Finding New Ways - Ciaran Murtagh

How we all doing? It's tough isn't it. It's like that last bit of a long distance flight, we've watched all the good films, the food's been eaten, the novelty's worn off and now we just want to get off the plane. Unfortunately it turns out our Captain doesn't know where he's going, he can't fly a plane, and he's just told us we're going round again.

I've been lucky, I've had work to do and I've kept on doing it, squeezed around home schooling, supporting sick relatives and everything else. But now things have started to get a little tricky.

Working in animation you tend to work on contracts that last a year or two. The processes are set up and established, you have your teams and you know what is expected of you. For the past few months, I've been working on shows that have been in progress -  Ninja Express and Viking Skool. They've been a lot of fun, but now they're coming to an end. I'm at a point in the creative process where I'm gearing up for some new projects and figuring out how to move forward with new people and new relationships.

Ninja Express - coming to a screen near you soon. 

This is a tricky thing.  You may have worked with some of the people involved before, but not always. Some of them may be in different countries, some will speak different languages and you have to come together to find a process that works for everybody in order to get a project up and running. It's a very delicate thing, it breaks easily and it's all about relationships.

Viking Skool - also coming to a screen near you soon.

The usual way to do this is to get everyone into a big room and thrash it all out over sandwiches, biscuits and a bucket of coffee for a few days. It always works. The ice is broken, you find out you're all fairly decent, professional people who want the same thing and you commit to getting it done as painlessly as possible. Of course you are. But you have to go through that process to know that. However, right now, in these times, that's not possible and that makes all of this difficult.

An eight hour Zoom call is never fun, and when you're on a call you don't tend to chit chat - you're there to work. You can't form informal relationships over a juddering screen with twelve other people fighting the same barrier. I always knew how important the personal relationships formed at the start of these processes are, they're just as important as the professional ones when it comes to getting  you through the sticky mid series humps. It's nuanced and it's balanced and it starts right at the very beginning.

So far, I've been muddling through, getting stuff done that's been in play, stuff that's already trundling down a well established track. I can't do that any more. I'm about to embark on an 18 month project without doing any of the things I would usually do. We haven't even built the track.

In the scheme of what everyone else is going through it's small beer, but finding new ways to be creative in these difficult times is a challenge. I was hoping I could wait it out until things got back to normal and start things properly, but with the plane going round again and the Captain not having a clue, it looks like I'm going to have to try and generate some kind of spark, jet lagged and exhausted. It's not a good recipe for creativity, but right now it's all we've got.

Oh. And I need a haircut.

Censorship and Brexit - Ciaran Murtagh

On Friday the BBC re-released a sketch from Horrible Histories that apparently 'trashed Britain'.  You can watch the offending sketch here:

It was from a 2009 episode called Vile Victorians and it upset a lot of people including Piers Morgan, Andrew Neill and the Daily Mail, so it must be doing something right.

Caution - this link will take you to The Daily Mail

It piqued my interest because as a kids TV writer, it seemed strange for so many grown men - and it usually is men - to get enraged by an 11 year old sketch, which many children have enjoyed and - crucially - understood for years.

Link to some frankly ridiculous Twitter comments.

The reason for the outrage was the fact that it was unpatriotic. Factually and historically accurate, but unpatriotic because it pointed to aspects of British history, that while true, displayed Britain in an unfavourable light.

No matter that this sketch has been broadcast many times to zero protest. No matter that it's from a show called Horrible Histories -  the clue's in the name.   No matter that Horrible Histories also trashes the 'Vicious Vikings' and the 'Rotten Romans'- maybe other countries have thicker skin, or aren't in the middle of an identity crisis.

We now live in a country so past irony that The Sun can create a poster celebrating Brexit in which the fictional character Alan Partridge is apparently a Great Britain,  while his very real creator Steve Coogan is a shattered Remainer.

Also on the poster and in the Great British camp are Mr Blobby, Basil Brush and Mr Bean. As a writer for at least two of those characters - Mr Blobby writes his own material -  I think I can confidently say Mr Bean is apolitical at best and if I had to pin Basil down I'd have him a little 'Countryside Alliance-y', but then again - THEY'RE BOTH MADE UP, SO HOW WOULD I KNOW!?

