Michael Pickard 0:19 Michael. Hello. Speaker 1 0:21 Hi, Michael. How are you? Michael Pickard 0:22 Good. How are you? All right. Speaker 2 0:24 Right. Yes. Michael Pickard 0:25 Good. Thank you for your time today. Are you you busy at the moment? What what’s what’s happening? Speaker 1 0:32 Well, we just finished this film, so literally I saw it on Friday. Okay. And there’s like two little bits of VFX to do. You know, we thought it’s all graded, all the music’s done. So it’s all right. Good, it’s all right. You Michael Pickard 0:47 happy? Speaker 1 0:49 I saw on a I saw on a cinema screen. Okay. Speaker 3 0:52 Yeah. Speaker 1 0:53 Which was really exciting. Fantastic. Michael Pickard 0:55 Yeah, but and and you’re happy, and it’s all as you as you wrote, I guess. Speaker 1 1:01 Well, yeah. I mean, it’s. I mean, this is what we’re talking about, isn’t it? It’s. You know, I have to be. I’ve been told not to be self-deprecating. Self-deprecating. You’re brilliant. No, I mean the about this time. No, not even this time last year. At the end of last year, because we made five series of Hope Street, and we’re talking about whether there’d be a series six, and it didn’t seem, you know, I mean, like for example, BritBox have been in from the start. So for BritBox to have 51 episodes of anything is a lot. You know what I mean? They’re and they’ve been brilliant, really, really lovely people, and brilliant. And every year, I’d think, well, they’ve got any more because their model is to attract new subscribers. Michael Pickard 1:48 Yeah. Speaker 1 1:49 So we’re thinking, well, if there isn’t any more Hope Street, that’s okay because when I first pitched the idea six, seven years ago, if you said to me you could make 50 episodes, I would have fallen over and you know ran an ambulance, so that’s good. And also, I’ve said a lot of what I want to say, but the only I was talking to Eddie Doyle, who is who runs all commissioning for BBC Northern Ireland, who has been in right from the start, and said my only thing is we haven’t given it an ending. Michael Pickard 2:16 Yeah, Speaker 1 2:17 so we he and I had this conversation about would you do two episodes? And I mean, we provide some money. Three episodes. What would that be? And then we had a conversation with Northern Ireland screen. They said, “Well, if you’re doing that, make a film. And and it was their idea. And my reaction was, “What would that be? And then suddenly it became, “Hey, it just it just seemed to make a lot of sense, and also if you start talking to people as we did, Great Box, Northern Screen, various bits of the BBC, who all said, “Oh yeah, okay, that’s interesting. They were enthusiastic. So suddenly, it went from being, “Is this the maddest idea of all time? to I seem to like this idea, and it it became a thing really, really quickly, and then we had to work out what Earth Hope Street film would be, which is a different thing. But in terms of production and what the budget would be and how we’d make it, that all came into focus pretty quickly. Yeah. Wow. So less Michael Pickard 3:20 than a year, though. That’s that’s fast. So, oh, Speaker 1 3:24 listen, I didn’t really start riding it till about February. Oh, okay. Oh gosh, that is even faster. Yeah, I saw a friend of mine this morning in the gym who has made films, who said, “I got yeah, I got an invitation to the London screening. Was it a joke? I went, “No, no, it is. I said it is finished. Incredible. So, what is it then? Is it is Michael Pickard 3:48 it an ending? Is it? I know in the the press release, I’ve just been revising. You know, refreshing my memory with. There’s. It’s a thank you to the fans. It’s a way to close some loose ends, but also maybe, hopefully, we’ll get a season six. So, how? Well, I Speaker 1 4:05 mean, I mean, I don’t know. I mean, as I say, you know, the the original idea for Hope Street was a returning drama set in Northern Ireland. I’m from Northern Ireland. I left a long, long time ago. I’ve I’ve worked in television for a long time, and I’d always thought there should be a returning drama set in Northern Ireland. You know, a returning drama, you know, heartbeat, Doc Marten, something warm and popular with a Northern Irish accent, which had never been done, and because the Northern Irish accent was so entirely identified with misery and collusion. And if you go to Northern Ireland, 99% of your experience will be warm and joyful. People are really good fun and a really good laugh, and that was you know from a sort of editorial point of view, it was a way of presenting a different version of Northern Ireland to the world, and that’s really really. Worked. It’s worked in space. Worked really, really well on BritBox in the U.S. You know, you now get crowds of tourists and Donica D. We shoot it turning up off cruise liners to come and see a Hope Street’s film. You couldn’t make it up, you know, and that is light years away from the Troubles. You know, Troubles is