大象传媒

Your questions were answered by writers Jack & Harry Williams.

Download and listen to the podcast here

***Watch Baptiste on 大象传媒 iPlayer***

Jack & Harry Williams Podcast – September 2021

Hello and welcome to “Ask the Write Questions” with Harry and Jack Williams. A podcast from 大象传媒 Writersroom. If you haven’t watched Baptiste, all episodes are available to view on 大象传媒 iPlayer now or there may be some spoilers. In this series we ask you the viewer to send in questions for the writers about their latest show and their writing career. We’ve collated all your questions, thrown them into a bowl, and we’re going to ask the writers to choose them now at random. They’re not sure what’s coming next. Let’s meet our writers, Harry and Jack Williams.

Harry: I’m Harry Williams, Screenwriter of various offerings like Baptiste, The Missing, One of Us, Relic, Liar

Jack: And I’m Jack Williams, his brother, co-writer of these but mainly known as co-writer of Roman’s Empire which I’m sure you’re very keen to hear more about and we’re here today to answer questions about writing Baptiste for 大象传媒 1 and other things that may have been sent in about our writing and interests like style tips or recipes or those kind of things.

Harry: so, thank you to everyone that sent us in a question for the podcast, there are a lots and lots here to get through and we shall pick them at random, sorting out if you will, and hopefully yours will make the cut

Jack: and you’ll hear our wisdom. That is enough awkward preamble from us, this is why we’re writers not presenters. Let’s hear a question

What is the best compliment you got for Baptiste and who was it from?

Jack: Oh that’s a good question, innit?

Harry: I have a terrible memory so it was the most recent one which was, Saturday, a friend of mine said “I really liked it and my parents really liked it, implying that maybe his parents liked it more than he liked it which was sort of a backhanded compliment, but I will take it!

Jack: Yeah, I think someone said that they’d gone into a pub and they’d heard people talking about it at the next door table. That’s quite good isn’t it? That person who said that was in fact our mother so is it true or was it just done to make me feel better about myself? Who can possibly say? But Harry’s right, the best compliments are the compliments you got most recently, any, to be honest any compliments are fine, aren’t they?

Harry: Ah yes, though you don’t always get them, some shows go out and literally nobody mentions they’ve even been on. It will go out and you never hear a word of it, it’s like it never existed. And it’s a lie agreed upon you know it’s like everyone’s basically like “This is terrible so we’re not going to say even the name of the show to you.” Those hurt.

Next question’s from twitter and it says “Going back to when you started, can you remember the moment when you wrote something that you knew meant you really had something that producers would want?

Jack: That’s a good question, isn’t it?

Harry: Man, can you?

Jack: No, there is no moment even now that we go “they’re going to want this,” I never have that, and the few times we’ve had it no one did want it, or it wasn’t very good. You don’t know what people want, you never know, we never thought, when we wrote The Missing, we only sent it to our agent and said please tell us if this is terrible and embarrassing because it’s all really serious and people are crying. We never thought people would want it. We wrote The Tourist our new show and thought will people like this, isn’t it a bit weird? You never, you never really know

Harry: No, I suppose you know and that was yeah, cos there are lots of stories like that and lots of, just like that. When we did Liar, I kind of, I didn’t know but I was like, this is a premise that will sell, this is an idea that, just will translate to TV because you can kind of see it. It’s kind of like a lot of things that have come before but it’s sort of different enough to carve its own path, it’s got a simple clean title and so therefore it’s a sellable thing. And you know it’s one of the few shows we’ve developed that had to solve loads and been remade in lots of different countries for that reason because it’s just this simple, simple idea about, is one person telling the truth or not, who do we believe, and following that thread, you know, but even then I didn’t know, you still go like “I think it’s good, I think,” but you don’t know.

The next one is from Instagram and it says, “what is the best way to keep motivated?”

Harry: The best way to keep motivated, well we’re very lucky because we have each other Man,

Jack: - brother, I was not expecting this

Harry: We’ve got each other to egg each other on, when one drops the other one can egg that person on so, if I was doing it on my own, I have done it on my own, it’s really, really hard to stay motivated.

