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You may be aware of my obsession with the TV show Goodnight Sweetheart, which I both admire and love and feel smugly superior to, because I believe I am the only person who is able to write about time travel. I am sure Marks and Gran, who know I love them and this show, are able to cope with any criticism from an also-ran writer like me, what with their lifetime of successful writing and multiple series of popular sitcoms that actually got made.
I wrote this amusing article about
Gary Sparrow's paucity of ambition many years ago and think the show might have made more of him having two relationships in different time zones. Was he still plagued by guilt or did the near impossibility of discovery mean he felt no shame?
I had always wanted to write a sitcom about a no-talent sitcom writer, who rather than writing sitcoms, sits at home watching Goodnight Sweetheart repeats and criticising them because they're not as good as the sitcoms that he would write if he could get round to it. His wife is angry with him for his pathetic failure and weird obsession.
Then the writer visits the real Duckett's Passage, goes down it and finds himself on the set of Goodnight Sweetheart back in the 90s. He ends up having an affair with one of the crew, but also copying scripts from his Goodnight Sweetheart DVDs in the future and bringing them back to sell to Goodnight Sweetheart. If he ever tries to write one of his own, it is never accepted.
I'd love to kickstart my novel Goodnight Goodnight Sweetheart Sweetheart, though it's always been a pipe dream as I'd never get the rights. But then today it struck me, can't I do that idea and just change the name and basic premise of Goodnight Sweetheart and have a fictional sitcom for my "writer" (let's face it, it's me) to be obsessed with.
I was suddenly flooded with ideas for how that might be. Maybe a sitcom where a philanderer goes from the 1990s back to the swinging 60s instead of World War Two. I thought it would be good to call that fictional sitcom "Get Back" (works on two levels).
Later when looking at Marks and Gran on wikipedia (because as one of them had pointed out on social media it was about time that I got them on my podcast) I discovered they had written a sitcom called Get Back already. I don't know if that is a sign that I should continue or stop with this stupid notion, but blimey.
Anyway I was buzzing with ideas for my new definitely not Goodnight Sweetheart based story. And also buzzing with excitement at the idea of backing Marks and Gran's sitcom and getting a character named after me in their book. I suspect that character might turn out to be a fucking idiot though. Just a guess.
