Why did you end the series the way you did? I knew some of you were going to be disappointed but there's a reason. One of DT's trademarks, love it or hate it, has been its cliff-hanger endings. I thought it would not be DT to tie up loose ends and resolve things. Also this is an interactive program. Probably the first ever. I thought every single DT fan ought to be able to decide for him or herself what had actually happened and how they wanted it to end. I also thought from the very beginning that the last shot should be Fletch. For me Fletch, alive or dead, as the spirit of Harchester.
Who was going to be the owner in Season 9? Never had any idea. Just made it up as we went. You were victims of the arrival of Desperate Housewives, which got us thinking about having a 'mystery' element. It proved as much of a nightmare for us as for you. Useful lesson learnt. NEVER import ideas from other shows. Just be true to yourself. Problem is after 9 series you start either wanting to do things different or thinking you should. Rob Kazinsky got the part on EE after he'd left us. It was about the time we were writing him out that we realized we could use this exit to solve our owner problem.
What were the plans for Jaws? Unresolved also. Didn't kill him at end of 8 because we were always desperate for him to return. Thought we had persuaded him to do S9 but then at the last moment he felt he should not return. He's a wonderful actor and I do so wish him the best in his career. He gave us two great years and I dearly wish it could have been more as I'm sure you do. Once we'd not officially killed him in Ep1 S 9, it became difficult, in fact impossible, to resolve his position. His character remained in limbo?
Did you regret killing off so many cast in Series 8? YES!!! Crazy to have got rid of Pressley. Really liked Dean Boyle and Chucky was fantastic but guess we felt we'd run out of story for them. That's the problem when you've done eight years under that kind of pressure. You start losing perspective and going a bit nuts. Is that why US presidents are limited to 2 x 4 year terms? It makes sense. Really regret that now. Too much death and too late to start again with new characters. Although I do think some of the actors had also got bored and probably needed new challenges too. Lesson in life. Keep moving. Don't do ANYTHING for too long because it always goes sour in the end.
Best moments:
1. I just watched End Game, Jamie's phone call with Tash. I loved writing that episode. I wrote two parts really easily but got stuck on the third. Ellen Taylor (now Casualty) and Nicky Larder (who went on to help start up New Tricks) came into my office and have me a pep talk to keep me going. They story lined the last part for me. I had like four hours to write it including that speech but it all just clicked. I knew when the script went to print that it was as good as anything else Id do. Oddly the best stuff does seem to be the stuff that comes easily.
2. 11 Angry Men. I'm pleased that made the top 25. My son Harry wrote it. Only his third episode ever. The speech about what a football club is made Harry's grandfather cry and that was a proud moment. We all watched it together as a family.
3. War of the Roses. We had to do a 90 minute ep mid series - I can't tell you how hard that is, making effectively a movie when you're doing 30 other shows at the same time. NEVER AGAIN. The pressure! But again it came quickly in the end. Tyson sat Jesse O'Mahoney and me down and talked about his life as a kid signed up by a football club (Millwall in his case). We based a lot of Eugene’s moments on what he said. Jesse and I wrote it in shifts over two days.
4. Ep 13 S 5 where Fletch is let out of prison following a fans campaign to play what he thinks may be his last game, before the jury returned a verdict in his trial for the murder of Prash. I loved the Travis track we put on the end. I loved the Lynda fletch relationships which just invented itself as I was writing. The production team were a bit appalled to come in and find Fletch and Lynda had slept together which wasn't at all what we story lined. But it worked. Often DT had a life of its own.
5. Perhaps most of all I've loved having the chance to work with some amazingly talented people over the years. There are so many I could name. Rod Brown who invented the way we did the football stands out as a hero. Jesse O'Mahoney was a favourite co writer. But Series 6 with Ben Harris and Ellen Taylor, Nicky Larder and me writing or rewriting just about everything from halfway through after some key people left - they were like war buddies. The experience of writing 18 eps back to back should have killed us, but it flowed. It worked. Special people in front of camera - Alison King, Terry Keily, Phil Brodie. We had so many wonderful actors, but those three had true star quality.
Which storylines/events were influenced by opinions on this forum? I don't know when the Forum began to influence us or even if it really did. The thing about drama is, I think it's best when it doesn't give people what they want and they feel they have no control over outcomes. It's been more of a debating forum after the event usually. After all if we'd tested out ideas in advance we would have been giving away story plans. Usually it's a place to come to get either beaten up or ones ego massaged - or a bit of both. Also many people now cyber friends. Fletch has helped us with our new BBC quiz pilot. Feel like I've been lived through SteveyD becoming a dad. The enthusiasm of people like Osh Vaughan (of another forum) and Rueby, Braders and all of you others is a wonderful thing to have had through all these years.
How did you come up with the name "Harchester United"? Was there any other names you considered? Why the name Harchester? Actually it was nearly Keeley Town instead. Both Rod Brown and the then producer Cameron McAllister thought Harchester was to closed to Melchester which is Roy of the Rovers. I always felt Keeley sounded like a small seaside place. I liked the association with Roy of the Rovers. We were always playing on the same park so to speak.
