Miranda Hart

by Sophie Johnson

  The Abbey for ITV in 2007 was yet another pilot, this time made by Baby Cow, with a cast including its writer, Morwenna Banks, plus Russell Brand, Omid Djalili, Reece Shearsmith and Liz Smith. Banks plays Marianne Hope, who goes to rehab to cope with a celebrity relationship break-up. When she comes out, she start up a money-making sanctuary which attracts drugged-up DJ Terry (Brand), a nymphomaniac geriatric called Elsie (Smith) and Helen (Hart), the suicidal wife of an MP.

  Miranda didn’t stop. Even when recording her radio shows in 2008, she voiced Miss Much, a pompous rabbit in Tales of the Riverbank. Alongside such revered voice artists as Stephen Fry and Peter Serafinowicz, this was a huge honour for the actress. She also took a part in Hotel Trubble, a children’s comedy drama for CBBC. Miranda plays Mrs Lily Lemon, mother of one of the lead characters, Lenny. Lenny has told her that he is the manager of the hotel when in fact he is only a porter. The episode revolves around the team trying to convince her he is the boss. Other guest stars on the show have included Josie d’Arby, Les Dennis, Phil Cornwell and another cast member from Hyperdrive: Stephen Evans (aka Vine).

  As she built herself up towards the broadcast of her sitcom in late 2009, there was still plenty of Miranda to be enjoyed elsewhere, such as in the film A Very British Cult. The lead character, David, was played by Richard Herring, who described the film on his daily blog, Warming Up, as follows: ‘The film is about a rubbish cult of which my character is the leader. They are all threatening to rebel and go and join a rival cult that seems to know when Jesus is returning and which has a glossy TV advert which makes their own cult look about as shit as it is.’

  Herring’s character dreams some numbers, what he believes to be the date of the second coming. They turn out to be very exciting indeed, but perhaps not in the way he expected. Other members of the cult were played by Emma Kennedy, Jim Barclay, Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Gus Brown.

  Fans of Tom Ellis from Miranda may have already seen Monday Monday, the 2009 ITV drama also starring Fay Ripley and Jenny Agutter. If not, they certainly should. He plays a flirty office worker in a secret relationship with the boss (Agutter). They all work at the head office of a supermarket called Butterworth’s, which has relocated from London to Leeds as a result of downsizing. Broadcast magazine said the show aimed to ‘shed light on a world of alcoholic HR bosses, power-crazed managers and sexually unfettered PAs’. Miranda played the small part of Tall Karen, an office assistant who works in HR. When the show was first broadcast on 13 July 2009, she tweeted, ‘ITV 9pm Monday Monday, have a tiny regular part in it. So small in 1st ep don’t be blinking.’ And then, as an afterthought, she added, ‘P.S. not seen it yet so no idea what it’s like. Great cast though. Tom Ellis who is in my show is the main man.’

  In the light of Miranda’s first series, broadcast in late 2009, and with her popularity gathering momentum, the BBC gave her a high-profile presenting job: 2009 Unwrapped with Miranda Hart. The festive show was a round-up of the year’s events, but using spoof news stories because, as Miranda quipped, ‘We’re filming this in April. I hope we get the events right – we’re just guessing.’

  Celebrities ‘remembered’ such memorable moments as ‘Arthur’ on Britain’s Got Talent, who had a trumpeting penis. Sally Phillips commented, ‘How romantic is that? It would be so romantic to be serenaded in that way.’

  Unwrapped is reminiscent of Time Trumpet, a BBC Two show from 2006 set in the future in which Armando Iannucci interviews celebrities about stories from their pasts, but pasts which are still in our future. (Clear? Good.) It also has similarities in style to Jon Holmes’s Listen Against, a Radio 4 show. This is largely because Holmes wrote for all three shows. The tradition of authoritative spoof news as we know it, however, dates back to the days of Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris’s On the Hour for Radio 4 in the early 1990s, which spawned The Day Today on television, as well as various vehicles for Steve Coogan’s sports reporter Alan Partridge.

