Tag Archives: Sharon Horgan

For better or worse

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With season four of Catastrophe set to be its last, creators, writers and stars Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney reveal the secrets of the partnership that drives the hit comedy-drama both in front of and behind the camera.

In this age of partisan politics, Russian bots and fake news, Twitter wouldn’t be the first port of call for many internet users looking for a cordial interaction. Yet it was the social media platform that became the unlikely launching pad for one of the most acclaimed sitcoms of recent years when US comedian Rob Delaney struck up a conversation with Irish writer and actor Sharon Horgan via the site.

Discovering a shared comedy chemistry, the two strangers went on to create, write and star in Channel 4’s hit relationship comedy-drama Catastrophe, which returns to screens for its fourth season on the UK network tonight.

Delaney, who rose to prominence via his jokes on Twitter and was once named by Comedy Central as the platform’s funniest person, recalls the pair’s initial connection fondly: “I wrote to Sharon because she had made [BBC3 comedy] Pulling, and that was the greatest sitcom I’d ever seen, so when I saw that she followed me on Twitter, I was like ‘Wow.’ So we met, we chatted and it was really fun.”

While the idea to collaborate on a series didn’t come immediately, “we just sort of knew that we’d like to work together at some point on something,” says Horgan.

Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney came up with Catastrophe after meeting on Twitter

The rest, as they say, is history, with the duo birthing a show that centres on the inventively named Sharon and Rob, who find themselves facing parenthood after a fleeting hook-up during the latter’s business trip to London.

However, things could have turned out very differently had execs at the BBC – who must now be kicking themselves – not decided to pass on the Bafta-winning series after Horgan and Delaney wrote a pilot for the pubcaster. “We took it to the BBC, who said, ‘This is great – we don’t want to make it,’” Delaney jokes.

Asked why the BBC wasn’t keen, Horgan says: “I don’t know. They’ve been lovely about it. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing for them at the time. I can’t remember.”

“Great networks,” adds Delaney, “can obviously make horrible mistakes.”

C4 made no such error, with Catastrophe airing for three lauded seasons to date and covering topics such as sex, fidelity, divorce, depression, drugs and alcoholism as Sharon and Rob, married since season one, raise their family in middle-class London.

After season three ended with Rob facing a drink-driving arrest having relapsed into alcoholism, the new run sees him struggle to regain the trust of his wife, who finds herself having her own brush with the law. “Season four is about the struggle of staying together when there’s no other option,” Horgan explains. “They’ve both fucked up but they’re both trying to stay together.”

Season four picks up after Rob (Delaney)’s drink-driving incident

Delaney picks up: “At the end of season three, they’ve realised, ‘OK, this is our pile of garbage,’ and they both have to weave it into a tapestry and use it as a blanket. They love each other, and it’s about enduring love – and real love takes work.”

The theme of sticking together is one to which Horgan and Delaney will no doubt relate, with the duo involved in an intense working relationship as the driving force for Catastrophe both on- and off-camera.

Horgan’s behind-the-scenes involvement in the show goes further still, with her prodco Merman (Women on the Verge) coproducing along with Avalon Television and Birdbath Productions. And early last year she struck an overall deal with Amazon, which holds the rights to Catastrophe in the US. ‘Busy’ doesn’t quite cover it. “It’s a lot harder work than I thought it would be, fucking hell!” she says of running her own production company. “It’s really hard work, but it’s fun and rewarding, and it’s exciting getting work picked up.”

Discussing their writing process, the pair reveal that they speak all the characters’ lines out loud, accents included. “We do all the voices, it’s pretty great. You should hear Rob doing my mum – he doesn’t sound anything like Mrs Doubtfire,” Horgan says sarcastically.

As for how much they are like their characters, Delaney explains: “We are Sharon and Rob, but I’m as much Sharon as I am Rob, and we’re also [supporting characters] Chris and Fran, and little Jeffrey.”

“One thing we really try to do is not have anybody sound ‘clever’ or written, so we make sure to say things out loud, then transcribe, then read it out loud 100 times so it doesn’t sound like some smart, clever writer or anything like that,” he adds.

Horgan has a two-year overall deal with Amazon Studios

“That’s the difference,” says Horgan. “When you’re writing on your own, you can’t really do that, unless you’re insane. The thing with Rob is he doesn’t always know when amazing stuff is coming out of his mouth – so I just immediately start writing it down.”