never the Troubles is never mentioned in Hope Street. It’s sort of there in the warp and weft. It’s never mentioned. Hope it is is deliberately upbeat, very very positive. What it says is life will be better if he communicated basically. So it’s crime in every episode, and we get to a point towards the end of the episode where somebody more or less says, “Well, if only you told us that right at the beginning, then you wouldn’t have had to hit her over the head with a shuffle or whatever it is that you’ve done, which is of course a not brilliantly subtle metaphor for Northern Ireland. Of course, if only people, because you know my experience with Northern Ireland is, if you fall over in the street, someone come and help you, they won’t stop and say, “Oh, you are Catholic or Protestant, before they help you. They just help you, you know. So, so it’s trying to get some of that on screen, and a Northern Irish sense of humour, and you know, and really good actors, and la la la la la. So, you know, we live five series of that. So, go back to your question, which is, what is the film? There, there, there were from the BBC, obviously, because they transmitted five series of it, they wanted us to pick up the continuity from the end of series five. Speaker 3 6:25 Yeah, Speaker 1 6:26 but if you’re making a film and you want to get the film tax break, and it is going in the cinemas array, it needs to be a film. So that is slightly rubbing your tummy and patting your head or doing two things. I think we’ve. I think it’s fine. I think it’s come out fine. I think we have done both those things, and I think that was, you know, I wrote it. I know the show better than anybody else. I’ve been involved in every single episode. I mean, I could write a really boring book about Hope Street, and one would buy. Well, maybe it’d be delightful. I don’t know. Yeah, Michael Pickard 6:58 sell it to the cruise tourists. Speaker 1 7:01 Yeah, yeah, I do know it inside out. So I, I hope that we’ve picked up a concert to be done in a way done in a way that’s deft and entertaining. And yeah, because I suppose you need fresh Michael Pickard 7:10 people to come to it, don’t you? Hopefully, as well as and then they’re like, oh wow, I’ve got five seasons to catch up on. So there you go. Yeah, Speaker 1 7:18 never know. And also, you know, I mean, never say never. If it works, could we do another one? Of course we could. Yeah. But that’s not the plan. You know, the plan was being really honest about the plan was to give it an ending, and you know there was there was two the two not so much cliffhangers. There were just two characters that needed wrapping up. I felt in particular the one played by Gary Quinn, who’s been in since actually two characters, but been from the start, whose story needed I felt needed wrapping up for the audience, and unless this film does that, but it does both of those stories are wrapped up in a way that hopefully feel like a fresh piece of narrative. Not you know, so you don’t need to have watched 51 episodes before that to understand what’s happening. You know, it’s Michael Pickard 8:04 all right. Who who are those characters? Sorry, that’s Speaker 1 8:07 the first one is Marlene, played by Kerry Quinn. Michael Pickard 8:09 Yeah, Speaker 1 8:10 the brilliant Kerry Quinn, who as our police sergeant has been police sergeant since episode one, and Kerry is a really really accomplished stage and screen actor. But Marlene has always been Marlene’s gay. She was in the closet for 1000 years. She came out during series one. She’s had very unhappy relationships. She’s just been married to the job. She’s a classic married to the job character, and it felt to me, you know, when I was talking to Eddie about is that the end of Hope Street? Well, if I’d known it’s going to be the end, I would have, I would have found had Martin find love, you know. And this has been great to do that. So she finds love, but of course it’s a very bumming, yeah. But I, but without giving too much away, it’s Hope Street. It’s very warm. Well, no, I Michael Pickard 9:00 gather there’s a wedding of sorts. So I guess the identity of the couple will be revealed on screen. Speaker 1 9:08 Yeah, it’s not. It’s not really that secret. Now, as we meet Martin, she has met somebody, and so a year has passed since we were last in Port Divine. Okay, somebody, and then they turn out to be a suspect in the crime, so Marlene spends series five telling another one of her colleagues that you shouldn’t mix up if you’re a police officer. You cannot mix up work, and and ends up inadvertently having done that herself. She basically finds that the person she’s seeing has been in prison, which is for her an absolute disaster. Hopefully, all very entertaining. And then the other character is Nicole. Nicole is the landlady of the of the Commodore, which is our hero pub, and that’s Neve McGrady, who again has been in since episode one, and she has been in this