Hut 33

Hut 33 on Audible.co.uk

2010-12-08T11:26:00.004Z

Well, here's a strange thing. I've just been told by @ianwolf on Twitter that Hut 33 Series 2 is available to buy as a download on Audible.co.uk here. I had no idea of this, but there it is. No idea why Series 1 hasn't been released. But thought I'd pass it on.

Series 1 Repeat on BBC7

2010-09-23T14:27:00.001+01:00

Series 1 is being re-re-repeated (!) on BBC7 on Sunday nights. Listen again here.

MAS*H

2010-06-22T16:27:00.002+01:00

Some thoughts on M*A*S*H - and why it's important and inspiring - over at Sitcom Geek blog here.

A Very Bad Week in British Comedy

2010-05-31T11:42:00.001+01:00

I've posted thoughts on why this is a bad week for British Sitcom... here.

Starring Greg Proops

2010-05-01T13:38:00.003+01:00

I was thinking to myself the other day about Think the Unthinkable and which episode I'm most proud of (and avoiding thinking about which episode I'm ashamed of). Two or three sprang to mind - and one of them is on BBC7 and iPlayer at the moment here. It's an episode about an energy company that makes lots and lots of money and looks to good to be true. Because it is. I like to think I was one of the first to satirise notorious failed energy firms (although I hear the West End play on the subject is excellent (and stars the truly splendid Tom Goodman-Hill)).

It was a real kick recording this episode because we had secured the services of a comedian I had admired for many years - Greg Proops. I had grown up watching him excel on Who's Line is it Anyway? and we put a call in to secure him for the episode and I was thrilled when he agreed to do the show. Have a listen while it's still online...

Think the Unthinkable Series 1

2010-03-26T17:29:00.002Z

... is on BBC7 again! So if you missed it, or just want to remember what seemed funny about eight years ago, have a listen here.

Miranda Hart's Jokeshop on BBC7

2010-03-26T17:25:00.001Z

If you missed Miranda Hart's Jokeship on Radio 2, it's being repeated on BBC7 - includes bits you might recognise from the telly, plus other shiny jokes. It's here.

Another Case of Milton Jones - Series 4

2010-03-04T21:37:00.002Z

It's now out there in the ether. Somewhere. Specifically here. Series 4 of Another Case of Milton. Few things give me more professional pride than this show. It's very much the brainchild of Milton Jones who sets the tone and produces jokes that are ludicrously funny. I'm madly running behind him, weaving together loose ends, picking up debris and shrapnel and generally trying to keep up. And then it's deliciously edited by the producer David Tyler to produce 28 minutes or so of joy. Have a listen if you can.

Cabin Pressure

2010-02-11T22:03:00.003Z

If you like Hut 33, there's a good chance that you like, and possibly prefer, Cabin Pressure too. I've been trying to work out what I like about the show - and posted some thoughts on Sitcom Geek here.

How Many Episodes is Enough?

2010-02-01T17:41:00.002Z

So far, I've written 18 episodes of Hut 33. And I would happily write 18 more. I'm not one of those writers who decides to stop when the show has just about found its feet and won some affection amongst its audience. Anyway, I write some thoughts about the phenomenon of getting out while the going is good on Sitcom Geek here.

The Persuasionists

2010-01-22T20:55:00.003Z

I've written a review of The Persuasionists, following on from my last post. But I have decided to keep this blog about Hut 33, and closely related matters. And I've started writing about sitcom in general, and the boring mechanics of it for anoraks like me, at a new blog called Sitcom Geek here.

Watching Comedy as Comedy Writer

2010-01-15T11:36:00.004Z

Whenever a new sitcom arrives on TV, I always try and watch it. I do this for a variety of reasons. The most obvious is that I'm sitcom writer myself and a bad person, and I therefore want it to fail. I then repent of this, and try to watch it without prejudice, remembering that I have more reasons to want this show to succeed. Why?

Firstly, a bad TV sitcom makes us writers all look bad. Secondly, the TV controller hates it when his/her shows attract criticism, and there is a special place in the hearts of the British people for sitcoms and slagging them off. People get really specific and offensive - especially online. They say things like "Why do the BBC makes this thing? Which executive approved this - and can their salary be taken away and given to orpans, or back to us viewers?" etc etc "This is the worst half hour I've ever spent of my life" and other such hyperboles. It's understandable. Comedy, when it doesn't quite work, is awkward and toe-curling. Even good shows are hard to watch when they go slightly awry, even for one scene) Naturally, any TV channel controller wants to avoid this, and this is, I'm sure, one reason why there are fewer and fewer sitcoms on TV. They are expensive to make (that's the other reason), so why risk wasting money and copping flack, they would think to themselves. An episode of studio sitcom costs at least £250k. You could have four antiques programmes for that money. They'd be forgettable programmes that won't make the world a better place, or even fulfill the BBC's charter, but they won't make people as angry if they don't like them. So, as a writer, I want BBC2 to have some hit comedies so that they'll want to make more of them.

Comedy is a small world, and it's quite likely that I will know the writer responsible, or will meet them at some stage. Or at least a cast member. In the case of the lastest sitcom, The Persuasionists, I happen to regularly turn up to the same cafe as one of the cast members. It really is that tenuous. But no-one likes having to lie about a show. And some of us have ethical problems with lying, so it's just easier if the show is actually good so you can say 'Hey, great show! I loved the bit with the [insert funny moment here].' And mean it. That's why I tend not to ask people I know about stuff that I do. They might not like it and would rather not say so, or lie, so it's best not to ask. Plus, there's the fact that I really don't mind if they don't like it. I wrote six episodes of My Hero - that were greatly appreciated by 5 or 6 million people on BBC1, mainly families with kids. It's that sort of show. My contemporaries are the time were graduates without kids who were into Six Feet Under - My Hero wasn't for them. If they didn't like it, I had no problem with that!

Finally, I want a sitcom that I can enjoy for myself! I await new episodes of 30 Rock with eager anticipation. I had the same experience with Arrested Development. Both are American shows, sadly. But I did get a frisson of excitement at the next episode of IT Crowd, Black Books and more recently, Gavin and Stacey (the latter of which is not, let's be fair, an out-and-out comedy, but a splendid show nonetheless).

So you may be wondering what I made of The Persuasionists, BBC2's latest comic offering that I initally wanted to fail (since I am a bad person) and then realised I wanted to succeed, not least because it contains the delightful Adam Buxton, whom I do not know, but enjoy on 6Music - and he comes across as a thoroughly pleasant human being.

But here we run into a problem - because writing up a review on blog (which remains in the ether for ever) is a bit of a risk. Dare I say anything negative, given the close-knit comedy world that I work in. And if I do only say positives, will you believe me or will you think I'm just being nice? Well, I shall give it a little more thought and post a review very shortly...

A Comedy Poll

2010-01-05T13:51:00.002Z

It's a popularity contest - and that's not always a bad thing, but usually... Anyway, the chaps at Comedy.co.uk are canvassing votes for people's favourite comedies on TV and Radio. Bless them for including Radio, which is largely overlooked by almost all other awards, despite generating more comedy than TV by a country mile.

To vote, go here. In case you're curious, apart from projects of my own (if I don't vote for them, who will?) I voted for Bleak Expectations and The Thick of It among other things. (I finally got round to watching four episodes of the last series of The Thick of It on New Years Eve - which was great, albeit a considerably large dose of bad language in a short space...)

Come and hear Another Case of Milton Jones

2009-12-23T10:49:00.002Z

I'm not fully in the swing of writing the Milton Jones series for Radio 4 (before downing tools for Christmas). Jokes are coming thick and fast during the meanwhilst. But I thought I would say that if you fancy being in the audience on various Sunday nights in January and February at the Drill Hall in London, I'd act fast. Tickets will be snapped up. Have a look here.

Miranda - Series 2

2009-12-15T10:58:00.002Z

Last night was the final episode in the series of Miranda. Probably my favourite one after Hotel - and some real emotion too. Felt like a really good one to end on. But it doesn't end there. We have been asked to do a second series. Such fun.

In the meantime, if you really can't wait for a DVD to be released, why not pick up the CD of the Radio 2 series? It's here.

Where Do Comedians Go When They Die?

2009-12-08T11:18:00.002Z

I'm currently writing a new series of Another Case of Milton Jones with the eponymous Milton Jones. Yesterday in a meeting with him and David Tyler, the producer, I laughed until I cried, which is a rather nice way to earn a living, I thought. Now I've just got to write a shed load of jokes. I love writing with Milton - not only is a thoroughly decent human being, he was a brilliant comedy brain. For my money, he is the finest joke-writer in Britain today. (Why he is not regularly on our TV screens is baffling to me.) But trying to keep up with Milton joke for joke is a real stretch for me - and I regularly fail, but it is a tremendous comedy 'work-out'.

Anyway, Milton has written a book about life as a comedian - a fictionalise account of the trials of being a jobbing comedian. And he got it published and everything. And it looks great. I hope to read a copy very soon - but for now, have a look here for a review on Chortle and here to buy it on Amazon.

