Tag Archives: Caryn Mandabach

Lifting the mask

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London’s Royal Festival Hall hosted the most prestigious night of the year for British television as prizes were handed out to dramas including Peaky Blinders, Three Girls and The Handmaid’s Tale. DQ went behind the scenes at the Bafta Television Awards 2018.

Crowds were hanging over balconies, hoping to catch a glimpse of their favourite TV stars as dozens of plush cars lined up to drop off their A-list cargo at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The red carpet outside was a scene of organised chaos as guests made their way past photographers and fans cheering their name before they arrived inside the venue for this year’s Bafta Television Awards.

Inside the grand building, which sits on the city’s Southbank beside the River Thames, the atmosphere was one of relative calm as the auditorium’s seats slowly filled up ahead of the start of the show, this year presented by former Great British Bake-Off host Sue Perkins.

BBC comedy This Country and drama Three Girls, which was based on real events, each scooped two prizes, while Molly Windsor (Three Girls) and Sean Bean (Broken) scooped the gongs for leading actress and actor. In the best drama category, Peaky Blinders beat competition from Line of Duty, The Crown and The End of the F****** World, while US series The Handmaid’s Tale triumphed over scripted rivals Big Little Lies and Feud: Bette and Joan to be named best international drama.

After the winners were escorted off stage, DQ was on hand to hear some of their reactions.

A fifth season of Peaky Blinders is on the way

Drama Series: Peaky Blinders (Caryn Mandabach Productions, Tiger Aspect Productions, BBC2)
This was Peaky Blinders‘ first Bafta award for best drama since the period drama set in 1920s Birmingham debuted on BBC2 in 2013. Season four aired last year, with a fifth commissioned by BBC2.
Steven Knight, creator and writer: “I’m shocked. I think it took that long just for people to get the idea of what it’s all about. Some things do take time. I’m really pleased. I’m hoping that next year it will be [actors] Helen [McCrory], Paul [Anderson] and Cillian [Murphy]. They are the Peaky Blinders. My ambition was to make it a story of family between two wars. I’ve always wanted to end it with first air-raid siren in Birmingham in 1939 – three more seasons. Now we’re getting approached to do all kinds of things – ballet, musical, a movie would be great. I wouldn’t want to do it at the very end but maybe between two of the seasons.”
Caryn Mandabach, executive producer: “I’m gobsmacked. What Steve’s not saying is many people were saying, ‘It’s not for me, it’s too northern, it’s too violent.’ What people didn’t understand was what he was really writing about was the effect of violence on people and the importance of respect for the family. Now finally everyone’s catching up with an honest depiction of people everywhere after some giant thing like the First World War. I don’t know how he actually writes them, personally. I think he’s got writer fairies that visit occasionally.”

O-T Fagbenle in The Handmaid’s Tale

International: The Handmaid’s Tale (MGM, Channel 4)
After claiming victory at the Golden Globes and Emmys, Hulu’s adaptation of Margret Atwood’s dystopian novel – a timely and often challenging watch – was a sure thing to continue its award-winning run following its UK broadcast on Channel 4.
O-T Fagbenle, who plays Luke, Offred (Elisabeth Moss)’s husband before Gilead: “The source material, Margaret’s book, is just a phenomenal piece of literature. Also we live in scary times, changing times, with populist governments on the rise and a greater awareness of the way patriarchy affects women’s rights in the world.
“What’s been really interesting about it is how so many people from so many walks of life related to it. When it first came out, Donald Trump had just been elected and everyone related it to Trump. Then there was the great #MeToo movement and people related it to that. Also people around the world are relating to the different ways, large and small, that men have oppressed women.
“Elisabeth is the greatest actress I’ve ever had the chance to work with, in so many ways. She’s phenomenal and she carries such a load with her. The material is so challenging and she’s just charming and generous on set. You couldn’t wish to work with a better partner in a scene.”

Brían F O’Byrne as grieving father Steve Jones in Little Boy Blue

Supporting Actor: Brían F O’Byrne, Little Boy Blue (ITV Studios, ITV)
O’Byrne and Sinead Keenan starred as parents Steve and Melanie Jones in the four-part ITV series, which dramatises the real-life killing of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool in 2007.
“Jeff [Pope]’s script is so good and Paul [Whittington]’s such a wonderful director, you know you’re going to be in safe hands but also worried they may have actually called the wrong guy – there must be a mistake. I was living in LA at the time and I had just decided to move back to Ireland after being over there for three decades. I hadn’t worked in the UK before and got a call to go to Liverpool. I didn’t have the fear of getting a job until I met Mel and Steve, and then there was the realisation I could really fuck this up really badly and it would be terrible. It’s too sensitive a material.
“You’re not really thinking about it from an acting point of view as much as you’re invited into [the Jones family’s] home, and I got to meet two people who are grieving a decade later and are processing something we could all have empathy with and identify with. It would be our horror that your child, just coming back from football practice, could be indiscriminately killed.
“This award is Sinead’s really. I got to witness an incredible performance take after take. Actresses are the ones who really have to go from 0-100 right now and it’s expected take after take. She was living in grief for those several months. It was a really tough job for her.
“The odd thing was going to work on a set like that because everybody thought of it as we’re not just making a shit TV show. If you go and work on something like that, everybody there had care for the piece. There was great care and attention taken because we all met [the family at the heart of the story] and we didn’t want to lessen the loss they had in any way.
“They obviously wanted their story told because of their love for Rhys. I know they were happy about how the show ended up. [The existence of the show means] Rhys’s memory is still out there. I think ultimately that’s what they wanted. They want to show their grief continues and the senseless act of his murder is not just nightly news thing, it goes on and it stays with them.