classic knock. About marriage with with her husband Clint, played by Errol, played by Aaron’s McCusker, Aaron McCusker, who’s now in Coronation Street. So because he was leaving to go to go and do Coronation Street, he walked out on her at the end of Series Five. So she’s been left bereft. So we we we tie all that up as well. I hope in a very emotional fashion. Michael Pickard 10:26 Yeah, Speaker 1 10:27 I love it. I have to say, make pleased Michael Pickard 10:29 with that. Yeah, no, it sounds like you’ve tied it up, and and then but there’s a new crime, there’s a new investigation to solve at the heart of it. So, I mean, what what are the first things you had to consider when writing a film, as opposed to an episode of the show. I mean, bigger, bolder, brasher-I guess are all the the terms. But I mean, what? How did you want to keep it related? Well, we’d never, in Speaker 1 10:53 hopes, yeah, in hopes we’d never on the TV show, we’d never done a murder. Michael Pickard 10:57 Okay, Speaker 1 10:57 never. So I thought, ha ha, and I tried that, and it just did not work. It’s not our tone. Michael Pickard 11:04 No, Speaker 1 11:04 not we’ve had suspected motives in the past, but it turned out to be something else. So I wasted about a month writing that. No, but it was an interesting exercise. You know, it was interesting exercise. And then I tried. I was very because I’m from Northern Ireland. I don’t live there, but my entire family live there, and I’m back a lot and there a lot of time. And so last year there was there were some riots in Bellabina, and then this year while we were shooting, there were some riots again, which were basically race riots, and that’s a very tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of people in Northern Ireland, which people I find are very tolerant and warm and welcoming. And and if there were no immigrants, there’d be no health service. It’s that’s more true in Northern Ireland than is in any other part of the UK. So I find that very depressing, and I really did want to, in some way, reflect that in the Hope Street film without it being that Hope Street is very gentle. And so the the crime story that I actually came up with is that there’s an assault, a serious assault, and Marlene is seeing her new girlfriend. Her new girlfriend is Anna, and Anna is a person of colour from, basically from the Caribbean, and she is suspected, and so she’s a stranger. She’s suspected, so you have to wait and see whether it’s her or not. I think you might have already guessed it isn’t. I’ll leave Michael Pickard 12:36 that be out of the article. Yeah, well, Speaker 1 12:39 but in a way, it’s when we’re not. It’s not a man. It’s not a massively suspenseful show. Do you know what I mean? It’s sort of. It’s more how you get there, really. It’s but and it’s you know in in in a in a hopefully warm and gentle way. All but it says what the show always says is you know prejudice is very very short sighted. You know, and I know if you come from Northern Ireland as I do, and you grow up, I grew up during the Troubles. You know what I mean? You, you, this is you. We need to keep learning the lesson again and again and again. And actually, we just got on. Life would be so. So Port Divine, where the show is set, Michael Pickard 13:20 to Speaker 1 13:20 me is the best of Northern Ireland, and also what Northern Ireland could be. It was why it’s called Hope Street. Speaker 3 13:26 Yeah, you Speaker 1 13:26 know, most most of my experience with Northern Ireland are like, in some way, another are are like what divine. They’re not negative. Michael Pickard 13:33 Yeah, Speaker 1 13:34 slightly idealised, but it is what Northern Ireland could be. My little brother lives in a town called Strangford, which is so beautiful down at the bottom of Spattle Lock on the Irish Sea, and when I go there, it really does remind me of Oak Street. It’s very mixed, you know. That you know there there are real places in Northern Ireland, like Port of Vine. But so it’s you know introducing that note of oh there’s a stranger in town. It must it so it’s called one of our own in the film, you know. So it wouldn’t have been one of our own. One of it’s one of our own who’s been attacked, and some of the other characters have forgotten that that the one of our own who’s been attacked has only been in town a couple of years. They’ve forgotten that become one of our own, you know. So it’s about you know what friendship is, and what community is, and what family is. It all hopefully without ever hitting you over there. I hope nobody’s going to sit and watch it and go, “Oh, I see the tree ties on racism and prejudice in Northern Ireland. It’s not, you know, but it is. It is that sort of. And then actually, you know, as we were shooting, there was the riots, and then after just this month, I don’t know if you’re aware there was the Flah. Michael Pickard 14:44 Okay, nice. Speaker 1 14:45 Well, the Flare is it happens every