Rather interesting if slightly odd article here (what exactly IS the subject matter?! Shed in Scotland, I guess...!), bit of a hodgepodge but fun to read. :)
--------
Talent by the shedload
By AIDAN SMITH
03 February 2008
Scotland On Sunday
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/sos-r...load.3738625.jpOF COURSE, TV production houses are nothing like the programmes they make. If you were hoping, at the home of Shed Media, to find some of the ludicrous bling of Footballers' Wives, then you'll be sorely disappointed. The HQ close to London's King's Cross is crashingly ordinary.
Not as banged-up grim as Bad Girls, another Shed show, but equally – as screenwriters tap away at computers in serried ranks – there are no hissy-fit power struggles of the Simon Cowell vs Louis Walsh kind that we are about to enjoy in their next drama, Rock Rivals.
If the Shed shed resembles anything of the fictional output today then maybe it's Waterloo Road, the series set in a tough comprehensive school. The work here is heads-down unglamorous, the nearest pub is boarded up, and if there was such a thing as a company motto then maybe, like Tony Blair's "Education, education, education" mantra, it would be chanted three times. "Popular, popular, popular." That's what Shed is all about.
But don't mention Waterloo Road. Or rather, don't mention that it's "Made in Scotland". BBC Scotland did, and last week they were accused in splash headlines of a "sham". The show has English stars, is filmed in Rochdale, produced in Manchester and, as we've established, Shed's base is London. But Waterloo Road's executive producer is BBC Scotland's head of drama. That's enough to have the show badged BBC Scotland, argue the corporation. Not so, say critics, who accuse BBC Scotland of deceiving viewers and trying to cover up a paltry contribution to our telly tapestry.
The impression given is that Shed is English. But when I arrive bearing bad tidings from Scotland in the shape of that day's front pages, I am greeted by an Aberdeen-born press officer who introduces me to Glenrothes-born Brian Park, – senior among Shed's creatives – who then introduces me to one of his most trusted lieutenants, Ayr-born Ann McManus.
On the first floor, which looks down on the writing pool, Park shows me into an office with a map of Scotland on the wall and a dozen Post-Its marking potential locations for the next Shed production, Hope Springs. Then Hamilton-born Eileen Gallagher – Shed's CEO – pops her head through the door to say hello before dashing off to a meeting about the post-graduate course she wants to help establish at Glasgow's Caledonian University which would sharpen the pencils of the TV writers of tomorrow.
Okay, so we've agreed that Shed is a wee bit Scottish. But we don't want the stooshie – a word they would understand – over Waterloo Road to dominate discussion. Not when Shed isn't to blame for labelling it as Scottish; not when Park says there will be benefits from the link-up, with 25% of the writers on the upcoming fourth run being Scottish.
And not when, in Shed's 10th year, there are new programmes to talk about. Camp programmes. Zeitgeisty programmes. Gloriously over-the-top programmes. Camp programmes (did we mention that already?). But above all, programmes people watch. Even in Scotland. The newest is Rock Rivals, which crosses The X Factor with the Michael Douglas-Kathleen Turner flick The War Of The Roses, and stars Michelle Collins and Sean Gallagher as bickering husband-and-wife judges on a singing show. Says Park: "The starting point for this one was: 'What if a Simon Cowell character was married to a Sharon Osbourne character?' To which the real Simon Cowell said: 'God forbid!' He acted as consultant, was classically Simon Cowell-blunt about how we should play it, but our man Mal Faith isn't based on him."
Not much he isn't. Faith has the same flat head and, in a similar voice, roars at the wannabes: "You're phoning your performances in – it's pathetic." The series begins with a shot of a car in a swimming pool, panning out to reveal a preposterous mansion. By the end of the first episode Faith's extramarital grinding and groaning has been piped into the talent contest's green room. In other words, it's classic Shed.