Three Girls told the true story of a sexual abuse scandal

Miniseries: Three Girls (BBC Drama Studios, Studio Lambert, BBC1)
The BBC three-parter retold the true stories of victims of grooming and sexual abuse in the English town of Rochdale between 2008 and 2012. The series also won writing, editing and directing prizes at the Bafta Television Craft Awards last month.
Nicole Taylor, writer: “The first thing I did was turn it down repeatedly because I was scared to do it. I thought I had good reasons for turning it down but actually I was just scared  – and what I was really doing was turning away from the girls because I didn’t want to look, like everyone else. They didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want it to be true. I was scared of approaching it, and that was actually an appropriate place to start from. Once I went up to Rochdale and met the girls and their mums and dads, I was so stunned myself at the gap between the idea of Girl A and Girl B and Girl C and these anonymous people, and getting to know them was so enormous. I was so shocked by that; I thought, ‘Right, I’m definitely going to do this – I can’t not do this.’ I didn’t really do anything else for three years.”
Philippa Lowthorpe, director: “The really urgent thing for me as a director was to get inside those girls’ heads and see their experiences from their point of view, not on the outside, but to really try to understand from the inside what they might be experiencing and to be really truthful to their experience and honour their experience and to not walk away. It was very emotional. We had a brilliant casting director in Shaheen Baig and we chose very carefully girls not only for their talent, but also their maturity to be able to deal with this kind of subject matter.”
Simon Lewis, producer: “Before the programme could be broadcast, we showed it to [the real-life victims]. They came and watched it individually because we were obviously nervous and because we knew it would be emotional. One by one, sometimes with a family member or a friend, they all came in to watch. We were expecting them to say, ‘That’s not quite right,’ or ‘I didn’t go in that door’ or ‘I was never in that car,’ but actually the essence, the big stuff, they all said that’s how it was. When we showed it to them, there were a lot of tears. But there were a lot of tears all the way through making it.”
Susan Hogg, executive producer: “One of the girls said, which has really made me proud, that until she watched the programme, she didn’t realise she was a victim. Watching the programme, because we’d interviewed her and then put her character on the screen, she could see she was absolutely a victim, and that meant a huge amount to her. It’s not just about the three girls on screen, it’s about the thousands of others who have been abused and those trials keep coming up and more and more victims come to light. It’s for all them really that we made this programme, for them to be heard, because, for a long time, even when they went to the police, they weren’t being heard and weren’t being believed. Now we know that is changing. For the BBC to support a programme like this and for [director of content] Charlotte Moore to put her weight behind it and have the confidence to commission it is massive. With the way funding now works and we have a lot of money coming in from America and the SVoD channels, we’re doing a lot of coproductions, this really important domestic drama is very hard to fund, and the BBC absolutely does that. Long may that continue.”

Vanessa Kirby accepts her award for her performance in The Crown

Supporting Actress: Vanessa Kirby, The Crown (Left Bank Pictures, Netflix)
Kirby stars in the epic British royal drama as Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy)’s younger sister. The award marked the first major Bafta for Netflix, following craft prizes for photography & lighting and sound. 
“I just felt like the luckiest person in the world to play someone so colourful, vivid, brave and strong, so actually this is for Margaret, wherever she is.”

Aysha Rafaele on stage at the Baftas last night

Single Drama: Murdered for Being Different (BBC Studios Documentary Unit, BBC3)
This film, from the award-winning team behind Murdered by my Boyfriend, retold the brutal 2007 killing of 20-year-old Sophie Lancaster, who was kicked to death by a gang of teenagers. Her boyfriend Robert Maltby was also severely beaten and ended up in a coma. Both were targeted because they were goths.
Aysha Rafaele, the former creative director of BBC Studios Documentary Unit who is now setting up a drama hub within the organisation: “A big thank you to Robert Maltby and Sylvia Lancaster, Sophie’s mum, for their bravery and courage in allowing us to tell this devastating story. Sadly since Sophie’s death, hate crime in this country has continued to rise. It’s our duty and our privilege as filmmakers to not look away from the dark corners in our society.”

Daisy May Cooper writes and stars in This Country

Scripted Comedy: This Country (BBC Studios, BBC3)
Female Performance in a Comedy Programme: Daisy May Cooper, This Country
The BBC3 mockumentary, about two young people living in a small village in the Cotswolds, also earned its stars and co-creators (and siblings) writing accolades at the Bafta TV Craft Awards last month.
Charlie Cooper, writer and actor: “We had an idea in our head that we thought might be funny but we were never intelligent enough to articulate it. As soon as we met these guys [producers Tom George and Simon Mayhew-Archer], they knew immediately what we were on about and transformed what was a seed of an idea into something that’s good and funny. It’s amazing.”
Daisy May Cooper, writer and actor: “What we were worried about when the first season came out was that people might not be able to find it [on online network BBC3]. Now with a second season coming out, people are really talking about it and I get stopped a lot more, which is brilliant. I absolutely love it.”

