of people who

are incredibly talented some of whom will be more talented than him. Absolutely gets it, gets what his thing is, which is I'm going to turn up put on a show, I'll do it properly, but understands that he's part of a huge team and that is almost all talent. Any show, you know, I was a producer for many many many years and the most talented people I've seen in my entire career have not been on screen. They've been in writers rooms, they've been in production offices, there's a huge amount of talented people out there and it's their show. Ant and Dec are such a good example of this. Ant and Dec happen to be brilliant producers as well, brilliant ideas people.

They also understand that they need to surround themselves with talented people and they understand the value of those people, if they're writers or producers or whatever they are, and that's the way to be talent. Be brilliant, be indispensable, which is what they are, but also understand that other people are brilliant and indispensable. So that's the perfect way to do it. Hue Ed was, and what happens around that and other names, of course, we know have been in that realm is the exact opposite, which is you are completely dispensable, which by the way is probably why the ego does go through the roof, because you probably go home and you know someone else could do your job. And the talent are not the captain of the

ship, the talent are the band. And first on that lifeboat, should I dare I say, in many people's experience. Yeah exactly, listen, certainly the first car that arrives at the end of the day is for the talent. And I said before with with talent, and it's an object lesson in it, talent who you're going to have trouble with think they get cars because they're special. Other bits of talent understand they get cars because someone needs to know where they are. And they don't trust them to get home by themselves and they don't trust them to arrive on time. And so they've got the driver's number, they always know where the talent is. If they're in traffic, they know it.

I don't want to talk anybody with a brush because honestly 95% of the on-screen people I've worked with are dreams and they really are they're just lovely human beings who work hard work in a team Understand the ridiculousness of their situation ask for as much money as they can get of course But that's the thing they do but the 5% of them It's a hellhole the way that they have to become enabled because you know If you do have someone who decides that you know they want special treatment you do sort of have to give them that special treatment because all the producers job is to get the show done. Otherwise it's just as we've said before on so many

things otherwise it becomes too expensive and you've got all these other people who were brilliant and not difficult hanging around who can't actually produce the show. Yeah the squeaky hinge gets the oil. But can we move then from that, I suppose, from that side of looking at talent to obviously the totally tragic story of Liam Payne who died in Buenos Aires, who fell from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last week.

And that seems to be the sort of utter, utter dark side of all of that, of having been put on this extraordinary pedestal at such a young age. And one thing, I mean, there's so many kind of very affecting and very kind of interesting things that have happened in the wake of this. There's quite a few people who've spoken about the whole idea of the X Factor, which now when you look back on it is already feeling such a sort of period piece. When I look back on the X F factor at that time, these shows that came

from nowhere and, you know, started with something like pop stars, but became the apps that you couldn't imagine Saturday night happening without two or maybe three of these sort of things happening. It was a different sort of fame. You were famous overnight by anyone who's in say, take the Spice Girls, right? They're also like a put together band, but they had a long time where no one was very interested in no matter that they were doing all sorts of nonsense, you know. This is like one Saturday you're famous and one of the former contestants on it,

Katie Waisel, said they needed press to keep the show in the news all the time and the X Factor stories were the front of the papers every single day and I mean there were some really sort of terrible things excavated about Katie Vesel's family. And it was really, you know, this is sort of terrible things for someone who's really young and just wants to be a singer and cares about music. Also, let's not forget the people in the auditions even who were bad at singing. And suddenly you're becoming a sort of brief celebrity and there's millions of

sort of journalists on your doorstep because, you know, you sang Flying Without Wings badly. I mean it The power in that show and all the money really was Simon Cowles Okay, he made a huge amount of money people another thing that people don't realize with you know Yes, you're the talent and yes the cars and they were making lots of money But you have to work if you're in one of those bands people don't understand the work level They're like, oh they're in one of those bands, people don't understand the work level, they're like, oh, they're famous. In those boy bands, they work every single day of every week and every week of every year.

