Miranda Hart

by Sophie Johnson

  Nick Frost was delighted to be able to work with Eldon for the first time. ‘I’ve known Kevin for quite a while but we’ve never worked together before. I had a tiny part in Big Train which he was in and he had a couple of days on Spaced but we didn’t have any scenes together, so it’s nice to work so closely at last.’ Off-screen, though, Frost reveals the hierarchy was reversed: ‘Off the set it was a different matter, as it was definitely Kevin who was in charge!’

  On the show, their relationship is ripe for comedy: Henderson thinks York is his best friend, while York has little but contempt for his commander, as he believes he would do a much better job. Occasionally, there are tender moments of camaraderie – not that York would admit to it.

  Stephen Evans plays Navigator Vine. Of all the cast, Evans is the biggest sci-fi fan in the cast, described by Riley as a Doctor Who obsessive. Vine is a depressive sort, who only seems happy when collecting 1990s paraphernalia, or ‘antiques’ as he calls them. He believes it to be a simpler time, as we discover when Henderson and York trespass into his subconscious, and find his only dream is where he owns a pub in 1995 with his wife, who looks suspiciously like Sandstrom. He is usually rather detached from the group, unable to bond and too nervous to stand up to any of them, but he shares a tender moment with Jeffers when they visit the planet he buys on a whim on an auction website. He calls it ‘Vineworld’ and, as he and Jeffers traverse the derelict mess, names areas Vine City 1 and Vine Ridge.

  Jeffers is played by the stand-up comedian Dan Antopolski, who was nominated three times for the Edinburgh award. He won the BBC New Comedy Award in 1998 and was awarded the honour of Best Joke at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, given by the channel Dave. The winning one-liner was ‘Hedgehogs. Why can’t they just share the hedge?’, which featured in his show Silent But Deadly. Punslinger Tim Vine took the title in 2010 with ‘I’ve just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I’ll tell you what, never again.’

  Antopolski’s character has something of a devil-may-care attitude, charming his way out of trouble, or simply covering his tracks. ‘Jeffers is pretty geeky, he knows his computers,’ Dan ruminates, ‘but he’s also a bit of a naughty schoolboy. He’s a bit arsey and has got a problem with authority.’ But he cares about his work and eventually does what he’s told, albeit reluctantly. ‘He’s basically me, I think. Or me as I was in school.’

  In Hyperdrivel, the making-of programme, Dan explains how he got the part in a style that epitomises his surreal style of stand-up: ‘Me and the writers first got in touch online, unusually. It was a chat room. I was posing as a 12-year-old girl. Obviously they’ve rewritten the part a bit; it’s been adjusted. But they know what jelly babies I like – I’ll tell you that much.’

  The member of the HMS Camden Lock family who it might be easy to neglect is Sandstrom, the prototype enhanced human who pilots the ship. She stands among bright poles that she strokes in a bizarre performance reminiscent of Reeves and Mortimer’s performance artist characters. This is unsurprising as she is played by Petra Massey, a member of the physical theatre company Spymonkey, who have toured all over Europe and the USA. As the series progress, it becomes clear that both Vine and York have a soft spot for Sandstrom.

  The cast aside, Hyperdrive had a fantastic start with its creative team. The writers, Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil, had previously collaborated on the BAFTA award-winning third series of Black Books. They didn’t simply write the script and then leave it to the production team; instead they took a very hands-on approach to filming. Miranda Hart commented, ‘They are on set every day which is great. A real help. They are making minor adjustments right up to the last minute and are very open to suggestions and lines that come out of improvements and rehearsals. It is a genuine pleasure to work with such generous writers.’

  Kevin Cecil describes the process in more detail on the making-of documentary. First the actors rehearse with no one in the room but the director, in a relaxed environment, and then rehearse in front of the crew and writers. ‘At that point,’ he explained, ‘if we think a line’s not working, or if we’ve got on an idea, or if the actors are worried about a line, we’ll go into a little huddle and we’ll work on the scene.’

  Riley says that they’ve usually made the relevant changes within five minutes while the cameras are being set up. ‘Then everyone will go and have a cup of tea, and then it’s time to shoot it.’

  The love-in extended right across the group, as many were very excited to work with John Henderson, the director. He was the oldest member of the crew, approaching 60, but he brought wisdom and experience with him. His first directing job was on Spitting Image on ITV, for which he won a BAFTA.