Toby Jones clutches his award

Male Performance in a Comedy Programme: Toby Jones, Detectorists (Channel X North, Treasure Trove Productions, Lola Entertainment, BBC4)
The comedy series, written and directed by Mackenzie Crook, saw Crook and Jones play a pair of metal-detecting enthusiasts. It previously won the 2015 Bafta for scripted comedy. Jones won the award for its third and final season.
“I think it’s fantastic writing. It’s a strange thing in world of TV now that I was cycling through New Orleans making a film last October and these guys came out of a bar and just went, ‘Man we love the Detectorists.’ It’s so extraordinary that a show made in a village in Suffolk is big in America and Canada. It’s a testament to how Mackenzie’s created characters that are archetypal. It’s about friendships, maybe about a life a lot of people want, where they can go to the pub with their mates and they have time.
“Mackenzie and I have worked on the same things before but never worked in a scene together. Then we were in Muppets Most Wanted as a double act and he said to me, ‘I’ve written this thing with you in mind. You don’t have to do it. I know it’s a nightmare when people tell you they’ve written something for you but, if you don’t mind, I’ll email it to you. You probably won’t like it and you don’t want to do a comedy show, do you?’ He emailed it to me and it was just the most amazing dialogue. It’s not comedy in the sense of gags, it’s about humane characters. That’s what appealed to me.
“I always think the most glamorous thing about our job is the contrast. You get to move medium, you get to move where you’re working, the scale you’re working at and the people you’re working with. That always feels to me like the most glamorous thing you can possibly do. So to work on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and then go and stay in a pub and make Detectorists, it just feels fantastic. Neither one is better. It’s just a huge contrast.
“Mackenzie was pretty clear that he didn’t want to say goodbye in a big way, but there’s a challenge in the show that you find treasure. You can’t keep finding treasure. It felt great that he’d found a third season because it felt like the second one, where we found treasure at the end, that was a good place to stop. Nut he said, ‘What if the treasure was up in the sky?’ So it actually feels good and appropriate to finish it. I really miss those actors because it was such a chilled-out job. You stroll to work in a field in the sunshine every day. The scripts are immaculate. It’s very rare you don’t have to change anything.”

Casualty first aired in 1986

Soap & Continuing Drama: Casualty (BBC Studios Continuing Drama, BBC1)
The long-running BBC drama follows the staff and patients at the fictional Holby City Hospital’s emergency department.
George Rainsford, who plays Ethan Hardy: “Casualty has been around for 30 years. It keeps challenging itself and keeps challenging the viewers, keeps producing big stories people can relate to, hopefully, and it keeps championing the NHS. I’m really speechless. I genuinely didn’t think we’d be here.”
Chelsea Halfpenny, who plays Alicia Munroe: “I think it shows authentically the realities of the NHS. The business, the lack of funding…  I get a lot of tweets and messages from nurses and doctors saying thank you for showing the struggles.”
Simon Harper, executive producer: “There isn’t particularly a gender pay gap on Casualty, I wouldn’t say. One thing that came to light in the [BBC] pay publication thing last summer was just how hard our artists work, and every single one of them deserves every single penny that they earn. I would agree in the industry wide there’s still a lot of work to be done but I think we can hold our heads high on that issue.”

Sean Bean collects the leading actor prize

Leading Actor: Sean Bean, Broken (LA Productions, BBC1)
Former Game of Thrones star Bean won the award for his portrayal of Father Michael Kerrigan, a Roman Catholic priest who tries to be a confidant, counsellor and confessor for a congregation struggling with its beliefs amid the challenges of daily life in contemporary Britain. The series was written by Jimmy McGovern.
“It kind of developed with Jimmy as an idea. I’ve worked with Jimmy before on a thing called Tracie’s Story, where I played a transvestite, so I knew it would be something unusual. It was kind of semi-autobiographical for Jimmy; it was based on his experiences but it stemmed from scratch really. There was no script, no story, it was just his ideas and he was very passionate about that. I got on board very early and said I’d love to work with him again and let’s see what you come up with. I wasn’t really taking a gamble because I love him – and whatever he comes up with, it’s going to be interesting. But it was very exciting for me. It was a nucleus that developed.
“We got the first episode and that was brilliant. It started off well and it was great to work with Anna [who played Christina Fitzsimmons], who was someone I’d wanted to work with for a long time. She was so perfect for the role, she was so fragile and vulnerable and yet a very strong woman, a woman with great self-belief but who has been battered around by her circumstances.
“I like looking at who the characters are, how they’re written and how they develop. That’s always been the case. When you read a script, if there’s detail that’s great but, in terms of characters, there are not a great deal of scripts that have characters that develop and we can relate to. There are quite a few one-dimensional characters you can play but you’re trying to supplement it with whatever you do to improve the character, whereas something like Broken, Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, the characters are there and you live up to their expectations. It’s up to you to reach that peak of characterisation. I’m just a bit more selective [now] and I like to know the directors and producers. Fortunately I’ve worked a few years and got to know quite a few people. I look forward to playing characters like Father Michael Kerrigan again.
“I worked as a producer on Broken. I’d like to spend some time looking at other things and maybe books I’ve read or ideas people have and become a producer. I wouldn’t say I’d like to direct, I can’t see myself doing that at the moment, but I’d like to be involved in the process of starting something from scratch and developing it and finding interesting characters to play. I don’t want to play something extreme. I think often the very simple stories as in Broken are the most powerful.”

