I Was A Teenage Computer

At the table read through for 'Mummy On The Orient Express', several of the actors were unavailable due to prior commitments. This meant that various staff members read in for some of the roles. I was offered Quell or Moorhouse and declined.

I mean come on. The last time I acted was in a school play. (Okay, so I was a stand up for six years, which is kind of acting, in that every night you have to act as if you just thought of your material, rather than the truth, which is that you've repeated it so many times over the years that it's been reduced to a series of syllables without meaning that somehow get laughs.) But actually acting? Opposite The Doctor and Clara? Unthinkable.

Ten minutes before the start, as we all settled into our seats someone realised that the role of Gus the computer wasn't cast. I was asked - did I want to cover it for the read through?

I said yes impulsively.

This wasn't really acting. Not really. All I had to do was read the lines in as impassive a voice as I could muster, like a plane safety announcer.

So I did. And it was fun.

After the read through the Director and Producer for the episode complimented me on my 'performance' and asked me if I could record the lines for Gus to be played on set. I was flattered and said that I would.

A few days later, I sat in front of my laptop and tried to do just that. And I hated my nasal blocked sounding voice so much I abandoned the project for about a week. At which point I reasoned that, what the hell, I should do it anyway. Everyone hates the sound of their own voice, don't they? This was a chance to be heard on set during the recording of my first Doctor Who episode. I would there with them all in spirit, the ghost in the machine... and other pretentious guff.

So I rattled through recording all the lines in about half an hour and e-mailed them in. I didn't even have a proper mic. This was through the tiny hole in the side of my laptop.

And then I started getting rushes through. With my voice as the computer. Which was incredibly cool. I even made it as far as full assemblies of the episode before some nefarious pretender called John Sessions was employed to do it 'properly', whatever that means (joking of course. He is brilliant) But for a few months there, I was the voice of Gus, my vaguely brummy twang echoing through the train.

I would never say 'Original and best'. That's for history to judge.

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Building A Better Mummy

So the way it worked was this: Steven Moffat gave me the title: 'Mummy On The Orient Express' and the idea that this episode would be set in space. I went away and had a think about it. And what I thought was this:

A monster on a train in space is a problem. Put bluntly: there's nowhere to hide it. As soon as someone is found dead by monster, people will search the train. So where is it hiding? Is it someone's alter ego, like Jekyll and Hyde? Is it fading in and out of visibility? Is it a ghost? Does it assemble and disassemble into snake like bandages? Do we set up arbitrary locking points along the train? Does it walk outside the train in the cold of space?

All the possible solutions I thought of felt a little meh, or made the passengers and the Doctor seem dumb for not finding the mummy's hiding place in five seconds flat.

While tinkering with all the various permutations of visibility and oblivious passengers, I started thinking about what scares you as a child. Monsters, obviously. Under the bed, in the closet, in the shadows. But also the idea that when you run and tell your parents about the monster, they tell you that there's nothing to be scared of. The monster isn't real. You were imagining things. But you know you weren't. And your parents denial of your monster makes it even scarier. You are the only one who can see it. You must face it alone.

That idea was in place in the first two page rambling I submitted on the episode. The monster that can only be seen by the intended victim. Other elements of the Foretold mythos came and went. Some of them I hesitate to mention as they may find their way into the DNA of future monsters (remember kids, use every part of the buffalo) but certain off cuts are fun to disclose.

There was a beat where the Doctor figured out how to reveal the Foretold, pulled a switch... and twenty Foretold faded in.

Oops.

There was the realisation that the only way to beat the Foretold was to crash the train into a planet full of things worse than them. Which kind of weakened the Foretold's scary factor a little.

There was Clara seeing the Foretold, and hiding inside the sarcophagus, which was then revealed as actually being a Foretold making machine, wrapping her in bandages...

All fell away over time, simplifying the narrative. The set piece of Quell's death was a favourite and we realised that the timed deaths should be the crown jewels of the episode, so more were added, of course culminating with The Doctor finally seeing and beating the Foretold.

The mummy to me has always seemed a bit of a poor cousin to the much cooler vampire, werewolf and zombie, but if we've done our job well this episode may go some way to redress that.

I hope you enjoyed it.