Jack: what did motivate you when you wrote on your on, there’s different things, there’s not one thing is there? It depends like when you’re starting out you’re motivated by the thought of selling something and being a writer and getting a show on TV or published is really exciting and that is it’s own reward and then when you are there, there’s the motivation of how will it turn out, will it look good and you know will it… and then, it just differs really, you have to think, what motivates you has to be what you’re writing, it has to be the thought of doing something original and interesting that’s yours that you can share with the world and if it’s, if you’re motivated by other things, like money or fame, that’s cool but those, I’m not sure that’s the best motivation because that’s, that’s outside your control so if you rely on that entirely to motivate you that can be difficult whereas if you just go, I’m motivated by what I’m doing that’s, that’s a better thing?

Harry: I think so, for me I’m like if anything does it for you that’s fine, its revenge or it’s like I want to prove myself some you know kind of, it doesn’t have to be come from a good place as long as it keeps you doing it then, great. I mean, you know, to a limit, you know.

Jack: No, it’s true when we wrote The Missing part of the motivation was like we can write drama honestly because we’re broke and hadn’t worked for months and we thought, we can show the world, I mean it evolved beyond that but you’re right, to get that script finished and out there and have the motivation there’s nothing, it focuses the mind to be dismissed and broke. That helps.

Harry: And it was proven wrong, we had eight years of sort of being slammed. I remember all the horrible reviews for all the comedies we did and it was sort of trying to prove that we could do something that was of note that wasn’t you know wide..

Jack: Yeah but bad reviews can motivate you I mean we’ve had lots of good ones, but I don’t remember them, I remember the bad ones.

Email question, Cat or Dog?

Jack: Cat, Harry: Dog

So, our next question is coming from the little known social media platform, Twitter, Tweeter? I can’t remember I can never say it properly – I just got another rejection from a writing competition and although it is very disheartening and disappointing, I do believe in my talent and I don’t want to give up. Any advice on how to keep going after getting so many rejections?

Jack: Stick with me Harry: you’ll be alright.

Harry: All right, that’s very, very funny. This is serious stuff.

Jack: That’s quite right. Rejection is, oh my God.

Harry: It took us a very long time to get something made, and to get stuff made together, It’s one of those things where you have to, to keep on going you have to find something you passionately believe in and that should be the fuel for the engine you know that keeps you going because if it’s something you keep doing and you believe in it then you’re, obviously you must keep doing it and there must be something about it. And actually it’s, from all the rejections you do learn and you do get better and you do try harder and it does sort of end up getting you there I think, it’s really depressing though isn’t it because you’re like they’re all wrong, and you know Missing, certainly, we sent it out, no one went for it, we ended up getting a production company, but all the channels turned it down, until 大象传媒 1 ended up eventually going for it. But everyone, you know, we were called in and we people were, told us oh we shouldn’t be writing things like this and it was quite, quite painful and we felt sort of ludicrous, when they said these things, but yeah, what do you think?

Jack: You’re always going to get a lot of rejections and even when you get a show made you’re going to get a lot of notes and opinions, so if rejection’s going to put you off, don’t be a writer because people, even if you get a show made, it comes out and you’re really proud and you work really hard on it and it comes out and everyone goes “eh, not that great” and that can be painful too. So, you have to, eh Harry, ah, you’re right, man, you got to just believe in what you’re doing and think it’s great. Don’t necessarily don’t, I don’t want to put people off but don’t try and do what you think people want because that’s never great because you’re always going to be too late, if you think “Oh people will like thrillers, I’ll do that” then by the time you write on you’re going to be behind the curve. Do something you think is brilliant and that at least will see you through it, even if people don’t like it, even if it doesn’t get made at least the act of doing it was worthwhile in and of itself because if you haven’t got that then you just chasing something and chasing other people’s opinion of you which is never healthy.