Three Girls star Molly Windsor on stage

Leading Actress: Molly Windsor, Three Girls
Windsor plays Holly, a young girl new to Rochdale who is keen to make friends and fit in, but soon finds herself drawn into a world she cannot escape, despite her pleas for help.
“It’s surreal, absolutely bizarre. Philippa [Lowthorpe, director], Nicole [Taylor, writer] and Simon [Lewis, producer] were working on Three Girls for a long time before I came on board. They’d done so much research that they were my first port of call and they introduced me to Sara [Rowbotham, an NHS health worker] and Maggie [Oliver, a police officer who investigated the real case] and some of the real girls. Any questions or bits of research or bits of things I wanted to know, they were so great and kept us all in the loop and told us everything. The biggest challenge was the responsibility, the weight of knowing, because you want to do it right. If you look at it as a big mountain, that becomes a bit scary. So for me it was taking it scene by scene and taking it each day as it came and just committing to it – because if you look at it as a big project, that’s a big challenge.”

Hear from the winners of the Bafta Television Craft Awards 2018 here.

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BBC’s blind faith in Knight

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Peaky Blinders will have at least two more seasons
Peaky Blinders will have at least two more seasons

The BBC has ordered two more series of Steven Knight’s gangster series Peaky Blinders, which is set in 1920s Birmingham in the UK. The show is currently four episodes into season three, which means it will now run for at least five seasons – though Knight has expressed a desire to keep going long after that.

Like the first three seasons, the new commissions will both consist of six hour-long episodes, which means a total of 30 hours of TV.

Caryn Mandabach, executive producer of the show for Caryn Mandabach Productions, said: “It’s a fantastic vote of confidence in the show and Steven Knight’s writing that the BBC has ordered two more series following the first episode’s overnight figures. We’re proud of, and grateful for, the BBC’s support of the show.”

Will Gould, who also works on the show as an exec producer for Tiger Aspect, added: “Peaky has become a global hit. Steve’s vision resonates with audiences the world over, and what a privilege it is that we get to make more.”

Knight, who will continue to write all episodes, said: “I am thrilled at the response to the third season. The prospect of writing season four and five is truly exciting. This is a real passion project for me, and I look forward to telling more stories of the Shelby family.”

To be completely frank, the audience for season three of Peaky Blinders hasn’t been massive. It opened with 2.95 million (BARB) for episode one and then dropped to 2.43 million for episode two. So it’s not in the same league as BBC2’s Line of Duty (circa five million) or Channel 4’s Humans, which hit six million last June.

The Americans will conclude with season six
The Americans will conclude with season six

A possible reason for the modest audience is the show’s graphic violence, which won’t be to everyone’s taste. Another is the esoteric nature of the season three plot, which revolves around the fallout from the Russian Revolution (angry White Russian exiles and so on).

But judging Peaky Blinders solely on the basis of its ratings would be a bit like castigating a Man Booker Prize winner for not muscling JK Rowling off the fiction best-seller list. The fact is that Peaky Blinders is superb – comparable to the best scripted series coming out of the UK, US, Nordics, Spain, Israel and elsewhere.

IMDb ratings back this up. The first episode of season three, which was slightly meandering, only managed 8.8. But the show really kicked into gear after that, with its IMDb rating jumping to a very impressive 9.5 by episode four. Critics are also pretty unanimous in their approval, with the Daily Express going so far as to call Knight’s show “this generation’s Godfather.”

The beauty of Knight’s formula is the way he plays different interest groups off against each other, blurring the line between criminality and legality, gangsters and establishment. The result of his complex plotting is that central character Tom Shelby is constantly saved from what looks like certain death by individuals or organisations that suddenly find they have a use for him.

Alongside the sophistication of Knight’s writing, the show is beautifully directed (by Tim Mielants in season three) and, of course, superbly acted. Cillian Murphy, as Tommy Shelby, is delivering a performance that, by this week’s episode four, is similar to the standards set by Bryan Cranston as Walter White in Breaking Bad. And Paul Anderson, as his brother Arthur, grows in stature with every season.

AMC's Preacher has opened strongly
AMC’s Preacher has opened strongly

Murphy’s comment on the new commission is that: “Tommy Shelby is one of the most intense, challenging characters I’ve had the opportunity to play. I’m particularly grateful that Steven’s original, dynamic writing and the longform series allow me to explore Tommy in depth. I look forward to Tommy’s evolution over the next two chapters.”

Peaky Blinders’ graphic violence (Tarantino-like in its intensity at times) inevitably limits the kind of channels/slots where it can air. But as Gould says, the show has established a solid fanbase around the world. Netflix in the US, for example, will offer season three from May 31. And Arte in France has also aired the show. Peaky is distributed by Endemol Shine International, which will be pleased that it can now go to the global market with 30 episodes.

Another quality show in the news this week is FX’s Cold War spy drama The Americans, which has also been given a new two-season order. The difference with this one, however, is that these two seasons will be the last, with The Americans ending in 2018 after six seasons. Season five will have 13 episodes and season six will have 10, bringing the total volume to a very respectable 75.

“Through its first four seasons, critics have lauded The Americans as one of the best shows on television and, remarkably, a series that keeps getting better every year,” said FX original programming president Eric Schrier.

“All credit for that achievement goes to everyone who has worked on the show, and especially co-showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, (executive producer) Graham Yost, our brilliant stars Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Noah Emmerich, Allison Wright, Holly Taylor and Annet Mahendru, and the ensemble cast for their incomparable performances. We have no doubt that this two-season order will allow Joe and Joel to tell this story to its perfect conclusion.”