And it's like, oh, you're too tired to go on in soul or whatever it is. Don't worry, we've got somebody who can give you a shot for that. And they are talent, but they are sort of being pushed out there as the moneymaker. Now, after Liam Payne's death, Sharon Osborne said, you know, we all failed you, we let you down. She said she eventually didn't find it quite difficult being involved in, and maybe she sensed something on the wind that the X factor, there was something so brutal about turning people into stars. As I say, overnight, they have not had to do anything. And then suddenly they're an overnight star and they are going to get spat out and they might get dropped by Simon Cowell's

record company in six months. And maybe that's, you know, some of the winners that happened to. they might get dropped by Simon Cowell's record company in six months. And maybe that's, you know, some of the winners that happened to the other side of that fame is that you, it is the level of isolation of that. I thought it was really terrible reading the opinions of, and I can see no reason these weren't their opinions of Liam Payne's family saying that if he hadn't been a celebrity, then they would have called an ambulance in that hotel. And that I found just so utterly and probably true. Yeah, I think it is true. That's the enabling thing, which is, you know, whatever the talent

is going through, you sort of, you just let them go a step further and a step further. You know, you're absolutely right about the boy band and girl band industry. And you know, I think comes from a history of those bands historically being very short lived. And so you absolutely squeeze as much as you can out of them. And you know, I see that, you know, my brother was in a Britpop band, so he's in Swade and the one thing I absolutely saw there is absolutely zero duty of care of the record industry. They find the new thing, they promote the new thing, they spend an absolute fortune, the image is good, the noise is good, the sound is good, they spend a load of money

on it, but there is absolutely nobody looking after those people. And listen, boohoo, you're famous, you've done incredibly well, who needs looking after? Everyone needs looking after. Yeah, the children. Is the truth, exactly that. Young people and the people making more money

are older people. And they're older people who have seen this story before a number of times and know how it can go wrong. It's not go crazy for a lot of people, you know, being in a boy band, a girl band, being in a Brit pop band, being a TV presenter, great, it works great. But there's always going to be casualties and there's going to be a significant amount of casualties and the people who are in charge of it know there are because they've seen it again and again and again. So Bruce Springsteen saying it this weekend about Liam Payne

saying well you know my industry this is it's it just puts a sort of remorseless burden on people and they just disproportionately high level of people to whom things like this happen. By the way bits of the industry and bits of the record company I know do good work with people but it is not enough because it keeps happening happens time after time after time. We started by talking about Tim Davy and this idea of not going to call people talent and this is what he means in a way, is if you start calling people something, you other them and the second you start othering them, you cannot deal with them as a normal human being.

None of it's good and you know, we also talked last week about the paparazzi and saying has it got worse, has it got better? Well, the fact that the TMZ published pictures, partial pictures of Liam Payne's body, yeah, they took them down because they can now see the backlash because social media makes it so much easier to see the backlash. And those pictures now obviously exist forever because once they're up, they're up. And we talked about nothing having changed really. And the whole story of this is that nothing really has changed. What is to be done? I would say that I think most people understand it already is you know

human beings are human beings and you know however much you think you know them, however much you might envy what they have and what they're doing to remember all times that you know people's mental health is their own mental health and you know fans to understand that people are real human beings which I think fans by and large are pretty good at the Liam Payne stuff where the fans are stopping the media taking photos of the dad and stuff like that I thought was very moving because they understood the situation in a way that no one else seemed to understand it so you know that's our role in it but also to those industries and to you know Instagram to TikTok to

all the record companies to all the TV executives all of that stuff there is a duty of care you know there really is we've seen the story too many times now it just goes on and on and on and on I don't want to be talking about this with somebody else in a year's time but I suspect we will be. Right shall we take a break now? Let's. Welcome back everybody. Can we do a quick advert of our own Marina? I'm quite excited about this one. Do you know what? I don't know if people often use the word ill-advisedly but we have ill-advisedly agreed to do a live show, have we not, for Christmas? It's festive. It is festive.

And it will be super festive, yes. Yeah. It is on the 4th of December at the Royal Albert Hall, the Rest is Entertainment Live. Get us. Yeah, get us. Tickets will be on sale this Thursday, so we'll push it again in the question and answer edition. So to members on Thursday and to everyone else on Friday, listen, I imagine there'll

be some tickets left after the members have had their fill, don't worry about that. So Thursday tickets for members of the wrestlers entertainment club and then Friday for everybody else. Can you believe it? I actually told one of my children this and he said, I would like to, unfortunately it's my extra homework club that night. Extra homework. So if you would like to see a show that the critics are already calling less exciting than Extra Homework Club, do we have the show for you?

