Inside out
Writer Dennis Kelly joins director Jeanette Nordahl and executive producer Katie Carpenter to take DQ inside the making of Waiting for the Out, the BBC’s adaptation of Andy West’s memoir about life behind bars – from the perspective of a prison philosophy teacher.
At a time when television series are noisier than ever, with audiences facing numerous other demands for their time, a new BBC drama is taking a different approach.
“We’re not doing that in that kind of way,” says Dennis Kelly, the writer behind Waiting for the Out. “There are moments that are a little bit tense, and there are definitely moments where you reveal things, so there’s a lot of that sort of stuff. It’s just not as hectic as things normally are.
“You just think, ‘Calm down.’ Things can be desperately painful to you on a much smaller level. Things can really matter. Although there is a lot of basically just sitting in a room, you’re also talking about people’s lives. I feel like it’s quite an emotional series. It’s funny as well.”
Based on the memoir The Life Inside by Andy West, Waiting for the Out is the thoughtful, considerate story of a man facing up to his own past while leading others to do the same. Josh Finan (The Responder) stars as Dan, a philosopher who begins teaching a class of men in prison and leading them on philosophical discussions about dominance, freedom, luck and other topics that gain new meaning when seen through the eyes of the prisoners.
His work also leads him to explore the impact of growing up with an abusive father (Gerard Kearns), who ended up in prison, as did his brother Lee (Stephen Wright) and uncle Frank (Phil Daniels). As he worries, obsessively, that he also belongs behind bars, Dan’s personal crisis begins to threaten his own future and his family’s.
Samantha Spiro also stars as Dan’s mother in the six-part series, which is produced by Sister (Chernobyl, Black Doves) and distributed by BBC Studios.
Sister optioned the rights to West’s memoir more than six years ago, but execs at the firm already knew the book’s anecdotal style meant “it wasn’t a TV series yet” and would require significant development time. “We knew it was going to take quite a lot of thinking in terms of how we adapt it into a TV structure,” says executive producer Katie Carpenter, Sister’s senior creative executive. “So we picked it up, and then the pandemic happened so it got slightly put aside. Then luckily, Dennis said he wanted to work on it, and off we went.”
Kelly, the creator of Channel 4’s Utopia and the screenwriter behind both Matilda the Musical and its feature film adaptation, was number one on Sister’s wishlist. In fact, he was the list. “We really needed someone who could just angle the complexity of it,” Carpenter says. “What Andy does so well in the book is basically steer clear of anything that’s black and white. He lives in the grey, and we needed a writer who was going to keep that essence in the dramatisation of it. Dennis does that so brilliantly. But we also needed a writer who was able to write character because it’s a character piece. Nobody does that better than Dennis.”
“It’s not a massive plotty thriller ride. It’s not that,” Kelly says. “And also, we didn’t want to do something where Mr Big is shanking people in the showers. Prison is dangerous and brutal, it’s chaotic. But also, no one moves fast in prison because no one wants to get anywhere. So the challenge was to find story within it.
“There’s also a lot of invention. It’s definitely based on that book. It’s based on Andy’s memories. But we’ve also changed a lot. It’s veered away from the source material, but hopefully to better express the source material.”
The book is divided into chapters that explore different philosophical questions and themes, which led to the idea that each episode could similarly explore a lesson learned by Dan or another character. The material also interwove West’s personal life with his career, as the series also does with the fictional Dan.
One of the key differences, however, related to West’s creation of an ‘executioner’ character in his head, a stalking presence representing his belief that he was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps. Kelly then struck on the idea to turn that figure into Dan’s father in the series, making him a figure that follows Dan’s every move.
That decision “just suddenly made everything make sense,” Carpenter says. “Dennis also said, ‘Why don’t we make each episode revolve around a theme like luck or men? That, again, gave a really clear shape [to the series] and allowed the philosophy, which is obviously so important to the story, to be there in the show without being too highfalutin.”
Kelly then ran a writers room with episodic writers Ric Renton and Levi David Addai among those present, picking out themes or topics from the book that they were most interested in exploring on screen.
“I’m not very good with writers rooms,” he says. “I’ve never been in one really. I normally write stuff myself. I’ve sometimes had writers with me and it’s been a good experience, and sometimes it’s been difficult because it’s a whole other skill. You’ve got to be able to communicate with people while not micromanaging them. But those guys were great.”
West was involved throughout in “the most respectful and elegant manner,” Carpenter says, as the author watched his memoir become fictionalised to tell the story of Dan, rather than having his own story directly translated for the screen.
“There’s a lot of stuff that happens in the show that doesn’t happen in the book and didn’t happen to Andy,” Carpenter notes. “So Andy’s had to watch this as a person watching a version of his life be developed and changed, but also as an author, watching his book be developed and changed. In all circumstances, he’s been very open to whatever those changes needed to be.”
Despite Waiting for the Out being set in London, filming took place in and around Liverpool, which was a condition of the BBC greenlighting the series. “In some ways, that was a gift, because the crew there is absolutely fantastic,” says Carpenter. “All the locations are much closer together than in London, so it meant we could cram much more into the day. And it’s also much cheaper than in London, and less restrictive.