Rush Hour has been canned
Rush Hour has been canned

Again, the show isn’t what you’d call a ratings hit. Season four is currently averaging around 930,000, which is down a little on season three. And it rates lower than a number of other FX shows, including The Bastard Executioner, which was cancelled after one season despite having a higher audience and better 18-49 demo.

Nevertheless, The Americans is a good show for FX because it attracts critical acclaim and gets a fair share of award wins and nominations – all useful for a cable subscription service. It has also had a decent life internationally, airing on Network Ten Australia, FX Canada, RTE Ireland and ITV/ITV Encore in the UK.

For Weisberg and Fields, there is no particular downside to the show ending, because they have also signed a new overall deal with FX Productions to develop their next scripted series.

Meanwhile, AMC’s latest new show, Preacher, has got off to a good start, with episode one securing an audience of 2.38 million. This puts it at number four on the channel behind The Walking Dead, Fear The Walking Dead and Into the Badlands.

Preacher was helped by being scheduled after FTWD – so episode two will be an important benchmark for the show. But it could shed a significant amount of viewers and still be regarded as a hit by AMC.

By contrast, six-part espionage drama The Night Manager has just ended its run on AMC with a modest 790,000 average audience. It picked up slightly for the last episode but made nowhere near the impact it had on British television. This is a bit of a surprise considering that lead actor Hugh Laurie has a good profile in the US with his long-running lead role in House. However, it may indicate that the show wasn’t right for AMC.

One programme that has had an abject first season is CBS’s movie adaptation Rush Hour. Just eight episodes in, the show is delivering around four million viewers and has already been cancelled.

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Playing a Blinder

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As British period gangster drama Peaky Blinders returns to BBC2 for its third season, creator Steven Knight explains that while the show is more ambitious than ever, his home will always be cinema.

Somewhere, perhaps in an office or filed away on a computer, are the first four chapters of a novel called Peaky Blinders.

An epic gangster story set in 1920s Birmingham, the story had been a longtime passion project for writer Steven Knight.

Steven Knight
Steven Knight

But the novel remained unfinished and Knight went into film, attaining credits including Dirty Pretty Things, Amazing Grace, Eastern Promises and Locke.

Then when Nurse Jackie creator Caryn Mandabach asked him if there was anything he wanted to do for television, he returned to Peaky Blinders – which takes its name from the gang members who would sew razor blades into the peaks of their flat caps.

Knight recalls: “In 1992 I was going to do it as a novel. When I first started writing, this was one of the things I wanted to do. I did write four chapters as a novel – I wonder where it is now. But I went away and did film and Caryn got in touch and said, ‘Have you got any ideas?’ and this was one of them.

“Then we went to the BBC, they liked the idea and that was it. It’s a story of a family so you could do it in any way. I knew the basics (of the gang, led by the Shelby brothers), which were that the older brother wasn’t in charge, the younger one was, their parents are dead and they’ve just come back from the war. Before, they’d been pretty rough and ready, and now this younger brother (runs the criminal enterprise) with class and does it differently. That was the idea.”

Peaky Blinders burst onto BBC2 in 2013 and now, after a two-year break, the series is returning to screens for a third season, which sees gang leader Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) pulled into the glamorous and dangerous world of international intrigue in 1920s Birmingham, putting his entire organisation and family at risk and forcing him to question everything about his own ambitions and desires.

Knight explains: “They’re richer but not necessarily happier. The tensions in the family are growing but the question of the whole series is whether people from this (working class) background can escape. Can they become respectable? Can they ever get away? What I want to do is dramatise the things that pull them back and keep them who they are. It questions whether it’s because of who they are that they remain like that or if it’s because of circumstance. That’s really the fundamental question – can the Shelbys ever become respectable?”

Peaky Blinders stars Cillian Murphy, who is now also an executive producer on the series
Peaky Blinders stars Cillian Murphy, who is now also an executive producer on the series

Executive producer Caryn Mandabach adds: “This is emotionally ambitious – it’s a saga – so your ambition is to move hearts and minds, and to do that, you use every trick in the book to understand how people access feeling. There are lots of contexts – we all have family, we have relationships – but to dig deep into those phenomena is at the core of the ambition. As Steve says, you can run but you can’t hide.”

On screen, the show reunites returning cast members such as Helen McCrory, Tom Hardy, Paul Anderson, Sophie Rundle, Joe Cole and Finn Cole. And they will be joined by Paddy Considine, who plays this season’s villain and is described by Knight as “a force beyond anything Shelby has previously encountered.”

“They’re so, so smart,” Mandabach says of the cast. “And it’s not just emotional intelligence. They’re great to have a beer with and that’s because they’re curious and they take a lot of things in. Some actors, not so much. These actors, as a group, are the smartest bunch of folks I know. Clever on every level, well read and curious. They love being there because they’re with other people just like that and it’s fun.”

The stellar cast includes Helen McCrory
The stellar cast includes Helen McCrory

For many series, reaching season three is a landmark moment. Having established your characters and setting in season one and navigated the televisual equivalent of the difficult second album, a third run is a chance to push both the creative and production boundaries.