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The Mummy's First Victim

There are only a few definite landmarks in my development as a writer. The Singing Detective is a big one. I was sixteen years old when I saw it and it's deft weaving of one man's memories and fantasies rearranged the furniture in my head like an over enthused lifestyle guru. It was funny, trippy, fiercely intelligent and incredibly accomplished. It's impact was seismic and I am not alone in this assessment. Many writers and creatives of my generation quote it as a formative influence, (including Paul Wilmshurst, the director of 'Mummy on the Orient Express').

And now, twenty eight years after it aired, I am putting words in the mouth of one of it's actors. Her name is Janet Henfrey and in The Singing Detective she played the formidable school teacher that so terrified the young Philip Marlow. She was marvelous then and she is marvelous now, playing Maisie's grandmother, the Mummy's first victim. 

I made a point of approaching her at the readthrough to tell her how happy I was that she had the role and how much The Singing Detective had meant to me. I also made sure I was there on set on the day her scene was filmed. I stopped just short of saying that I was really happy that she was my first Doctor Who kill. I didn't want to sound too much like a serial killer. But the link to my personal journey as a writer that she represents really makes me happy. Her character dies in style and really sets the tone for both the monster and the episode.

Bravo, Janet, bravo.

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I Am Writing TWO Episodes Of Doctor Who

So... they quite liked the first script I delivered and asked me if I'd like to write another. They quite liked that one too. Then they decided to put them next to each other in the schedule as episodes 8 and 9.

No pressure.

Obviously I can't say any more than that, I have checked and I am allowed to say YIPPEEE. Great honour times two. Thanks to everyone who voted for me. That's how it works isn't it?

I should also comment on the attached photo. It was taken during a Who story meeting in a room at the Beeb that just happened to have an old Tardis in the corner. That sort of thing happens there. I commented on it and was told it was a 'real' one used for filming during the Davison era. Mr Moffat mentioned rather glumly that the doors were locked. They'd already tried opening them...

I craned my neck and mentioned that it had no back...

Ten seconds later we were all straining to pull it away from the wall like removal men and giggling like children. I unlocked the door and the posing began.

(As a side note, the t-shirt I am wearing is Johnny Alpha, Strontium Dog, from the pages of 2000AD, drawn by the inimitable Ezquerra. 2000AD REPRESENT!)

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Frank Skinner In My Episode Of Doctor Who

So, Frank Skinner is in my episode. Which is very cool.

I was a stand up for a living for quite a few years. When I was trying to figure out how to do it in 1996, his first two stand up videos were part of my boot camp, so there is a nice synchronicity for me to be writing lines for him to deliver nearly twenty years later.

I haven't yet met him, but I'm sure that when I do, no doubt on set, he'll say something nice like: 'I could tell you were a stand up. From the rhythm of the jokes.' and I'll say something self deprecating, and he'll say 'No, really. It's obvious. You can tell when someone knows funny. And you know funny. Your stage time really shows.' and I'll say something about that being high praise indeed coming from him.

And we'll chat some more, like old friends meeting again, our time on the circuit giving us a shared language, a common bond. Soldiers from different fronts of the same war. The war that every comedian fights – the war on sad faces.

And when we finally part, we will be firm friends, with plans in place to meet again and maybe work on something together. But then the number he gave me doesn't work and when I try to reach him through his agent I am given the runaround. But a friend of a friend knows where he lives so I go and visit him and he explains that he gave me an old number. And we laugh about the silly mistake and we hold hands and spin around in a circle laughing until we get dizzy.

Yeah. I imagine that's pretty much how it will go.

I Am Writing For Doctor Who

So for all the people who googled me solely because of that fact, and ended up here, this is what you need to know;

I am forty four this year, which means that I was five when the Tom Baker Doctor Who adventure Terror of the Zygons first aired. I have a memory of it being utterly terrifying. And strange. And wonderful. And too much for my tiny mind to deal with.

Out of pure fear, I then decided to avoid Doctor Who for the rest of my childhood. I don't remember much else clearly from the Tom Baker years. I vividly remember literally hiding behind the sofa when the Daleks came on screen and still being able to see them in my head.