“But obviously the show is set in London, so we had to make Liverpool look like London, which I think we have pulled off. We did a couple of days in London just to pick up some GVs [general views] and stuff like that and bed it in.”
Another challenge was realising the production’s “huge ambitions,” with numerous scenes and settings, on a relatively modest budget. “It wasn’t a script where you could go, ‘Oh, let’s just cut that. Let’s just move that.’ We really wanted to preserve what had been written and film it,” Carpenter says. “So we had to think really cleverly about what locations we chose.”
Sister also partnered with the Liverpool Film Office to make the production as environmentally friendly as possible, resulting in a 61% fall in CO2 emissions. “We feel really proud of that,” Carpenter says.
Kelly would visit set once a week, but watched the rushes every day and was constantly talking to directors Jeanette Nordahl and Ben Palmer. “I have to say, this has been one of the best experiences I’ve had on screen. Jeanette and Ben, they’ve been unbelievable,” he says. “I don’t think there’s been a moment where we’ve fallen out, and with Josh, Josh is great. He’s a fantastic actor. What I like about him is he just gives you things you don’t expect. There are one or two moments in here that I just thought, ‘I could never have written those moments, that’s just an astonishing moment.’”
Danish director Nordahl’s first screen role came as an assistant director on political drama Borgen. She later worked on Bedrag (Follow the Money) and Når støvet har lagt sig (When the Dust Settles), among other titles, before joining British crime drama The Responder.
Battling post-production deadlines on a feature film, she was then urged by her agent to read Waiting for the Out and was immediately impressed. And when she picked up West’s book, she was “completely sold” on the project.
“In every conversation, it just felt like the right fit,” she says. “There was so much humanity and heart, and it was quite rare to read something so special. Every episode is extremely different. Every episode has its own nerve and its own energy. I really enjoyed that, because everything was so unexpected. I was completely blown away by it.”
In terms of the show’s prison setting, the team wanted to create an atmosphere unlike other prison dramas on TV, with a classroom space used by Dan that felt natural, authentic and “hopeful.”
“We didn’t want to put our dramatic, grim fingerprints on it and say, ‘This is where the drama is.’ We wanted it to be coming from the characters,” Nordahl explains. For those classroom scenes, with up to 10 characters on camera at once, “I rehearsed quite a bit with all the men, because obviously we have these very long scenes which talk about philosophy. It’s quite obviously a demanding task to do all of these long scenes and not just cover your ass off [filming multiple angles of the scene], because that would be the easy way to do it, and we don’t have time for that.
“So we did a lot of rehearsals, which were absolutely amazing to [allow us to] be very specific about the characters in the scenes we were doing, and also to see how we could push it. How can we create these little pockets of character that just put pressure on Dan?”
Nordahl also wanted to allow the actors freedom to play within their scenes. “I never wanted to finish a day where the actors felt like they hadn’t tried everything they wanted to try,” she continues. “Behind the camera, we were basically as fast on our feet as possible. We created space for the actors to do what they were supposed to do, and that’s what makes the characters feel real. That’s what we wanted.”
Despite each episode taking on a different look, with something “unexpected” for the audience in each one, Nordahl sought a “clear thread” through the series that highlights the various emotions at play – often at once.
“When I read it, I laughed out loud a lot of times. But there were also times I cried, and there were times I went, ‘Oh my God, this is so uncomfortable I can’t even be in my skin. It’s so tense.’ So it mixes all of these things,” she notes. “For me, what I found is that it just had to be a very emotional piece, and that every single emotion has to be taken seriously. So if it’s making people feel scared, if it’s making people laugh or if it’s making the audience cry, I wanted every single emotion out there. I wanted to squeeze out everything I could. You can do that when you have such strong characters as this piece has.”
Nordahl also wanted viewers to relate to the challenges facing Dan. “We’re dealing with a character who doesn’t quite truly understand what his problem is, which is really interesting. I actually think that’s extremely human,” the director says. “He has to figure out what it is to be able to move on, and to be able to be a free person. For me, that was extremely moving. That journey is just very relatable.
“It’s also very funny. When we’re making drama and fiction, we can be so afraid of talking about things that can be uncomfortable to discuss, and then we don’t dare to put any laughter in. Both in Andy’s book and in Dennis’s script, there’s a lot of a lot of humour and a lot of warmth, and that’s what makes it human.”
Carpenter adds: “I feel so lucky to have made this. It’s one of those shows that I will always be grateful for it landing on my desk. Working with Dennis, working with Andy and working with the BBC, everyone had exactly the same vision for it and was supportive of that vision. Hopefully that’s resulted in a show that has real integrity, which is perhaps the most we can hope for.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
The Responder: A morally compromised Liverpool cop on the night shift fights to keep addicts, criminals and his own sanity from collapsing around him.
Time: A principled teacher and a haunted inmate navigate the brutal realities of a British prison, where every moral choice has a price.
Screw: A team of overworked prison officers juggle gallows humour and personal crises as they try to keep a volatile men’s wing from exploding.
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tagged in: BBC, BBC Studios, Dennis Kelly, Jeanette Nordahl, Katie Carpenter, Sister, Waiting for the Out