Unlucky for Some

2009-11-16T13:14:00.002Z

You can listen to the latest episode of Hut 33 here. It's called Unlucky for Some, and it was a very enjoyable script to write, albeit a very pressured one. The Big Machine episode took ages - and so the time I had to spend on Unlucky for Some (which I wrote last) was very short. It was an idea that I'd had for the show very very early on when considering storylines for Series 3. I considered lots of alternatives, including Mrs B telling Archie that he was going to be lucky in love, and Archie so determined to prove her wrong that he throws away a really good chance with a really lovely girl. I liked that storyline because Archie was paying the penalty for his own dogma and stubbornness - which is what you want on a sitcom. The characters have to be their own worst enemies, and sow the seeds of their own downfall. I rejected that storyline in the end, however, partly because it isn't very funny, and also because it did not bring him into conflict with Charles, which is very much the comic engine of the show.

The other reasons I was attracted to this plot was because of current discussions around science, religion and faith. Many are stridently opposed to religion because it appears to them at least to be irrational. Professor Dawkins and friends are furious that people still regard religion as important or worthwhile when, to them, there is simply no need for it. In fact, it is menace to society, they say. It seemed to me that Archie would espouse this view, since he is a Marxist and the Russian sympathiser. Stalin ran an atheistic regime (demonstrating that you don't have to be religious to destroying millions of lives, single-handedly killing more people than every crusade and the Spanish Inquisition combined).

(I hasten to add I don't agree with Archie in this. Christianity, at least, is not based on an irrational 'leap of faith' as many think. My understanding is that God comes to earth as a man and gives proof of himself, rising from the dead, so that no 'leap' is needed. But this is not the place to discuss theology.)

Charles however is religiously motivated, being a Roman Catholic, although his faith sometimes has the appearance of superstition. But maybe I would say that because I am a Protestant. The important thing, however, is that Charles' faith is believable and real. Gordon, the middle-man, would be an Anglican - in the worst sense of the word - trying to agree with everyone and be all things to all men. And Mrs B would naturally be superstitious and full of old wives tales.

And thus, Unlucky for Some was born. One of the advantages of writing the final episode of a third series is that you know who the characters are and how they would respond in any given situation. Take the subject of superstition and you immediately have attitudes from the characters forming in your mind. The trick of writing is to hear those characters talking to each other and trying and keep up with the voices in your head...

JRR Tolkein

2009-11-02T15:52:00.001Z

I should have spotted this before but this is rather juicy. I suppose it makes complete sense. Tolkein was an expert linguist and philologist, so an obvious candidate for codebreaking. Gives me an idea for a show...

The Big Machine

2009-10-21T16:43:00.003+01:00

Episode 2 of Series 3 is now on iPlayer here if you want to have a listen.

The episode is about machinery and early computers so, as you can imagine, there are lots of jokes about computers and IT. Lots and lots has been written on this subject and I have waded through much technical data in the last few years as I've written this show and the novel Crossword Ends in Violence (5) (available here). I read a book about Colossus by Paul Gannon, large parts of which I had to skim since they were extremely technical. I didn't much enjoy the book, but I was very glad that someone had bothered to write it. But it did teach me about the astonishing technical achievements achieved under such pressure.

Turing naturally gets much retrospective credit in all of this - and rightly so. His brain was a very rare thing indeed. He vastly improved the Bombe, building on the achievements of the largely forgotten Pole, Marian Rejewski who first cracked Enigma in 1932 (thanks in part to some splendid espionage by a Frenchman). But often overlooked is Max Newman and Tommy Flowers who were largely responsible for the amazing Colossus.

The machine invented by Gordon, and streamline by Archie, in this episode is an arbitrary one, designed to automate the process of trying to drag a crib through the text and spot links (since the Enigma machine never encoded a letter as itself) - it's getting boringly technical now, isn't it? This is what I'm up against, you see, writing an audience comedy show set at Bletchley Park.

I had a lot of fun writing it although, for some reason, this took the longest to write by far, going through several drafts. One of the problems stemmed from the dilemma the characters find themselves towards the end of the show. I don't want to spoil the plot, so I won't (I hope). But the machine that is created obviously has ramifications - but to suggest that our heroes would do something as malicious and self-serving as sabotage it is unthinkable. Still, our characters are feckless and petty, so nothing is beyond them. Naturally, they are nothing like the hardworking folk who laboured away at Bletchley for real - it's just a sitcom, remember... (In the same way, the German occupation of France did not resemble the goings-on of Allo Allo). Hope you enjoy this one.

Episode 1 - Know Thine Enemy on iPlayer

2009-10-15T16:00:00.003+01:00

For the next week, you can listen to Episode 1 of Series 3 of Hut 33 on iPlayer - here. This episode is actually about codebreaking, which sounds obvious given the premise of the sitcom, but it much harder to do that you might think. I've had one or two people quite indignant that, as a sitcom, we don't concentrate on the codebreaking anywhere near enough. Of course, sitcoms are about characters and people, not ideas. Hut 33 is not about the war - well, it is. It's about class war. It's about the clash of world-views between Archie, the common man, whose time is coming, and Charles, the posh don, whose time is passing. Gordon is stuck in between as the peace-maker. And the war is what pushes this unlikely trio together, as was the case in the war. It is often given as the reason for Churchill's astonishing defeat after the war; Britain, for the first time, really saw how the other half lived, and they didn't like it. Anyway, hope you enjoy the episode.

Know Thyne Enemy

2009-10-08T18:24:00.003+01:00

For some reason, this episode is called Know Thyne Enemy. I don't know where the 'y' in 'Thyne' came from, but there it is. Anyway, this is episode 1 in the new series of Hut 33 - details of which can be found here.

This episode is an attempt to actually do a story about codebreaking - which is about as hard to do as it sounds. Stories about codebreaking that are comprehensible are quite hard. To do them on the radio makes them even harder. To make them funny on the radio, well, that's a bit of a tall order. But that is, after all, the premise of the show, so it's my own fault. You can be the judge of how successful I've been with this episode. Have a listen anytime from 11.30am on Wednesday 14th October.

Series 3 sorted

2009-09-28T20:33:00.003+01:00

So we recorded four episodes of Hut 33 in the last few days - two on Friday 25th and two on Sunday 27th. We recorded two in May. So that's the whole third series in the can. The series starts on BBC Radio 4 on 14th October at 11.00am (or thereabouts).

I'd like to dwell briefly on the writing process - especially in relation to the results on the night. On Sunday night, we recorded two episodes that took highly varying lengths of time to write. The Big Machine took weeks to produce and ended up going to five drafts. It was an obvious area for an episode - building a computer - but the plot took a long time to come together. Despite a lengthy outline that seemed okay, it didn't quite come together in the first two drafts. But eventually, a script was done. And then dusted.

Because of this, there was limited time available to write the final script, Unlucky for Some, an episode about superstition and luck. It only required two drafts to get across the line, which was fortunate as that was all there was time for! I was a bit worried about going for this topic for an episode as I'd looked at it a number of times and couldn't quite find a story from it that worked. But something came along and it zipped along fairly well. And any concerns about the lack of time on the script were swept aside on the night. Unlucky for Some went extremely well - and probably better than the heavily worked and rewritten Big Machine.

On balance, it wasn't the time spent, but the source of the plots. The Unlucky for Some plot stemmed from the characters and became a clash of world-views - Archie being a rationalist, Gordon being superstitious and naive, and Charles being a Catholic - whereas The Big Machine was more about the concept of technology. Both had plenty of jokes and the audience seemed to like them, but if I had to chose one, it would be Unlucky for Some.

As it happens, both episodes recorded on Friday 25th went even better - the matinee audience were very appreciative. Naturally, the cynics will complain that the laughter is canned. But it isn't. It really isn't. People really do have a nice time at the reocrdings.

So you want to be a comedy writer...

2009-09-03T15:42:00.003+01:00

There is an opportunity for new sketch-writers here. Follow the instructions carefully...

The Unthinkable on iTunes

2009-09-02T20:06:00.003+01:00

I probably knew this already, but Think the Unthinkable Series 1 is available on iTunes for £5.95. Do please pester the BBC to release Series 2-4. There seems no obvious reason why they can't be released digitally if not as CDs (remember them?). Concrete Cow is also up there on iTunes too (it's a pound more, probably because there are six episodes - and only five of Think the Unthinkable).

Think the Unthinkable was recently chosen by Barry Cryer on BBC7 as one of the best shows of The Noughties. Which is nice. I've only got a few months left to get Hut 33 onto that list...

Wired

2009-08-14T12:32:00.001+01:00

The tickets for the Bloomsbury Boffoonery gig have been selling briskly to say the least. About half of them sold on the first day, so don't hang around - especially after an honourable mention in Wired magazine online here.

Boffoonery - Tickets Now on Sale!

2009-08-12T08:13:00.003+01:00

At last, you can buy tickets for Boffoonery! - a night of comedy celebrating codebreaking, cunning and computing cleverness in aid of Bletchley Park with Robin Ince, Richard Herring, Robert Llewellyn, Laurence and Gus and lots more tbc. It's on Tuesday 3rd November at the Bloomsbury Theatre and it will be a great night. So buy your ticket online today from the Bloomsbury theatre here.

Bletchley in the Express

2009-07-22T17:27:00.001+01:00

There is an honourable mention of Hut 33 in an article about Bletchley Park in the Daily Express here by Elizabeth Mistry.