I remember Weetabix releasing tie-in Doctor Who cereal boxes and cards when I was seven. Their images are burned indelibly into my mind. They evoke childhood to me in a way that shows of the time never can. In many ways, my Doctor will always be two dimensional and made of cardboard (a fact I truly hope is not reflected in my work on the show).

Fast forward to 2014. I am writing for the British institution, children's nightmare factory and infinite narrative sand-pit that is Doctor Who. Which is an honour. And a joy. And a huge pressure. And very, very cool. And a chance to shine in front of the biggest audience I have ever had. (Or fall flat on my face, but let's not dwell on that.)

And I am going to do my damnedest to knock it out of the park. (I mean come on, if you don't go into writing anything with that as your aim, you're not a writer. With Doctor Who, that goes doubly so.)

A nice bonus of all of this is that I am now the coolest Uncle in the world. To not only my niece and nephew, but also to a bunch of my friend's kids. And I can finally show them something I've written because it doesn't have any swearsees or disemboweling.

Okay, maybe a little...

I am huge nerd in many ways but have never really succumbed to buying action figures. I told myself that if I got the Who gig, I'd buy me a couple. Just a couple.

As I sit writing this, on my desk I have two Tardises, a Tom Baker, a Tennant, four daleks, a Davros and a Matt Smith.

They're clustered around my keyboard. Totemic artefacts of an ancient and wonderful phenomenon with a voracious appetite for stories. And they watch me type. Awaiting the arrival of new monsters, worlds and adventures.

And I open my screenwriting program and I type: THE DOCTOR for the very first time. And I smile. And I put words in his mouth. And I make him run. And think. And fight. And the action figures look on, as another piece of their long never-ending history slots into place.

I love my job.

Alt Is Coming

“There are thousands of worlds out there. All with a version of you and a version of me. And someone is trying to kill us. All of us…”

Imagine: that mate you dumped months ago because he's a tool, rings you out of the blue and asks for help. You go round and he's tripping. Banging on about parallel worlds and killers with swords and you're not really listening to be honest. And the next thing you know the world's changed. Literally changed. Your girlfriend, who was kind of the love of your life, no longer even recognises you. Dead relatives are suddenly alive again. And someone who looks just like you is living your life. Badly.

E4 has commissioned a brand new drama pilot ALT, (1X60’), written by Jamie Mathieson (Being Human, FAQ About Time Travel) and directed by Ben Caron (Derren Brown, My Mad Fat Diary, Tommy Cooper), which will TX on E4 in Spring 2014.

ALT stars Gethin Anthony (Game of Thrones) as 24-year-old pragmatic everyman Danny who’s about to move in with his girlfriend Suzy, played by Roxanne McKee (Game of Thrones, Hollyoaks). Craig Roberts (Submarine) also stars as Danny’s stoner and waster ex-best friend Milo. Suddenly finding themselves transported to a parallel universe where they encounter different versions of themselves, the pair soon realise dangerous assassins played by Jason Flemyng (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, X Men: First Class) and Arsher Ali (Four Lions) seem intent on hunting them down and killing them. With Danny desperate to get back to his own Suzy before it’s too late and he loses her forever, they embark on a series of darkly comic and dangerous adventures in an effort to get back home.

Warning: ALT may contain; swords, guns, doubles, corpses, bickering, bitterness, broken friendship, love, drugs, sex and quantum physics.

Commissioner Beth Willis says “ALT is a mind-bendingly funny pilot for E4 from the pen of Jamie Mathieson and directed by the brilliant Ben Caron. Milo and Danny are wonderful and useless and loveable. Expect the unexpected – and lots of laughs.”

“We’re so pleased to bring Jamie’s hugely inventive and hilarious world to life, and are lucky to have such an incredibly talented creative team and cast – all of whom have given us a bold new show full of fun, wit and adventure” says Damien Timmer from Mammoth Screen.

Commissioned by Beth Willis, and made by Mammoth Screen for E4, ALT goes into production in January 2014 and will TX on E4 later in the Spring. Toby Welch (Skins) is Producer and Executive Producers are Rebecca Keane, Preethi Mavahalli and Damien Timmer.

I Know It's Over

So. Being Human is over. Ish.

Obviously for the viewing public, there are still two episodes to air but for anyone involved behind the scenes, it's always a series of little deaths; the last day of shooting, the wrap party, the breaking of the sets.