So the Royal Outer Hall, you can get the tickets from there and we'll go to therestisentertainment.com as I say. Members, thank you for signing up by the way, lots of people, you can get special access. But yeah, we'll be doing all sorts of Christmassy things, we'll be finding out the greatest Christmas song of all time, we'll be taking questions from the audience, there might be a few celebrity guest questioners as well. There'll be all sorts going on. It's going to be a huge amount of fun. Both of us immediately went no and then our respective partners both said, are you mad? It's Christmas, it's going to be amazing.

You love Christmas. Yeah, exactly. It'll be a Christmas extravaganza. Fourth of December at the Royal Albert Hall. Come on. And listen, for anyone saying, are you going to come up to Scotland? Are you going to come to Manchester? If this goes well, yeah. And if this goes badly, no, we will not. So listen, if you hear us next year announcing a tour, it's because this went well. And if you never hear anything more about it, you go, oh, that must have gone well, mustn't it? The Albert Hall thing. Sorry, I'm just looking up the word hubris on my phone. Oh, but listen, you've got to have a go, haven't you? It's Christmas. Yeah. And it will be a laugh and there'll be lots of stupidity.

I think we're going to exchange gifts and all sorts of things, aren't we? Oh, I've already got you something. I've already got you something, which I think listeners to the podcast are going to like very much. Listen, if you want to come we would absolutely love to see you there. We try to keep tickets prices as low as we can as well. We will see you there or more likely not see you there but very much your choice. Right, let's pull out of this. Onwards. Yes, can I talk to you about the franchise? So the show, anyone who's listened to the

podcast for a long time would know this is a show you've been Working on it started last night the franchise on now TV so people can see I think the first three episodes Oh sky comedy or sky comedy now So just what I wanted to do in the same way that I when I talked about my book release Week and and that you know the machinations of how that happens Can I suggest a series of questions about how a television show gets made? Tell me then about the first time you had heard about the franchise and how they hooked you in and what it was that you were employed to do, if that makes sense. Well, this thing is quite interesting because it had been around in the ether for a while.

Sam and the film director thought he wanted to pitch some ideas to Armando Iannucci. They thought, we must have lunch. They had a really fun lunch. And Sam says, oh, you know, I pitched him loads of ideas. I don't think he liked any of of them so I just told him a load of really hilarious stories about working on the Bond movies. So if you're like an indie director and you're suddenly pushed into this massive studio machine and kind of crazy directing you're here and then someone's

directing second unit and showing you all on an iPad and it's just this kind of pure chaos all the time and Amanda at the end of lunch said no now I think there's a show in that and obviously because Marvel had become this kind of huge In some ways the premier kind of cultural product of our time as a base a defining one But lots of different sets of writers had sort of had to go with it all via HBO Doing a sort of a takeoff yeah behind the scenes on scenes in the Marvel Universe or a superhero movie. Behind the scenes of superhero movies and they've done it all sorts of different ways and it hadn't sort of got anywhere. And then John Brown, who's utterly brilliant, who is the show writer on this, he is just amazing and if he hears this he'll be so mortified.

He wrote on Succession. He wrote on Succession, he had his own show called Dead Pixels, he was like one of the top writers on Succession, he's very, very brilliant. He should call himself John Q Brown. Yes. Just something like that, just to be a bit more peacocky. Yeah. Don't you think? He is not someone who wishes to push himself forward, but he's totally brilliant. And then he took it on and... So Armando and Sam would have looked for writers for this thing. So Armando and Sam are not going to write this. So Armando obviously has, you know, can sell shows.

He has an amazing reputation, he's an incredible producer. Sam, obviously, almost without equal. And directed the first episode. He has ended up directing the first episode of, and that sort of sets the visual tone and the visual language of all of it. And is, you know, obviously sort of hugely significant in terms of how it looks going forward.

So the two of them get excited about an idea. Yeah. John makes it happen. At which point someone has to write it. So, you know, they go out and Armando, it seemed he'd worked with John before and brought him in. And John went, yeah, this sounds like a bit of me. Yes, and he wrote the part.

And relatively early on, me and John and a guy called Keith Cushing, we always wanted to make it about the below the line people in one of these huge things. although you know actors are brilliant and funny there's something about being the sort of unsung backstage crew of all of this. Being let's say the non-talent. Being the non-talent, yeah. And although we've got Richard E. Grant and Billy Magnussen who play actors in this and do it super faultlessly I have to say.