Milton's Paradise Jones

2009-07-17T16:42:00.002+01:00

Fans of Milton Jones will also be pleased to learn that he's doing a gig at the marvellous Bloomsbury Theatre on Sat 7th November - more details here.

Milton Jones and Pozzitive

2009-07-15T12:53:00.001+01:00

For a few weeks a year, I have the pleasure of working for the independent production company Pozzitive, writing scripts with the splendidly funny Milton Jones, a series of which is being repeated on BBC7, and can be found on iPlayer here.

And if you look on Pozzitive's flashy new website, you'll find clips, jingles, info and tremendously time-wasting trivia to fill your lunch hour several times over. Why not get a sandwich and have a look here?

First Episode

2009-07-06T15:01:00.001+01:00

For the next week, you can hear the first episode of Hut 33 Series 1 - Bridge Too Far - here on BBC7.

Bletchley Park Benefit - Tues 3rd November

2009-06-30T18:25:00.012+01:00

It's happening. At the Bloomsbury Theatre in London on Tues 3rd November. A comedy celebration of codebreaking, cryptography and those brilliant hut-bound boffins, with all profits going to Bletchley Park.

Comedians, actors and celebs will be performing stand-up comedy, sketches and generally showing off. Confirmed so far are:

Robin Ince - Bloomsbury favourite stand-up comedian and winner of the Time Out Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy. The thinking man's thinking comedian.

Richard Herring - One half of Lee and Herring. The same half of Collings and Herrin (whose podcast can be found here) and a splendidly funny man in his own right. There is worryingly good picture of him looking like Hitler here.

Robert Llewellyn - presenter of Scrapheap Challenge, Red Dwarf's Kryten and the creator of the highly entertaining vodcast, Carpool.

There'll also be sketches (by me and others) on the subject of codebreaking, Bletchley Park and boffinery performed by an all-star cast. Watch this space for updates on the line up, and for news of when tickets will be on sale.

BBC7

2009-06-29T21:18:00.002+01:00

In case you missed Series 1 of Hut 33, you will be able to hear it on Sundays on BBC7 - and subsequently on iPlayer, I guess. Lucky you.

(Don't worry. A third series is in production and should be with you sometime this year. I sat in my office-shed sweltering in the heat trying to write episode 4. It's shaping up!)

Joshua

2009-06-26T15:43:00.003+01:00

Fans of 3rd Lieutenant Joshua Fanshawe Marshall will be pleased to know that Alex Macqueen, who plays Josh, is in the pleasantly silly Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire. He plays Barnabas, the sidekick to Matt Lucas' character. You can see that (for now) on the BBC iPlayer here.

Writing a Sitcom - advice from the expert (ie. not me)

2009-06-10T09:31:00.004+01:00

There are three splendid pages of advice on writing a situation comedy from sitcom sage Paul Mayhew-Archer here at the BBC Writers Room section, which is well worth a browse. Paul gives some handy pointers. Then has a sample outline of a sitcom, with some characters and stories, and then explains why sitcom is so dreadful... Great advice. If you want to write a sitcom, read it, learn it and do it. Paul has been an immense help to me over the last ten years.

D-Day Prize Crossword

2009-06-07T12:51:00.004+01:00

Crosswords will forever be associated with D-Day. The story is told of the D-Day codewords appearing in crosswords in the Daily Telegraph. It caused a bit of a stir. And it is around that story that my comic novel Crossword Ends in Violence (5) is based.

So given the anniversary this weekend, there is another chance to have a look at my D-Day themed prize crossword here. You may have looked at it before, or it may be new to you, but have a look and have a go. Print it out and pick at it over this week. It's not fiendish, but playful, I hope. And the prize is naturally a copy of my novel - Crossword Ends in Violence (5).

It is also available to buy here. Or on Amazon marketplace here.

Standing Corrected

2009-06-03T22:17:00.001+01:00

In the Duke of Kent episode, there is an explanation to Gordon who innocently doesn't really understand that the Duke of Kent swings boths ways (the one who lived until 1944 at least. I make no comment on the current one). Rugby Union and League rules were used as metaphors. But a correction has been twittered. It's here.

Pigs n Spivs

2009-05-21T19:08:00.004+01:00

BBC Radio has just aired a repeat of the Pigs N Spivs episode of Hut 33. I remember this episode rather fondly. Having a pig around the place struck me as a funny thing - not least because they make a wonderful noise. Having something that sounds good on Radio is, as you can imagine, no small thing for a radio comedy. Anyway, I wrote something about this episode back in June that you can find here. And there's a link to the iPlayer to hear the episode here.

Hut 33 - Repeated

2009-05-15T08:28:00.003+01:00

Listen to the first episode of Series 2 on BBC iPlayer here. Read more background info here.

You can also hear a repeat of my other show, Think the Unthinkable, on BBC7, also on the iPlayer.

Stephen Fry at Bletchley

2009-05-12T17:54:00.001+01:00

Technophile and philologist, Stephen Fry, has been inspecting Bletchley Park. Read all about it here.

Hut 33 - Series Two repeat!

2009-05-09T18:14:00.003+01:00

Here's something exciting (at least it is in my world):

Series 2 of Hut 33 is being given another airing - this time at 6.30pm. On Thursdays on BBC Radio 4 beginning with Episode 1, presumably, about which more has been written here.

The recording for Series 3 on May 25th - is apparently sold out (Well, not sold out exactly, since no money changes hands (and that includes the writer the way the contracts are going at the moment...) But it is fully booked. Sorry.) More recordings to be announced in due course.

Most Popular

2009-05-09T10:15:00.002+01:00

Here's a nice thing. Today, Think the Unthinkable is currently the most popular show on BBC7 on iPlayer. In particular Episode 4 of Series 2. Listen here.

Think the Unthinkable

2009-05-04T22:07:00.002+01:00

There is a repeat of a previous sitcom what I wrote called Think The Unthinkable - starring Marcus Brigstocke, David Mitchell and Catherine Shepherd. Series 2 in on BBC7 at the mo. Listen to an ep here.

Crossword Ends in Violence (5)

2009-05-01T00:14:00.003+01:00

For a limited period, the entirety of my novel, Crossword Ends in Violence (5) is available for free as a download. So you can print it out (c. 116 pages of A5 (two pages per a4 page)). And you can read the whole thing. Or you can order it via Lulu as before. Just go here.

Recording 1: Series 3: Hut 33

2009-04-30T18:17:00.004+01:00

Okay, not the most engaging of blog titles, but it explains it clearly. We have a recording date for Hut 33 - for the first of three recordings. We're not entirely sure when the next two will be. Some time in July perhaps. Or September. But we have managed to pin down our wonderful cast for a day in May. 25th May 2009 at the BBC Radio Theatre in London at 7.15. It's a great night out and it's free. And when you finally hear the programme go out, you can smug about the fact that you don't need to hear it - because you were there. More details here.

Comedy and the Bible

2009-04-13T18:38:00.003+01:00

It may or may not interested you to know that last August I gave a talk at the Greenbelt festival about Comedy and the Bible. You can find that talk here. Sorry it's not a free download. But worth a listen I reckon if you're interested in the area. There's not a lot of decent literature on the subject. (But there is Douglas Wilson's excellent Serrated Edge, which is a biblical defence of satire).

I shall be returning to the Greenbelt Festival again this year, speaking on the subject of Crosswords! What's the point of them? And why do them when you could be helping the poor? Should be fun. But I haven't made onto the bigwigs page here.

Cheltenham

2009-03-09T12:13:00.001Z

Robert Bathurst, aka Professor Charles Gardiner, has written rather a splendid piece for the Independent. Enjoy it here.

Bread

2009-02-27T13:55:00.002Z

My early morning sit-com viewing continues. And the other day I watched Bread - a sitcom about an extended family, the Boswells, in Liverpool that scrapped to make a living. There is a strong mother at the centre of it who is fiercely loyal to her children, who all live together in a house, with grandad Boswell next door, and the estranged Freddie Boswell turning up now and then.

I watched almost every episode as a child, or teenager, and have great affection for the show, but watching one episode as a one-off one morning last week was rather enlightening. Let me explain why as I note a few thing.

1. Watching the episode in isolation was rather unrewarding. Because it wasn't all that funny. This is not to say that there were lots of jokes in it that didn't work or fell flat. Carla Lane, the writer of the show, knows what she's doing. There were exactly as many laughs are there were meant to be. The comedy, when it happens, is a little sparse at times.

2. Why were the jokes not as thick and fast as I'd have liked? Because the characters are so big and well-developed. They all had stories of their own, and the show covered all of them unashamedly. In one sense, the show is unwieldy. But I really felt that I'd 'heard from' all of the characters by the end of the episode. As a result, I didn't laugh all that much, but I was a little moved at times (in a way that one is not with Bilko or the Big Bang Theory - both fine shows in their own right). At the end of the episode, which was left on a cliff-hanger, I felt I was watching a comedy soap. Again, this is not a bad thing, necessarily. Just an observation.