year, and it happens in the same place for two years, and then it moves on. So we’ve never been Northern Ireland before. It’s a it’s a massive music festival. They basically take a. Speaker 4 15:00 The whole Speaker 1 15:00 city. So it was 10 days, I think, in Belfast. They thought they might get 800,000 people. They got nearly 2 million. Michael Pickard 15:06 Oh wow! Speaker 1 15:08 And it was relentlessly brilliant. I couldn’t be there. I was relent. My whole family just had such a brilliant time. Relentlessly brilliant. Relentlessly optimistic. Like the you know, to me, doing what Hope Street does, which is saying actually, do you know what I mean? This place, this place is all right, actually, and and it it’s the flowers is traditionally about traditional Irish Music. They had lots of they had Protestant pipe bands, and you know what I mean. It was really and it was really diverse, and it was a massive, massive success, and so to me, Hope Street fits in the same spectrum as that. Yeah, Michael Pickard 15:47 amazing. Well, how do you explain the success of the show? Because, like you say, it’s it’s on the genteel side of of crime drama, but in a world where crime drama is relentlessly depressing and violent, and and always upping the shock value, perhaps you know-is this-is this what people actually want? You know, to you know the characters to you know spend the time with with people they like rather than being scared of, perhaps. Speaker 1 16:14 Well, I mean, it’s it’s it’s a spectrum, isn’t it? It is. I’ve made, you know, I ran the bill for four years, and then we made a spinoff called Murder Investigation Team, in which there was a nasty murder in every episode, you know, on the mean streets of London. And then I did a show for the BBC and Acorn called London Killed, which was, you know, basically someone gets absolutely murdered in every episode. So I’ve done the other side of it. I it it always struck me that in the sort of 70s and 80s, and in the 90s, when I started working in television, and I so you know there was the ITV system, and there was UTV, also television, and they all showed Coronation Street. Did very well in every region. In Northern Ireland, it was a phenomenon. Coronation Street, everybody watched it. I mean, everybody. And I and I met someone very high about Oslo Television, and I and I I was talking to him about, and he said, “Listen, he said, “I’ll be very honest with you. Oso Television is a licence to print money because of Coronation Street. It was so successful, and there’s something about that. I think I do think North Island is a very working-class society, a bit like Liverpool. I’ve lived in Liverpool as well, a bit like Manchester, but you know that sort of there’s a lot of DNA in common Glasgow as well, and that sort of working-class sense of humour. So I found growing up, I really identified with Coronation Street, and then when I my first job in television was at Granada, and then I was on this little mission for the first two years. I was there to get get on to Corrie, and I was offered a posh drama series or coronation story. I took coronation in the memory. My grandmother was dead then, but she was even so proud, and I loved that. And I loved Cory in the 70s and the 80s, and I love that sort of ordinary madness. I love that, you know, it needs a particular quality of writing to get away with it. It’s, it’s, you, it’s you know, it’s a sort of, it’s a cliche to say it’s easy to stab people, it’s easy to rape and murder, and the stakes are really obvious. Michael Pickard 18:16 Yeah, you know, Speaker 1 18:17 stakes in Hope Street are really low. So the hardest thing with Hope Street, over 51 episodes, coming over 51 crime stories, where the stakes are low enough, not high, where they’re low enough, so that so the the key thing, like Corry in the old days, I think, is the tone. It’s the tone, and and I remember pitching it right at the beginning, and and it felt to me like there was an audience who weren’t being catered for, who didn’t want to watch really, you know, didn’t want to watch really violent crime shows, and and were as interested in character as they were in anything else. And so the premise basically was half have 45 minutes off from Port Divine, come to Port Divine for a little holiday. There will be a crime, but it will. Don’t worry, we will take you by the hand, walk you through it, and it will get solved. And nobody will exit. Even watch an episode of Hope Street, and coming up, you will not come up this feeling worse than you did when you went in. You’ll always be a bit better. So yes, there’s a crime. I’ve done a whole lot of crime. When I was offered the bill, famously, I said to them, “I’ve never done crime, and please, I don’t think I could do that. Michael Pickard 19:29 Here we are. Then, Speaker 1 19:30 honestly, since then, I’ve done nothing else, apart from stint on Tawi. I’ve done nothing else, which you know, anyway, there are