I can imagine Richard E. Grant playing an actor well. He plays an actor very well. I mean, it takes so long, as you know, to make television. Television takes a bloody long time. So in order to get a pilot, you go and so they went into... We did a table read for this and all the HBO executives came over and at the end of that, they said, okay, let's go for a writer's room. Now God bless America because we ended up having a 22-week-wide writer's room which is quite expensive. So you've done a table read so HBO, they know it's John who's just done Succession for them, they know it's Sam, they know it's Armando, so for them you know there's a lot going on. And they have the table read and you can see how it goes in that and you think okay there's something here this is going to work but... So is that the

point they commissioned a series or is the writers room writing a series or is they just saying we'll pay for some scripts? The writers room is technically always writing a pilot but then you hope that they would immediately commission the rest of the series off the back of that. This one was slightly complicated by the fact that there was a writer's strike in the middle of it and the one thing that doesn't happen in a writers room is you don't write any of the show. The writers room is the best fun in the whole of it. And the one thing that doesn't happen in a writer's room is you don't write any of the show. The writer's room is the best fun in the whole world. I mean, I remember talking to Georgia Pritchett from Succession. She said, you say,

Oh God, at the end of the room, it had been so much fun. You think, Oh, we've got to go and write it now. Because you had such a brilliant time. And you write on the walls. John writes things all over the walls. And it was ideas, character stuff, beats of stories. Yes. And eventually you get it down into episodes which by the way are still always in flux and change even during the shooting thereof. It's funny I mean the way that you get these things, I mean John I think really liked what Jesse did on Succession and we'd always say in the morning, what did everyone do

last night? And it's fine if you just watched a lot of reality TV which is what a huge, by the way, huge amount number of writers are obsessed with. Yeah, they were all obsessed with like perfect match. Love is blind. I mean, I mean, I talked to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and she's like, have you seen the next bit of, you know, married at first sight? And I was like, I think they watched like in extremist forms of human interaction. John also has this unbelievable memory. He can remember the, a single look that someone gave someone in a Metallica documentary he saw 10 years ago and what was funny about it and he's got like the Sherlock Holmes memory palace but of funny anecdotes and whereas me and Tony Roach is one of the other

writers we say well I can't remember anything I mean I can't remember I can't remember things I'm yesterday. I can't remember the plot of anything. Not remotely anyway John can remember everything but it's funny you get to the end of the day and you've been trying to get through, like work out. How many people are in this room, by the way? There are seven writers and a writer's assistant and at some point a script editor. Then you get through and you do the business of the day and by the end of the day, when you're trying to work out

what might actually happen in this episode, it's amazing how often something, the conversation that was sparked by the thing that you did last night, the strange look in the Metallica documentary, can be the sort of thing that makes you think, oh, I know what we could do here. This could be quite fun. That's one of the things that I found really striking that there's such a value. And also you develop very close friendships in lots of ways because you're sharing all your happy stories, but mostly your sad and embarrassing stories, let's be honest, because they're funnier. And so you

have this highly accelerated sort of friendships and relationships with people in some ways because I mean, how many of us spend like eight hours a day with any of our friends these days? It's like being at school. Yeah, it's like being at school. That's a very, very good way of putting it. And is there, what's the culture like in terms of, because presumably all day all day it's ideas as well, whether it's you saying oh I have an idea or if you're saying oh this thing happened to me knowing there's the kernel of an idea, how supportive is that atmosphere, what's the key to getting creative people to be more than the sum of its parts? Well definitely

that all has all come from John, he's brilliant, made everyone feel that they could say things and you know the thing you say most often is okay not this but but something like this. People are always saying okay not this but this is stupid but a bit like this and then also every time I've been in that room as well sometimes even when you've got something you think is the right thing you go look not this but something like this and they say the thing and people go do you know what but maybe actually actually that. But maybe that, yeah. Oh, I didn't, oh, okay. I thought of that. Yeah. Obviously, everyone just spends a huge amount of time apologizing for what they're about

to say, which is quite, even though we had two Americans and the British way is of course to... It infected them eventually. Yeah, eventually, you know, we can bring them down to our end of empire level. You're writing live on the set all the time. Everyone is always, shows like that, certainly, you know, and that's always been a way with Armando shows. Certain words that, I mean, Tony Roach, who is Britain's funniest man and will be so mortified if you heard that. Also does succession.