  With such credentials, Hyperdrive was bound to work. Critical reaction, however, was mixed. Many comedy fans loved the show. Jay, a user of the British Comedy Guide website, said that it was ‘funny, clever and engaging’ and ‘destined to be a classic’. Fellow forum-member Ben said, ‘Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley have a pleasingly absurdist bent to their writing… and Hyperdrive is agreeably quirky as a result.’ The show’s biggest fan was ‘Captain Helix’, named after the show-within-the-show sci-fi hero whom Henderson idolises, who said that he was disappointed at first, but, once he managed to get other shows out of his mind, he was ‘able to enjoy it for itself, forgetting comparisons with Red Dwarf and other TV shows, and judge it on its own merits’.

  Some couldn’t forget though – Daniel O’Rourke wrote, ‘I thought this show was absolutely abysmal, it is just a rip-off from Red Dwarf.’ And die-hard science-fiction fans were the hardest to please. One magazine dedicated to the genre, SFX, gave it only 1.5 stars. Reviewer Dave Golder said, ‘This new sci-fi Brit-com may as well have been called Black Hole, because that’s where most of the humour seems to have been sucked into.’ He continued, ‘The creators appear to be aiming for a hybrid of Red Dwarf and The Office. In practice, it’s a car-crash mix of styles that actually work against each other.’

  But Hyperdrive embraced its sci-fi heritage, introducing a set inspired by Blake’s 7 and guest aliens that recall the more comic episodes of Doctor Who. In the first episode, we meet the Glish, who have some bizarre customs as Nick Frost describes: ‘The Glish are a strange race who like to lick people as a form of greeting. They lick your hands and sometimes your face so I had to make sure my hands were clean and smelling of Imperial Leather that day!’

  The meeting doesn’t go quite as the crew of the Camden Lock intended and the Glish leave a man-eating parasite as a parting gift.

  Frost says that episode two was good fun to film as they leave the spaceship. ‘We go down to the planet to meet the aliens… It’s been a long time since they have had any contact with humans so they are very excited.’ Henderson ruins their chances when he falls in love with the King’s daughter and Teal becomes so jealous she causes quite a scene. They try to escape but Vine has been led astray by Jeffers, who has taken advantage of the empty ship to have a race with his friends.

  The episode ‘Weekend Off’ is one where Miranda really shines. The whole ship takes time off for Gary Neville Day, celebrating ‘the 21st-century footballer and inventor of artificial gravity’. While Vine and Jeffers go to explore Planet Vine, Teal gets overexcited about the Officers’ Dinner. She rigs it so that no one can attend except her and Commander Henderson – by any means necessary. She serves up a meal of Wotsits, clumsily trying to instigate flirty chat. Of course, the captain is oblivious and immediately dismisses the thought that people may talk. This desperation to be liked is a trait that would also appear in the sitcom Miranda, but Teal is a totally different character that Hart pulls off brilliantly. In the fan-site interview, she told mega-fan ‘Captain Helix’, ‘If I met Teal in real life (bizarre idea!) then I would probably not dislike her, but she wouldn’t be on top of my list to go to the pub with. She wouldn’t be quite as free and silly as I would like a drinking companion to be. She’s a bit too uptight for me.’

  There was one joke on set that will
already be a familiar theme – teasing Miranda about her appearance. ‘I am sure my kind and loving nicknames Queen Kong and Big Truck will stick – a couple of those got into the show, which really made me laugh.’ Queen Kong, as her old school friends call her in the BBC sitcom, doesn’t appear in the show. At one point, where the cast are improvising at the beginning and end of scenes, though, she gets called ‘Big Truck’, and it survives the edit. Miranda admitted that it’s at times like these that she can’t keep in the laughs. ‘I would say I am probably the worst at corpsing. If at the end of a scene the director didn’t shout cut straight away, we would improvise and I would always be the first to laugh.’

  One episode – ‘Clare’ – also reunited Miranda with Sally Phillips, who she had previously worked with on Smack the Pony. Phillips played Clare Winchester, an Ellen McArthur-in-space figure who travels the galaxies solo. When he spots her flying near them, Henderson gets excited at the thought of meeting a celebrity and visits to attempt to make friends and cheer her up. It’s a fantastic performance of cabin fever – Winchester refuses to talk at first, is erratic and has an unhealthy relationship with Mr Cup, who is literally a cup.

  The overriding feeling of the show, both on- and off-screen, is one of camaraderie. Nick Frost summed up how well the cast bounced off each other: ‘We’re all really different people and we come from different backgrounds but it worked. I think that comes through in the dynamic of the ship’s crew as well; because we got on well off-screen, that gave us a nice shorthand on-screen.’

  The credibility of the characters and the performers came across to viewers, and it led to Hart receiving added recognition: she received her first British Comedy Awards nomination in November 2006 as Best Female Comedy Newcomer. She was up against Katherine Parkinson from The IT Crowd and singer-turned-talk-show host Charlotte Church. Church won the award at the ceremony in December, but nevertheless, the nomination helped to raise Hart’s profile some more.

  9

  NOT GOING OUT

  ‘It had to happen sooner or later. BBC One has finally found a sitcom worth staying in for.’

  – Jane Simon, Daily Mirror

  So Miranda was now a familiar face to comedy fans and many were praising her work, but it was BBC One’s sitcom Not Going Out that made her, if not a household name, then at least a household face. Everybody loves her character, Barbara. Lee Mack, who co-created and starred in Not Going Out, says of her performance in Miranda, ‘She plays an extension of herself. She’s a true comedian, putting herself into the part, rather than an actor changing to fit it.’ But Mack spotted her potential early in the run of Not Going Out – after she played a bit-part in a series-one episode, he created the role of Barbara the cleaner specifically for her.

  BAFTA-winning comedian Lee Mack created the sitcom with Andrew Collins, who had previously won a Sony Award for BBC Radio 1 show Collins and Maconie’s Hit Parade. It came together when Avalon, the comedy production and management company who were developing the show with Lee, put the two in touch. Collins had already collaborated with another Avalon act, Simon Day, for The Fast Show spin-off Grass. He told the British Comedy Guide that initially he was brought in as a ‘straight man’ writer: ‘I feel I am more instinctively better at story, structure and character than actual gags and punchlines, although I’ve written comic stuff for myself on the radio before.’

  Collins, however, discovered that both Day on Grass and Mack on Not Going Out were keen to work on structure and story, while he could add some strong gags to the respective shows. He found that Lee’s vision was for an old-fashioned style of show, in front of a studio audience and thick with gags: ‘At that stage, it should be noted, we were developing Not Going Out with a view to showing it on BBC Two, not BBC One. So our ideas were a little edgier than something like My Family. I realised that this would be a challenge, and relished working with someone new. You only improve by trying new things with new people, and I liked Lee from day one.’

  It was Lee Mack alone who came up with the premise for the first series. Lee and his housemate Kate have an easy-going friendship that is moving towards a will-they, wont-they? situation. Hence the title Not Going Out. What makes it a real problem, though, is that Kate’s ex is Tim, Lee’s best friend. The relationship between Lee and Kate came from a sketch show Mack did in Edinburgh. Andrew Collins explained the character’s origin: ‘The character of Lee is a big layabout with big dreams. The real Lee is a bundle of creative energy, and not a layabout at all. But he cracks jokes all the time, and so does the character Lee.’

  Lee (the character) meanders between jobs, relying on the goodwill of others to support him. But, while Kate (Megan Dodds) is doing her best to motivate Lee, Tim (played by Tim Vine) has trouble coping with how close they are becoming.

  A non-broadcast pilot was made at Teddington Studios at the end of 2005 with Catherine Tate playing Kate, as she did in the original Edinburgh show, Lee Mack’s Bits, in 2000. As well as being a stand-up, Mack appeared in ITV’s The Sketch Show, running for two series between 2001 and 2003, and even transferred to American TV, scheduled next to The Simpsons on the Fox network’s Sunday line-up, and with a cast featuring Kelsey Grammer. Mack also starred in The Lee Mack Show on BBC Radio 2 (nominated for a Sony Radio Award) and hosted the final series of They Think It’s All Over. Most recently, he has become a popular team captain on Would I Lie To You?, sparring with David Mitchell under the watchful eye of hosts Angus Deayton and, in later series, Rob Brydon.