Why Purple and Orange as team colours? Why orange and purple? They were the two colours no other premiership team was using in 1997/8. We\always had to make our shirts solid colour so we could easily colorise other teams into being Harchester. This got really tricky a few years back when there was a fashion for broken up weird patterns on football shirts. Almost no one played in solid colour blue or red. Thank God for Everton, Chelsea and Liverpool who were our main doubles over the years.
Why was the mascot made a dragon? The idea of calling Harchester the Dragons was Rod Browns. When we set up the show he thought of all those things like badges, mottos, what the stadium would be called etc. Again no one else had dragons and it was sort of a national heroic beast.
In regards to the series 3 plane crash, where are they!? Do you see them as just crashing or dying, or they living on an island. Perhaps they will be on Lost next year!? The plane really did crash in S3. They are DEAD. And No I would not have rescued them and brought them back even if they wanted to come. I think it would be too far fetched.
If you could have had any of them back (Sean, Leon) and if the actors wanted to come back. Would you have written them into the show as being rescued, or would you not want to? I thought Daymon Brittan and Nathan Constance were both good actors. I would have kept either or both but as I have explained here many times before, few actors will agree to do more than two series tops particularly at the start of a career. Everyone is in a hurry to get to Hollywood!
Was it always the plan to have John Black shot at Wembley, or did you toy with the idea of killing Lynda, or even Luis? Embarrassingly we had no idea who would get shot when the hit man pulled the trigger at Wembley. In fact we didn't plan to kill anyone. Then all summer people were asking us - who died, so we realized someone had to and the actor who played John Black did not want to return so we picked him. Embarrassingly we had to say there had been two shots in order to get Lynda injured as well. Wish we hadn't done that.
Did you ever try and bring back Jerry Block after he left? If you could have, would you have wanted to, storyline wise? No there was never a plan to get Jerry Block back.
Did the whole Liverpool/Didier thing come up while you were making the show? What did you/he make of it all? Liverpool’s mistake over Didier Baptiste was a pure fluke and great publicity for us. Best we ever had I think, apart from when Jordan did the show.
Where do you see Stuart? Is he just living out a happy life in the Bahamas? Is he hiding in England and keeping tabs on Ryan? Was he tracked down and killed by the Sheikh? I have no idea where Stuart Naysmith is but I believe he's still alive.
Where is Lynda (or where has she been), has she been in hiding incase the police came after her, or has she just been living in Harchester? After Dempsey confessed to the killing, Lynda was to have been prosecuted for pe3rverting the course of justice but she had just lost her baby so they never pursued it figuring she'd paid a big enough price. She has been living quietly back in Manchester with Louis and Angie. Little Louis, now 5, shows signs of having inherited his dad's talent, has already attracted the attention of scouts from Man City and Everton. Isn't football crazy!
Was it always the plan to have Lynda kill Prash or did you consider it being someone else. That at least was always planned. Lynda was to be the killer of Prash but Fletch was to be accused.
Was season 6 planned out to go in the direction that it did. Was it always the intention to drag Jamie into it and kill him off. Or did that just kind of develop? Series 6 was another fortuitous but of planning. Just shows, things turn out better when you do plan. Our script editor (who only stayed with us a month) made the vital contribution of suggesting that Doyle bet on the club going down. It went from there. We did not preplan Jamie's involvement. It evolved. but that was fairly predictable. Who else would you involve but the keeper?
How did the producers/sky see the risk of season 8? Did you think that putting the team in the second division would turn off viewers or freshen up the show? Sky were rightly nervous of letting the show drop out of the Premier League fearing it would lose the glamour by association. But in the end I think a spell in a grittier division worked well for the series. It brought in Don Barker who was another of my all time faves.
Did you ever try and get Dean Hocknell back for the show? Did we consider bringing back Dean Hocknell? No. He was well advanced on a career in mainstream drama and would not have been interested. Good luck to him.
Was there any chance of the show just turning out to be a dream? I did briefly consider ending on Lynda watching the final day of the Premiership in the lounge of a psychiatric hospital with Fletch wheeling her chair as an orderly and telling another member of staff it was so sad, she imagined she was chairwoman of a football club after she fell and injured her head ten years ago at Manchester airport. Then I thought that might be silly.
How long was the show originally signed up for? Did you expect it to be cancelled after its original run? The show has always been commissioned on a series by series basis except for S6 and 7 which were commissioned together based on the success of S5. Every year and particularly every new Head of Sky One we got (I think there have been six since we stated, maybe more) I expected the axe to fall. It was a big chunk of money in their terms and commissioners would always rather stamp their name with new shows. That's human nature. We very nearly got axed after series 3 but were switched to hours as a compromise. It has been one of the more stressful elements of the whole ten years. We\always wished they would get behind it as their EastEnders , their very own home grown drama. They never quite did. Oh well.
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