Yeah, also does succession. Does everything. Tony's light works on all the greatest shows, you know, V, the thick of it, Fresh Meat. I mean, he's brilliant. But when he came up with the word Omnishambles, which became like one of the words of the year for the Oxford English Dictionary in the thick of it, randomly just one morning was having to sort of change a scene in what we call the sides of the pages and just sort of thought, oh, I can't really add to this brilliant scene by Simon Blackwell. But still Malcolm Tucker can just say you're an omni shambles, but not expecting it. And then it just sort of caught fire. I suppose it did define a times and, you know, and in fact a decade probably.

Still going. Still going, still going. But you know, once the show has been greenlit, as in all episodes have been greenlit and it's going to happen, that came after the pilot. So that's after the pilot and after you'd written the scripts or? No, although there were sort of early drafts of scripts of the first, I think, I want to say four episodes, but that could be wrong. Normally they need a pilot and an idea of where the rest of the series is going. Oh, and they have a full idea of where the rest of it's going.

And the interesting thing is, by the way, this is with everyone behind this, with Sam and Armando and John, and HBO still needs to see everything. It's not like they go, oh yeah, fine, whatever you want to do. This is a process that even the absolute top names in the business have to go through. And if the story outline is not right or the pilot is not right, it just disappears. Doesn't matter who you are. No, and it's just business.

And as I say, they spend a huge amount of money on creating these things, but at every stage, you have to sort of get over that particular hurdle or you're not going any further with the best will in the world. So when they decide to go ahead for the series then then you're writing them and all of us have an episode but also by that point all of the other heads of departments have come on board so you've got the cinematographer, you've got

wardrobe, they have to build the sets and it takes months and the production design guy is a guy called Neil Callow, he's absolutely brilliant. It's really nice coming so close up to people who are brilliant at doing that sort of a job, they will build these beautiful maquettes of the sets that you're going to be involved in. And then it's like, Oh no, you don't need the space station on the volcano that we spent like weeks. Don't worry about that. You know, you want us sort of like, you know, a desert world, you know, petrol

station or something, it doesn't matter. Then they'll just redo the whole thing. And it is extraordinary. You're constantly building the plane in midair. Then it's all being written even as it's going, and that is particularly punishing for John, who's across all of it. But certain things I've really enjoyed,

like we had a premiere of it at the London Film Festival, and you're in an audience with, and they show the first three episodes. That's so invaluable for when you're writing to hear what really people laugh at. And of course the actors bring out things that you don't even realize were jokes when you wrote them. And there are things like, there's a line

and I thought I wrote that and it never gets a laugh. You might not even expect it to because quite frankly it isn't even recognizable as a joke. But it's like, that's taught me a lesson. And then it's really nice watching all these things for the live award, which of course we don't watch TV like that, you you know like your husband might like laugh politely yeah but other than that it's so I've I really have

enjoyed all that but right to the last minute you're still editing by episode eight and doing the sound mix of it all so it is a huge task for a show to be a showrunner I think is absolutely enormous so I I think that was generally fascinating I think we watch so much incredibly episodic TV now, which is absolutely brilliant to watch. I'd be fascinated now when people hopefully would go and watch the franchise and if you understand the sort of work that the ducks legs are doing under the water, it might be an interesting thing when people watch it to kind of, you know, hopefully they get just drawn along in how brilliant and

funny it is, but having that insight into how much work goes into that and how many brilliant people are as well. And it's sort of about that as well. It's sort of about people who are working backstage and the sets were a head scrambler for me. When you turned up on the first day of the pilot, you would actually then, you know, go and get, try and get a glass of water and someone would say, yeah, that's a prop water. And so in the end, we just had to have yellow lanyards for the people who were on the prop water. And so in the end, we just had to have yellow lanyards for the people who were on the fake us.

And then the real movie people who were on the fake movie had black lanyards. And that was how you otherwise they just looked like the sort of people who would be on crew. Well, I'm very, very excited to see it. I will give you my review next week. I will be honest about it. Of course, I will.

Now, I'm very, very excited to to see it and also very excited. Well, hopefully they do another series, but hopefully excited to see what you do next as well. Well it's been such fun doing it I must say really amazing. So the franchise it's on NowTV, it's got comedy right now wow it's an advert it sort of is but people have heard so much about it over the year. Yes. I think it's yeah it's nice to get it's nice to get the proper lowdown. Shall we finish by talking about dead authors? Yes, please. All living ones. All living ones.