crimes in Tawi of different nature. Anyway, so yeah, there’s a crime. So and which of course hooks the audience in, and it gives you a structure, and it gives you the spine, it gives you middle, beginning in the middle and end. But really, it’s the characters and the writing and the tone of it, and you know that that that feeling that you know these people, and they’re sort of they could be your name, they could live next door. They have quirks and their foibles, and there are things that you recognise, and it makes you laugh. It doesn’t make you laugh out loud; it makes you smile. So, I mean, my father always says, and we work very, very hard to do this. He says, he says he never struggles to understand it. My father’s right, good man, but he’s he’s old, and he, you know, he just he sits down and watch. Hopefully, he always gets it. He really gets it, and so it is. You know, it’s it’s a very deliberate, and that means it’s it’s travelled. You know, it’s travelled and it’s travelled and it’s travelled. And because one of the concerns at the beginning was, you know, because When I first went to Northern, when we first went to North Island to pitch it and to make it, I get into taxis and they say, “What are you doing? And you say, “Oh, I’m here to make a cop show. And they’d say, “Oh, is it serial killers? Is it the IRA? And you say, “No. There’s an episode in which someone steals a sheep, and you could see them. People go blank. I’d say, well, like Doc Marten, a heartbeat, and you say, but in Northern Ireland, and they these were Northern people, they could not see that, you know, it seems such a sort of logical absurdity that you have warm crime drama from the place of from the home of the Troubles. You know what I mean? It’s like to me, always really, if you know Northern Ireland, if you go to a Northern Irish pub and listen to the nonsense that people talk, you know the wonderful nonsense, you would go, well, of course it’s going to work here, and I think it has because of that. It’s quite, you know, it’s warm and it’s funny and it’s, Michael Pickard 21:38 yeah, Speaker 1 21:39 and that’s worked from the start, I think. Michael Pickard 21:42 Yeah, yeah. No, I’ve seen some of the reviews and things, and yeah, it’s it’s the community feel is established straight on, isn’t it? And you know exactly what you’re watching quite quickly. So, yes, Speaker 1 21:52 and actually, it’s a very small number of core characters. Very small. Yeah, I think people gets bigger than that. You know what I mean? Oh, it’s a whole town. It’s there’s there’s four police officers and about six other people. That’s it, you know. And it’s you know, and it’s been it was set up by me and Donna Wiffin. You know, I met Donna first. We’ve been we’ve worked for we run our company together. We worked together since the bill. We know what we’re doing. Michael Pickard 22:19 Yeah, Speaker 1 22:21 I remember years ago in LA, and I went to it was on some sort of course, and I went to Chicago Hope. They were just about to do another musical episode. The rise of Chicago Hope. When you’ve been doing a musical episode, you’re thinking, I’ve been watching Chicago Hope. I think you should you should work out what it is rather than do musical episode. That was in the morning, in the afternoon, we went to diagnosis murder and met the writers there. And the first thing they said is, “Oh, we we we we we can’t we can’t talk to you all day. There were two cigars like this. Can’t talk to you all day because we’ve just got another four episodes because Chicago Hope can’t do them, so they give them to us. I’m thinking, oh, you know what you’re doing, don’t you? You really know what is, yeah. And I said to them, extra four episodes. That’s that’ll be what 30 or something. They went, yeah, yeah, it’d Michael Pickard 23:10 be fine. Speaker 1 23:10 I think we’re a bit like that. I mean, you know, we we we know how to make this stuff. It is it is sort of the build meets Corrosion Street in in hopefully a brilliant way. Yeah, for Speaker 5 23:22 sure. Michael Pickard 23:22 So, how was it making the film then? Just in in a production level, was it? Did it feel like this isn’t TV anymore? It’s a film, or did you did it retain that a long TV episode kind of vibe, perhaps, or were you conscious of elevating it a little bit? Maybe it Speaker 1 23:39 felt different. Yeah, it did feel different. I mean, for me, it felt different because on a really dull level. Because normally, I’m if there’s eight episodes when we start shooting, I’ve still got seven to finish or something, or three or six. It’s always I’m more. I’m just chained to a laptop. Yeah. Whereas this one, I’d written the script and it was done, so I was on set the whole time, and that doesn’t well nearly the whole time. That doesn’t that doesn’t normally happen. So that felt it, but it just it it it did feel very different. I mean, some ways, of course, it’s exactly the same. It’s the same crew. It’s the