It's been a while since I gave in my first draft of "Gorgeous" (the pilot script for a potential new BBC comedy drama), but because of being away in Edinburgh and then on holiday, today was the first day I could go in and find out what the executive who commissioned it had thought of it. The fact that I was going to TV Centre to meet her was a positive sign - if it stunk she could have probably told me by email- but the meeting might be to tell me that this idea was no good and did I have any others? The best I could realistically hope for was that she'd give me some notes and ask me to go and write a second draft. Unrealistically she could tell me that the first draft was so good that they had decommissioned all other programmes and I was going to be writing all BBC output from now on.
It was nerve wracking. Would my baby be strangled at birth or would the strangling be postponed until some point in the future? All that is sure is that the baby will be strangled at some point, for this is the way of the business, but it would be cool if the strangling came after six long series....
I woke up early and thought I should go and reacquaint myself with the script as I couldn't remember all of the characters names. I was pleased with what I'd written. The first half in particular sped along, but the last third got a bit bogged down and overloaded - I had figured at the time that it was more important to give them a flavour of what the show could be rather than make it perfect - it was likely to be pulled apart in any case, so no point in perfecting it for months only to have to change it. It's not a bad idea to have stuff in there that you know isn't right, if only so that you can readily agree with the criticisms you will receive.
My own assessment of the script seemed to match the view of the executive I was meeting. She gave a lot of positive feedback, but pointed out the flaws that I had myself noticed as well as some that I hadn't (it would be worse, as I have heard happen to other writers, if the executive loved the bits that you'd put there for them to expunge and hated your better bits). She nailed the fact that the focus of the piece was a little bit off, that in places it was too much like a sitcom and that, for the first episode, I was trying to introduce too many characters and ideas. I was sent away to create a second draft. And annoyed as I was to find out that I wasn't writing all of the BBC's output from now on, it's good to have made it over the first hurdle. Now it's up to me to see if I can get what I think is a good project actually on to the television (though it's likely there will be more drafts, maybe a reading and maybe another script or two before we get to that). Will I achieve my 10th anniversary of Warming Up target and have something on TV by November 2012? Or more realistically something commissioned for TV by that stage. Well we'll see.
I headed to the Westfield to have a coffee and relax after a pretty intense first 24 hours back at work. And there's plenty on my plate to come - not just the first few dates of
the What is Love, Anyway? tour and four more episodes of Richard Herring's Objective, but also I am working on the pilot of the TV version of Banter (just as a panellist rather than a regular) and today I also got a call suggesting there might be life in a game show format I came up with in about 1992. I was hoping to start work on a film script and a book this autumn too, but maybe that will be over stretching myself. I am glad that I didn't commit to another series of AIOTM
.
I did a bit of shopping in Marks and Spencer's foodhall and was amused to see that they marketed a tub of sliced mango under the name "Mango Madness". Is it madness just to have some sliced mango? Or is it just some mango. Surely mango madness would involve putting broken glass or anthrax or crow's feet and a petticoat into the mango. Or not having any mango. Or maybe no tub, just loose sliced mango. The only thing that I can see that is mad about it is that it cost £3 a punnet when you could probably buy three whole mangos for that price down at Shepherd's Bush Market. And let's not even get on to the "Wicked Watermelon" underneath it. Call it what it is M&S - sliced mango for lazy, affluent people. We can take it. You don't have to dress it up.
Tonight I watched "Wayne's World" for the first time in years and it is still utterly delightful. It's just silly messing about, but it had me giggling all the way through. I thought that I could probably just look at Garth saying nothing and pulling his stupid faces for about five days in a row and still laugh every time. But then I started watching "Wayne's World 2" and discovered that this was not the case. It has little of the innocent fun of the first film and seems to be weighed down in sub-Airplane background jokes that they didn't bother with in the first film. Maybe it's just too knowing or success took out the fun part or it's over-produced or maybe it's just a rushed cash-in, but it almost all falls flat, just as nearly everything in the first one hits. If you haven't seen it for a while then give the first one a go though. It's excellent.... not. (aside) it is excellent.
And I think it had more influence on Fist of Fun than I realised at the time.