  Unwrapped was revived for the end of 2010 with clips including a spoof of Professor Brian Cox’s programme called ‘Wonders of the Stoner System’; the year’s must-have gadget, the iTurd; and the Scandal League, which sets footballers up with others’ girlfriends. And one for the fact fans: both episodes were produced by Alex Walsh-Taylor, who also produced Hyperdrive.

  In that Christmas TV season of 2010/11, old and new were united in a one-off special, The One Ronnie. Corbett, the surviving Ronnie, one of the country’s best-loved comics, performed sketches alongside today’s stars to celebrate his 80th birthday. It was a stellar cast including Matt Lucas, David Walliams, Harry Enfield, Catherine Tate, Rob Brydon, James Corden and, of course, Miranda Hart.

  Earlier in 2010, however, Miranda had another shot at the big screen, playing Mrs Keyes in The Infidel. She had the honour of breaking some rather shocking news to Omid Djalili’s character, a salt-of-the-earth East End Muslim named Mahmud Nasir – who turns out to be Jewish. The film, written by David Baddiel, brought Hart to a wider audience, but her most significant performances outside of Miranda were as Barbara in Not Going Out and Teal in Hyperdrive, two shows we’ll return to shortly.

  What this roll call of film and TV appearances has proved is the drive and resilience of Miranda, and her commitment to her dream. As she says herself, ‘I think, however much I worry it’s all going to stop, that someone else much better will come along. Ultimately, there’s always been a percentage of me that believes I’m funny. I think I just kept going, like tunnel vision.’

  Miranda Hart is no overnight success, but a hard-working woman with the ethos: ‘If you commit to it, you commit to it.’

  8

  GOING INTO HYPERDRIVE

  ‘I know NOTHING about science fiction. NOTHING!’

  – Miranda

  When Miranda Hart was offered the role for the BBC Two sci-fi sitcom Hyperdrive, she finally gave up temping, and became a full-time professional comedy actress, over 10 years after her first appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe. She had achieved her dream, but there was still room to grow. As she said in an interview for Hyperdrive’s fan website: ‘I have always wanted to be a comedy actress. That has been and still is my dream. There is SO much I would still love to do. I feel like I am just at the beginning of my career really.’

  The writers and creators of the show, Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil, have explained how the idea first came about: ‘We were stuck in a windowless office in LA and started musing about what a British space force would be like. There’d be a lot more arguing and a lot of meetings and a lot of biscuits.’

  In the show’s development, its title changed from Lasers to Stun, then to Lepus, and then Full Power. It was under the last title that an untransmitted pilot was filmed, directed by Armando Iannucci. Aside from Sanjeev Bhaskar (as Henderson) and Mark Gatiss (as York), the cast – including Hart – remained the same as for the eventual series.

  Finally, BBC Two commissioned a full series of the show, now called Hyperdrive. Bhaskar and Gatiss were replaced in their respective roles by Nick Frost and Kevin Eldon. ‘We’ve always had this burning ambition to do science fiction and the chance doesn’t come round that often,’ co-writer Kevin Cecil admitted. ‘The BBC decided the time was right, though.’

  In a making-of documentary called Hyperdrivel, star of the show Nick Frost joked about how he got the part: ‘They came to my big Malibu house with a big case of money, and they said, “It could all be yours – we need you for eight weeks.” So I came out of retirement and I did the gig.’

  By the time the first episode of Hyperdrive was broadcast, on 11 January 2006, sci-fi was deemed to be cool again, primarily because of the revival of the BBC’s Doctor Who the previous spring. Christopher Eccleston had been replaced as the Doctor at Christmas 2005 by David Tennant, whose first episode was the festive special, ‘The Christmas Invasion’. Science-fiction fans were anxious to see how the tenth doctor would progress under Tennant when the new series was due to start in April 2006. This actually put Hyperdrive’s cre
ators under some pressure, as producer Alex Walsh-Taylor explained: ‘When you’re dealing with sci-fi comedy, you’ve got a huge fan base of the genre, that are watching, not only for science fiction, but the comedy as well… We all had to create this world that we were very certain of, that played within the rules that have kind of been set by this 40-year history of TV and film sci-fi.’