same locations. It’s the same cast, largely. But it do feel it felt. I genuinely did not know whether it would work over 90 minutes. I didn’t, and and I really only got two drafts of the script as well. Really, because because of I mean, I got lots of thinking time, and then it was like write it now. So it was like two full drafts, but that was okay, but I’d all the way through. I was thinking, does this hold? Does this extend to 90 minutes? And I think it’s better, which is a surprise. And I haven’t sort of thought it through yet. I think it just goes a bit deeper. I think it’s. It let yeah because because always we always sort of do two and a half stories in O Street. I always say similarly, oh that’s the old Corey formula two and a half stories A B and C, which I don’t think they quite stick to anymore. But those two and a half stories told over 90 minutes worked really well actually. They all got a bit more air. They all got a bit more time to breathe. And of course, because it’s a film, you’re going. We’re gonna. We are absolutely going to pick a crisis moment or or a very profound moment in these. In in in these. We have three sets of characters effectively in three different stories, which all overlap. But we’re one is a wedding, as you know. You know, one is a very much about whether Marnie will ever find love, and you know, and that definitely works in in terms of if you’ve never seen it before, it’ll definitely work for you. But watch 2051 episodes; it’ll really work, you know, because you’ve been waiting a bloody long time for that to happen. But no, so did it feel different? Yes, I mean, you know, I mean, we should talk about Ender, who directed it, who did such a brilliant job. You know, I mean, in some ways, it’s the same as a TV show because it was hot daily prep. Yeah, I’m sure Doctor Ender would say, “Yeah, Hod Daddy Prep. There was no less prep than the TV show, but there was no more prep. But actually, his approach to it was because if we’re doing you know eight episodes, you’re going to be in the police station X number of times. He said, you know, he said we’re going to with literally literally only six scenes in this in this location. I’m going to make each one of them feel completely different that he has, and I think that’s clever. Michael Pickard 26:39 Yeah. Speaker 1 26:39 Every time we went to the pub, you know, again, if you’re if you’re doing a series of eight episodes, there’s going to be hundreds of pub scenes. There aren’t. There’s 10 or something, you know. And so you approach each one of them very differently. We did. I mean, we didn’t used to like the TV show at all. We really liked the film. That’s a big difference. I am famously impatient and intolerant of lighting, so I think they took ages lighted. They don’t. I bet they’re. I think they’re right. Anyway, it’s myomania. What are you doing now? Anyway, it looks terrific. Michael Pickard 27:18 Yeah, Speaker 1 27:18 it’s really really good, and I think that yeah, the costumes are really good. Actually, it it certainly we took a lot more time to light it, a lot more time to grade it. The music has gone up by many many levels, and so from the start with Justin and Tony doing the music, Justine was very experienced. We’ve worked with her for years. Tony was new. He came to us in World Downs, Green, and now he has scored the film on his own. That’s how it be. He’s done a brilliant job, and lots of the strings were played by the Ulster Orchestra. We did not have an orchestra on the TV show, so you know it feels it’s it definitely feels elevated. But the thing that made me feel comfortable when I watched it on Friday is I don’t think our audience is going to watch and go they’ve gone mad. You know, watch it and go. Oh, it really feel it really feels like Hope Street, but somehow I keep saying it’s Uber Hope Street. You know, Hope Street to that power of 100. It it feels it really feels like Hope Street, and some of it’s very beautiful because when we shoot, it’s very beautiful and it’s really beautiful. Actually, I mean, and the other thing that makes it feel different, which is the complete accident. The weather was terrible. It was absolutely stunning before we got there. It was absolutely stunning after we left. I would say God hates Hope Street. There was a moment where there’s a scene where they’re fighting outside a church. We had to come. We had to go back three times through that scene because the weather was so appalling. And the third time, and it was like we don’t get it this time. I don’t know what we’re going to do. Hail was coming off the sea into our faces. I was there going, “It’s June gold. June. We were having a Michael Pickard 29:15 heatwave. What was going on with you guys over there? That’s. Speaker 1 29:19 I mean, I live. I live in Blackheath, and actually, and I it was too hot for me here. Do you know what I mean? So I, I was, I didn’t mind it that much, but I actually intend to shoot. But