Robin Romps

I'm still catching up, or I'd have pulled this post together before now... last Friday saw the broadcast of Andy Rattenbury's Crusoe episode The Mutineers and this week it's the show I've known all year as 'hour five', aka High Water by yer own James Moran.

(The 'hour five' business, for a show that goes out in week four, is an attempt to keep everything straight in my head after embarking on a 13-hour plan and then revising it to accommodate NBC's request for a two-hour opener.)

I promised to name names and here they are; Hour 3/week 2 was by Avrum Jacobson, and future episodes come from Nick Fisher, Debbie Oates, Cameron McAllister, Jack Lothian, and Rohan Gavin. I've taken care of the two-part season closer that brings the running flashback story into the present and wraps it up.

I haven't said much about the actual format, but a few weeks before the premiere I was asked to write something for the press release. This is from that:

Everybody thinks they know Robinson Crusoe, but what people really have is just a small handful of images – a man on a beach with a goatskin umbrella, and a footprint in the sand that everyone thinks is Friday’s (it isn’t). Although a lot of the novel is given over to Crusoe’s patient survival, it’s also a rollicking tale of captures, escapes, disasters, cannibals, mutineers and pirates. Defoe fed on the tales of adventure being conveyed back to England from the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, and he turned them into something that feels almost like documentary fiction.

It was never going to be a matter of translating the book page-by-page to the screen. The French did that brilliantly with the Robert Hoffman series in the 1960s, the one that everyone can sing the theme to. I’m not interested in competing with that memory.

What did interest me was Defoe’s world, and the prospect of being let loose in it. Certain things set me free. Part of the brief was to explore Crusoe’s backstory, and memories of the love of his life back in England. But the fact is, in the book there’s very little of one and nothing at all of the other. All we see of Crusoe’s family life is a mild disagreement with his father, and he doesn’t meet his wife or marry until the sequel, which takes place after his time on the island. But this cue to draw on wider elements pretty much opened up Defoe’s world before me. And when I read a couple of Defoe biographies as part of the background research, I knew where my pitch was going to go.

And it was pretty much this:

I grew up on great filmed adventure series that took characters from history and literature, created a world out of the source material, and then revisited that world on a weekly basis – Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, Wyatt Earp, Long John Silver. I haven’t seen a show like that in years, and I really miss them.

So let's take that slice of the novel between Friday’s arrival and Crusoe’s escape from the island, and anchor our series arc to its two major incidents – the rescue of an un-named Spanish captain, and the arrival of a shipload of mutineers whose imprisoned crew offer Crusoe his best chance of escape. In amongst those unfolding stories we develop further tales of Crusoe and Friday on their island. For Crusoe’s life and loves in England, rather than add to his life with pure invention I looked to Daniel Defoe himself.

As a child, Defoe lived through the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. As a young man he dabbled in dissenter politics, lost fortunes in business, and got swept up in rebellion that had him hiding in fear of his life. It reads like something out of a Rafael Sabatini novel, and it’s in a blend of the creator and his creation that I found the engine for our show.

The other part of the brief was to provide action adventure for a modern audience, and I looked backwards for that one, as well. Back to Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks and all those great seafaring swashbucklers from the Warner Brothers Studios. My DVD bill went through the roof.

What we’ve ended up with is a modern show that I’d like to think Defoe would recognise. It draws on his life and his obsessions as well as his most famous work.

One of the most interesting challenges has been the development of the relationship between Crusoe and Friday. Looking at Defoe’s own sources and other contemporary writings, it quickly became clear that there's more to be explored here than a master-servant relationship. When it comes to survival, Crusoe has nothing to teach Friday and so much to learn. Every skill that Crusoe has struggled to acquire comes naturally to Friday. Crusoe can't pronounce Friday’s true name, while Friday acquires English in a matter of months and speaks it with the eloquence of a natural linguist. Theirs is a partnership of equals in an environment where their very survival depends on it. But what Crusoe knows, and Friday can only suspect, is that if they should ever leave the island together, a very different reality awaits them.

Defoe appears to instruct, but he wrote to entertain and in doing so, he almost single-handedly and at a stroke created the novel of adventure. That’s what we’ve got in our sights with this show. We’ve got ships and shipwrecks, swashbuckling and swordplay. We’ve got amazing tropical locations that don't look anything like your usual desert island, and a wonderfully detailed and atmospheric recreation of Defoe's England. We’ve got great young leads and the starriest cast you’ll find on TV anywhere. And, from a personal point of view, I’ve had more concentrated fun working on this show than just about any other.

The most bizarre moment of these last couple of weeks came when I stopped to fuel the Jeep at a Shell station in Santa Barbara.

Above the pump was a TV screen that came to life and ran ads as the unleaded started to flow. First thing I heard was, "Alone on an island..." then I looked up and there was Philip Winchester with his spyglass, through the gas fumes.