But you no longer write their own books. Yeah, exactly. This comes because I just finished the book Carla's Choice by Nick Harkaway. Nick Harkaway is a pseudonym, but is the son of John Le Carre, which was also a pseudonym. And Nick Harkaway has written a new George Smiley novel. And I mention it only because you would sort of think, how is that going to work? Because John Le Carre is one of the greatest novelists of our time and George Smiley is one of the most iconic characters of our time and so beautifully written. This book is unbelievably brilliant. Anyone who loves

George Smiley, anyone who loves Le Carre, I promise you you're not going to be let down by that. It feels like you're reading Le Carre. It's just beautiful from start to finish. It's pitch perfect. And he writes beautifully in the introduction to it as well, Nick Harkaway. And George Smiley, of course, people say, where do you get your characters from? Of course, George Smiley is Le Carre. It comes from the inside of Le Carre's head. And something else that comes from inside Le Carre is Nick Harkaway. So you know what, Nick, if you're listening, I'm so sorry. I did I absolutely So, you know he he has that DNA and he and he's a brilliant novelist in his own right Nick Harkaway and it's an extraordinary achievement Anyway, Carlos choice

I would really really really strongly recommend it if you're a fan of smiling and and a fan of Hikari. But it's fascinating that thing of you know authors who create characters and authors of states. So Sherlock Holmes for example. Yeah. So Sherlock Holmes, there are a lot of Sherlock Holmes adaptations out there. So we've got Sherlock which is the BBC thing. We've got the Guy Ritchie movies, the Guy Ritchie Sherlock movies. I'm a work. We had your fan. We had, you're a fan? We had Elementary, you know, the John Lee Miller, Lucy Liu thing, there's Enola Holmes. And there's also of course Sherlock and Co,

the podcast made by, I don't know if you've heard of Goldhanger Productions. No. But that updates the story to modern day London, comes out every week. So there's lots and lots of Holmes stuff out there. And do you know why that is? Arthur Conan Doyle died more than 70 years ago which

means Sherlock Holmes is in what they call the public domain which means if you want to write a Sherlock Holmes story tomorrow you can do. You do not have to pay a penny to anyone. Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha Christie died I think in 1976 so 48 years ago so you've got another 22 years before you can write a Miss Marple or Poirot movie. And so what that means is when you have an author who passes away, so that the carry thing is perfect because you've got this perfect person to carry it on. Christie you know she's got these incredibly iconic books, these incredibly iconic characters. And so who was in charge of that for 70 years and that's by and large is a family.

There's a guy now called James Britchard who's her grandson who's in charge of everything that happens through Christie. So if you're watching a BBC adaptation, I think they're doing Towards Zero at Christmas, James has signed it off. He signed off, yeah. Yeah, Netflix I think are doing The Seven Dials, Mystery and again that comes through James and, you know, as a member of the family it's incredibly important to him that her memory is understood and her characters are understood and is looked after. Sophie Hanna's done some books. Sophie Hanna's done the war-red books.

Yeah, yeah, done her own versions of, and that happens a bit, you know, and that's obviously happened with Fleming and who's another really interesting one to talk about. Exactly. Well, I mean, Christie is, I mean, having spoken to James about a number of things, he gets off, you know, he gets off of 400 things every week and he says no to almost every single one of them. And so if something comes out, as you say, like Sophie Hanna, it's cause he's really, yeah, he knows what she's doing. He really likes her. So streaming has been huge for all, I, we should say have for all these things. Cause

in the old days, they could sort of make a movie of your book and most people feel that their book has been ruined by a movie in almost all cases. But you know, once you're saying to someone, it'll be 10, one hour, it's like, all right, well, that would dignify my book better. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And Fleming, as he says, is fascinating because Bond is about to be in the public domain, I think in 2034. And weirdly Bond is already out of copyright in Canada and Japan. I mean, the whole thing is an absolute minefield. So the books, therefore, are public domain. So anything that's written in the books, you can use for yourself 70 years after Ian Fleming dies.