once it’s all graded, it gives it a really nice feel. Actually, it’s not normally Hope Street. Hopefully, the sun signs, and then we grade it to make the Mediterranean. You know, and we couldn’t do that this time. And that plus, it’s very nicely lit by Anthony Breen, you know. And he’s somebody else who’s been operating cameras on Hope Street since the start, and has done did some DOPing for us before. And Ray Carlin has always been our DOP. Busy. He’s now doing line of duty, and you know all that sort of stuff. So Tony did it. Did a brilliant job. Did a really good job. There’s a lot of that going on. There’s a lot of people going, “Oh my God, they’ve given us the film, including me. I’m really going to try and put. I’m going to pull my finger out, and I think that’s paid off. It’s, you know, it sounds like an odd thing to say. I thought it was going to be good. I think it’s really good. I think it’s really, really good. And I think it’s when I when I watched it on Friday, I thought, you know, given who I am and where I’m from and my story and all that, it’s a little bit of magic. Michael Pickard 30:34 Yeah, Speaker 1 30:34 actually, there’s some magic in it. Yeah. You know, I’m looking. I’m looking forward to other people seeing it. And the fact it’s going to be Michael Pickard 30:45 in cinemas was was that important, or was that something you had to ask for? That you know, rather than just it going out on TV as a feature length episode. Speaker 1 30:55 I mean, that came from if you if you make a movie and you want to access the film tax credit, it has to be. Michael Pickard 31:03 Okay, Speaker 1 31:04 I mean you have to, you know, you can’t guarantee a theatrical release. We just got one. I mean, I was talking to somebody recently who’s been in the film business for a long time, and he said, “I said, oh, we made a film, and you can see him thinking, “You haven’t, and I said, “No, we have. And he said, “I said, “Well, it’s going to be in the cinemas, and he said, “You’ve got a theatrical release. Is that a big deal? Doesn’t everyone have one? Apparently, it is. So apparently, you know, most people start off at festivals and hope to get theatrical. Anyway, we got theatrical release. I mean, it’s because it’s based on a TV show. I’m not, you know, I’m not naive. But no, it’s going to be in 17 cinemas in Ireland, and we don’t know about the about the rest of the UK yet. But no, you know, it has to be a film. It is a film. It really is a film, and and you know, and that was very clear, and that was very helpful. Actually, you know, in that terms of won’t you say no, Paul, it’s a film. Write a film. If you write a long episode of the TV show, that won’t be good enough. Yeah, you know, get over yourself. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. I keep saying to people my my first and last feature. Of course, I might do another one, but you know, no, it’s it’s Michael Pickard 32:23 that’s fantastic. Congratulations! Speaker 1 32:25 I I I do think that you know, as five years of people working hard on Hope Street and moving up, and then giving those people, saying these people, you know, Anthony’s DOP is is the best example I think where he’s absolutely taken it and run with it and done a really, really good job, and done a really good job with me standing in the corner moaning, and just ignoring me, and and and turning out to be right. You know, I do find lighting so tedious, but it looks great. You know, so I think I think the point being rumbling now. I think everyone has stepped up. Factors to film has made us all go, oh, actually, I need to raise my game, and I think that’s right across. I mean, you know, the acting’s always been good. The acting’s cracking. I think really, really, really good. I don’t single anyone out because I shouldn’t because they’re they’re terrific and there’s not you know are you Michael Pickard 33:24 having conversations in about whether you’re going to do more or is it is it just you’ll wait for a call maybe Speaker 1 33:30 not well not yeah I mean we will I mean you know what’s always happened with a TV show is it went out and then we talked about doing another one and that we kept getting recommissioned and then they would never gives us enough time to write it properly. But anyway, that’s television today. But they obviously did get enough time to write it because we always got it done. But so you know, I’m not. I think with Hope Street, I don’t think we’ve said everything that could be said, but we’ve said plenty. You know, and I don’t know whether for us, for me, or for us as the company, I’d like to do something else set in Northern Ireland. I would, but I don’t know what that is yet. I think I need to get this open system. But now we’ve made a Hope Street film. I think there could be another one. You know, if you asked, and if you asked me six months ago, I said, “Oh my God, I can’t think. Don’t know if we can do one. Never mind, because people