Harry: That’s it and also people will give you a lot, a lot of advice, you’re inundated with advice especially if they, why they’re not going to make something and the really hard bit is trying to figure out who do you listen to and what bits of advice are worth listening to.
Jack: This advice is worth listening to.

Harry: You always instinctively know, like actually maybe they’re right I could’ve worked a bit more on that and actually maybe they have a point there. It’s so important to listen to the advice, same way that we get notes now, it’s exactly the same thing you know, someone says why something isn’t working, why they think it isn’t, they may not be right but they may have landed on an area which does need a bit more work and that can be a helpful thing.

Jack: That’s very true, you know, we, as producers we work with writers a lot as well and the one who go on to be successful are the ones who are, not do everything we say by any means but who are open to listening and open to making their work better. The ones who go, “Ehh, I did that for a reason it’s all perfect.” You go, well if you think that’s perfect, that’s great but I don’t and they tend, you need to be open to the possibility that you can make your work better.

Harry: Yeah, the best ones go yeah oh you have a problem with that, I kind of know what your mean, ah, you’re idea is terrible but I have a much better one, let me write, there you go, then you’re on to something it feels like.

So, the next question is from Instagram, do you get Writer’s Block? How do you deal with it workwise but also on an emotional level?

Harry: If one of us gets writer’s block the other one will not sort of allow it, ah or help the other one through it, I suppose. Have we ever had it? I don’t think we have.

Jack: I don’t believe in writer’s block.

Harry: Wow, that’s a big statement.

Jack: Isn’t it? I know. I don’t know, I feel like it’s this sort of very, it’s this very precious label you put on it, “I can’t work today.” I just don’t think that’s true; I think sometimes you’re not working as well, but is it always possible to sit down and try and make something happen? Yeah, course it is, it’s just sometimes you get stuck and you have to work your way through like anything else. You sit down and…

Harry: Though maybe you haven’t experienced it. Our dad had it, our dad is a novelist and screenwriter and he, when we were young, had writer’s block and he called it, he used to start, he started cooking for us, during this period cause he wasn’t doing anything else presumably and made writer’s block stew, he called it, wasn’t it?

Jack: I think we called it that because every time he got stuck, he’d come down and throw something else in the pot and he’d have like five million ingredients, and it was, it wasn’t great. it was writers block stew, but that’s one thing you can do. But how do we deal with it? I think it’s fair to say there are days you don’t feel like it or days you get stuck or some plot points, I mean I can think, even on , you know, our latest show, The Tourist, we’ve been stuck on, you know, plot points for days sometimes and you start to worry it’ll never get resolved, it can’t be done, it’s just a bad idea and you do get into a dark place where you think is the whole thing just not a good idea in the first place because if you can’t, you know , if an idea is not working sometimes, is there something wrong with the premise. But how do we deal with it, we’re lucky though, Harry’s right there, we’re lucky there are two of us, we just sit down and try and build it back up from the ground upwards and go what do we love about this, what are we trying to achieve and always be open to the possibility of starting again and doing something differently.

Harry: There is always the thing of like “what do you want to say?” Like an idea always kind of starts from, what do you want to say? And we have had a thing where we’re like, I don’t know what I want to say, I’m not sure what I want to write at the moment. We’ve definitely experienced that.

Jack: That’s true but then you just sit down and you go what, what’s interesting me at the moment? What’s, what do I want, yeah what do I feel? Yeah, we just, we just talk a lot. So if you can’t, you know, it’s being on your own is much harder, Harry’s right, maybe being two of us makes it much easier. I think, talk to anyone I just, you know, involve yourself in the world, and then just sit down and see what comes out. I think just keep trying.

Harry: A lot of good writers tend to lock themselves away from the world

Jack: And that makes it worse, doesn’t it, you need be alive, and also when we do get stuck we tend to find, any time we’ve moved, cause, you know, we produce as well, if we end up going somewhere else and doing something else, I know it’s like the oldest advice in the book but it is true, when you stop obsessing over something you find it. And, don’t just write one thing, I know writers that just do one thing at a time, because that is a recipe for disaster. If you do lots of things then you progress on them at different speeds and different levels because you know just one thing you go a bit, you get a bit, snow blind to it.