Noted Great Briton and anti-EU advocate Mr Bean. Apparently.

Regardless it's obviously fine to give fictional kids TV characters British values and agendas to reinforce your political point, but don't you dare put actual facts in front of the kiddiwinks for fear of being labelled unpatriotic.  Or maybe The Sun poster is clearly a joke and I shouldn't take it so seriously, in which case... Horrible Histories! 

The only thing that's changed in the 11 years since this sketch was first broadcast is that we now live in age where we no longer have a need for experts and facts are apparently negotiable depending on your world view.  That and they got a British born Asian to introduce it. Can't have people with a darker skin tone telling us OUR - and their, but lets not worry about that -  history can we?

Another criticism levelled at the sketch is that is lacks perspective, it doesn't say anything about all the good things the Victorians and Britain did. Which is true, it doesn't, but then it's a comedy sketch for children, it makes one point and it makes it very well, it's how sketches work. You never hear of any of the perfectly healthy parrots the pet shop owner sold in the Dead Parrot sketch do you? Where's the perspective? Next you'll be telling me that 'Allo 'Allo isn't representative of life in German occupied France and not all Dublin matriarchs are men in drag.

Life in German occupied France not all bad. Apparently. 

In the scheme of things it's a silly thing to get annoyed about, but as a children's writer I find it very worrying. It points to an insidious trend. If the future of writing for children means passing some strange Daily Mail criteria for what is and isn't acceptable then we're all screwed.

Children are happy to be challenged, happy to be provoked, happy to question and happy to think for themselves. The evidence of the past few days seems to suggest that certain adults are not. We should always remind ourselves that we're writing for the children who are happy to explore different perspectives, not the grown ups who would rather we reinforce a particular world view.

On a wider note, for anybody who creates anything, if these angry, seemingly educated people feel so threatened by an 11 year old sketch about Queen Victoria on kids TV,  just imagine how they'll feel when faced with more grown up criticism on a news show. Or maybe they'll just select favourable journalists from now on.

Regardless, the shouting voices are getting louder. Post Brexit you're either with us or against us. In an age where a slightly peculiar decade old sketch in which Queen Victoria has sugar poured on her head can cause such indignant rage I worry for anybody who dares to create anything with a dissenting voice, no matter how light hearted it may be.

Ciaran Murtagh's work can currently be seen every Friday at 6pm on CBBC on Crackerjack.  Follow the link to see an unashamedly apolitical Basil Brush doing his thing. 

Funny's Funny - Ciaran Murtagh

Last year I spent a good few months writing an unashamedly British TV show - Danny and Mick. It's currently going out on CBBC and will be on the iplayer forever. I wrote ten episodes and script edited ten more and it makes a virtue of it's constraints in a way that you don't see too often.

Usually, in kids TV, we are being asked to write for the widest possible market. PJ Masks has to play as well in Doha as it does in Dudley. The budgets and costs reflect that, but so too do the editorial and creative choices. Danny and Mick is a live action TV show, so the costs are less. It's also been designed to do one thing and one thing only - make children from the UK laugh. That means, for the first time in quite some time, I was free to focus on one audience.

Danny and Mick shares a great debt to classic British kids TV staples - gunge, slapstick, pantomime. But it had two great assets in it's stars. Danny and Mick really are brothers and they have spent a life time in the circus. Their Dad is Clive Webb - formerly of Tiswas -  and they know what makes kids roar with laughter. They also had buckets of routines they could pull out to enhance any script.

With live action TV the thing that usually gets squeezed is rehearsal time. It means that there isn't time to work out a complicated sequence and often you have to cheat it when it comes to filming. These guys had classic routines in their DNA. Watching them work was like watching a ballet or a wrestling match, they knew how to respond to each other's movements to build something special. It was who they were and was something they've been doing all their lives.

Sometimes we would ask what routines or props they had lying around and build a story around that set piece. Sometimes we would script an idea and they would suggest a routine they knew would work. It's rare for scripting to be so symbiotic, but we all knew we only had one thing to do - make kids laugh.

Take a look at the show, and if you get the chance to see them live then grab it. I'm moving onto write Crackerjack with Sam and Mark next. It seems like great British humour is making a come back, and this Irishman couldn't be happier!