To help define classic Shed a bit more, we're joined by some of the A-list writers. Without seeming to brag, Maureen Chadwick says there's a cleverness to writing good dialogue for dumb people that's got the right amount of pathos. Liz Lake defends Shed's examinations of celebrity culture against charges of over-the-topness by producing a recent tabloid headline: "Britney to be dead in six months." But Ann McManus admits Rock Rivals is Shed back in the old routine after Waterloo Road, whose school setting limits their excesses, although as an ex-teacher she's passionate about that programme.
In the past, Shed has managed to offend the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Daily Mail and Michael Grade – no mean feat when you consider that Grade (then of Channel 4, now at ITV) was lambasted by the Mail as "Britain's pornographer-in-chief". Park calls it "impishness".
"We're not afraid to push the boat out," he says, though what he really means is "push it over the waterfall". The team learned to do this on Coronation Street. "At every writers' conference, the same bloody question would come up: 'What do we do with Ken ('boring' Barlow]?' Half of us wanted to kill him off and the other half would wail: 'No, no, he's an institution!'" Park jokes that politics made him the ruthless imp he is. As Gus MacDonald's researcher when the ex-STV boss was a political reporter, he edited Labour composite motions – with a machete. STV was an even older connection between Shed's key players and it was on High Road that bonds were first formed. In 10 years of Shed, there have been lots of gay storylines. But another minority in TV terms – Scotland – had always eluded them. Until now.
Scotland will be the setting for Hope Springs, if not the star – although in typical Shed style, just as Footballers' Wives featured no actual football, standard shortbread-tin depictions will be avoided.
Park again: "In searching for a location we're trying to avoid places where TV has been before, such as Plockton (the setting for Hamish Macbeth] and the two Tannochbraes (Callander and Auchtermuchty, which were used for Dr Finlay's Casebook and the remake]. Incidentally, as a child actor, I was in the original. The 'surgery' scenes were shot right here in London. So even in the so-called golden age of Scottish television, not everything was entirely home-made."
The action in Hope Springs begins with a botched diamond heist. "It's Bad Girls On The Run," says Lake, and McManus adds: "It's going to be Ealingesque. These four women were bound for Barbados and have only packed flip-flops, but instead they end up in Scotland." Chadwick, who describes herself as Shed's token Sassenach, says cross-border tensions will loom large.
Shed is part of what Michael Grade last week called Scotland's "talent exit" – programme-makers who have headed in the other direction, deserting the country that gave the world television.
Park and Co have no real need to apologise for this; London has always been a draw for lots of talented Scots. Equally, there is no obligation on them to make Scottish-themed programmes. If Footballers' Wives had been Scottish Footballers' Wives, focusing on the extra-time shagging of a Partick Thistle left-back and the "shopperunities" afforded by Sauchiehall Street, it wouldn't have been such a hit, both with ITV's identikit viewer and Germaine Greer.
Nevertheless, they are thrilled to be coming home for Hope Springs. "Scottish TV production is in the doldrums," admits Park. "Drama is tricky. Hope Springs was the longest commission in Christendom, even for a company with our track record. But it's finally happening because of the tie-up with BBC Scotland and I agree with Michael Grade that if we can get a couple of hits up there, then the whole landscape changes."
Shed hopes that Hope Springs will run and run, providing TV work and opportunity in Scotland, although they're more nervous about its success turning the unsuspecting town or village into what Park calls "tourist and telly fan hell". Never doubt the power of a Shed drama: because of Footballers' Wives, 82 young girls now answer to the name Chardonnay.
But for their next trick, the team will return south again, for a drama about the lives and loves of Notting Hill Tories – possible title, Dirtysomething. "It will have as much to do with politics as Footballers' Wives did with football – our template being that Dallas never featured any oil production," laughs Park.
Or as much as Waterloo Road has to do with Scotland, for that matter.
Rock Rivals starts on ITV1 later this month www.itv.com/Drama/family/RockRivals