Harry: The next question is an email. Oh, this is really a very good one.

Jack: Oh, I wonder if we’re going to have the same answer, Harry? I think we might?

Harry: I absolutely know. The question is, before we get to the...

Jack: Exciting reveal...

Harry: What is your favourite snack while writing? What is your go to snack?

Jack and Harry together: 1, 2, 3…Monster Munch!

Jack: Look at that, I mean wonderful, I mean you can’t beat a bit of Monster munch. I don’t know what it’s made from, I don’t know how it’s made, it’s…

Harry: Monsters!

Jack: Monsters, it’s some kind of otherworldly extruded wheat snack, and no man of 42, corn snack, um but yes wonderful.

The next question is from Twitter, it says how do you plot something like Baptiste in order to control flashbacks and what’s revealed when. Do you use story cards, coloured post-it notes, do you plot backwards? What is your technique?

Harry: I suppose we start from the premise and what the story’s about and we sort of take it as it comes and it’s a series of us asking each other questions about why a person does something, what might happen next. We don’t use story cards or post-it notes or whatever those things are, they work for a lot of people. It’s hard keeping it all in your head and going oh no, but he died three episodes ago, so suddenly we can’t have him do that, so it can be a useful thing. I think for us we always have a document where we write down all the ideas we have on a word document. I say we, um, Jack?

Jack: Definitely, I think there’s a danger if you get too, you know, although the plotting is intricate. I think if we built it all up in some massive kind of you know the terrible trope of where people have things pinned up and bits of string connecting it as if somehow the string is going to ah make everything intelligible. And you know, I think if we did that and then pieced it together it’s like plotting like a puzzle. We plot it forwards, we go what’s happening now and then at the time, and then we go ooh now we feel it would be interesting to see a flash of the past. We plot it in the way the audience will see it rather than trying to build something up deliberately to confuse. I think if you take a story and then chop it up it’s going to feel arbitrary, you might be doing it to be artificial whereas we try and do it in a way that will be, make sense for the story as how it is.

Harry: And be emotionally true because quite often you’ll have scenes that aren’t to do with the story, you know, don’t move the story forward, they’re about the emotional repercussions for that character and those are often the best ones and when you’ve got a load of post-it cards up you don’t often tend to write, the person feels sad about a thing, you know you tend to just get to the story, the plot points and that can be a bit reductive for us but I think for a lot of people it does work. I think also for us you go into a room and there’s like 500 bright yellow cards with little bits of writing on it, it’s quite scary and it feels a bit like work, and it should not feel like work. And like you’ve got to unpick this thing, it should be fun.

Jack: Definitely. And everyone, everyone does it differently and like we’ve worked with lots of people who do the post-it notes, and their offices there’s quite a lot of cards all over the place a lot, but plotting backwards, no, like even Relic which was a show that was set backwards, we didn’t plot it backwards, because again, that sort of doesn’t make any sense. Like we experience, we actually plot it in the way which we experience it as an audience, what are we thinking, what are we feeling and what do we expect? We talk a lot about what people will expect to see and what the audience might be thinking and then we try and think how we might confirm that expectation.

Harry: And quite often we’ll go, we’ll have the premise and we’re talking generally about it and we’ll go ooh, what would a great scene in this show be? And so we’ll come up with a great scene and a great moment that throws a bunch of characters into conflict, and that’ll be there floating somewhere where we’ll be wouldn’t it be great to work to that, and that’ll be the end of an episode. So that will kind of help guide some kind of a structure and sort of help dictate the story, because at the end of the day you know those great scenes are the things people talk about aren’t they? And those, you probably might not land on those if you just followed the natural course of a story and went oh, he’ll go there, he’ll go there, cos that would probably end up being pretty linear, um,..

Jack: And that’s probably our equivalent of post-it notes isn’t it? I mean I guess we write out the scenes in a word document so we have little bits of scenes or moments that we do, you know, move around and move into some kind of structure but we just find that quicker and easier and if we’re not staring at it the whole time, feeling like it’s challenging us to make it better.