The writers have their own little landmarks; the last time they type a line of script, meet with production staff or an actor says a line they wrote up on screen.

I've had some fairly ropey writing jobs over the years. Being Human wasn't one of them. It was the first adult drama I was asked to write for and it proved to be a joy. More than that, I would go so far as to say that it was the best job I've ever had. Which sounds a little child-like in it's simplicity. But it's also true.

The best part of the job for me was story lining. Which basically involved sitting in a room with some combination of Toby Whithouse, Phil Trethowan, Polly Buckle and Laura Cotton. And saying 'What if....' for an entire day. And laughing. And debating. And arguing. And laughing some more. And imagining exactly how our vampire, werewolf or ghost would behave in the insane situation we had just dreamt up. And then going home and marvelling at the fact that I was being paid to do this.

In a writer's room, it's wise to keep to the maxim 'best idea wins'. And my scripts benefitted immeasurably from the mighty brains in that room. Notes on my scripts invariably pointed out real problems and offered canny solutions. Which believe me, is not always the case with notes.

That's not to say that the job was always a bed of roses. Being Human is a show that spins a lot of plates and sometimes entire plotlines would be have to be abandoned or massively changed. But this was never done in a capricious or casual way. We all understood that this was a necessary evil, a side effect of never settling for 'just good enough'. Always striving to make the show better.

I considered doing a big list of 'thank you's', naming everyone involved, but I feel that would be a little bit self aggrandising. I've not won a fucking Oscar. I just wrote an episode per series. So I'll end by saying a big thank you to everyone both in front of and behind the camera who helped make this show the success that it is. You know who you are.

And to Lord Tobester himself (yes, that is your name now, suck it up): thanks putting up with four years of my compulsive wise cracking, for letting me turn George all sweary, for giving me a zombie to play with and for letting me bond Tom and Hal over a discussion about virginity. But most of all thanks for taking a chance on a new writer, a little green behind the ears with a knotted hanky on a stick and a dream in his heart.

Thank you.

2000AD and Me

Judge Dredd. Rogue Trooper. Slaine. Halo Jones. Nemesis the Warlock. If you are of a certain age and geek status you'll just know. From the age of nine onwards the comic 2000AD and these characters, this attitude, were a massive part of my mental landscape. Buying the comic on Saturday became a magical ritual. The stories and characters are seared into my memory. Thirty years later I can still quote swathes of it verbatim. My shelves groan with comics and geek ephemera, all of which sprouted from that weekly fix.

But all good things must come to an end. In the mid eighties America opened it's chequebook and lured titan after titan away; Gibbons, Bolland, Moore, O'Neill. One day I looked through the comic on the shelf in the newsagents and it just seemed limp and lifeless. For the first time in a decade I left without buying it. I've dipped in occasionally since, but it's like checking out an old lover on Facebook: she's doing different things without me with people I don't recognise.

In it's prime the comic had an outlook, a satirical perspective and very distinct sense of humour which had a huge effect on my creativity. It also shamelessly mixed genres in a way which now seems second nature to me.

So thank you, 2000AD, and all who sailed in you. You opened a door in my head which I've never even tried to close since, have given me immense pleasure and more importantly a career. Of the three projects I am currently being paid to work on, there isn't one that would look out of place between your pages.

Your children have grown up strong and we're doing just fine.

Tears Of A Nerd

I keep trying to sneak nerdy shout-outs into my scripts. None of them ever make it to the screen and it hurts my soul every time that I fail.

Let me give you a little run down of my failures:

In 'FAQ About Time Travel' Pete's lighter has 'FUCK COMMUNISM' stencilled on it. Like the one in the comic 'Preacher' and later in the comic 'Y-The Last Man'. I even wrote a scene where you saw a close up of the lighter. But as I was the only comic reading nerd on the production, the idea was met with blank looks of incomprehension and the shot never made the final cut.

In last year's episode of Being Human that I wrote, 'The Graveyard Shift' I suggested in the script that gothic Vampire wannabee Michaela should have ankh eye make-up, like Neil Gaiman's Death character. I soon learnt that suggestions to the make-up department is like suggesting camera angles to the director. And so it never happened. But imagine the squeals of nerd delight had it come to pass...