3. This, then, sounds like a curious show and, given it moves slowly, takes its time over jokes and has lots of characters, would not imply success. And yet its one of the most successful sitcom in BBC history. It was a monster hit show. It ran for years, survived at least three changes in regular cast members (Joey, Aveline, Billy's Julie). And episodes regular drawing ratings of 14 million+. I seem to remember one episode nearly hit 20 million. Yes, there was less choice back that, but that's a juggernaut of a show by anyone's standards. I note, then, that Carla Lane was doing something right. But what?

4. We care about the characters. We really care. When the show doesn't give us a laugh every second, it's okay because she's created a group of people that we want to be with, and we want to succeed. Interestingly, the character that generates the most laughs per minute, in her short time on screen, is the long-suffering stern woman who works in the local Benefits office (DHSS). And she's only in one scene per show.

5. The show had a strong local flavour without being exclusive or annoying. (Even though I find the Scouser accent hard work after a while). It can be done.

6. The show, when you count them up, had quite a lot of catchphrases. Joey's 'Greetings!'. Aveline's 'Modelling'. Mother Boswell answers the phone 'Hello, yes'. And screams, about her ex-husband's girlfriend, 'Lilo Lil' - 'She is a TART!'. There are others. But those have stayed with me for a very very long time. Watching the episode of Bread the other day was like catching up with old friends.

There's lots to learn from Carla Lane's monster hit, Bread.

MAS*H - Blood and Guts

2009-02-18T10:05:00.004Z

Every morning from 7am 'til 8am, I look after my daughter - during which time I'm able to watch about twenty minutes of television. So this morning, I watched an episode of M*A*S*H - from the 10th series. It was called "Blood and Guts" - which sitcom geeks tell me was originally aired in Jan 1982. In this episode, Hawkeye is outraged when a sensationalistic war correspondent, Clayton Kibbee, reports irresponsible G.I. stunts as tales of military valor. What can we learn from it?

M*A*S*H works best when the characters are all getting on each other's nerves. It occurred to me that Hut 33's Archie vs Charles antagonism is akin to Hawkeye vs Winchester. But let's be honest, when you're on your 200th episode of a sitcom, you can be forgiven from bringing in outside characters and seeing how the characters react. The outside character in question is a famous fictional war correspondent - and everyone likes him. He's brought out some pints of blood with him from the readers of his newspaper, and is writing a story about how each pint is used. Unfortunately, the first two pints are used on dumb GIs injured via self-inflicted accidents, not combat. But Kibbee writes up a tail of derring-do anyway. Hawkeye is appalled and tries to get others to see that Kibbee is a phoney.

Kibbee's motives are unclear in this episode - is he twisting the facts to publish a good story for the paper? Is he trying to help the war effort by creating heroes for the readers at home? Clearly he'd be doing the 4077 no favours if he said they had to treat stupid GIs who were foolishly injured. But since Kibbee is not a central character, his motives are less interesting to us than Hawkeye's. And it's very easy to forget that when creating character that only last one episode. The audience like the regular cast - and tend to have their favourites within that. And they rarely, if ever, derive much pleasure from outside characters.

But here's the exception. Seinfeld made a virtue of creating funny one-off characters. Like the Soup Nazi. Or Elaine's Dad. Or the Bubble Boy. It can be done. But very little pressure is placed on these characters. It's all about how the regulars react - and then act, and move the story on. One should avoid outside characters being the central plot engine of the story.

For Hut 33 Series 3
One of the reasons for examining other sitcoms is to learn - and make improvements to my own writing so that Series 3 of Hut 33 is better than the last two. In Series 2, there were probably too many outside characters coming in: The Duke of Kent, the German Spy, The American. I was perfectly happy with the episodes, but the focus of the show must always be the main characters. To that end, for series 3, I have outlines for four scripts which contain no outside characters at all. Two more episodes are still to be storylined. But those episodes will be numbers 17 & 18 in the overall canon of Hut 33, so there's no excuse. I'm still some way short of an episode 200.

One other point about M*A*S*H, which is a military show, as is Hut 33. Military shows are useful from a sitcom point of view because comedy require simplicity, and comprehensibility. And in the army, everyone has clear ranks, roles and duties. There is a hierarchy that must be observed. Wars that need to be won. Anything that subverts that order is, or can be, funny. Moreover, the beauty of M*A*S*H, from a writing point of view, is that the job of the main characters is clear - cure patients, save lives and generally help out.

The role of Hut 33 is altogether harder to convey. Code-breaking is incredibly hard to do, and even harder to explain. It helps that we have a thickie character in Josh, to whom things have to be explained very simply (and to the audience), but it doesn't always work. Again, I'll be trying to tackle that head-on in this series, but add to that fact that its radio (so everything has to be said, not seen), and it's all rather demanding. So I'd better get on with writing a script now...

Starting Writing an Episode

2009-02-03T10:51:00.004Z

And so I begin to write Series 3 of Hut 33. Yes, it really is written - not made up on the spot, which is, I'm sure, how it sounds to some.

For those interested in the process of writing, I plan to put things on this site every now and then - and in particular how I go about writing a six-part radio sitcom. Of course, I've already slipped up by calling it a 'six-part' series, which implies some kind of story arc. There isn't one, even though this series finds us in 1942, rather than 1941. So, for the characters in Hut 33, the war is going ever so slightly better. The Russians and Americans are in the war, but the Germans are still doing very well.

Starting to Write the Episode
So, today, I'm going to write the first page of the first episode of the Series 3. Although, because it has no real 'serial' component, it may turn out to be the second or fifth episode. Who knows? This episode is notionally set in January 1942, partly because one has to imagine it is cold, both in the hut, and in the Arctic Circle - which will be referred to a number of times throughout the show.

How do I know that? How do I know what's going to happen until I've written it?

Because I'm writing the script based on an scene-by-scene outline that is, in itself, 2000 words in length. A script normally ends up being about 5500 words (which reads at about 31/31 minutes, and is then edited. That's another story). The scene-by-scene outline I'm using is a fifth draft. I've been through it a number of times and the story is, I think, fairly solid. Each scene has a paragraph or two about what happens, and sometimes a few lines of dialogue and jokes, so that every scene is like writing a little sketch.

Writing Schedules
I hope that this script will take me about a week to write. But I've probably already spent a week on the story, the scenes and the general ideas. Once I have that first draft (which may not be finished by Friday as I have a busy week, plus my daughter's first birthday party this afternoon), I will save it, ignore it, go onto another episode, and a few weeks later, come back, go through it and cut bits, add jokes and then finally send it to the producer - as Draft 1.

I expect that Draft 1 will be lumpy and far from perfect. The producer will spot bits and flaws and possible cuts. And I'll spend a few more days on it and write draft 2, that may be anywhere between 10-50% different from Draft 1. Hopefully, Draft 2 will be readable by the cast. Hearing it read makes a bit difference and we like to read through every script with as many of the cast as we can get at least a week before the recording - since there just isn't time to fix things on the day. Especially now we record two episodes at one recording.

The readthrough, then, will probably generate another day's work - possibly two. (this is per script, obviously) And then one more pass-through for a day with the producer, adding more jokes and deleting bits and we have a script that should be ready for recording. That's the theory, anyway - and how I've written Series 1 and 2 of Hut 33, Think the Unthinkable and The Pits....

But every writer is different. Some writers seem to thrive on leaving it too late, last minute scrambles and staying up all night. That sometimes happens for me. But not usually. I'm boring, like that. 2am is a brilliant time for sleeping, I find. Not writing...

Daily Telegraph Cryptic

2008-12-03T10:54:00.003Z

I meet quite a few people who like to cryptic crosswords. I meet quite a few more people who wish they could. Here's something that I've put up designed to help you unpick the clues in Daily Telegraph cryptic. It's not all of the solutions, but some. (I can't do them all myself, for a start). But it 'shows working' and might be of use to some.

Crossword Ends in Violence (5)

2008-11-20T12:57:00.003Z

If you enjoy Hut 33, and/or crosswords, you may enjoy a novel I've just written called Crossword Ends in Violence (5). It's a quintessentially British thriller about a professional crossword setter who discovers that his grandfather was accused of passing secrets to the Nazis just before D-Day. It's a comic spy novel - with a gulag and some chess grandmasters thrown in. It's like Robert Harris with jokes.

You can read long extracts of it here. And you can buy it here.

Milton Jones & Miranda Hart

2008-11-17T23:03:00.008Z

As well as writing Hut 33, I get to co-write Another Case of Milton Jones, with the thoroughly delightful and eponymous Milton Jones. The show is produced by equally splendid, but less eponymous, David Tyler. You can listen to it, via the BBC iPlayer, here. And buy the previous series on CD here.

I've also been helping Miranda Hart write her Joke Shop for BBC Radio 2. It aired over the summer and is now available on CD, just in time for the Credit Crunch. Ah yes, comedy is all about timing. It's here.

Enigma News

2008-10-29T10:17:00.005Z

In case you haven't seen already, it has been revealed that Franco used the Enigma Machine in the Spanish Civil War.

But it may be worth pausing to consider for a moment our country's fascination with the Enigma machine. Why is it such a popular icon - and any stories about Enigma machines are immediately snapped up by the Enigma machine. Why? Here are a few reasons:

1. The Enigma machine represents a tangible, enduring, inoffensive of war memorabila. It is an easily identifiable object that stands for one aspect of World War 2 - and of course, as a nation we are still obsessed with World War 2.