Episodes come together via “really, really detailed outlines,” says Horgan, with Delaney agreeing: “We outline like crazy people, write terrible first drafts and then rewrite, rewrite and rewrite.”

Script notes from collaborators are also crucial. “We love notes,” says Horgan. “If we send in a draft of anything and we don’t get notes back, we’re immediately suspicious.”

“Yeah, like either the person is stupid or lazy,” adds Delaney.

When it comes to plot points, Horgan and Delaney admit to drawing quite heavily on real-life experiences, both their own and those of people they know, although they add that this has decreased as the show has gone on. “There are always parts of us in there,” Horgan explains. “That’s helped us – if you’ve lived it, you can be braver.”

One wonders to what extent this might apply to the show’s infamous sex scenes, which are characterised by their mixture of realism and hilarity. “I think we both wanted the sex to be like, ‘Oh Christ…,’” says Delaney, placing a hand over his face in faux embarrassment.

“We didn’t want the sex to ever look pretty,” adds Horgan. “We wanted it to look real and rank.”

And while she notes that such scenes between Rob and Sharon have become less frequent as the series has gone on, fans of sexual slapstick can rest assured that other characters carry the torch in season four, including a very public liaison involving Fran, played by the always excellent Ashley Jensen (Agatha Raisin, Extras).

Mark Bonnar and Ashley Jensen play Chris and Fran

Jensen returns to the show as part of a strong supporting cast that also includes Mark Bonnar (Unforgotten) and Daniel Lapaine (Black Mirror). But one actor who will unfortunately be missing from the show is Star Wars legend Carrie Fisher, who played Rob’s insufferable meddling mother, Mia. Best known for portraying Princess Leia in George Lucas’s original sci-fi trilogy, Fisher died at the end of 2016.

Like Horgan and Delaney’s meeting, the improbable casting of a Hollywood star came about in unconventional circumstances. “We were at an awards show for a gay magazine – the Attitude Awards,” Delaney recalls. “[Fisher] was presenting an award, and her speech was so funny that Sharon leaned over to me and said, ‘We should get her to play your mother.’ And I was like, ‘Ha ha, you’re drunk.’

“But anyway, we sent her all the scripts and the pilot, and she agreed to do it – probably because she enjoyed spending time in London,” he jokes. “She would improvise – ferociously. It was scary at first, but then we knew to prepare for it and she was just so wonderful.”

Horgan continues: “The first scene she ever did was between me and her on the phone, and we ended up just insulting each other. We just went at each other. This was the first time we’d ever met, and she definitely called me a c**t.”

She adds that Fisher’s passing will be addressed in the final episode of the new season. And with Horgan’s Amazon deal and production commitments, plus Delaney’s increasing presence in Hollywood – he recently appeared in Deadpool 2 and has been cast in the forthcoming movie about disgraced Fox News exec Roger Ailes – Horgan has revealed in an Instagram post that this will be the series’ last outing.

“We’ve been doing it for five years and we’ve made four seasons we love,” says Horgan. “We give it an ending.”

Delaney adds: “We’re very proud and we’ve made exactly what we wanted to make, for better or for worse. We’ve said what we want to say.”

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The Verge of success

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Three friends find their lives are moving backwards in Women on the Verge, a comedy-drama based on Lorna Martin’s bestselling autobiography. DQ speaks to Martin and producer Gavin O’Grady about making the six-part series for UKTV’s W and RTÉ in Ireland.

To say Women on the Verge has been a long time in the making might be something of an understatement. Executive producer Sharon Horgan admits as much.

The actor, writer and producer best known for Catastrophe had received a copy of Lorna Martin’s autobiographical book Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown but, like many parcels delivered to her home, it lay unopened for some time.

“I’m not very good at opening parcels,” Horgan says, “so it sat down by my front door for a while and then I opened the parcel and I added it to the pile of books I always keep on my bedside table.”

When she finally read it, while on holiday about a year later, she loved it and immediately partnered with the author to develop a television adaptation of the memoir, which itself is based on Martin’s magazine column Conversations With My Therapist.

L-R: Women on the Verge stars Eileen Walsh, Kerry Condon and Nina Sosanya

That was in 2011. Since then, Horgan and Martin wrote the first episode together, before Martin took on the remaining five – her first time writing for television.