For Knight, reaching this stage just makes his job much easier. “The first season was setting the whole thing up and you really had to point out that this is mythology, that it’s larger than life,” he explains. “We’re not trying to do kitchen sink, it wasn’t ‘isn’t life awful.’ It’s the opposite of that. We want glamour and gangsters and westerns. Now everyone gets that and it makes it so much easier.

“It’s a fantastic time because you know the actors are great, you know they can do it. There are things you can do and they can pull it off. In other words, you can say that here in 1924 (the setting for season three), my characters are now here. I know how they’re going to behave so I can just watch them, effectively. This is what they’re saying, this is what they’re doing, getting themselves into the same old trouble, making the same mistakes over and over again. That’s the beauty of it. But the challenge is to throw different fireworks at their feet.”

But while he is enjoying working in TV with Peaky and forthcoming Tom Hardy drama Taboo, which will air on BBC1 and FX, Knight still considers the big screen to be his nine-to-five.

“I still consider film to be the day job,” he says. “And I consider Peaky to be what I do when I’m happy and relaxed. For me, I want to get to Peaky. The features – it’s such a different thing now where you write a script and a director takes it and that’s it, that’s fine. I’ll also be writing and directing a feature. Features are great but TV’s something different.”

He goes on to describe a TV set as “heaven” compared with being on a film lot: “It’s like taking your tie off, taking your boots off. It’s great, it’s lovely. You don’t have the studio’s notes, you don’t have the director’s notes. You don’t get all that and it’s all lovely. And that’s why I think television is thriving. Because people who make up and tell the story have the authority, rather than someone who feels intimidated by being given the story and feels as though they have to prove it’s theirs.”

Peaky Blinders is now on air in 163 countries around the world following deals by Endemol Shine International, while Netflix also carries the show internationally.

The third run follows the Shelby brothers' criminal organisation in 1924
The third run follows the Shelby brothers’ criminal organisation in 1924

And like many film stars, Murphy has crossed over to television and admits “it’s a real gift for any actor to be given a part like this and be able to explore a character over 18 hours.”

He continues: “That’s a long time and it’s a real luxury. But first and foremost it’s the quality of the writing. To get scripts like this from the get-go and see a character develop like this, and see all the characters develop like this and see the writing keep that level of quality right from the beginning, I feel very lucky.”

In the role of Tommy, Murphy is rarely seen without a cigarette in hand, something that has become the character’s crutch and means the actor has smoked thousands of times during filming.

“People smoked all day and night (in the 1920s), that was their thing, and it just became a Tommy thing,” he says. “I don’t smoke myself but they’re these herbal roll-ups. I asked the prop guys to do a rough count of how many I smoked and they think it’s something like 3,000 in four months.”

Off set, Murphy has been enjoying his new role as an executive producer – the first time he has performed such duties. While he had been involved in discussing the show, the story and tone from the beginning, the EP credit formalises his position.

“It’s very collaborative,” he says of Peaky Blinders, which is produced by Caryn Mandabach Productions and Tiger Aspect and boasts a contemporary soundtrack featuring Radiohead and Nick Cave. “It’s my first barbecue as an executive producer. It’s interesting trying to look at stuff dispassionately and objectively, whereas normally you watch yourself through your hands. So learning to try to watch stuff and look for the overall structure and story is very interesting for me. I’ve really enjoyed the process.”

Murphy avoided watching himself back while on set, however, hoping to avoid colouring his performance. “It all happens afterwards, it’s all in the post-production,” he adds. “I just come in and have a look at things and just add ideas. I would hate to colour the performance because it’s only in the post-production that you ever pipe up with thoughts. I’ve never looked at rushes or playback or anything during shooting. That’s not the way I would do things and I don’t think it’s a helpful addition to an actor’s arsenal to start looking at yourself during shooting.”

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Drama at its peak: Caryn Mandabach on the state of the industry

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Peaky Blinders producer Caryn Mandabach explains why she isn’t concerned by the so-called drama glut.

“There aren’t too many novels,” says Caryn Mandabach, the US television producer behind Nurse Jackie and gangster drama Peaky Blinders (pictured above).

She’s responding to a question about whether there’s too much television nowadays, a view expressed by FX Networks chief John Landgraf earlier this summer and one that has played heavily on the minds of broadcasters and creators alike ever since.

In the literary world, the bestsellers stand apart from the rest, and Mandabach views the television industry in the same way.

Mandabach: 'We the consumers don’t need parochial content, we just want great stories well told'
Caryn Mandabach: ‘We the consumers don’t need parochial content, we just want great stories well told’

“I think the cream will rise to the top,” she says. “I’m always interested in stories and storytelling. I love a narrative that’s told through the medium of a character or characters because I relate to human beings, because I am one. I believe in the power of fiction and I think I’m not alone.

“What’s wonderful about Peaky Blinders is it appeals to young and old. Some things are just for the young, some things are just for the oldies, and if you can have something that crosses the border, that thing should go on forever. That has a depth of meaning. If a book, symphony or piece of art appeals to everybody, you’re connecting on a really deep level. Therefore, it’s like a novel.

“Something that’s wildly appealing is never going to out of style. Maybe the niche stuff might go out of fashion but if it’s appealing to a wide demographic, you’re always going to find something to say.”

From her roots in comedy, Mandabach’s television credits include The Cosby Show, Cybill, 3rd Rock from the Sun and That 70’s Show.

She’s since become known for producing Showtime’s dark comedy-drama Nurse Jackie, while BBC2’s Peaky Blinders – an epic gangster drama created by Steven Knight and set in 1920s Birmingham – is in production on its third season.