What is a universal story in 2019?

I am currently head writing a new cartoon series. The show will air in 2020 and will be broadcasting in every country in the world. Sounds great right? And in one way it is. It gives me a tremendous sense of satisfaction to sit in a shed in Croydon and know that the stories I am creating will be seen by millions of children in countries I will never visit. However, the flipside of this is that every story I and my team create has to be just as accessible to a child in London as it is to a child in Hanoi - and everywhere in between…. There’s the rub.

Now you might think a child is a child is a child. Certain stories will always appeal no matter where that child is from. And again, to a certain extent, you’d be right. What that doesn’t factor in is the restrictions different broadcasters put on what you can and can’t write about.

In the Middle East there’s no magic or witchcraft. You can’t have homosexual characters and only the most conservative mixed relationships can appear on the screen. There’s no pork products – so ham sandwiches are out – as are pizzas just in case they have pepperoni on them.

On the subject of food, the French broadcasters are on a healthy eating drive which means all food shown on screen needs to be healthy, so pizzas would be out anyway. So too would be any sweets or biscuits, pasta, noodles, meat that isn’t grilled and an ‘abundance of bread.’ But they’re fine with gay characters. Not that we could have them.

The British are keen to model good behaviour and are hot on imitable stuff that may lead to letters in the Daily Mail. So – and I kid you not – we have one particular story where some animals hijack a vehicle from some humans. That’s fine. But they have to wear seatbelts, drive on the road and use a designated slipway when driving into the sea. 

As a sidebar, if you’ve ever wondered why Dennis the Menace has become Dennis and Gnasher, look no further – we can’t have kids being menaces these days. This also makes a particular form of universal visual humour very difficult to get away –slapstick.  If you do have slapstick humour, no one can get hurt. So there’s definitely no slapping with sticks in slapstick.

The Chinese have some issues with other races, in particular the Japanese, so we can’t show sushi. Chalk that up with pizza. They are also conservative in what relationships can be shown on screen. They are however very keen on fireworks. Unfortunately all the other broadcasters hate them so they’re out too.

Maybe fairy tales would be a source of fun? You’d be right. But only for certain cultures. How can you be sure that the kids in Bangkok know about Goldilocks or Sleeping Beauty? And if they do, have Disney already done the definitive version? In which case you can’t touch it with a bargepole.

A good old Christmas Special should be hard to argue with. Unless your culture doesn’t celebrate Christmas of course. And if it does celebrate Christmas is there snow? And Christmas trees? Best not call it a Christmas special just to be sure. A case in point – my recent Danger Mouse Christmas Special has no references to Christmas at all.

So how do you create a story with all of these restrictions? More importantly how do you do it 52 times? The answer is, with great difficulty. I liken it to playing one of those buzzing wire games. If you can get to the end of the wire without anything buzzing, you’ve got yourself a story. Maybe. So long as it comes in on budget.

This is quite a modern phenomenon. We live in a global society. Previously, if a cartoon was going to be made for the UK, then the BBC would pay for it and they’d be the only broadcaster we would have to worry about. Fifteen years ago, the very idea of an American network being able to sell a cartoon and the ensuing merchandise to Saudi Arabia or China would have been unthinkable, now it’s all part of the business plan. Cartoons have become more expensive, to get them made you need global partners, that means those global partners have a say in what gets made and naturally they want to make sure their interests are served and represented.  

Where the TV world leads I am sure the world of books will follow. I already know that there is a lack of appetite for rhyming picture books – it makes them hard to translate. I was asked to tone down the girlfriend/boyfriend plot in a recent series of middle grade books so that it will sell to the Chinese market and on one memorable occasion I was asked to remove a reference to a sausage dog in case it offended the Middle East. I did point out that it wasn’t literally a dog made of sausages, but dachshund was our ultimate compromise.

Where does that leave us as creators? Is there still space for the stories we want to tell? Is there still space for region specific stories, or as publishers become multinationals are we obliged to create work for a multinational audience if we want them to buy it?

The stories I am creating are still fun. I am still proud of them. They still work. But increasingly they are stories no one can argue with. Perhaps that’s the true definition of a universal story in 2019.