And in this year's episode of Being Human that I wrote, 'Pie and Prejudice', at the point when Tom comes running downstairs to tell Alex that 'Hal's got a girlfriend', we wanted Alex to be reading something when he entered. I wrote in the script that she was reading the comic 2000AD. We went as far as writing off to them to get a few copies and their approval.

In the actual episode, she has some magazine open on her lap, which could literally have been anything. Possibly even the galaxy's greatest comic. I couldn't tell you. I was too busy weeping hot salty tears as I failed yet again to shout out to my nerd brethren.

Still, I had a little cameo. Which is probably the nerdiest thing anyone could possibly do. I think you can just see my head in the screenshot below.

I am now on Twitter

@jamti

One hundred and fourteen followers. Not that I'm counting. First impressions; it's like a very slow gig where loads of people just stare and occasionally people tut and walk out.

Oh, that's quite good. I should tweet that.

 

Writer's Guild of Great Britain Awards 2012

"Best TV Drama Series: Being Human - Toby Whithouse, Tom Grieves, John Jackson, Lisa McGee, Jamie Mathieson"

So I won an award. Which was nice. Well, technically, on eighth of an award. As I wrote one episode in an eight ep run.

Toby has already won two solo Writer's Guild awards for Being Human. I think we can all see the burning resentment in his eyes at having to share the stage this time around.

As we left the stage, I mentioned that he'd already got two of these things cluttering his mantel, so maybe he should... Toby finished my sentence for me. 'You're absolutely right. I'll leave it with Touchpaper.' (The production company)

Reddit AMA

I am doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit Covering; Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel, Being Human and Dirk Gently which starts tonight at 9PM on BBC4. No really, the timing is a total coincidence...

Being Human Online

I had the good fortune to be asked to contribute to this years Being Human online experience. They're going to be rolling out more bits and bobs as the series progresses, but here are a couple of the video pieces. Great fun to do and well done to the actors and crew involved.





The official blog is here.
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Being Human – The Graveyard Shift

The new series of Being Human is almost upon us. I wrote episode three, 'The Graveyard Shift'. I am inordinately proud of the fact that I also came up with the title for my episode, which wasn't the case last year (damn you Laura Cotton). Obviously I wouldn't dream of spoiling any of the plot points other than to say that it is funny and shocking in a roughly 70/30 percent split. I am very proud of it and would like to publicly thank all involved.

This was my third year in a row writing for Being Human and boy has the time flown. It seems like only yesterday that Lord Toby was urging me to drink the virgin blood from the Hollow Skull of The Fettered Man and swear fealty to the Horned Onesy. Since then I've written 'That One with Tourettes George and the Cage', and 'That One with the Zombie and Mitchell's Cornish Stalker' as well as pitching quite a few lousy ideas that Toby has wisely vetoed. (Evil Morris Dancers? Anyone?)

Hope you enjoy it.

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Douglas Adams Rewired My Brain

If you were to remove the top of my head and look inside, I'd probably die from shock and blood loss. So don't do that. But if you were to do it metaphorically, and chose to picture my formative creative influences as a series of geographical features, then you would find a pretty big mountain range named 'Douglas Adams'. Probably with a dead whale lying next to it.

I was ten years old when I saw the Hitchhiker's television series. On a family holiday in the same year, I found the first two Hitchhiker's books sitting on a spinner in the caravan site shop. Their influence on my tiny forming mush-like brain was seismic. Ideas that were funny. Jokes that made you think. Concepts pursued to their illogical conclusion. Dry British stoicism in the face of interplanetary insanity. Arthur. Ford. Zaphod. Trillian. Marvin. Slartibartfast.

Much of where I am now, who I am now, what I do for a living now, I owe to the worlds he created.

And now I find myself, thirty one years later, writing an episode of Dirk Gently for the BBC. My seasoned forty one year old self is calmly typing the words, building the episode, structuring the jokes. This is what I do for a living. It's just another gig.

But somewhere deep inside my ten year old self just did a little wee and passed out.

However tangentially, I am adding to the legacy of Douglas Adams. I am putting words in the mouths of characters he helped create. But more than that, the reason I am able to, the reason I got the gig in the first place, the reason that working in this world feels so damn natural to me, is that Douglas Adams rewired my brain as a child. I am simply putting into practice what he taught me.