But lots of the stuff in the movie you can't use because the movies actually were invented after the book. So you couldn't, for example, do a story about Blofeld. Because Blofeld was not in the original books or there's a weird sort of a crinkle by Kevin McClaury who wrote the Thunderbolt script with Ian Fleming. He owns that, so you couldn't have Q, you couldn't have Spectre, that's owned by Eon, they're film people. But you could write your own brand new James Bond thing, but the second Blofeld or Q or Spectre are in there, you would be sued. It's an amazing world of artist estates that, you know, for a long time, as you say, you know, Fleming,

there's been novels written, Kingsley Amis wrote a Bond novel, William Boyd wrote a Bond novel, Charlie Higson wrote the brilliant Young Bond series, which if you've got kids who are interested in those sort of books, they're really, really worth reading. So those estates can really, really look after the legacy of the author. We should say, because it does, it can at first thought, I think, feel to people like, oh my God, nepo authors, they're cashing in, how much money is enough? Isn't estate worth a lot? But if you read interviews with people who kind of steward these big estates, and there's Curtis Brown, Becky Brown, and Nora Perkins, they have the legacy division and all of the authors are dead. If you ever read interviews with Becky

Brown, she's very interesting in talking about what it means to manage a dead author's estate. And one of the sort of analogies she made is that it's a little bit like keeping a balloon in the air. You kind of don't want them to fall from public consciousness, but you don't need to do necessarily huge kind of amounts. You're just taps here and there to kind of keep it all going. But you want it to be dynamic. And actually, interestingly, if of course it was agents who were in at the first, who realized this, when John Updike died, one of the co-executives thought, well, why does an agent want anything to do with, you know, he's dead now. And it was Andrew Wiley, the kind of New York super agent who obviously thought,

Oh no, I mean, I think there'll be quite a lot. And of course, you know, with streaming and all sorts of other things, they're going to make masses and masses of it and they'll keep making his work. And it's really worth it. But people feel a very deep responsibility to keep either their relatives work in that, you know, there's lots of cases. I mean, you know, the Mr. Men, Roger Hargreaves and Adam Hargreaves.

Yeah. They want to keep their relatives' work kind of relevant and still out there. And it's not just, it is easy to think, oh, they're just cashing in and this is a sort of... Yeah, it's tricky. So Nick Harkaway, obviously, John Le Carre is his father and Nick Harkaway is a great novelist, by the way. But, you know, he said, my dad wants his books to be remembered, wanted his books to be remembered, wanted them still to be read, wanted them still to be relevant, you know, absolutely knew that, you know, I think that Nick Harkaway had helped him with Silverview, which is the

last Carrie novel, which is also terrific. So you know, I think there's an understanding there. Listen, it's not going to happen to every single author that they have a son who can write so beautifully. So I think that's that's fortunate. But you know, Lee Child has handed over to his brother and Andrew Child and again... Yeah, that's gone very well. I mean, Frank Herbert, who wrote the June Things, the fans, I think it's fair to say the reviews of Brian Herbert's work were

mixed with everything that means on this podcast. But if it doesn't work, I think it's the highest war act. It's far easier to write your own book and fail than it is to come on and write John Le Carre. So it's much harder and in lots of ways, Nick Harkway's very successful novelist doesn't need to do it. So I think that's particularly interesting. A part of me when I was just sort of thinking about this thought, it's almost like there's a psychological thriller in there, but an exploitative relative who I could almost feel it as a novel in there that an exploitative relative who I could almost feel it as a novel itself like an exploitative relative writing a book but actually being manipulated by the prese predecessor beyond the grave. I thought that would be sort of

that's funny. But that's the sort of thing that Well, there was an issue with Harper Lee. So Harper Lee obviously did To Kill a Mockingbird and she had written Go Set a Watchman previously and had always resisted it being published and towards the end of her life and there's discussions about whether she fully understood what was happening, it was released and actually harmed her reputation, I would say. I mean, sold an insane amount of copies, but you know, wasn't great for her reputation. We need to know as a buying public that they were okay with this, I think. If you feel that someone's just turned up to do it badly or do it exploitatively,

like any estate, that is not something we want to see. And there's always authors who, you know, like Kafka, I think as well, who are always saying, they will, oh, you must burn my unpublished things. And some people just do that anyway. Emily Dickens' sister did it anyway. You know, James Joyce's nephew, I think, got rid of it. But that's the thing, I saw a great agent just saying, well, the thing is, they can say you must burn it

all they like, but they didn't burn it. No. You know, so they don't really want you to burn it. What they really want you to do is go, I'm gonna publish this anyway. And you know. Didn't Terry Pratchett get his hard drive run over by a steamroller? I think he actually did.