“She’s such a legend,” Horgan says of Martin. “She stayed with it and stayed enthused and only wanted to walk off once or twice maybe. Once was a week before production, so that made us a bit nervous, but it was all about finding the right home for it.”

The right network proved to be UKTV’s W, with RTÉ in Ireland also partnering on the Dublin-set series that is coproduced by Horgan’s Merman and House Productions.

Equal parts funny, frank and shocking, the dark half-hour drama follows three friends struggling to survive their 30s. Laura (played by Kerry Condon), a journalist sleeping with her boss, is persuaded by Katie (Nina Sosanya) to seek professional help to deal with her many issues and begins sessions with the enigmatic Dr F (Horgan).

Meanwhile, divorced and single Katie is hoping to ‘complete’ her family without a man and have a sibling for daughter Ella through IVF treatment, while Alison (Eileen Walsh) finds herself back with her uninspiring ex-boyfriend.

Martin says it was a “lovely surprise” when she received that first email from Horgan – pre-Catastrophe, post-Pulling – enquiring about her book. She hadn’t previously considered adapting it for the screen, so happy had she been to see the back of it once it was published.

Sharon Horgan’s ‘Dr F’ plays therapist to Condon’s Laura

“It felt like there were such mixed and complicated reasons for writing it,” she explains. “It had been a dream to write a book but, once it was out there, I had mixed feelings about it – why would you put your very flawed life out there? Although there are some virtuous and altruistic reasons that you hope it will resonate and give people a laugh at the same time, it was painful and you are exploiting yourself for other people’s entertainment.”

Very quickly it became clear that the only way Glaswegian Martin could dramatise her life was to put as much distance between her and the characters as possible. That the story was moved to Dublin helped to give the show a life of its own and not have it just reflect “the mess and car crash I was” during a period of her life. “It does make it feel like it’s not a documentary,” she adds.

With Martin taking control of the remainder of the series after writing the opening episode alongside Horgan, she admits she found episode two “unbelievably difficult” to write, with no deadline or full series commission at that point. “A bit of me thought it wasn’t going to happen,” she says. “I found that really difficult – partly the fear of can I do this myself? It was just the fear of writing.”

The arrival of producer Gavin O’Grady in March this year helped Martin to focus the story, as the writer admits she had tried to be funny, apparently without much success. After submitting a draft of episode four, “Sharon called me and said, very diplomatically, ‘This needs a lot of work,’” Martin recalls. “She said to me the best advice is to stop trying to be funny and to be truthful, and that funny would come. It’s a fine line to get right.

Sosanya is Katie, a divorced woman hoping for another child through IVF treatment

“It was a big learning thing for me. I’m not a stand-up or gag writer. It was on episode four where I tried to write a sitcom and it was ripped up. A lot of it went. It just had to be believable.”

The writer describes watching the first cuts of the series as “the strangest thing I have ever seen,” a version of her life crossed with something she had written. “I cannot describe how weird that was. I had to watch it four times before I was watching a show,” she adds. “By episode three, I was getting used to it having a life of its own and not seeing it as my life.”

When O’Grady joined the production, there was no episode five or six, with only a very early draft of episode four written. Two months later, shooting was due to begin, with W announcing the series in June.

Alongside Martin, they worked out where they wanted the characters to land at the end of episode six, which meant some rewriting of earlier episodes was needed. He also jumped straight into casting, with the series requiring an ensemble of predominantly Irish actors.

With Condon based in LA, the leading trio weren’t able to test together before production ramped up. But O’Grady says all three bring different things to the series: “They look brilliant together and all represent what feels like very different ideas of being women and being on edge. With the casting, the biggest thing was what the tone of the show would be. For us, it had to be believable, and those three actors are very good at doing drama and comedy in a way that feels real and natural. You still want it to be funny, but what comedy does is push the realms of believability and reality to get those laughs, whereas we couldn’t do that. We had to work a bit harder to make things funny and not compromise the credibility of the characters for a gag.”