Email is the next question: What’s your TV guilty pleasure?

Harry: Aw man, well which shall we choose? I enjoy very much a programme about Yachters, well not yachters, people who work on yachts called Below Deck: Mediterranean, Normal brand, other brand haven’t seen that one yet but it sounds fantastic, I’m going to enjoy that. And I will enjoy it for as long as I humanly can until I run out of it and then I’ll get very, very sad. There is also Married at First Sight: Australia which just texted me last night to say there is a UK one with the Australian guy now in the UK. I couldn’t be more excited.

Jack: Absolutely, Harry and I, our guilty pleasure is reality TV because when you write drama all day long, watching it all the time can feel like work and either it’s brilliant and you go, aw I wish I’d done that or it’s terrible and you go why can’t they do it properly? Or it’s just sort of what you expect when you do things day in and day out watching reality TV which, you know, say what you like about it, the people who make it know what they’re doing and it’s a totally different mode for us so that’s always quite amusing.

The next question is from Instagram: How do you develop your subplots around the main plot, any good tips?

Jack: Yes, I think we do have good tips, we’ve done it a lot and we’ve done it well I think, in The Missing and we’ve done it poorly in a show we wrote called One of Us on 大象传媒 and we’ve done it, we have, and we’ve done it poorly in a show called Liar but we cut them all so no one will ever know because we cut all the sub plots. Um, I think the one thing we always say to each other is, the subplot needs to be sort of two things, on point thematically and on point narratively. That sounds very obvious but like just going oh, here’s a detective lets follow her home and see what’s going on. That’s fine in certain kinds of shows but I think a subplot needs to connect to the main narrative and have relevance, not always right away and not the whole time but it needs to, it needs to be there. If you can cut it from the finished show then it’s not very good. And it should be you know, like Harry says, the Missing was a show about obsession and every story about that, whether people noticed or not, was about that. You know, the journalist, Arsha Ali was obsessed with cracking this case, Nesbit was obsessed with finding Olly, you know there’s the main themes to this show are echoed throughout the subplots, to the extent that you feel, if you cut them the show just doesn’t work as well and isn’t as good, not go oh it’s nicer with it. They shouldn’t be luxury items. They should feel essential or don’t put them in. What do you think Harry, is that fair?

Harry: I think that’s really fair. I think the other thing about that and them being linked thematically to the story you want to tell is that, it’s really good, it means, it’s like a focus for what kind of story you would tell. So if you’re going what kind of story am I telling, it’s about obsession, you go what stories are set in the world of obsession, what would, what’s another version of a story that you know has that at the heart of it. It actually generates material, that approach to it for us. You know, we go, it’s revenge, what kind of revenge are there, the sort of inversions of that, all the different incarnations of what that means, gives you so much and so many things that actually you sort of, there’s an embarrassment of riches in terms of the stories you can tell. So, it’s really useful from that point of view.

Do you socialise much together outside of writing together?

Harry: Sadly, we do.

Jack: Yeah, we do.

Harry: We live around the corner, you know before we wrote together we hung out a lot and we had a band and so we did spend a lot of time together, you know we don’t always talk about work, but we do a lot, I must say, we love our job, we love writing, you know we get to hang out lots, have fun and not necessarily just talk about work, which is a wonderful thing, but yeah a depressing amount probably.

Jack: Yeah, when Harry’s baby was christened recently, and we went outside to have a drink and his other half came up and went what are you doing? You spend all day together, every day and we’re outside huddled up, catching up so ah yeah but you know that’s um. I think we started writing together because we socialise so much so that’s a good thing. We have worked with writing pairs who do not and it’s all business and that’s fine too, but it always struck me as quite sad because writing together is really fun.

Harry: And you don’t have any other friends.

Jack: I have no other friend, but you know, there you are.

The next question’s from Instagram and the question is, how long did it take you to write the Baptiste scripts?