2. The Enigma machine is simple and is in itself a thing of beauty. And yet it represents bamboozling perplexity. Such a small, easily contained item - not much bigger than a typewriter, in a pleasing wooden case. And yet it has serious scrambling power.

3. The British encryption machine, TypeX, was actually more effective and powerful. It was based on the Enigma-rotor system, and was not broken by the Germans. They did not however, have a code-breaking initiative on the scale of Bletchley Park. But it is not such a beautiful design and it doesn't come with the same stories that the Enigma brings. It's altogether less exciting to the man in the street.

4. The cracking of the Enigma machine represents a popular, memorable, British success in World War Two. It's something to be proud of as a nation. I say 'popular' because it is popularly believed that the British cracked the Enigma when it was the Poles who got there first, invented the Bombe and handed their research to the British - saving them months of headscratching work. The Poles were, in my opinion, rather shamefully sidenlined thereafter, but there's not doubt that Turing, Newman et al built on the work and did amazing things with numbers and letters. One unequivocally British success of cracking the Lorenz cipher, Hitler's own personal code that was far more heavily encrypted than anything else previously encountered. And this led to the building of Colussus, which, despite the name, isn't as strong a 'brand' as the German Enigma machine.

Anyway, those are some brief thoughts on the matter. Read about the Spanish Civil War story here.

Some Useful Links

2008-10-15T11:44:00.002+01:00

Here are one or two links if you are interested in the business of writing, or thinking about sit-com.

Ken Levine, writer of many American sitcom hits, has a blog here.

I also recommend Rob Long's weekly podcast called Martini Shot, broadcast by KCRW. It's only 4-5 minutes long, but is an interesting window into the comedy writing world. You can find that here. He is also the author of this wonderful semi-autobiographical book published a few years ago called Conversations with My Agent. He has followed it up more recently with Set Up Joke, Set up Joke.

Rob Long writes very well about the Biz, as it were. And there are literally dozens of TV shows about sitcoms from the past. But there isn't much out there on the technical subject of comedy writing itself. One book I read when I was starting out was Writing Comedy by Ronald Wolfe, writer of the now unwatchable On the Buses. But the structural stuff and the way in which comedy works is all useful, even if you end up writing jokes that don't revolve around 'crumpet'.

If I stumble across other resources, I'll put them up here. In case you're interested. You may not be. You may just like Hut 33. In which case, let me reassure you that I'm doing my best to write Series 3 at the moment - and it should be out in the second half of 2009.

Don't Bet on it

2008-09-09T09:27:00.003+01:00

Last week's episode (in this current run of Series 1 repeats) was probably my favourite episode of either series. And not just because of the sultry, sizzling tones of Miranda Raison - although that had something to do with it. It's because the character that Miranda played sent the characters spinning off in all kinds of directions - and ultimately back into each other. Once the idea was in place, the episode came together very quickly.

This was not the case with this week's episode - Don't Bet on It, which was the eternally tricky fifth episode. See below for details on why Episode 5 is always the hardest to write. (We circumvented this issue in the latest series of Another Case of Milton Jones by only making four episodes). I was keen that Charles establish some kind of betting syndicate. My original idea was to have them bet on results that Charles could rig - and then eventually bet on baseball in America which he could not rig. Then a crucial game would be cancelled by the intervention of Pearl Harbour.

I did use Pearl Harbour as a plot intervention - in series 2. I also used the German invasion of Russia as a plot intervention in Series 1, which got all the characters off the hook for some Marxist-based misdemeanour. Both, if we're being honest, are cheats. The technical term for them is Deus Ex Machina. They are an event from the outside over which the characters have no control. (I believe Shakespeare uses it occasionally. There's some bit in Measure for Measure when a Duke returns 'fortuitously' and it's all a bit contrived.)

A Deus ex Machina is, to some extent, an admission of defeat. In sitcom, the characters problems are caused by themselves. No matter how tenuous. Ideally it isn't tenuous - and involves the resolution of colliding plots. Because if someone is vindicated - or destroyed - by a Deus Ex Machina, they don't deserve it. Sitcoms are, to some extent, morality tales. When a character is exhonerated unjustly, or maimed without good reason, it seems unfair. (This is one reason why I stopped reading Evelyn Waugh. As an author, he is horrid to his characters who just don't deserve to have life go so badly for them when they've done nothing to deserve it).

I suppose this tells us about our innate sense of justice, right and wrong. We don't want to read, hear or watch stories where people are not treated as they deserve. But here we get far more profound than a preposterous wartime sitcom like Hut 33 merits. So we'll stop there. Suffice to say that Charles, in this episode, gets his just deserts.

Pressing 'pause'

2008-08-20T11:06:00.002+01:00

In case you were wondering, the repeat of Series 1 of Hut 33 is taking a short break for the Edinburgh Festival. Episodes 3-6 will be broadcast in September. Fret not.

In the meantime, you may be interested to know that the complete first series of Concrete Cow - a sketch show wot a wrote from a few years ago - is now available on CD. It stars the Olivia Colman (Hut 33's Minka), Rob Webb (of Mitchell and Webb) and the now ludicrously famous Sally Hawkins (Happy Go Lucky, Fingersmith etc). Sally also wrote some of the sketches with Catherine Shepherd, so they're clearly annoyingly talented. The show also starred Chris Pavlo and Steven Kynman. It also contained sketches written by Jon Holmes (The Now Show) and Robin Ince (whom I saw on Richard and Judy the other day). The show even got some good reviews.

Anyway, it's available from places like this.

History Repeating

2008-08-11T16:52:00.003+01:00

It seems odd that Episode 2 of Hut 33 should be about one of the characters potentially leaving, but it proved to spark a good spat between Archie and Charles.

A foreign posting in Iraq becomes available and naturally it is assumed that Charles will be the one to be sent - he is the linguist after all and knows the area. But Archie won't stand for it. Why should Charles get the foreign posting? He's only just arrived for a start. A game of cat and mouse ensues and the foreign posting is not quite what it appears. Eventually, they have to join forces to wriggle out of their commitments. They are only saved by exterior events and a Fascist coup in Baghdad which was temporarily taken over by the Germans.

And so begins the theme of "being sent abroad" in Hut 33. It's been a common threat in Hut 33 (as it was in Allo Allo; the German soldiers were all worried about being to sent to the Russian Front, which meant certain death, or worse.) In Series 2 of Hut 33, the big threat was being sent to Burma, a land of poisonous snakes and terrifying diseases. Who knows what threats Series 3 will hold?

In any given sitcom, there needs to be jeopardy. One needs to ask 'What's at stake?' If there are no consequences to failure the audience will rapidly lose interest because they don't care about the characters. In reality, the consequences of failure at Bletchley were often too awful to think about, but since our regular characters are not really at the coalface of code-breaking, there is less at stake. So failure, for them, needs to be punished in other ways. Being sent abroad was one of them.

Of course, the greatest thing to be avoided is 'losing face' or being seen to be wrong. Pride is one of the great sitcom motivators - and in that it really does resemble real life.

Series 1 Repeat

2008-08-04T11:36:00.005+01:00

Here's a bit of good news for Hut 33 fans.

Series 1 is being repeated on Radio 4 in the 6.30pm slot. From tomorrow - Tuesday 5th August. Two episodes will be broadcast. Then a break for some Edinburgh stuff. And then the rest of the series will go out in September. That's the plan, I think.

The series begins with the pilot episode in which Professor Charles Gardiner, from St Sebastian's College, Oxford, arrives and encounters unexpected hostility from Archie - for rather personal reasons. Meanwhile, there's an Inter-Hut Bridge tournament that 3rd Lieutenant Joshua Fanshawe-Marshall is keen the Hut wins.

The Problem of Pilot Episodes
This episode, unsurprisingly, was the first episode I wrote. And every sit-com writer always starts with the dilemma of how to start a new sitcom. The pilot episode is by far the hardest one to write. Do you simply get on with it and hope that people pick up the characters and then get the jokes? Or do you work out a way to introduce characters one by one?

The problem with any new sitcom is that sitcoms should rely on character for comedy and plot. They are all part of the same package. Characters say and do funny things because of who they are. 'Wise-cracking' gets boring after a while. We like characters we can identify with who do things and say things because of their own flaws and prejudices. But how do you get laughs from the start when the characters are unfamiliar?

Here are a few cheats that I've learned in the last few years and used to good-ish effect (or not, if you hate the show.)

The first is start with as few characters as possible and put them in a sketch-like situation. So the episode begins with some basic code-breaking jokes that are easy to get, not least because one of the characters, Joshua, is monumentally stupid (that's the other trick - a stupid person who needs stuff explained to them (and so we, the audience, benefit from that explanation)). Joshua thinks German is already a code. A basic joke of misunderstanding. We can all laugh and we're not too worried about who everyone is but the show is underway. We're familiar with some of the voices. There's a Geordie, a young-sounding man, a posh, stupid military-type who sounds like he's in charge and then a strange Polish woman called Minka comes in. We've established some sort of hierarchy in our heads and are already building the set in our mind's eye.