Walsh as Eileen, who finds herself back with her uninspiring ex-boyfriend

Filming took place across six weeks from the end of May, with interiors filmed in London for four weeks before production moved across the Irish Sea to spend two weeks filming on location. O’Grady says the biggest challenge on the show was the split shoot, which required several planning trips during pre-production before a new crew was brought in for the Dublin-set scenes. “We took essential department heads out but everyone else was replaced,” he says. “We wrapped London and three days later we were filming in Dublin with all new props people, production design and assistants, all while trying to keep that momentum and those lines of communication open.”

The future looks bleak for Laura, Katie and Eileen, however, with O’Grady hinting that the characters all find themselves worse off by the season’s end. Though she is seeking therapy, Laura in particular begins to self-destruct, her affair with her boss bringing her to the edge of breaking point.

Despite comparisons to other female-led series, the producer says Women on the Verge stands out for its naturalistic and believable style. “It’s being compared to Sex & the City, which is understandable,” he notes, “but their lives always looked so great, even when they weren’t wearing amazing clothes, going to amazing bars or living in amazing apartments. Whereas we’ve not done that. We don’t glamorise it. It’s a lot more real.”

Season two may be some way off, especially if it follows the lead of the first season, which launches on W in the UK tomorrow. Martin and O’Grady are, however, already talking about where they might like to take the characters next, particularly now they have seen how the actors have embodied them.

“Now we can play to their strengths,” O’Grady adds. “We’re bouncing ideas around of what we could do, where we could go and the kinds of things we could throw at them.”

With Women on the Verge finding humour in the depths of despair, it looks set to follow the path of other successful comedy-dramas like Catastrophe, Fleabag and, more recently, Karl Pilkington’s Sick of It.

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Networks bank on spin-off series

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The Big Bang Theory spin-off will focus on Sheldon Cooper
The Big Bang Theory spin-off will focus on Sheldon Cooper’s younger years

In a relatively quiet week on the commissioning front, one of the more interesting stories is that US network CBS is developing a prequel to its hit comedy series The Big Bang Theory.

Now in its 10th season, the Chuck Lorre/Bill Prady-created show continues to attract an audience in excess of 14 million, so it’s no surprise that CBS would want to build on that strength.

According to US reports, Lorre, Prady and showrunner Steve Molaro will oversee the project, which will focus on the younger years of key character Sheldon Cooper. None of The Big Bang Theory cast will be involved in the new sitcom except Jim Parsons, who plays Cooper and will executive produce the spin-off.

Interestingly, rival network ABC has also announced plans for a spin-off from its sitcom The Goldbergs, created by Adam Goldberg. Unlike the CBS project, this will be a sequel as opposed to a prequel. The Goldbergs, now in its fourth season, is set in the 1980s, but the new show will be set in the 1990s. It will star Bryan Callen, who plays a gym teacher in the current series.

The spin-off from The Goldbergs will centre on
The spin-off from The Goldbergs will centre on Bryan Callen’s character Mr Meller

The spin-off trend is not new – think Cheers/Frasier and Friends/Joey. But it fits well alongside the TV industry’s growing reliance on TV-to-movie spin-offs and TV reboots, giving networks a promotional boost from the outset.

And, for the most part, it works well. In the drama procedural arena, for example, we’ve seen franchises like Gotham (ABC), CSI and JAG/NCIS (both CBS) prosper, while Dick Wolf has created an entire world out of Chicago-based dramas for NBC. More recently, there have been examples such as NBC’s The Blacklist: Redemption and CBS’s The Good Fight, the latter an extension of The Good Wife.

US cable network AMC has also got in on the act with Breaking bad spin-off Better Call Saul and The Walking Dead spin-off Fear The Walking Dead – both of which have rated well enough to justify their existence.

There are also reports that Netflix is planning a Daredevil spin-off with The Punisher (based on the Marvel Comics anti-hero), while outside of the US the success of ITV’s Morse prequel Endeavour has encouraged the network to follow up with a Prime Suspect prequel called Tennison (coming soon). In Italy, Rai has also enjoyed decent levels of success with Young Montalbano, a prequel of its hit detective series Inspector Montalbano.

Jon Bernthal as The Punisher in Daredevil
Jon Bernthal as The Punisher in Daredevil

However, as the Friends/Joey example shows, spin-offs aren’t always guaranteed to succeed. And there has been a more recent example of an unsuccessful spin-off in the shape of Ravenswood, which grew out of Freeform’s hit series Pretty Little Liars. But overall there is enough of a hit record for networks to take notice.