“I’m a daughter of a gangster from Chicago so the story of family, class and immigration was 100% mythologically accurate,” Mandabach says of Peaky Blinders. “Britain was yet to mythologise working-class people and Steven always says Americans mythologise cowboys and all they really are is guys who herd cows and horses, but we make a big deal of them. Similarly American gangsters.

“It’s not so much about gangster culture as the combination of the immigrant culture, the British class structure that was hard to break through and the inclination to ‘keep it in the family’ because they’re the only people you can trust. Steve appreciated I knew where he was coming from just on a human level.”

Caryn Mandabach Productions has two offices, one in Santa Monica and the other in London, where Mandabach began to spend more time after recognising the production possibilities offered in the UK, such as being able to retain rights over a series you created instead of handing them over to a US studio.

Nurse Jackie
Showtime drama Nurse Jackie

“That’s why I’m in the UK,” she admits. “We develop high-end drama series because I know how to do television series, and I’d be happy to do minis and one-offs. Because I know the rules here, I’m happy to play here. It’s a wonderful industry with lots of wonderful people.”

Mandabach is now developing shows for US cable channels, streaming platforms and broadcasters in the UK, and says she “couldn’t be happier” with the opportunities currently available to produce television.

In October, Caryn Mandabach Productions inked a multi-year deal with MGM Television (Fargo, Vikings) to produce hour-long and half-hour scripted series.

“The indie film industry has fallen away in both the UK and the US and, as a result, high-end extraordinary talent is now coming to TV,” she says. “Steven Knight writes movies and television. It doesn’t matter to him and it doesn’t matter to the actors. It shouldn’t matter to the audience.

“As a community of producers and writers, actors and directors, we don’t care any more. Steve is writing three movies – Peaky Blinders is six hours, that’s three movies for the BBC and for Netflix. That’s the way we treat it. The love and the passion of everyone involved – I haven’t seen the likes of it before.”

Mandabach says she is now working on new shows with writers including Craig Wright (Dirty Sexy Money), Danny Brocklehurst (Ordinary Lies) and Michael Thomas (The Devil’s Double), and has three projects at Sky and another with Sony’s international networks. But she admits she doesn’t worry about the competition to get commissions or where viewers might have to go to find her shows.

“It doesn’t matter where they are – people will find you now. You could be anywhere in the world watching Peaky Blinders, and that is a much more interesting game,” she says. “We the consumers don’t need parochial content, we just want great stories well told.”

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Inside Steven Knight’s critically acclaimed period drama Peaky Blinders

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Peaky Blinders, the Steven Knight-scripted period crime drama, has had one of the best critical receptions of UK drama in recent years, also winning the Editor’s Choice award at the inaugural C21 International Drama Awards in November 2014. But what exactly does it take to create, and sustain, such a beautifully crafted drama? DQ talks to some of the key players behind the production.

Viewers of last November’s climactic season two finale of Peaky Blinders on BBC2 were treated – and boy was it a treat – to an hour-long illustration of just why the UK period crime drama has become one of the best-received UK series of recent years, and what The Guardian has called “Britain’s answer to Boardwalk Empire.”

The sixth and final episode of the drama’s second season saw its protagonist, 1920s Birmingham gangster Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy), faced with near-impossible decisions across his business, family and love life. A finale played out at the Epsom racecourse brought the show’s dramatic tension – love and hate, law and crime, loyalty and honour, right and wrong and, of course, life and death – to a brutal climax.

Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy, left) and Arthur Shelby (Paul Anderson)
Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy, left) and Arthur Shelby (Paul Anderson)

The derby day denouement of Peaky’s many tense arcs was, above all, the handiwork of its writer, Steven Knight. With screenplays Closed Circuit, Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises to his name, Knight was already a drama giant. But he’s perhaps less known for being the UK creator of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? – an experience that no doubt honed his faculties for high drama.

For Peaky Blinders, Knight turned his attention to post-WWI Birmingham and the historical ‘Peaky Blinders’ street gang, so named for sewing razorblades into the peaks of their flat caps, which could then be used as weapons.

Peaky Blinders was created by Knight and coproduced by Caryn Mandabach and Tiger Aspect. Jamie Glazebrook, an executive producer working for Mandabach, says the show’s genesis was almost incidental.

“Five or six years ago we had a great meeting with Steve about a different project. He called a few weeks later to say he had an idea for something else – and told us about Peaky Blinders. We loved it straight away.”

Mandabach had built an enviable reputation in the US for groundbreaking comedy hits including The Cosby Show, Roseanne and latterly Nurse Jackie. The move to a dark UK drama like Peaky took Mandabach Productions outside of its sweet spot, and it needed a partner.

“Our background is in family comedies, but we wanted to cut our teeth on a big period drama with horses and guns and a cast of thousands,” Glazebrook recalls. “Very early on it seemed the best thing for the show was to hook up with Tiger Aspect. We have been proved right: they have been geniuses at taking a relatively small budget and making it look like something that could absolutely compete with US cable.

Frith Tiplady, executive producer and head of production at Tiger Aspect, explains: “Caryn Mandabach had the relationship with Steve Knight and got the commission. The BBC asked them to partner up with a UK production house. I like to think that Mandabach came to us because of our production expertise in delivering quality on screen – interpreting the writing to deliver the best show.