Thanks for everything, Douglas. I hope you enjoy the episode.

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Becoming Human Coming to the Tellybox

And lo! A child to Being Human was born! And the people saw that it was good, even though it doth have both fangs and fur. And they watched it online quite a bit.

And the Gods looked down from on high, well, BBC Television Centre, and they too saw that it was good. And they decided, this is good enough for the tellybox. Let's put it on. And so they did.

Well, they will. On Sunday 20th March.

And lo, I wrote a third of it, the bit in the middle.

Amen.

Being Human - Type 4

The second episode of Being Human wot I wrote airs this week. Spoilers beyond this point, so go away and watch it then come back. Titled “Type 4” it was a blast to write and I hope everyone found it a blast to watch. I got to introduce zombies to the Being Human universe! Quite a responsibility. And I got Mitchell and Annie to make out. And I set George and Nina on the road to having a little hairy baby. All fairly big Being Human milestones.

Sasha the zombie's character came from a few places, not least of which was my past life as a stand up comic. I used to spend my weekends on stage attempting to talk over gaggles of drunken Hens, a fair few times in Cardiff. Little did I realise that my onstage fantasising about killing gobby women then digging them up would later prove creatively useful.

Being Human Series 3

I am writing the third episode in season three. I report this at this late juncture as they're begun filming my episode and paid me for writing it. Which in this business is this only point at which you can be sure it's actually going to happen. Probably.

As with my experience last year, the development and writing process has been a joy. And not in a 'DVD extras, fixed grin, let's not get sued' kind of a way, but in a real, 'deep joy, wow, didn't we make something good, let's all pat each other on the back until we bleed' kind of way.

For the curious, my episode is the one where the werewolf/vampire hybrid steals the Necronomicon eggs and pollutes the water supply of Cardiff with the ghost virus.

Some of that may be untrue.

But not all of it.

(The new series is set in Cardiff.)

"Being Human" Read Through

I got a train from Nottingham to Bristol, where Being Human is shot. The weirdness began at Bristol train station, when I spotted Kemp, or at least Donald Sumpter, the actor that plays him. I introduced myself and he revealed something of a history with Nottingham, (where I live) having performed at the Nottingham playhouse. He was a thoroughly nice man, which proves he's an actor and not evil.

Relax, I told myself. You're a professional. You're cool with this.

It turned out that several more actors were due to arrive by train, at which point they would all be ferried onto the read through in a mini van thoughtfully provided by Touchpaper. By chance there was a spare seat for me.

Now I am not by nature a superstitious person. Nor am I one of these writers that believes that I create people as I type, breathing life into my creations by will alone. I understand that these people are simply actors, paid to pretend, in the same way that I am a writer, paid to make things up.

But here's the thing: I soon found myself sharing a mini van full of actors, playing characters I had been thinking about and inventing words for, pretty much constantly, for the past three months. For them it was no big deal, some of them knew one another – there was gossip to catch up on, old jokes to revisit. For me, however, it was like travelling along in my own head.

There was Sam (Lucy Gaskell) who's romance with George I had kindled, there was Sykes (Brain Dick), whose first words on screen I had invented, and there was Lucy (Lyndsey Marshal), who I had written a nice little flirty scene for with Mitchell. I felt like leaping to my feet and screaming “I gave you life, do you hear me? Life!” and then leaping out of the window into the road. But I didn't.

Directly in front of me, in the passenger seat, sat Paul Rhys, the actor who plays Ivan. Now his character is dangerous, unpredictable and scary. The actor himself, however, is a thoroughly nice chap, who also professed a Nottingham connection, having lived in outlying villages as a child. He turned around in his seat and spoke to me during the journey. But between us was a head rest, one of those square padded ones, like a hoop with a hole in the centre. And he was talking to me through the hole. At any one time, I could see his eye, his nose or his mouth. But never all three at the same time.

And part of my brain was making conversation and sharing knowledge of Nottingham. Chatty. Light hearted. Professional.

And another part of my brain was going: “Oh my God. It's Ivan. He's talking to me through the back of a chair.

And he knows where I live.”