The characters themselves are 'big'. That's a intentional decision and, in my opinion, the most effective way of doing audience comedy. I enjoy nuanced, subtle comedy too. But comedy characters need to have simple driving forces and comic attitudes to be quickly understandable and, therefore, funny. So we quickly find out that Archie is an inverse-snob; Gordon is an innocent bag of nerves; Josh is a patriotic moron; Minka is a psychopath.

After a few pages getting to know these characters, we can meet Mrs Best - who is a very liberal nymphomaniac. Then we can introduce a 'new boy' who can be our eyes in unfamiliar surroundings. He's introduced to people - and we discover he is a pompous snob. He has things explained to him and it's quickly established that we have a problematic central relationship. Archie and Charles are not going to get on. Hooray. We have a fight on our hands. Comedy is about conflict. Who's going to win? Well, I've written twelve episodes of the show and I'd say they're both definitely losing.

If you're new to the show, I hope you enjoy it. If you've heard it and can't understand why Radio 4 insist on broadcasting this rubbish, I say 'each to his own'.

Fighting against the odds

2008-07-26T09:38:00.000+01:00

Over the past seventy years, Bletchley Park has beaten the odds on a number of occasions. The most obvious odds to overcome were the chances of cracking the Enigma code that began emanating from Germany in the late 1930s. Boffins were bundled into vans, linguists rounded up and all manner of experts approached to work on the problem. But the entire enterprise was nearly stillborn before it had even got underway. Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair had to defeat the insurmountable object that was the British Civil Service. Securing the funds for buying Bletchley Park took so long, Sir Hugh ended up spending £7500 of his own money on the building (c. £1.2m by today’s earnings)

With the site secured, they finally had some luck cracking Enigma. They rapidly discovered the Poles had already done it. Keen to find out what all the muttering was about in Germany, the Poles had broken the wheel-settings and found a way to mechanise the process, creating a giant calculator known as a bombe. Code-breaking activity in Poland was somewhat curtailed in 1939 and the methods and the machine were imported to Bletchley where they were honed, duplicated and industrialised. By the end of the war over 200 bombes whirred away at Bletchley and five other stations.

By 1941, the codebreakers had another problem put in their path. Not another fiendish code – they could handle those - but their own government were causing difficulties. Bletchley Park lacked man-power, and woman-power, and no amount of protesting to the War Office seemed to make any difference to their resources. So a letter was taken to Churchill, delivered to Downing Street in person by Stuart Milner-Barry. He was deputy head of Hut 6, where some of the greatest feats in mathematics, logic and codebreaking of all time were performed. These calculations undoubtedly shortened the war by several months and saved thousands of lives. In fact, you still see Hut 6 now, boarded up, rotting with the paint peeling off. Churchill interceded, funds were found and men moved.

Then a new curious code was picked up in through the airwaves. It was believed to be Hitler’s own secret cipher and no-one had a clue where to begin. It seemed hopelessly complex. Which it was. But a 24-year-old chemist from Trinity College, Cambridge, called Bill Tutte got to work where many before him had failed. With some educated guesswork and some ferocious intelligence, he worked out the secret Lorenz cipher was generated by a machine with two sets of five rotors. On one set of five, the rotors had 41, 31, 29, 26 and 23 settings respectively. On the other, 43, 47, 51, 53 and 59. This astonishing discovery – borne out when a Lorenz cipher machine was captured some time later - did not suddenly render the message legible. It just gave told the codebreakers that the odds of cracking the code itself were infinitesimal. But, as one would expect, with patient brilliance, the codebreakers found a way through. And soon enough, a computer, Colossus, was designed to automate the calculations.

But once again it was the government and authorities, not the numbers, that were the ultimate frustration. Tommy Flowers invented a valve-based computer that was deemed far too expensive to fund, and so he put his hand into his own pocket and partly funded the project himself. The machine was built, the Lorenz cipher cracked and Hitler’s own personal messages were intercepted. Armed with this weapon, the allies could make decisions surrounding D-Day with confidence since they sometimes knew the mind of the Fuhrer before Goering, Kesselring and Rommel.

After the war, the site continued to be used for various government training roles – teachers, post office workers and members of GCHQ. By 1991, however, the site had fallen into disuse and was about to be torn down and replaced with a housing development. It would have been bulldozed but for the efforts of the Bletchley Archaeological and Historical Society. They tracked down former codebreakers so that they could at least say farewell to the place before the diggers moved in. Over 400 attended. One final stay of execution for the site was granted. Bletchley Park Trust was formed the following year, shortly after Milton Keynes Borough Council declared most of the Park a conservation area. In 1993 it was open to the public.

Fifteen years on, the site is barely scraping by. Despite receiving no government assistance, it stands as a national monument to mathematical brilliance, even when the country has never been prepared to pay for it. Only a recent change in Lottery Funding rules has allowed an application for money. Even if the bid is successful, the money may take a year to arrive and not even be sufficient when it does. But one can’t help feeling that given it’s seventy year track record in beating enormous odds, the Bletchley bosses would be better off buying a Lottery ticket.

Bletchley in Trouble

2008-07-24T11:48:00.002+01:00

An open letter has been sent to The Times highlighting the financial plight of Bletchley Park. Read all about it here. BBC online has reported it here.

Given the vast amounts of money handled by the Lottery Fund, there must surely be a few million sloshing around to secure this national treasure? The site is in need of investment - and let's remember that the codebreakers undoubtedly saved thousands of lives during the War and arguably shortened the war by a number of months, if not years. While the government officials sit on their hands, it might be worth considering reaching into your own pocket and become a friend of Bletchley here.

A Third Series!

2008-07-11T15:42:00.002+01:00

I'm pleased to announce that BBC Radio 4 has commissioned a third series of Hut 33. The recording dates and transmission dates are not yet clear, but it's happening. So that's good.

Think the Unthinkable

2008-07-09T10:18:00.004+01:00

If you liked Hut 33, you may be interested in some other shows wot I wrote. One of them is Think the Unthinkable, the second series of which is currently being repeated on BBC7. Quite frequently. You can find the latest episode at here. You should be able to listen again later. This episodes features a company called 'Blue Herring' and contains one of my favourite exchanges with Daisy, splendidly played by the delightful Catherine Shepherd.

Incidentally, the first series of Think the Unthinkable is still available on CD from Amazon and other retailers. If you would Hut 33 to be similarly available please write to your MPs who will no doubt process your requests in the usual way and raise the matter in the House.

Even Gillian Reynolds laughed...

2008-07-07T12:14:00.003+01:00

In case you're wondering about critical reaction to the show - beyond the generally enthusiatic one from Chris Campling in The Times - Gillian Reynolds wrote this on 11th June. Hardly a ringing endorsement, but at least she 'fesses up to laughing. She writes:

I confess to mixed feelings about this sitcom set in a wartime de-coding centre. I find it hard to giggle about people who lived in isolated privation to crack essential enemy messages. Yet the cast is good, the characters not invariably too crude to convince and, I admit it, occasionally there’s a laugh. But why schedule, just before it, a repeat of a splendid feature on real-life British military spies, The Brixmis Story, by Jolyon Jenkins. Or maybe they’re all too young at Radio 4 these days to know the difference.

Incidentally, there is also a Facebook group to get Hut 33 commissioned as a TV series. Naturally I'm in favour...

Getting Heavy - Episode 5

2008-06-20T13:18:00.000+01:00

The official blurb said:

Getting Heavy
Hut 33's record is the worst in the complex. Charles is mortified with shame, Archie is desperate to prove himself and Gordon wants to impress a girl he has just met. They break into Hut 7b to get extra information on a message they are decoding, which turns out not to be a good idea.

Getting Heavy, the episode of Hut 33 that aired on Wednesday 18th June, was easily the mot difficult episode to write. It happens every series I've ever done. You write episodes 1 to 4 fairly easily as you're fresh and excited about a new series and bursting with ideas. Episode 5 is like pulling teeth. It takes lots of drafts and just doesn't want to settle down. And Episode 6 comes together extremely quickly (see last blog post).

So Getting Heavy was one of those tricky ones that took six full drafts to crack. It was only in the fifth draft that I deleted a whole plot strand about radioactivity. That was what I wanted to do an episode about - our characters not really understanding Uranium, touching some and then being bundled in a van and taken off to some secret facility where they would be tested, poked and prodded. There was even a part where they thought they might have special super-powers as a result of the exposure to radiation - which sounds rather preposterous but let's not forget that in 1941, not an awful lot was widely known about radiation. The first H-Bomb was still to be invented In the end, we had a Quarantine episode in a different show, so the idea of being sealed off was covered in the series.

What I was able to retain, however, was the rivalry about sex-lives between Archie and Charles - and then Gordon. Archie is full of bravado, but short on delivery. Charles is aloof and unimpressed by innuendo, but has finally given into Mrs Best's pestering. Then step forward Gordon, who becomes the star of this show. Once he finds his woman, loses his virginity - he thinks - he becomes a man.

Two parallels spring to mind. One is Arnold Rimmer's alter-ego in Red Dwarf who is known as Ace - and says 'Smoke me a kipper. I'll be back for breakfast' played by the splendid Chris Barrie. The other is Harry Enfield's whining Kevin character, the teenager who hangs around with Kevin and complains about everything. He radically transforms once he's had sex, becoming polite to his parents and very contented.