saying, “Well, you do one, you do another. Yeah, yeah, Michael Pickard 34:24 you got a trilogy mapped out or something? Have you Speaker 1 34:28 today? No, but no, I don’t think it’s impossible. I don’t, but I haven’t. You know, we shall see. Let’s see how you’re back to this. Great. What Michael Pickard 34:37 else are you up to then? After what’s what’s on the slate for you next? Speaker 1 34:41 Well, generally, I mean, I’m sort of-I shouldn’t say I’m actually being self-deprecating, is it? I didn’t start off as a writer, so when I worked at Granada, I was a script editor and story editor with such you know low rent writers as Russell T Davies and Sally Wayne Wright and. Michael Pickard 35:00 Whatever happened to them? Speaker 1 35:02 Exactly. So I never felt like I got myself a. In some ways, it was a very bad. It was brilliant, obviously. Yeah. You know, and Russ Liptic was still a really good friend. And so I was, you know, I was a script editor and a producer, and then I ran Brookside and The bill, and you know, and then I started inventing things. I did the bill. I invented murder investigation team, which is spin off of that, and and I invented thing called Footwear’s Wives, which made. I would say, like in America, I always say, I did Footwear Wives, and everybody here says, which was great. But I mean, but I didn’t ever because I worked with Anne McManus, who started Shed Carter Street. We were very good friends, and I took Footballers Wise to her, and she made it work physically. And I was running Brookside then, so I didn’t, I didn’t ever really worked on Footballers Wise. It was very strange in a way, but she was brilliant, and she made it outrageous. She made it hit, and then so when I was doing the bill, episodes would fall over, and I’d end up rewriting them. But I still never thought of the writer. And then how many years ago? It hit nine years ago something. I came up with this thing called On the Kills and Acorn. Who now they weren’t then, but they’re now owned by AMC. They were about to commission their first original drama, and and I thought, here’s my chance. I said, and do you care who writes the first of this? Because they really liked the idea that we didn’t quite write the first one. They said, oh, we don’t care. So I want a good script. I went, I’ll go and have a think about that. So I went and I wrote it myself. Yeah, and I thought it would take because I had a sort of scene by scene breakdown. It would take me about a week to get decent scripts. Took me about two months. Two months, I went and here’s the script, and they said, “Oh, we’ve been waiting for that. And I said, “Yes, I won’t tell you who’s written it. And they read it, and they really liked it, and so it was me. So I wrote quite a lot of London Kills, not all of it, and then the Folk Street. I created with Susie Farrell. Susie Farrell is a film writer, ironically, who created lots of the character. In particular, she’s brilliant on the characters. She’s great, Susie, but she’s always busy, so we grew it together. She wrote the first episode, but then as it’s gone on, I’ve ended up writing more and more of it. And so, somebody said to me the other day, “You’ve got to start calling yourself a writer. Stop this now, you know. So, Long Story TV, the company Mix Hope Street, we also made the Light in the hall for Channel 4c, so we have shows in development. We have one show which I can’t say very much about that is written by me, which is a cop show, very different Moat Street. More, I made a show for we made an improvised cop show for Channel Five called Suspects, favourably and Damien Maloney. more in that line, and then we have a script which I’m really really excited about that I’m not writing, which is about a drag queen in Souls murders. Michael Pickard 38:14 Okay, Speaker 1 38:15 yeah, which is really getting there. We have Gina Mariati, who created Light in the Hall, has written something new for us, and I can’t tell you anything about it apart from it’s Michael Pickard 38:28 brilliant. Okay, Speaker 1 38:29 so good. It’s so exciting. Yeah, so we have we have three or four other projects that are quite close. We’ve got a big we’ve got a big piece of classic fiction IP as well that we’re working on. So crazy Michael Pickard 38:44 times, great. Well, I don’t want to get cut off. So, but that’s great. Thank you so much. Yeah, good luck with the film, I guess, and final touches, and we’ll see when it’s out soon. September, isn’t it? So yeah, Speaker 1 38:59 yes, yes, yeah, and it’s another yeah, be on the telly in October. I know it’s in yeah, and the telly in December. Michael Pickard 39:06 Yeah, okay, good to know. Well, I’ll check in with Celine on about those details. Celine will run something. Speaker 1 39:12 Yeah, the word of the law. All right, Michael Pickard 39:17 nice to see you, Paul. Thanks so much for your time. Unknown Speaker 39:19 Good night. Bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai