by Miranda Hart
MIRANDA: I don’t need help thank you. And the people you set me up with are ridiculous. (TO ANTHONY) No offence, I don’t mean you. You’re lovely just not in a kind of ‘phwaaoor take me’ kind of a way. Sorry I mean I’m sure lots of people look at you and go ‘phwaaoor take me now’. I’m more kind of ‘ummm’. Sorry I mean the other people you try and set me up with.
Anthony is writing in his pad.
PENNY: Now look what you’ve done.
MIRANDA: What I’ve done?
He puts his pad down.
ANTHONY: Nothing to worry about.
He smiles at them.
They smile back.
A pause.
Penny gets her phone out, starts texting.
Miranda’s phone gets a text.
MIRANDA: Oh it’s from you.
Penny winks at her.
(READING THE TEXT) He’s a bit smug isn’t he?
PENNY: (TO ANTHONY COVERING UP) He… being a friend of ours…
MIRANDA: Yes… Japanese. Our Japanese friend, is a bit smug.
ANTHONY: So you were just thinking about your friend. He… what’s his surname?
PENNY: Oh umm…
MIRANDA: He.
ANTHONY: He?
MIRANDA: He he? He’s a right laugh. (LAUGHS)
PENNY: And I suddenly thought I must tell Miranda how smug He He is.
ANTHONY: Right… but with slightly strange grammar…
PENNY: That’s how we say things. Miranda’s being a bit silly today, isn’t Miranda? As a random example. Good that’s settled.
ANTHONY: As long as you’re aware that I know you meant me, and not your friend He He.
MIRANDA: I don’t know where you get these things from? Do you need to see a therapist? Are you always thinking people think you’re smug behind your back?
PENNY: He’s paranoid. Classic case. I’m going to write this down in my note pad.
MIRANDA: Oh me too.
Penny and Miranda get out their note pads.
In fact, actually, role play. I think if you sit here.
Miranda sits at the desk, he sits on the sofa. Miranda takes her note pad, stares at him. He crosses his legs. Miranda writes furiously.
PENNY: Ooh yes yes yes.
MIRANDA: I’m sure that would help you a lot because you’ve clearly got some issues.
PENNY: (LOOKING AT HIS PHOTOS) Is this your father?
ANTHONY: Yes it is.
Penny sits on the side of the desk and puts a pair of Anthony’s glasses at the end of her nose.
PENNY: Um interesting that you put it on your desk.
MIRANDA: Mmmm. Interesting.
PENNY: Mmmm. Interesting.
MIRANDA: Mmmmm.
PENNY: Mmmmm.
MIRANDA: Mmmmm.
ANTHONY: I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to put the focus on me because you’re panicking that you’ve revealed too much about yourselves.
MIRANDA: You haven’t got us pegged.
(TO CAMERA) He’s totally got us pegged.
Looking at the shelf.
Oh hello, CD player – on pause. What have you been listening to?
She presses play. It’s ‘Alone’ by Heart. It’s at the slow part…
PENNY: Oh now. This. Speaks. Volumes.
MIRANDA: A love ballad eh?
Miranda and Penny start dancing.
It goes to the chorus and Penny and Miranda do air guitar/drums.
Miranda changes the track. It’s ‘I’ve Had The Time Of My Life’ from Dirty Dancing
MIRANDA: Oh, fabulous… This is the best CD EVER!
Penny and Miranda start singing. We then go in to a fantasy.
We see Gary, in the black outfit Swayze wore in the film.
A spotlight goes on Gary and Miranda, like in the film and they start the dance. They do 10/15 seconds of the dance.
Then we see Penny (in a different outfit, sitting at the back of the room).
PENNY: Of course you learned to dance from me.
MIRANDA: (FURIOUS) No I didn’t!
Miranda turns off the CD player
MIRANDA: The only thing I get from you is a feeling of failure, guilt, and very large feet.
PENNY: Where’s this coming from? And we tried to get you to swim competitively to make the most of the natural flippers God gave you. No luck there either.
MIRANDA: Oh well I’m sorry, I’m glad I’ve been such a massive disappointment to you.
Grabs a scotch egg.
PENNY: Look if you are going to eat, eat some fruit…
MIRANDA: Fatist. She took me to overeaters anonymous once, it’s true.
With food in her mouth.
Totally unnecessary.
PENNY: I can explain… Belinda was showing off that Tilly had issues, so I said that you did.
ANTHONY: Well it seems the lies we tell end up in a therapy session of one kind or another.
PENNY: (REALLY ANNOYED) No, both the occasions to which you refer were entirely Miranda’s problems.
MIRANDA: (FURIOUS) You’re the one who gets me in to these scrapes. You do!
PENNY: You can pin all you want on me, but from what you’ve heard over the last half an hour, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that Miranda’s a bit odd, isn’t Miranda?
Penny and Miranda argue at each other – top of their voices, we can hardly hear what they are saying lots of ‘disappointed, ‘can’t take you anywhere’, ‘killed my dog’, ‘find a boyfriend’, ‘we weren’t meant to be doing a session’, ‘people can probably hear this’, ‘you told him x’, ‘you told him y’, ‘that’s why we turned your room in to a jacuzzi’, ‘i’ll tell your father’, ‘don’t bring dad in to this’ etc. It reaches a crescendo.
They stop.
A beat.
Anthony picks up his pad and starts really writing.
Has another thought, turns the page, keeps writing.
Puts the notebook down. And smiles at them.
They fake-smile back.
PENNY: (WHISPERS) We’ve got to get that notebook. It doesn’t look like shorthand now. Follow me. Pincer movement. We’ll go commando.
MIRANDA: (TO CAMERA) Let’s hope she doesn’t know what that really means.
Penny approaches the desk and sits on the far side with the note pad behind her.
PENNY: (FLIRTING) So Anthony, if I may um… what else do you have in your CD collection?
During this she beckons Miranda.
Miranda crawls to near the desk and Penny flicks the note pad for Miranda to catch.
ANTHONY: Give me my pad back!
Anthony makes a grab for it, but Miranda whisks it away.
MIRANDA: Ooh I have it now, so what does it say? Dad – new toaster. Mum – garden knee pad. Don’t forget presents from the pets. This is a Christmas list.
Miranda turns the page. It’s a sketch of a cat.
PENNY: You drew a cat.
ANTHONY: Well, that’s the end of the session. Would you like to book another appointment?
PENNY AND MIRANDA: No!!!
PENNY: (FLICKING THROUGH PAD) What’s this shorthand bit?
ANTHONY: Just some initial thoughts at the top of the session.
MIRANDA: And what does it say – I can’t wait to draw a kitten?
ANTHONY: Well actually it says…
Takes the pad, looks at shorthand and translates.
Mother and daughter. Mother’s protective instinct has become dominating, fuelled by fear of how she is perceived by outer world. Daughter seeks mother’s guidance and approval as she has yet to find her own voice.
Miranda and Penny stare at him.
A long silent pause.
MIRANDA / PENNY: Absolute rubbish…
They start gathering their stuff.
PENNY: I think he’s nutty himself.
MIRANDA: Driven wholly by money.
PENNY / MIRANDA: Two hundred pounds?!
PENNY: Obsessed with his father.
MIRANDA: Only listens to lo
ve ballads. Very odd. In fact… I think one more before we go please doctor… hit it.
Chorus of ‘This Thing Called Love’ comes on.
They start dancing.
Anthony joins in.
Caption: you have been watching.
Miranda Hart. Waves.
Patricia Hodge. Waves.
Mark Heap waves.
Tom Ellis pops his head in the door, waves, and pops out again.
They start heading out of the window.
Miranda suddenly remembers her trousers. Goes back, grabs them and puts them over her shoulders, one leg on each side.
Suddenly a policeman knocks and comes in purposefully.
POLICEMAN: Is everything all right in here? Someone thought there might be a hostage situation…
He sees Miranda and Penny half way out of the window looking suspicious.
Miranda tosses one trouser leg round her neck like a scarf.
POLICEMAN: Hold on. It’s you! The ice-cream child-catcher lunatics.
PENNY / MIRANDA: (POINTING TO EACH OTHER)
It’s her, she’s mad.
We freeze on Miranda and Penny pointing at each other in the window.
Roll credits with ‘This Thing Called Love’ playing.
Series Two, Episode Five
Behind the Scenes Tit-Bits
At 4 p.m. on day one of rehearsals I rushed home and was sick as a dog all night. Patricia then had to rehearse on her own all the next day. So I only had half of Wednesday and Friday to rehearse. It was fly by the seat of your pants.
To write the episode I spent some time at my parents’ house and wandered around their sitting room one day acting as if I was wandering around a therapist’s office, bored, as the character. I picked up lots of ornaments and played with them – my parents quietly thinking I had gone mad. The Russian dolls and the dancing flower pot that ended up in the script and on the TV both came from my parents’ sitting room.
I have never seen Patricia Hodge nervous until the night of this recording. We both felt the pressure because if the audience didn’t go with it, we had no back up. It was just us.
The first set piece that happened was when the tap got stuck on the water cooler and we were looking around for receptacles to catch the flowing water with. We had never done this before we filmed. Patricia is basically laughing the whole way through and my performance became totally manic as I was determined to get it in the can.
The moment when I had to spill chicken on Mark Heap who played the therapist will go down as the luckiest bit of comedy as it landed perfectly – with no planning – on his wrist. And I managed not to laugh. I don’t know how.
I love the fact that I made Patricia do air guitar to a rock ballad. A career high for us all!
We filmed the Dirty Dancing scene –Tom and I grabbed Craig Revel-Horwood in the BBC corridor as he was doing Strictly that Saturday. He gave us some tips. We cut the sequence in edit for time. No one will ever see it!
Series Three, Episode Three
The Dinner Party
· · ·
Ah and we are in to Series Three. Writing-wise I am slightly more relaxed, the pressure is off a little. The tricky second album I got away with – phew. Although now I hear they want to move the show to BBC 1. Oh dear, let’s not think about that. Let’s just try and enjoy these characters and not get quite so het up about it all. What Series Three gave me, which I am very grateful for, was the chance to focus on the relationships between the characters, and get more emotional with them. Well as emotional as a studio audience sitcom can. Miranda was gaining more confidence. It was time to see her as part of a couple and get her a boyfriend. It was time to develop Stevie and Tilly more and further Miranda and Gary’s feelings. I felt it was time to get them together. I get irritated watching will-they-won’t-theys and if I am invested in one, then I can’t take too much before I am just desperate to see them kiss. Romantic at heart. So although the audience had seen Miranda and Gary kiss, they had only ever seen it in Miranda’s fantasy. Never for real. Series Three Episode Six would be the time. But I had to keep them apart until the final episode of the series and the only way to do that was to have them date other people. Which felt ripe for comedy – jealousy is always funny. Plus you get the universally recognisable jokes of how to behave at the beginning of a relationship and a woman’s fear of never feeling like a good or impressive enough girlfriend. So what were the two hardest situations in the early stages of a relationship? My first and final thoughts were meeting their parents and having a dinner party. I was settled. This was going to be the dinner party episode.
I now wish I had done another bottle episode and just had a dinner party as a whole. Until I started writing it I didn’t realise what fun I could have with it. But by then I had story-lined another episode in the series just set in the flat with Miranda and Penny ill in bed, so needed to stick with what I had. At least it meant we just got the best bits of a dinner party scene. It was one of my favourite scenes to film. And every single time in rehearsals we all completely fell apart – for a long time – when Stevie’s fake boyfriend Norman, played brilliantly by Joe Wilkinson, said the line, after an awkward pause, ‘I shat myself once’. So childish. But the way he delivered it was so brilliant and there were tears of laughter every time. Such a wonderful feeling, doubled up laughing around actors and friends you love. And luckily guest actor Tim Pigott-Smith, who was playing the boyfriend’s father, found it equally funny. I was concerned he might think us all certifiable and ring Equity to get social services to the rehearsal room immediately.
This episode also gave me the following line, when Miranda gives up and refuses to conform to societal pressure any more. It shows she is gaining confidence and more and more becoming her own person. A celebration of a woman coming in to her own. It is also the nub of my on-screen persona (and a bit of the off screen one too).