“We are definitely clear on our roles and really respect what the other brings to the party. I am sure Caryn agrees. Together we have made something really special. I think it’s been a brilliant partnership.”

Knight’s scripts define Peaky. “We are here because of Steve’s words,” says Glazebrook. Tiplady concurs: “We really see our job as being like the LAPD – to protect and serve. The strength is in working with Steve, realising his vision and protecting him as the writer.”

The show’s gothic texture is grounded by a deliberately cinematic look and feel rooted in the grime of 1920s post-war industrial Birmingham, which also has more than a nod towards Sergio Leone and Ridley Scott. That production design is led by TV period veteran Grant Montgomery.

Frith Tiplady
Frith Tiplady

“When I first read the first script I wanted to be part of it,” says Montgomery. “Giving it a very cinematic look from the get-go helps give it integrity,” he adds. “It goes for very much a cinematic quality of storytelling. That comes really from Steven’s scripts. When you read those, you think you have got to bring everything – cinematography, prod – so of course it becomes even more high end.

“It is also then moving from Birmingham to London – from industrial second city to first city – and you have to bring all of that to the table. So the journey has to become very clear visually.”

History and a rooting in actual events is one of the things that grounds the show. So how important was this in Montgomery’s work? “Initially the industrial world was dark black and the houses were black, so it was very important for me to get that right,” he says. “And the minute detail – if you notice in season one they are all using oil lamps, and then when they go to season two they have electricity and wealth – all those details that show the changing of the period and of their status.”

Of similar importance, says Montgomery, was the use of exteriors to take viewers out of the present and give a sense of reality in the past. The challenge of creating that experience was “huge, because you don’t have an art department budget. There isn’t a Hollywood budget to build a street,” he explains. “It takes a lot of money to do that and we don’t have it, so to try to convert locations and make them as big as possible was the ambition of the show right from the start.

“Every exterior was really hard fought for, with us thinking about how we were going to do it. Maybe we would only shoot half of a street. For example, in season one you had the whole street, while this year we only had half of it – but being sneaky with our angles made it seem like more than it was.”

Peaky is reported to have cost £1m an episode to make, but in fact that figure is an underestimate. “It was about £1.3m, £1.4m and probably season two was more like £1.4m, £1.5m,” Tiplady reveals. “But that’s not surprising. It’s exactly what a big period drama costs.”

So how did the funding come together for the show? “For series one we needed more money than is traditional in UK television,” she says. “The BBC supported it through the licence fee, and we had huge help from Endemol Worldwide Distribution, which placed a very good advance. EWD and Screen Yorkshire brought in match-funding, which together was almost a third of the budget.

“What’s interesting is that series one was done before the government’s tax break and series two was done after the tax break, so they have different funding models. The change went hand in hand with the creative ambition for series two, which was so much bigger that we needed more money.

“The difference between season one and season two is probably about £250,000 an episode. So it’s a huge amount of money, and the tax break went into a huge hole. It enabled us to deliver our vision. Without it we would have had to curtail Steve’s ambition, which is something we don’t want to do.

Tiplady says the real investment was that “we were in there for the long haul. It wasn’t about series one – for us it was always about getting series two, getting series three. Steve wanted to write a saga, and if you get into bed with that kind of extraordinary writing, they you need to have faith that you can deliver quality and potential for going forwards.”

Of course, the success of Peaky Blinders lies not just in its script, nor its look. The stellar performances of lead actors Murphy and Sam Neill, joined by Tom Hardy and Noah Taylor in season two, are also a big part of the show’s success.

For Tiplady, the production has been dependent on the goodwill of the lead performers. “We operate with no options for them so there is a definite love for the project,” she says. “We are punching above our weight.”

Jamie Glazebrook
Jamie Glazebrook

A haunting goth-punk soundtrack, curated by singer-songwriter PJ Harvey and Paul Hartnoll of electronic dance duo Orbital, lends a dark and unsettling texture to the show from the off. Not least with their choice of Nick Cave’s vengeful anthem Red Right Hand as Peaky’s theme tune. The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys and Johnny Cash add to the dark-days soundtrack.

Tiplady says the show’s strong emphasis on pre-recorded artists presented its own challenges, not least because of the way the music industry itself is funded: “Music is extraordinarily expensive, very confusing and very complicated. I do think royalty-wise it needs a massive overhaul. The costs are such an important part of the process, but economics often force you down the composer route.

“When you are trying to do something creatively different like we are doing in Peaky, the only way we can do it is to get those artists involved at the production stage, which is fantastic and has worked extremely well – but that is very unusual and very hard.

“The music industry is finding other ways to explore things creatively. If the rights could actually shake up and release us then potentially we could see more shows like Peaky just being really rewarding for everybody. But I think the setup is so antiquated and I am not quite sure who it is looking after at the moment.”

With season three now confirmed (the producers announced it via Twitter in November), what are the challenges ahead? Glazebrook says: “I think we have a little bit more time. We were very tight in series two and, to an extent, Colm McCarthy was already directing when the final episode came in. So we were flying blind. Everyone who has seen that final episode will see it was pretty much all in new locations. That was hard, so we don’t want to put our director through it again.”

“We are going to have slightly longer to actually produce the show, so in essence that makes things 100 times more easy,” says Tiplady. “The driving force with Peaky is to keep pushing quality high and deliver an extraordinary viewing experience to the audience. Maintaining that is crucial to all of us, so that will be the challenge.”

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