There are a couple of reasons why they seem to stick. One is that spin-offs often centre on actor/character combinations that the audience still loves – unlike TV reboots where the audience is being asked to like something that was popular 20 to 30 years ago. Another is that they are generally written by the same team that created the original, so there is a continuation of tone that audiences connect with. Again, expecting a new creative team to run with something that is decades old is not a simple process.

Prequels, of course, require the audience to accept a new actor or actress in the central role. But there is something inherently appealing about seeing the youthful back story of a mature character you’ve grown to love over several seasons. Besides, the time gap from original series to spin-off is usually shorter than the kind of TV reboots we’ve witnessed in the last few years.

Pulling
Pulling is set to be remade in the US

In fact, the hit rate on spin-offs is such that networks would be foolish not to at least consider them. Is there any reason, for example, why ABC would not consider some kind of extension of Modern Family? Imagine a young Phil Dunphy at college – the only downside here being the likelihood of getting anyone to live up to the high standards set by actor Ty Burrell. Or what about a Game of Thrones prequel? It will be a major surprise if HBO lets its biggest franchise go without trying to create a follow-up.

Returning briefly to the subject of comedy, there are also reports this week that NBC is developing a US remake of UK comedy Pulling, which first aired on BBC3. The original show was written by Sharon Horgan and Denis Kelly, who are attached to the US adaptation as exec producers.

Actor/writer Horgan is already well known to the US market having written HBO comedy Divorce, which has Sarah Jessica Parker in the lead role. She was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe, alongside Rob Delaney (Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series).

Darren Criss in Glee
Darren Criss in Glee

Also this week, pundits are predicting that ABC’s legal drama Conviction is destined for cancellation. The first season of the show, which stars Hayley Atwell, has been limited to 13 episodes, which doesn’t augur well.

However, this setback doesn’t seem to have reduced US network interest in legal subject matter. CBS, for example, is developing a drama about a US senator who withdraws from office to join his brother’s private-investigation law firm, unearthing the truth in high-profile and top-secret cases.

In other stories this week, Glee star Darren Criss is working with Fox on a new project called Royalties. According to Entertainment Weekly, Royalties is a “workplace comedy detailing the unseen, unsung, and unglamorous heroes behind the pop stars – the producers and songwriters whose day job it is to crank out hits. Sometimes it’s sexy, but most of the time it’s just like every other workplace: day-to-day minutiae, office politics, and clashing personalities. Royalties is about a small publishing company, Royalty Music, and a one-hit wonder who returns to the fold in the hopes of making it big again.”

Fox is also trying to get into the vampire scripted series business. This week it ordered a pilot based on Justin Cronin’s boot trilogy The Passage.

Fauda
Fauda’s second season has been picked up by Netflix

Away from US drama, Netflix has acquired the upcoming second season of Fauda, a hard-hitting Israeli political thriller that follows a unit of the Israeli army working undercover in Palestine. The global SVoD platform has also picked up the show’s first season, which initially aired on cable broadcaster Yes last year.

Following up on last week’s column about Nordic drama, this week has seen UK-based SVoD platform Walter Presents pick up Valkyrien from distributor About Premium Content.

The eight-part series, produced by Tordenfilm for NRK and written by showrunner Erik Richter Strand (Occupied), revolves around an illegal hospital hidden in an Oslo underground station. It tells the story of a physician who fakes his terminally ill wife’s death to secretly keep her alive in an induced coma while he tries to find a cure. To finance his activities, he makes alliances with the criminal world and treats patients who need to stay off the grid.

In the UK, meanwhile, BBC3 has joined forces with actor Idris Elba on a series of short films that will bring established talent together with new writers and actors. Called Five by Five, the project will consist of five standalone five-minute shows that are set in London and question identity and changing perceptions.

Valkyrien
Valkyrien will air on Walter Presents

Elba will appear alongside talent such as Nina Yndis (Peaky Blinders) and Andrei Zayats (The Night Manager) in the shows, which are being produced by Elba’s production company Green Door Pictures and BBC Studios.

The films are written by Cat Jones (Flea, Harlots) and new writers Lee Coan, Namsi Khan, Selina Lim and Nathaniel Price.