Jack: I don’t know, do you Harry? I don’t actually know the answer to that.

Harry: No, it’s a tricky one cause they all vary, some of them, there’s two of us so you only have to write half of it, so if it’s five days, it’s ten days but yeah I don’t know it can vary, sometimes it’s really quick, sometimes it’s really slow and that normally has no baring on the quality of the script either necessarily.

Jack: It may be three months but, we’re being vague because the trouble is you , you have to have the idea for the story and write the first draft and then, and Baptiste particularly you know, and then you get notes and you rewrite and then you get, and then we had to shut the production down because of Covid and then move it all back to filming, instead of Hungary we were filming in Acton. And then we had to rewrite them a lot to accommodate that. So you never really stop writing is the truth, there’s never a moment you just go “That’s it, go film it” so with a TV script, it’s constantly going, even when you’re editing it, you’re doing the ADR and changing the lines and you’re trying to make other aspects of the story simpler or better. You don’t really stop. So, once you start it, once it’s actually out on TV, and even then quite often I’ll test Harry when a show is going out and I’ll go, “You know what we should have done?” And he’ll be like, shut up, it’s going out on TV, it’s too late to fix it. But we find ourselves sometimes having conversations about how we would have done a script two years ago better now. So yeah, once you start, you’re in it, don’t worry about how much it takes a really long time, a really long time.

This is from Instagram and the first bit sounds like I made it up myself – An amazing drama and character, thank you to all involved – Thank you Stranger! Has Baptiste developed as a character and if so, does this come from the actor? Tcheky Karyo is a legend

Jack: He is a legend, he texted us a picture of him on a white horse in the middle of Paris at midnight

Harry: With his top off

Jack: With his top off literally last week. He actually did it all right, this isn’t photoshopped.

Harry: Oh yeah yeah no this was him

Jack: Like 2am in the morning, him outside some Parisian building, his top off. It must’ve been for a music video or who knows, or he just…

Harry: I hope so or if it was just a regular Friday, I really…

Jack: Ha, it wouldn’t surprise me but yeah, yes he is a legend is where I’m going with that. Tcheky Karyo is a legend.

Harry: And the character has developed, you know. We met him Missing 1 and got to know him over the years and so he does have this incredible way of talking and is very passionate. There are definitely lines, stuff that he’s said that have found its way into the show, you know, he’s a, the character wouldn’t exist without him.

Jack: There were so many lines as it goes on, particularly in Baptiste as we got to know him better and better, there are many lines that are things he said, Tcheky said to us in conversations that, probably too many of them to count, that we’ve worked in some ways, we’re just like, this is great. And yeah, I think he has developed. He was the cop in season 1 but already, when Tcheky joins you know there were layers to him and he had a daughter and you know again why is this cop so obsessed with the case. But yeah, as we have had more time committed to him you have to develop them. We love Tcheky and hopefully we will work with him again on something.

The next question is from Twitter and it says: Is there a challenge in writing such a project, being culturally aware of, for example, a Frenchman would never say that.

Jack: What would a Frenchman never say? There’s no time for lunch, anyway…

Harry: I don’t think we’ve ever had that particular, no Tcheky’s sort of said oh this is not what I would say whatever, or he likes to add in a line that might change it but no I think it’s always been pretty.., we love France and French Culture which is why we had the French detective, you know um, so we’re huge fans of it.

Jack: We, you know, we went to France to write the idea in the first place you know, there are many times Tcheky will say you know no Frenchman does talk like this. I mean, it’s true, like, some of the way Baptiste talks is this bizarre nomic sort of utterances, I don’t think anyone talks like that to be honest, it’s only Julian does, but that’s okay that’s the character it’s not about, I think we have more, I’d say we have more problems writing things for America where things you think are fine, it’s amazing how often things are British that we don’t realise are or turns of phrase that they just go I don’t know what you mean. That happens to us more despite having done it for years, so no we didn’t have it with France but we do with America.

The next question’s from Twitter, is it best to come up with a great ending and work backwards or do you need to start at the beginning and build on the twists and turns? thank you very much.