Yeah, I think that did occur. I'm just going to read out this thing by Nick Harkaway right in the beginning of, he writes a little intro and he's taught, if you're a Smiley fan, he says this. There will be people who love this book, whatever it is, because their attachment to George Smiley and the circus is so deep that any slight touch of his hand is enough to bring them joy. There will be others who, for the exact same reason, cannot conceive of reading it and whose hackles rise at the mention of my absurd hubris. To those people who will inevitably be given the book by well-meaning family members and who will have to pretend to be grateful through an instinctive snarl,

I can only apologise. I hope that perhaps in your bath after a particularly dismal day, you pick up the neglected volume on the basis that things can't possibly get any worse and find that the appetite arrives in the eating." And just so right from that intro you think well you love your father, you love Smiley and also all you can write. Don't forget that John LeCarré, when Alec Guinness began playing George Smiley, he was so good that he got into Le Carre's head. So you'll think that someone is sort of taking the character in their own way during the lifetime. And obviously Le Carre ends up writing further

Smiley books after that, but nonetheless was affected by someone taking his idea even in his lifetime. It's impossible for, you know, when you create something so amazing in lots of ways, it is dynamic and living in it. It lives beyond your pen or your typewriter or your computer. Yeah and Nick Harkaway writes very beautifully about that as well about Smiley as a living being and it's fascinating so I'll tell you who couldn't write a Le Carre novel, AI,

but who can is someone who deeply understands in the DNA who Le Carre is. I was asked one of the things that I wish I could have done last year. I was asked to do a Poirot short story. There's a brilliant book of Miss Marple's short stories that came out last year with loads of brilliant writers doing their own version of Marple. And with that, you can take it slightly in your own direction. And I had an idea that I'd love to do for Poirot.

I couldn't do it for timing. But again, with that, it is, I wouldn't sit down and do it, but if James Pritchard, who understands Christie, who gets it, says, would you do it? I would do it. There's something about being able to add to that stuff without taking anything away, which I think is the real dream of any extent. It's all always done out of deference. Yeah and also it doesn't need to be this brilliant, Carla's choice and it really really is. So if you like Smiley, honestly absolutely recommended. Congratulations to Nick Harkaway. Now in that sort of a recommendation in and of itself,

but any more recommendations? It's only reminded me that I'm doing this because it's so topical. The show is not topical, by the way. I've been re-watching the original Miss Marples, Agatha Christie, with, well, the Joan Hickson Miss Marples. She's totally incredible. First of all, Joan Hickson's doing that role in her 80s.

Second of all, obviously Christie, when she's writing these books, there isn't television. There's theatre is what you do, live action, and they are very theatrical. And many of the other actors are playing it like a stage play. Joan Hickson, who is in her 80s, understands instinctively what it is to be a television actress in the completely modern era. And by the way, that performance could go in something by Netflix, HBO tomorrow, right now. The other ones you think, oh, this is so manned, I'm watching some people doing the mousetrap and then I'm watching. The central performance in that is so extraordinary. It's so sort of small and subtle and quiet. I mean, she's the definitive marble for me unquestionably. And to see how modern that is now and

they're made in the mid 80s is a really great to see an individual performance that's so modern so I can recommend those I think you can see them on ITVX. Excellent and we finished watching Sweet Pea this week which I would really really recommend it's so it's really really really good they did it on Gogglebox this week and it's so good I loved watching people I bet they're gonna show that bit I bet they're going to show that bit. I bet they're going to show that bit. And another recommendation of course is our show at the Royal Albert Hall. Tickets on sale.

Stop laughing every time you say it. No, because it's going to be so funny. So I'm just laughing in advance, just imagining how funny it's going to be and how Christmasy is going to be. So tickets on sale on Thursday for members of the Restors Entertainment Club and Friday for everybody else. So go to therestorsentertainment.com for more information on that. on Thursday for members of the Rest as Entertainment Club and Friday for everybody else. So go to therestasentertainment.com

for more information on that. But listen, I mean, who knows what it'll be like, but I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. It's going to be a huge amount of fun. We've got some fun plans. Yes. Of course, if you want to be a member, ad-free bonus episodes, all that kind of stuff,

go to therestasentertainment.com and sign up. We've been asked by so many people to do the ad free thing, but then we're gonna do the bonus episodes. We will do bonus episodes. Yeah, exactly. Restsofentertainment.com. And with that, I think we will see you on Thursday. We'll see you on Thursday, everyone.

Bye.