“I have spent time with these talented five writers and observed their storylining process,” said Elba. “The scripts are uplifting and incredible, and with this group of young actors now attached to star, BBC3 viewers are in for an absolute blast. I couldn’t be prouder of what they have achieved.”

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Brits dominate Rose D’Or scripted

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Mum
Big Talk Productions’ Mum aired on BBC2

The Rose D’Or Awards were dominated by the UK last year with wins in nine out of 11 available categories – and following this week’s release of the Rose D’Or shortlists for 2016, it looks like the UK stands an extremely good chance of repeating its success.

One thing is for sure, the UK will win both the sitcom and the newly created drama series categories. In sitcom, the three shows slugging it out are Episodes from Hat Trick Productions, Mum and Raised by Wolves, the latter two from Big Talk Productions.

In drama, the contest is between Happy Valley, River and This Is England ’90. The winners will be revealed in Berlin on September 13.

Looking first at the dramas, Happy Valley (written by Sally Wainwright) and This Is England ’90 (Shane Meadows/Jack Thorne) have already received plenty of plaudits. River, a six-part drama for the BBC, is probably the least-known of the three, despite being written by one of the UK’s top talents, Abi Morgan.

Having started out writing for theatre, Morgan’s earliest credits were in TV (Peak Practice, My Fragile Heart), but more recently she has moved effortlessly back and forth between film and TV. Her best-known films include Brick Lane, The Iron Lady and Suffragette, while stand-out TV credits include novel adaptation Birdsong, The Hour and River.

River
Six-part drama River earned positive critical notices in the UK press

Regardless of whether River triumphs in Berlin, Morgan certainly got the thumbs up from critics. In the UK, The Daily Telegraph critic Michael Hogan said the series was “beautifully written by Abi Morgan, stylishly directed and superbly acted. [Lead actor] Stellan Skarsgård delivered a powerhouse performance: sad and soulful in one scene, sardonically spiky and manically energetic in the next. With his craggy face and crumpled demeanour, the haunted detective prowled the streets of London like a wounded bear. I’m torn between wanting River to get recommissioned and wanting this series to stand alone as six near-perfect episodes.”

Aside from its UK screening on the BBC, River has also been available via Netflix internationally. In Canada, Globe and Mail critic John Doyle added his voice to Hogan’s, calling the show a masterpiece of melancholy crime drama: “It is the sort of drama critics rejoice in seeing. It is a stunningly successful hybrid of Nordic noir and the traditional, gloomy British police procedural. It is about solving a murder, but mainly about the intricacies of the human mind dealing with loss and terrible grief.”

The Rose D’Or sitcom category, meanwhile, brings international recognition for Stefan Golaszewski, writer of BBC2’s Mum. Golaszewski previously wrote Bafta-winning sitcom Him & Her for BBC2. In Mum, he tells the story of a woman seeking to rebuild her life following the death of her husband.

Catastrophe
Rose D’Or-winning sitcom Catastrophe is set for third and fourth seasons

When the show was commissioned, Shane Allen, controller of comedy commissioning, said: “Commissioning Mum was a delightfully easy decision after seeing the sure-footed pilot. Stefan is a unique author and this is a very confident next chapter in what promises to be a distinguished career in comedy. All his hallmarks are there – painful authenticity, comedy grotesques, emotional tenderness, revelation and depth – it’s a class act. I think it will connect with a lot of people as a refreshing take on an overlooked stage in life.”

Conveniently for the sake of narrative flow, last year’s Rose D’Or-winning sitcom Catastrophe is also in the news this week, with Channel 4 commissioning a third and fourth season of the critically acclaimed show. Created by and starring Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, the second season of Catastrophe was C4’s second-highest performing comedy of the year. The show has also been streamed in the US by Amazon Prime and picked up for adaptation for French-speaking Canada.

Announcing the news, Phil Clarke, C4’s head of comedy, said: “I am thrilled to commission a third and fourth season. It’s a welcome return for the brave, razor-edged, excruciatingly honest and painfully funny portrayal of a modern, long-term relationship.”

Raised by Wolves
Big Talk Productions’ Raised by Wolves

Critics have also been effusive in their praise of the show. The Guardian’s Will Dean said it “inverts the classic romcom with sexual honesty, a barrage of swearing and a wonderfully dysfunctional support cast. Catastrophe is a modern great. All 12 episodes [the first two seasons] were superb in pretty much almost every aspect. At its heart it’s an ordinary love story, couched in some first-class swearing, about sexual honesty, served with a side-plate of adultery, lust, elderly parents, flirtatious colleagues, money worries and a dead dog. The love story we deserve.”