  Co-writer Andy Riley thinks the potential audience for such a show extends beyond fans of science fiction. ‘It would make me enormously pleased if people that didn’t normally like science fiction would give this a go. Hopefully it’s got this Croft and Perry effect of having lots of characters from lots of different social classes thrown together in a situation where they have to do things.’

  The writers had rules though. While writing the series, they had a sign on the office wall that said, ‘No time travel’, and another which ordered, ‘No teleporting’. They wanted to avoid parody and create a believable science-fiction world for the characters to inhabit. Within reason. Of course, sci-fi isn’t sci-fi without an alien or two. Riley explains how this became inevitable. ‘We had to have aliens. We had aliens arriving on about page three of the first script! In the very first episode, there’s about three alien species, so we start as we mean to go on.’

  As big science-fiction fans, Cecil and Riley were keen to educate the cast of its history. The set became something of a DVD lending library – not that many of the cast members were that enthusiastic. Miranda has bravely admitted to the show’s fans: ‘I know NOTHING about science fiction. NOTHING! I approached Hyperdrive as a sitcom that happened to be set in space and often have to ask the boys about the sci-fi references.’

  Nick Frost is partial to science fiction but decided to steer clear. ‘I didn’t watch much other sci-fi while I was doing it, because I didn’t really want it to inform how I did it. But I know that sounds twatty.’

  In the Venn diagram of science fiction and British comedy, only a small number of shows lie in the middle segment: Come Back Mrs Noah in 1977, starring Ian Lavender and Mollie Sugden; Astronauts, a 1981 series created by Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie; Goodnight Sweetheart, where Nicholas Lyndhurst time travels to the 1940s; My Hero, with the superhero played by Ardal O’Hanlon; The Strangerers, a Rob Grant comedy shown in 2000; and the most successful of all, Red Dwarf, a megahit with Chris Barrie, Robert Llewellyn, Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules.

  As a sitcom set on a spaceship, Hyperdrive was inevitably compared to Red Dwarf but the writers were keen that it should be seen on its own merit. ‘The differences with Red Dwarf are in the writing, the acting style and the level of performance,’ Andy Riley asserted. ‘It’s got a different look too. It’s got more in common with 2001.’

  Writing partner Kevin Cecil added, ‘Also the situation is very different. With Red Dwarf they’re answerable to no one; they’re free agents. In ours, they’re very much not. They’re the crew of a vessel that is part of the British Space Force and they have to follow orders.’

  Miranda Hart concurred, ‘As for Hyperdrive being the new Red Dwarf – I think they are totally different shows and should be viewed as such.’

  Hyperdrive is set in 2151 on the HMS Camden Lock, a space crew on a mission, not to discover new worlds, but to act as salesmen for Britain and persuade alien businesses to relocate to Peterborough, extolling the virtues of the nearby Lake District as a holiday destination. But, as with any comedy, the show is really about the characters and their relationships. Executive producer of the show Jon Plowman explained, ‘The show is really about them trying to persuade aliens to relocate to Britain, while the Americans offer Florida, and partly about a group of people being stuck together in a confined place for a long time.’

  The first series (of six episodes) aired on BBC Two from 11 January 2006, with a second run following from 12 July 2007. Miranda Hart auditioned for the pilot and so impressed the writers that, when they wrote the series, they wrote the character of Diplomatic Officer Teal with her in mind. Director on the series John Henderson has commented, ‘She was just absolutely perfect because she completely epitomised the Teal we were after and the boys wrote for her… I couldn’t imagine anyone else ever playing that role.’

  Hart too felt an affinity with the character, telling the Camden Lock fan site, ‘I am not sure how many people went up for the part at that stage, but I am delighted to say they still wanted me for the series as I just fell in love with the character of Teal.’

  Diplomatic Officer Chloe Teal is a perfectionist who is more comfortable arranging her pens than dealing with social situations. Miranda describes her as a ‘conscientious, slightly prudish, home counties girl. She sticks to the rules and regulations and her efficiency and organisation mean she is seen as the school swot of the team. She is much better at her job than at social interaction – and doesn’t really understand how to flirt or to relax socially.’

  She shares a forces background with the character, but it is about there that the similarities end. ‘Teal continues to enjoy and live by the regimented, emotionally uptight elements of that background,’ Miranda explains. ‘[I] am much more informal and slobby than Teal.’