I should add that I don't share this view about losing one's virginity. It doesn't 'make you a man' or turn you into a contented polite person. We're back to the theme of myself as the writer having different views from the characters that I write. I hope, if anything, that this episode demonstrates that the hypocrisy and lying that goes on around sex is rather feeble and very pervasive. And let's be honest about this. The War was a time of pre-marital and extra-marital sex on a large scale. I don't condone it. I hope to painting a picture of Wartime Britain as it was rather than how we would chose to remember it. With a few jokes along with way.

Where Boffins Dare

2008-06-12T13:21:00.003+01:00

Episode 4 in Hut 33 is called ‘Where Boffins Dare’. The episode was, in fact, the sixth and last one to be written and recorded in the series. Like most final episodes in a series of six, it was of a frantic scramble to get written in time. You might think that the last episode is the hardest to write because you’re all out of ideas and have to scratch your head for weeks to find something for the characters to do – that you haven’t done before. This can be the case on individual jokes. Eg. Minka’s silent entrances need a different joke each time. Coming up with three or four is tricky. A fifth and then a sixth is really hard work.

Hearing Voices
Overall, however, Episode Sixes, as a rule, tend to get written fairly quickly. This is normally because Episodes One to Five take longer to write than you’d planned. But the shortage of time for Episode Six is not a disaster by any means. Having written five episodes in the series already, you find you’re writing faster and more ‘in character’ from the start. As a result, your Draft 1 is probably as strong as your Draft 2 on Episode One or Two. As the writer of the whole series, you’ve learnt the lessons again about what’s funny and what isn’t. You’ve re-learned the mechanics of writing radio comedy – and how that differs from television, prose and everything. Also, you can ‘hear’ the voices of all the characters almost instantly – and these voices sometimes lead you away from where you’re wanting to go in any particular scene. So you just have to follow the voices.

Being able to ‘hear’ the voices of your characters in response to any given subject is very important. If you can, you know you’ve got a show that stands a chance of being a success. I was once given some very good advice a long time ago by Gareth Edwards, a BBC producer and thoroughly decent human being. He said that you should be able to take your regular characters, put them into an odd or unusual situation, and know immediately how how the characters will react. If you can’t do that, you need to do more work on the characters. Eg. In your mind, put them in a scene from Alice in Wonderland. How would they respond? What would they say or do?

I did this when I was putting together the show Think the Unthinkable. In my mind, I sent my characters into a coffee shop – hardly Wonderland but effective nonetheless. Also, bear in mind it was nearly ten years ago when places like Starbucks were rather exciting, rather than functional and part of everyday life. Anyway, I knew straight away what my characters would order. Ryan (Marcus Brigstocke) would order some ludicrously overpriced frappelatte that barely resembles coffee (and probably doesn’t even contain any). Sophie (Emma Kennedy/Beth Chalmers) would order a triple espresso. Daisy (Catherine Shepherd) a skinny decaf fairtrade cappucinno with organic chocolate on top. Owen (David Mitchell) would just want coffee and keep saying coffee ‘til he got one – ideally with milk extracted from animal in a slightly cruel way. (Incidentally, Series 1 of that show is now available on CD here)

Monopoly
Last week, episode 3 of Hut 33 called ‘Yellow’, started with a slightly arbitrary scene that tested their character in a slightly unusual way - a simple game of Monopoly. Our regular three characters, plus Mrs Best, play this relatively new game. It should be no big deal. But it’s a great opportunity to express character, prejudice, snobbery and general anger. It was useful to the plot of that episode because it highlighted was a terrible Christmas they were having. And therefore the prospected of having to spend New Year’s Eve together in Quarantine was simply too much to bear – hence the tunnelling and escape plans. In the end, the game of monopoly turned into a large political dispute about the ownership of property which was true to the characters. And the audience seemed to enjoy it – because they were starting to know the characters as well as I did.

In essence, one of the main tricks of sitcom is taking characters out of their comfort zone – without it seeming contrived or ridiculous. It’s up to you to decide whether I’ve been successful in that.

Mistakes in Writing Sitcom
Along the way, then, we can note that this is an area where many first-time writers fall down. New writers are tempted to make their characters sit around and say ‘funny things’ rather than get up, move around and ‘be’ funny. First-time script frequently focus around funny, witty characters swapping jokes and witticisms. This is okay for three pages – Hut 33 attempts to have our characters in the Hut for the first three or four pages talking about stuff to set up the episode and reintroduce the characters – but it doesn’t sustain for forty pages, which is what you need. You need to give them stuff to do, reasons to react with each other and new characters. Put them in Wonderland.

That was the reasoning behind an Australian Doctor in Episode 3 played by Brendon Burns. How would the characters react to this ‘in-your-face’ character? It was a great chance for Charles to demonstrate his colonial prejudice, which come back to bite him later. It’s also funnier to have him confronted with a real-live Australian than simply have Charles sit around and make jokes about Australians. And it’s funnier for this Australian to be equally acerbic as Charles and be able to take revenge on him.

It was also one of the reasons for using the Duke of Kent character in Episode 1. It’s funnier to have Archie, as a working man from a traditional Newcastle mining family, actually have to flirt with a leery bisexual prince, rather than just make a series of jokes about homosexuality. The fact I didn't have to invent such a character was a bonus.

It’s also why I had the characters roaming the countryside in Episode 4, looking for a spy and receiving a live pig in Episode 2 – because these difficult and fraught scenarios set the characters against each other. And then I can hear them talk to each other, bicker, argue and call each other names.

So, yes, I hear voices. Please do not contact the BBC Psychiatric Unit on my behalf. I’m fine with it. In fact, my career depends on it.

A busload of Quakers

2008-06-03T11:59:00.004+01:00

Episode 2 of Hut 33 was called ‘Pigs n Spivs.’ This implies that there is more than one pig and spiv in the episode, but there isn’t. There is one spiv who sells our starving codebreakers a job-lot of bacon. Which is still in pig form. Unfortunately, they discover the origins of this pig and could be in serious trouble.

The general theme of the episode is shortages and hunger. In that sense, it’s similar to an episode in Series 1 in which Charles is so hungry and fed up that officers have much better meals than him, he joins the Bletchley Marxists.

As the writer of the show, I don’t feel all that guilty reprising an episode theme in the second series. Food was in short supply for the whole war and an unpleasant reality for all but the wealthiest. World War Two ration were meagre. Most of us today could eat their weekly ration in a day. So it's good to keep coming back to that.

Quakers, Baptists and Jokes
One last point of interest on this episode. Hopefully my explanation of it will give a small insight into how you sometimes make a joke fit the context. I spotted a comment on someone’s blog about Hut 33. (Clearly as the writer of the show, I’m constantly googling ‘Hut 33’ in order to find out what people think of it). This blogger, a wife of a Baptist minister, blogged about her irritation that the writer of Hut 33 seemed ignorant of certain religious groups and their drinking habits. What am I talking about?

The joke in question is Archie’s joke in response to his discovery that the pub has completely run out of alcohol. He says “So we’re now standing in the world’s first teetotal pub. We expecting a bus-load of Quakers?” And the audience laughed. But the blog pointed out that it is Methodists that refrain from drinking, not Quakers. I knew that. Honestly, I did. I’m a professing Christian myself and have a degree in Theology! But I chose Quakers for the joke. Why?

Shared Knowledge
Comedy relies on shared knowledge and simplicity. If the audience have to think about a joke for too long, or are unsure about any part of it, they can’t laugh. And they don’t laugh. Simplicity and clarity is everything. This partly explains why people get upset about stereotypes. They are a reality in comedy because it relies about compressing information and leaving plenty of things unsaid. In this case, I chose Quakers because I’m not sure how widely know it is that its Methodists don’t drink. It’s also the case that many Baptists don’t drink either. How widely known is that? Less so now than before. However, I judged that the audience would have no problem believing that Quakers don’t drink – partly because in my mind there seems to be some kind of overlap between Quakers, Puritans and the Amish, at least in terms of their public perception. In reality there are vast differences between these groups of Christian believers. The puritans in particular were a remarkable bunch of Christian folk who were nothing like the the adjective named after them - 'puritanical'.

Returning to the joke in question, we have to bear in min that this is a joke for 2008. So I chose Quaker. Even though the joke is set in 1941, when the vast majority would have been clear that Methodists don’t drink.

Add to the equation the fact that characters are the creations of writers – and do not represent the views of the writer, or share their factual knowledge. So Archie, Charles and the team, and especially Josh, say plenty of things that are wrong, or grammatically incorrect. But don’t shoot the writer!

Incidentally, the Quaker website says:

One testimony that Quakers have had to give careful thought to is our testimony on moderation. In the nineteenth century Quakers saw the bad effects that drink and drunkenness had in society. Along with other Non-conformist Christians they campaigned against alcohol. Many Quakers were active in the Temperance Movement - a movement of people who "took the pledge" (promising that they would never drink alcohol) as a witness against the evils it caused.

Did Hut 33 actually exist?