Harry: Thank YOU very much.

Jack: We’re being depressingly predictable here but there is no best way of writing anything. If in our experience, coming up with what you think is a great ending and working backwards hasn’t always worked out the best because what happens is then you tend to write towards this ending thinking oh that’s going to be so good, and you don’t enjoy the journey on the way because if that’s the best thing you have, you sort of just, you find yourself in a rush to, everything has to serve that and then are you really enjoying what most, what the audience are going to experience which is the story, like of you’ve got that, if that scene is so good, why not start with it or do it earlier or do it at the end of episode one. We have done one show where we had the end first and that was One of Us, and I think it suffered for it because we thought we had this great ending, so episodes two and three, I don’t know, there was kind of stuff happening and

Harry: You were always kind of treading water, you were like I know where this ends up, and also you’re, you’re not going to surprise yourself in that instance because you’re not going to come up with anything that makes you go, and so therefore all the decisions you make in terms of red herrings, you know, characters and decisions they make, they’re going to be a bit false and they’re going to feel a bit false. There’s going to be some, there’s going to be a lack of sincerity there whereas if you sort of follow, and then you can throw in some spanner that completely goes hold on that doesn’t make sense, how did I get there and then go, how do I get this story to that place, that can be a way to do it but I think doing that for the very end, it’s just, yeah, for us certainly it just feels like its not ever ended up benefitting the story you’re trying to tell in that moment.

Jack: You slightly have the M. Night Shyamalan problem where you’ve got this twist and everything is just to serve that so it’s just sort of, Ah they’re not really in a village, they’re in a sort of weird old fashioned place, in the - sorry spoiler alert but in that movie was, I don’t know, for me, a whole lot of nothing happening until hey aren’t you surprised and that’s not what you want. It’s great to have twists but they’re not that be all and end all. People remember them but also remember the characters and how they got there. You want people to be invested in what’s going on and if all you have is the ending, that is harder. That said I’m sure people do it, I’m sure it’s possible but it can be a bit of a trap in our experience.

What have you got coming up? What’s next that we have to look forward to?

Harry: So, this autumn we have a six-part thriller for ITV called Angela Black coming our starring Joanne Froggatt, which is sort of Hitchcockian domestic noir thriller, which we’re very excited about. And then in, I’m not sure when, the end of the year maybe the beginning of next, we have a six part series for 大象传媒 1 called The Tourist with Jamie Dornan coming out which is sort of a bit of a departure for us in that it’s not just straight gritty thriller, it’s sort of weirder and has some humour and has some oddness, so yeah, which we’re editing at the moment and is looking very good so far. Ah anything other than that?

Jack: Lunch

Harry: Well sure, we’re going to be having lunch, we’re going to be having that, well not now, it’s 5.41pm.

Jack: We’re also currently developing a show for Peacock in America which Will Forte is attached to star in who is a very funny man so that’s a bit different for us again and we have a notes call on Thursday which of course we are greatly looking forward to aren’t we Harry?

Harry: I cannot wait

Jack: Just really get into it and hear what they didn’t like. The whole premise of this call is to talk about the things they didn’t like about the thing we spent a long time working on.

Harry: I’m waiting for someone to like, instead of the notes call, they go we’re not going to need the notes call because this is basically perfect, that’s what I am…and I would like to give that, I feel that we should as producers we should offer that up to somebody

Jack: But we always have notes

Harry: Who would we like to get that email?

Jack: I mean the last notes call we had with them they were very, they were very nice

Harry: Oh, these people they’re very good, yeah

Jack: They handled it very well but yeah so, we’re quite looking forward to our failings in that department. That’s about it!

Thank you for listening to Ask the Write Questions, a podcast from 大象传媒 Writersroom. All episodes of Baptiste are available to view on 大象传媒 iPlayer now. Find out more about 大象传媒 Writersroom and keep up to date with news an opportunity on our website bbc.co.uk/Writersroom and follow us on social media. Thank you.