The Times’ Hugh Rifkind added that it is “the funniest British comedy of the past five years. I shan’t say more, because it is so funny that me telling you the funny bits would be considerably less funny than you actually watching it, which is definitely what you should do. It’s tight and sparse and there’s never a wasted moment. In a nutshell, the best bits are about all the terrible things you never quite say to your friends, family and significant other, and what would happen if everybody just said them.”

Announcing the recommission, Horgan and Delaney said: “We are thrilled to be making a third season of Catastrophe. Rob and Sharon are a blast to spend time with. And we’re not talking about ourselves in the third person, we’re talking about the characters. We’re eager to breathe life back into Rob and Sharon. Okay, now we are talking about us. In the first season Rob and Sharon went through a lot (us) and even more in the second season (back to the characters). We’re looking forward to putting Rob and Sharon (both us and the characters) through further pain for your enjoyment (now we’re talking about you).”

This is England '90
This Is England ’90, written by Shane Meadows and Jack Thorne, is up for a Rose D’Or

Delaney recently took part in a panel session at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, during which he talked about the challenges of delivering great comedy. He talked about the need to keep ego under control, even when the world is telling you how great you are. “I had this fear of becoming this walled-off guy who wouldn’t listen. So I’m a real believer in humility,” he said.

Explaining why he persisted with comedy as a career, Delaney said: “I realised after the global financial collapse that no career is safe, that everyone else knows how comedians feel. So I thought I might as well do exactly what I want to do.”

He was also very refreshing on the subject of encouraging diversity, observing that it is “insane” not to draw on diverse voices. “My advice is to be selfish, make money by embracing diversity,” he quipped.

Finally, in the UK, there are reports that the new season of BBC period drama Poldark will go head-to-head on Sunday night with ITV’s new period drama Victoria (September 4, 21.00). Fortunately, most of us have time-shifting technology these days, so my guess is that people will store Victoria so they can avoid the ad breaks.

Poldark is written by Debbie Horsfield while Victoria is created and written by novelist Daisy Goodwin in her screenwriting debut. Alongside the likes of Sally Wainwright, Sarah Phelps and Abi Morgan, these shows may be indicators that female writers are starting to hold more sway in primetime – a section of the schedule that, from a writer’s point of view, can sometimes resemble a London gentleman’s club. Or Muirfield Golf Club.

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Putting the Spotlight on Oscar winners

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Spotlight
Spotlight’s Oscar-winning screenplay was by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy

Let’s start this week by congratulating this year’s Oscar-winning writers.

The prize for Best Original Screenplay went to Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy for Spotlight, a film about The Boston Globe’s investigation into child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests. Meanwhile, Best Adapted Screenplay was claimed by Adam McKay and Charles Randolph for their financial comedy-drama The Big Short, based on the best-selling non-fiction book by Michael Lewis.

Singer’s credits to date have pretty much all been in TV and include The West Wing, Law & Order and Lie to Me.

McCarthy is more of an actor/writer/director type. Although he has acted in TV series (such as The Wire, Boston Public and Law & Order), his writing has generally been in the film arena. High-profile credits include Up, with Bob Peterson and Pete Docter, and Million Dollar Arm. He was also nominated in the director category for Spotlight.

Steve Carrell and Ryan Gosling in Oscar winner The Big Short
Steve Carrell and Ryan Gosling in The Big Short

Turning to The Big Short duo, Adam McKay is a director, producer, screenwriter, comedian and actor who has a long-standing creative partnership with Will Ferrell, with whom he usually writes films. His TV credits include two seasons as head writer on NBC’s acclaimed sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live.

Randolph, meanwhile, is a writer/producer whose credits include The Life of David Gale, The Interpreter and Love & Other Drugs. Randolph was also the writer of an ABC drama pilot called Exposed, based upon the books by best-selling Swedish author Liza Marklund. This show was doing the rounds in 2014 with a lot of high-profile acting talent attached but has since gone pretty quiet.