  Miranda impressed the crew, too. The producer, Alex Walsh-Taylor, said, ‘Physically she’s very funny. She’s very tall and she’s developed this great galumphing walk for Teal, which looks really funny.’

  Miranda has joked that it wasn’t just her acting which turned heads on the set, saying during Hyperdrivel that there was some tension with some of the male cast members. ‘They all, bar none, fancy me. I know that… I had to make it clear that I wasn’t going to mount them at lunch – they all offered. Every day for two weeks, initially. Once we got that out of the way – it wasn’t going to happen – it’s been good ever since.’

  Andy Riley quipped in kind. ‘[She’s] very physical. Sometimes I look – particularly when she’s in the costume – it gets me going. Purely in a professional way and I wouldn’t possibly cross that line. But I’d like to.’

  The character of Teal was unlucky in love. She fell for Space Commander Michael Henderson, played by Nick Frost, but didn’t know how to cope with it. Director John Henderson liked the dynamic of the relationship: ‘It’s really nice because an upper-class lady with a crush on Henderson is a great dynamic to have. There’s a whole sort of To the Manor Born thing going here which is really, really nice.’

  Captain Henderson, however, has no idea how Teal feels about him. ‘She fancies him and he just sees her as a mate,’ commented Nick Frost. ‘I think, because he doesn’t see it, that drives her all the more crazy.’

  Miranda has said of Teal’s feelings for Henderson: ‘Someone suggested the other day that it was lust. It’s not lust, let me correct you there. It’s simple adoration and love. I reckon she’s probably fallen in love with him as her first love. She doesn’t know quite how to deal with it.’ She has also said that she would like to see Teal find happiness in a reciprocal relationship but concluded, ‘I don’t think it will happen!’ Her hunch was correct.

  Nick Frost has compared the bond between the two characters with another in classic comedy history. ‘It reminds me a bit of Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques in the Carry On films – that same dynamic where they really like each other but every now and again she comes on a bit strong and he pulls back.’

  Space Commander Henderson, leader of HMS Camden Lock, values his job but sometimes takes a risk with his superiors for the good of his team, seeing his orders as ‘open to interpretation’. Frost describes his character as ‘very well meaning, he’s very nice… he cares if they don’t like him’. Of his character’s back story, he reckons Henderson got lucky: ‘He’s been through a war, I think. But I think more by luck than judgement he made it through. I like to think maybe he was knocked unconscious and lay there as they scoured the battlefield for the dead and he just went unnoticed.’

  It’s his enthusiasm and compassion that makes Mike Henderson such a likeable character, along with his everym
an quality. Hyperdrive’s director John Henderson regarded the character as key to the group’s dynamic: ‘He becomes the centre of the group because he’s the audience and his reaction to things is kind of what the audience’s reaction to things would be. It’s everybody around him that has a slightly more eccentric quality.’

  The other characters certainly cover a wide spectrum of personality. As well as the amiable Commander Henderson and the fastidious Chloe Teal, there is the strict, borderline sociopath First Officer York; Navigator Vine, who is so nervous it seems impossible he ever got the job; Jeffers, the geeky but layabout Technical Officer; and Sandstrom, the enhanced human who acts as Pilot. Writer Andy Riley commented, ‘Hopefully, there’s one person in the mix that any person could identify with.’

  York is played by the actor Kevin Eldon, a familiar face to comedy fans as he has featured in numerous shows over the past 15 years including Fist of Fun, I’m Alan Partridge, Big Train, Brass Eye and Nighty Night. In 2010, he did his first full solo stand-up show at the Edinburgh Festival, which received great critical acclaim. Bruce Dessau, comedy critic for the Evening Standard and the Guardian, gave him five stars. He concluded by saying the show’s only fault was that ‘it could have been longer. Give this man his own TV show right now.’

  Playing Henderson’s right-hand man, Eldon is cold-hearted and pragmatic, seeing the rest of the crew as amateurs and really believes he should be in charge. The British Comedy Guide sums up his character by pointing out that he is ‘still the only trainee at Space Force Academy to have killed someone in a role play workshop. Apparently he was “just trying to make it realistic”.’