  Tim, eventually played by master of puns Tim Vine, is Lee’s best friend. He’s an accountant for the local council and, compared with Lee, he’s rather uptight and sensible. Vine also starred in The Sketch Show and has also worked as a presenter, hosting and devising Fluke – a Rose d’Or Award-nominated Channel 4 show – as well as presenting the quiz show Whittle in the early days of Channel Five. He is probably best known for his unrelenting one-liner style of stand-up. He holds the Guinness World Record for ‘Telling The Most Jokes in an Hour’, fitting in 499 jokes – that’s roughly one every seven seconds.

  Despite Vine’s close relationship with Mack, the part of Tim wasn’t written with him in mind. Lee said, ‘I’ve worked with him for years on The Sketch Show and on the stand-up circuit, and it was the obvious thing to have him in Not Going Out… and yet I didn’t really think about him at first. He certainly wasn’t written for in the un-broadcast pilot.’

  Tim’s character was initially called Colin, ‘a city boy with stubble and a leather jacket’. As Catherine Tate played Kate quite aggressively, they needed someone who would be believable as her ex-boyfriend. When they cast the full series, they held auditions in the usual manner, but Lee thought of his friend and asked him if he wanted to audition. ‘Tim can sometimes be phenomenally laid back and he sort of went, “Well, I’m a bit busy tomorrow, but go on then.” He came in, he read it, and it immediately made sense. Obviously we rewrote the show then to make the character more of a middle-class twit.’

  As they changed this vital character, other characters had to adapt around him. Catherine Tate’s ballsy Kate was rewritten into a kind, health-conscious Californian. Megan Dodds, best known as Christine Dale in Spooks, took the series one role. Tim’s ex-girlfriend Kate is also Lee’s landlady, who, despite the huge personality differences, finds herself attracted to Mack’s character. Tim still had feelings for his ex, turning up at the flat with dubious excuses for seeing her. In one episode, he even invites her along to his grandma’s funeral, hoping that pity might develop into something more.

  Miranda first appeared in Not Going Out in series one episode four, ‘Stress’. Lee gives Kate some driving lessons, which causes his stress levels to go off the chart. They try yoga – but he doesn’t really enter into the spirit of things. Exasperated, Kate makes Lee an appointment with an acupuncturist – played by Miranda. She gives a superb performance of a passive-aggressive woman who eventually turns to out-and-out violence. As he settles down into the chair, Lee asks, ‘
Is this going to hurt?’ and she drily replies, ‘Depends if I like you or not.’ He goes on to infuriate her, giving wisecrack answers to her questions, but relations slide further when she asks him, ‘Are you pregnant? Silly question’, and he bats back with ‘Are you pregnant? Silly question’, looking at the character’s bulging stomach (for which padding was used!). Unimpressed, she answers ‘No’, and proceeds to stab the needles into his skin.

  As we have seen, Miranda’s scene-stealing performance as the acupuncturist so impressed Lee that, for the second series, he created a new character for her: Barbara the cleaner. The writers did not draw attention to the connection in the programme, leaving it to eagle-eyed viewers to create Barbara’s back story themselves.

  Reaction to the first series was positive. The industry recognised its success: writers Lee Mack and Andrew Collins won the RTS Breakthrough Award – Behind the Screen – and the show itself was honoured with the Gold Rose D’or award for Best Sitcom.

  Critics agreed. David Stephenson wrote in the Sunday Express, ‘Telling jokes as we know it is almost a dying art in TV comedy but here Mack cleverly combines the traditions of sitcom with some classy production values. In short, it’s funny.’

  The Mail on Sunday’s Jaci Stephen said, ‘Not Going Out turned into one of the most laugh-aloud comedies on screen in aeons. The ubiquitous shots of buildings lend it a distinctly American feel, but it is the tightness of the scripts with quite complex gags built up over conversations – particularly between Lee and his friend Tim – that make it so different.’

  At the Guardian, meanwhile, Lucy Mangan wrote, ‘This is a programme you can really savour.’

  But, most importantly, it pleased the audience. Ratings gradually grew as word spread and viewers were impressed. A review on IMDb by the user stephenclayton calls it ‘an absolute gem’ and says, three episodes in, ‘it just keeps getting funnier, although there appears to be a love interest developing between Kate and Lee it can only add to the laughter (provided it remains unrequited).’