2008-05-26T11:14:00.002+01:00

No. There were a number of real huts, namely Huts 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14 and I read somewhere about a Hut 17. I also don't know why there wasn't a Hut 2, 5, 9, 12 and 13 to speak of. But then, this was a place for mathematicians, so maybe there is a sequence buried in those numbers in some complex logarithm. That said, there was plenty of linguists, musicians and brains from all disciplines so perhpas its not a maths puzzle at all.

The point is Hut 33 is a fictional, outlying, also-ran hut created on purpose for Archie, Charles, Gordon, Josh and Minka. When I originally thought of setting a sitcom in Bletchley Park, the show was called 'Hut 6'. It scanned nicely as a title and had something about it. Perhaps it was because this was a famous hut (You can read about the goings on and its personnnel here.) But it was mainly out of respect for these wonderful, intelligent men that I veered away from taking a real hut and moved towards inventing one.

I therefore hoped to avoid causing offence on those grounds. In this, I still failed. The first series was criticised on BBC Radio 4's Feedback programme by a veteran of Bletchley Park who said life in the huts was nothing like that portrayed in the sit-com. I am relieved that this was the case, or else we might have lost the war. (I suspect occupied France did not resemble that portrayed in Allo Allo). But this is what happens when you set a sit-com in a specific place. People complain. I remember a sitcom a few years ago called 'Chalk', set in a school. Lots of teachers complained about that. It's right and good that people complain and voice their opinions. It's a free country. It's why we fought the war in the first place.

So where did the number '33' come from?
It seemed the right number, despite not being a prime. In case you didn't know, prime numbers are funnier than non-Prime numbers. I don't know why. They just are. It explains why 17, 19, and 37 crop up in comedy disproportionately often. A friend suggested whether 'Hut 33' was a reference to Catch 22. Subliminally, it may well have been. I read Catch 22 round about the time I was writing the pilot of the show.

What is the fictional role of Hut 33?
In Series 1, our regular characters are breaking Italian Naval codes. It's worth noting that, despite jokes about the inadequacies of the Italian Army, the Italian Navy were rather handy and cause the Allies plenty of strife in the Mediterranean. In some ways, their role felt too important given their ineptitude and bickering so in Series 2, Hut 33 have been demoted to Norway. Norway was invaded and overrun in 1940 in Operation Weserübung. The fight did not last long. Thereafter, Norway was something of a backwater, with a hint of excitement in its heavy water plants, which does crop up in Series 2 at some point.

Times Review

2008-05-23T16:31:00.003+01:00

Some say it's bad form to quote your own reviews. Well, click here for a fairly flattering one from Chris Campling in the Times.

Episode 1 - Royal Visit

2008-05-14T11:24:00.004+01:00

Episode 1 of Series 2 is called Royal Visit. This is the blurb:

A royal visitor is coming to inspect Bletchley Park, but the top brass are worried that this particular royal is a Nazi sympathiser. Hut 33 has to delay him and make sure he doesn't see any of the code-breaking machines.

Allow me to fill you in on how and why this episode came together without, hopefully, deconstructing the whole thing into a joyless series of components.

The Inspection Episode
The 'inspection' episode is common sit-com device and also a very useful one. Characters are sent rushing around getting things ready. Cleaning, polishing and tidying. In the process, skeletons can be found in cupboards, difficult tasks can be comically compressed and plenty of dirt can be swept under the carpet. See the effect of the Inspector in JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls. The presence and prospect of an Inspector causes lives to unravel.

Another advantage of the 'Inspector' episode it is simplicity. Simplicity is everything in comedy, especially in half-hour sit-com. If the audience is confused, even slightly, they can't laugh. In that sense, sit-com is contrived reality, over-simplified and sign-posted. The audience is normally happy with this because they understand the genre. The trick is, within the contrived situation, to make the plot and events seem as organic and un-contrived as possible. We start with something believable, and through a series of believable steps end up somewhere original and bizarre, so we're left thinking 'How on earth did we get here?'!

Inspections are a reality of life - audits, royal visitors, tax men - so we have a believable, clear goal that we can all understand - everything has to be ready for the inspector or special visitor. It's a variation on 'The Boss Comes to Dinner' episode that's common to many domestic sitcoms.

The Twist
The trick of sitcom, then, is to take a familiar situation and push them further, into unfamiliar areas. World War Two threw up plenty of these. And so when I came to consider the inspection episode, I tried to think of what the twist would be. As the blurb of the show suggests (so I'm not spoiling it) what if the Royal visitor cannot be trusted?

This taps into the very real concerns during the war that some members of the aristocracy could not be trusted and were well-known for Fascist sympathies. It is a running theme of the series - partly embodied in the character of Professor Charles Gardiner. As a well-connected Oxford professor, he moves in elevated circles and was friendly before the war with high-ranking Nazis and sympathised with some of their views. Every episode, Archie normally makes jokes implying that Charles played some kind of gentle sport with a prominent Nazi. And Charles has to concede that he was friendly with the Von Ribbentrops, the Rommels and even Mussolini.

And so as I was thinking about which Royal visitor, real or imagined, could visit Hut 33, I stumbled across Prince George, Duke of Kent. If you read his profile here, you will see that he was a very worrying figure for the British Establishment. Given the extraordinarily secret nature of the work at Bletchley Park, the Prince's visit would have to be frustrated in some way. If news of the breaking of Enigma was leaked back to Germany, it would have proved disastrous for the Allies.

German High Command had no idea that the British were reading their messages so a hint to that effect would have been catastrophic for Bletchley. 1941 was a difficult year for the Allies. Britain stood alone against Germany and was on the verge of starvation. The convoys in the Atlantic bringing food and supplies from America were a lifeline. This, then, gives an intensity to the story that hopefully makes it play and gives good motivations for our regular characters who are instrumental in keeping the prince away from the code-breaking machinery.

Guest Star
Fans of Radioactive will recognise the voice of the Prince. He is wonderfully played by Michael Fenton Stevens (who also played alongside Robert Bathurst (Charles) in My Dad's the Prime Minister).

Just one week to go now...

2008-05-14T11:21:00.003+01:00

The more observant of you will have spotted that our previous date for the start of Series 2 didn't actually exist - being advertised as Monday 21st May. The 21st is a Wednesday, and that is the day of the first episode of Series 2. It's a week from now. Excited? I am, and I know what I happens.

All Now Recorded

2008-04-06T21:51:00.002+01:00

The whole second series has now been recorded - over three recordings in the Radio Theare in Broadcasting House.

In the final recording on Monday 31st March, our regular cast were joined by Perrier-winning comedian, Brendon Burns and all-round rising star (and Perrier Best Newcomer winning some time ago...) Ben Willbond.

Nearer the time of transmission, information will appear on this blog about individual episodes, historical detail and such like which some, several or fewer may find interesting.

Hut 33

2008-03-28T12:01:00.000Z

Hut 33 returns for a second series on Monday 21st May at 11.30am on BBC Radio 4.

Nearer the time, background information about the series, how it came together and bits of historical detail will appear on this blog, written by me, James Cary, the writer of Hut 33. For now, there's some information on here.

Four episodes of Series Two have already been recorded, but the final recording of the series takes place on Monday 31st March at the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House. All tickets are currently allocated, but if you turn up on the door, there's a chance you'll get in. But you might not.

Hut 33

Hut 33 on Audible.co.uk

Series 1 Repeat on BBC7

M*A*S*H

A Very Bad Week in British Comedy

Starring Greg Proops

Think the Unthinkable Series 1

Miranda Hart's Jokeshop on BBC7

Another Case of Milton Jones - Series 4

Cabin Pressure

How Many Episodes is Enough?

The Persuasionists

Watching Comedy as Comedy Writer

A Comedy Poll

Come and hear Another Case of Milton Jones

Miranda - Series 2

Where Do Comedians Go When They Die?

Unlucky for Some

JRR Tolkein

The Big Machine

Episode 1 - Know Thine Enemy on iPlayer

Know Thyne Enemy

Series 3 sorted

So you want to be a comedy writer...

The Unthinkable on iTunes

Wired

Boffoonery - Tickets Now on Sale!

Bletchley in the Express

Milton's Paradise Jones

Milton Jones and Pozzitive

First Episode

Bletchley Park Benefit - Tues 3rd November

BBC7

Joshua

Writing a Sitcom - advice from the expert (ie. not me)

D-Day Prize Crossword

Standing Corrected

Pigs n Spivs

Hut 33 - Repeated

Stephen Fry at Bletchley

Hut 33 - Series Two repeat!

Most Popular

Think the Unthinkable

Crossword Ends in Violence (5)

Recording 1: Series 3: Hut 33

Comedy and the Bible

Cheltenham

Bread

M*A*S*H - Blood and Guts

Starting Writing an Episode

Daily Telegraph Cryptic

Crossword Ends in Violence (5)

Milton Jones & Miranda Hart

Enigma News

Some Useful Links

Don't Bet on it

Pressing 'pause'

History Repeating

Series 1 Repeat

Fighting against the odds

Bletchley in Trouble

A Third Series!

Think the Unthinkable

Even Gillian Reynolds laughed...

Getting Heavy - Episode 5

Where Boffins Dare

A busload of Quakers

Did Hut 33 actually exist?

Times Review

Episode 1 - Royal Visit

Just one week to go now...

All Now Recorded

Hut 33

MAS*H

MAS*H - Blood and Guts