Right, that’s it! I drop the gauntlet. For the last two days I’ve tried to be a grown up but I have no interest in abiding by the adult rulebook. I want to do fun things that make me happy which by the way, for the record, include making vegtapals. Meet Mr Butternut. (GETS OUT MR BUTTERNUT) You might call me a child. Good. For if adults had even the slightest in-the-moment joy of a child then frankly the world would be a better place.
Good old alter ego!
INT. MIRANDA’S SITTING ROOM
Miranda is sitting in her armchair.
MIRANDA: (TO CAMERA) Well, bonjour to vous! That’s the sort of sophisticated patter you’ll get from a woman who’s still got a boyfriend! Though elegance in the world of romance eludes me.
EXT. COUNTRYSIDE (FLASHBACK)
Miranda and Mike are walking along hand in hand. They come across a gate. Mike jumps effortlessly over it. He’s about to turn and help Miranda but sees a bird.
MIKE: Oh, wow, look. A robin, lovely.
Miranda after a struggle manages to sit elegantly on top of the gate. Suddenly it swings open and tips her head into the bushes behind; she holds on to a branch of a tree and then kind of catches the gate back so when it swings shut she’s elegantly sitting on top when he turns around.
INT. MIRANDA’S SITTING ROOM
MIRANDA: (TO CAMERA) But I’m proving myself a good lady woman for Mike.
INT. MIRANDA’S KITCHEN
Miranda in the kitchen with oven gloves.
PENNY: (OOV) Pssst…
Miranda goes to the window. We see Penny at the top of a ladder. She slides a lasagne in. Miranda puts it in the oven. Penny disappears. Mike enters. Miranda takes it out of the oven and puts it on the table.
INT. MIRANDA’S SITTING ROOM
MIRANDA: (TO CAMERA) Well, I don’t want to lose him, he’s great. But Operation Maintain Dignity means the suppressed silliness bursts out at inappropriate moments.
INT. YOGA CLASS (FLASHBACK)
YOGA TEACHER: Now close your eyes, breathe in and out. Relaxed. Peaceful and calm, and open your ey…
As the teacher says this
Miranda crawls over and comes nose to nose with the teacher.
The teacher opens her eyes and screams. The whole class screams.
INT. MIRANDA’S SITTING ROOM
MIRANDA: (TO CAMERA) But generally I’m sophisticated girlfriend personified. I know this because a) I now own a pashmina and b) I’ve stopped giggling when people say sausage. (GIGGLES)
OPENING TITLES & MUSIC
INT. FLAT
Miranda is wearing an aertex shirt, zip up hoodie and culottes. Stevie comes in with some papers. We now see the flat is a tip. Food cartons, fruit friends, DVDs, trashy magasines, a standing swing ball.
STEVIE: Can you sign these? Oh, look at this place! Do you know, one night without Mike and the real you explodes.
MIRANDA: Well I’m not ready for him to know I make fruit friends and new vegtapals. Meet Mr Butternut. (HOLDS HIM UP)
STEVIE: Oh hello to you! (WAVES)
MIRANDA: I don’t want that to put him off.
STEVIE: And what are you wearing?
MIRANDA: I happen to be sporting an elasticated culotte.
STEVIE: Because you’re a PE teacher from 1987?
MIRANDA: Cos I’ve got nothing else to wear. Washing machine’s broken. Do you want a round of swing muffin?
STEVIE: Of course.
MIRANDA: Good luck!
Miranda swings muffin round and she and Stevie try to eat it as it passes.
MIKE: (OOV) Hello?
MIRANDA: Oh! It’s Mike.
They rush to tidy.
Glee box set! Hide it!
Miranda throws the DVD to Stevie. Stevie throws her a modern art book to replace it.
STEVIE: Modern art!
MIRANDA: Nice.
STEVIE: Fruit friends! Fruit friends!
Miranda holds the bin. Stevie sweeps the fruit friends in
MIKE: (COMING IN) My taxi was going past and I just…
Miranda kisses him and indicates to Stevie to hide swing ball. Miranda throws Mr Butternut to Stevie.
MIRANDA: Oh, I’ve missed you!
MIKE: Oh! Well I’ve, I’ve missed you too, I just came to get a glimpse really, I…