Outside the Oscars, the big writing story of the week is that the new showrunners for season five of Netflix’s House of Cards have been named. They are Melissa James Gibson and Frank Pugliese, who have both been working on the drama since season three.

Gibson’s credits to date cover various media. She has written plays including Placebo, What Rhymes with America, This, Suitcase or Those that Resemble Flies from a Distance and Brooklyn Bridge. She has taught playwriting at Princeton University and is an alumnus of the Yale School of Drama. She wrote the film All is Bright (Tribeca Film Festival). In addition to House of Cards, her television work includes The Americans (FX), for which she received a Writers’ Guild Awards nomination.

House of Cards' fourth season hits Netflix on March 4
House of Cards’ fourth season debuts on March 4

Pugliese’s work in theatre includes Aven’U Boys, The King of Connecticut, The Talk, The Alarm, The Democracy Project, The Summer Winds, Hope is the Thing with Feathers and KAOS. His TV credits include Homicide, for which he won a Writers’ Guild Award, Law & Order, Borgias and Copper. Film credits include Shot in the Heart, Undefeated and the upcoming Border Crossing. Pugliese is associate professor of TV writing at the Columbia University Graduate Film Department and is the co-director of the television writing programme at La Femis in Paris.

Gibson and Pugliese replace Beau Willimon, whose last series as showrunner of House of Cards will be released on this Friday. They received a polite vote of approval from star and executive producer Kevin Spacey, who said: “I welcome Frank and Melissa in their new roles on House of Cards and look forward to collaborating with them and our creative team on season five.”

Elsewhere, CBS has announced that it’s renewing its procedural juggernaut NCIS for another two seasons. Already in season 13, the show regularly draws an audience of 20 million (including time-shifted viewing) – making it one of the top programmes in the US. It is also licensed to around 200 countries worldwide.

The ever-reliable NCIS
The ever-reliable NCIS

CBS Entertainment president Glen Geller said: “It’s extraordinary that in its 13th season and with more than 300 episodes to its credit, NCIS continues to excel at such a high level on a global scale. It is testimony to an amazing cast, led on and off the screen by the exceptional Mark Harmon, for skillfully bringing this appealing team of heroes to life; and to Gary Glasberg and his writers for crafting compelling stories that feature NCIS’s blend of mystery, quirk, drama and comedy every single week.”

As Geller says, the success of the show is inextricably linked with the involvement of Harmon, its star and executive producer, and Glasberg, who heads the writing team on NCIS and was also the creator of NCIS: New Orleans.

Glasberg’s career actually began on animated shows such as Rugrats before progressing via series such as Crossing Jordan, Bones and The Mentalist. His name first popped up as a writer in the middle of NCIS season seven (2009-10). Starting from season eight, he took on the responsibility of writing the first and last episode of each season and also penning another two or three episodes per run. He also wrote the set-up episodes for NCIS: New Orleans but has since handed primary writing duties to a separate team. In terms of influences, Glasberg is reported to be a big fan of TV series M*A*S*H.

Sharon Horgan (centre) in Pulling
Sharon Horgan (centre) in Pulling

In the UK, meanwhile, Sky Vision, the distribution and production arm of Sky, has signed a three-script development deal with UK-based indie producer Merman. Sky will have first-look access to projects from Merman, which was founded in 2014 by Sharon Horgan and Clelia Mountford, plus the option to distribute.

While Mountford is a producer, Horgan has established herself as an in-demand actor, writer and director. Her key credits in the UK are Pulling and Catastrophe, though she is also making a name for herself in the US. After Pulling went to pilot in the US, she created a series for HBO called Divorce. Starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Hayden Church, Divorce is due to premier in 2016.

Kylie Munnich, Sky Vision director of drama and comedy, said Merman “is a creative force to be reckoned with. Its high-quality scripts attract some of the industry’s leading names and we’re excited to be working with them on future projects.”

On a less happy note, Amazon will not be renewing Mad Dogs, which was adapted for the platform by Shawn Ryan from the UK version of the show that aired on Sky1 in 2011.

Ryan worked with the UK show’s creator Cris Cole on the Amazon version, which consisted of 10 episodes. Ryan wrote on Twitter that he and Cole “laid out a story for season two we believed in. Ultimately, Amazon didn’t want to make that story and we didn’t want to make the kind of story they wanted us to make, so…”

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