Back to normal now.

I think.

Revisiting Robinson

In a message via the contact page, Nancy wrote:

My family and I have really enjoyed watching the Crusoe series but wish we knew how the story would have ended. Do you have any ideas how you would have reunited Robinson and Susannah?

Well I do, and I did, although in series TV drama it's never quite as simple as that... preparing for a future season is like having to pack and plan for a trip you may or may not get to make, by routes and means you can't yet choose, over a distance that only fate will determine. One of the cutest things I've read in recent years was the novelist with a couple of books to his name on how much better a job he'd have made of the plotting of Lost.

Brother, you can have no idea.

During our development period, NBC were pretty clear that this was to be a thirteen-part miniseries, entirely self-contained. But once shooting began I started getting signals from the London office to keep some story options open for a possible second season.

Tricky stuff. But then it's the challenge faced by almost every American show, and by any British drama series incorporating a seasonal arc; to offer both closure and continuation, keeping the ball in the air, answering enough questions to give satisfaction without closing the door on further developments.

The comments on Amazon's Crusoe DVD page suggest that Nancy's family aren't alone in their curiosity, so here's what I told her:

My plan, had we been given a second season, was for Susannah to use some of Blackthorne's fortune to charter a rescue ship with the Spanish captain (Santana) in command. Olivia would stay close to Susannah but we'd never be sure of her motives - is she Susannah's friend or her enemy? Is she selflessly working for Crusoe's happiness at the expense of her own, or using Susannah to get him for herself?

Meanwhile Crusoe and Friday are back on the island and Crusoe's finding it hard to recapture his optimism after such a huge betrayal and the destruction of everything that he'd built. Friday takes it upon himself to motivate and encourage him, and eventually they get to leave the island by the subterfuge of allowing themselves to be captured by the Spanish Garda Costa with their escape already planned and prepared for.

After escaping they make their way up through the Carribean in a series of high-seas adventures as wanted men, while Susannah arrives at the empty island and finds evidence that suggests Crusoe may have lost hope and died there. Believing him dead, she gathers what she can find with the intention of taking it back to the children. But their ship has been stalked by pirates who now take it for booty and Susannah for ransom.

The Spanish captain has no value and is left alone on the island but, a seasoned mariner with access to a sunken longboat, he's able to reach civilisation and to contact Crusoe, who by now is in a Spanish jail in one of the ports waiting to be hanged. After a daring escape, Crusoe, Friday and the Captain steal a ship and sail to the rescue. Crusoe and Susannah are reunited and return to England.

And had there been a third season... that would have started a couple of years on, with Crusoe prospering in England and Friday fitting into society, adopting the style of an English gentleman but uncomfortable at being perceived as a novelty wherever he goes. I'd envisage an anti-slavery plot taking them back onto the high seas, but beyond the broad outline of an idea I'd develop it no further until I saw how season 2 had worked out.

Well, that was the dream. Whether there'd have been the budget to achieve it is another matter. Crusoe was a show of exceptional visual lushness but it wasn't an expensive production; one of the factors that had lured NBC had been the prospect of numerous inexpensive two-hander stories featuring just our main cast pitted against "the island itself".

In practice those two-handers were a problem; with two protagonists and no antagonist, the prospects for drama were limited. Stories could easily fall into a pattern; Crusoe and Friday have a spat, one of them stomps off, he falls in a hole, their differences are forgotten as they cooperate in a rescue. They discover something interesting, one want to leave it where it is and the other wants to take it home, one stomps off and the other one tries to reach it and falls into a hole... with five acts and a teaser to fill, it's not easy to stretch that out and keep it alive.

It was producer Jeff Hayes' idea to get them off the island in season two and send them buccaneering. I was all for it, especially since the budgeting would be his problem! But ships and ports and cities full of extras don't come cheap, and maybe we'd have been forced to change our plan.

It's all hypothetical now, anyway. Time's moved on. Anna Walton went on to a lead role in the British suspense feature Deviation, and Philip Winchester is currently starring in another UK/US production, Cinemax's Strike Back. But here's an off-camera moment with Mark Dexter, filming on a May 2008 Bank Holiday in York Minster.


You can find more behind-the-scenes stuff here. I shot some HD footage during the UK filming; it's still sitting on the hard drive but I'm planning to get it edited and online Real Soon Now, in my Copious Spare Time.

Crusoe in Kent

I'm grateful to Scott Andrews for the news that the many of the sets, props and weapons created by Production Designer Jonathan Lee for Crusoe have been shipped from South Africa to the UK. The sets have been reconstructed as an adventure play attraction at Groombridge Place near Tunbridge Wells (these images are Jonathan's concept sketches, not views of the park itself; I haven't seen any of those).

From their press release:

A desert island from a TV blockbuster has been recreated using props and artefacts which were shipped all the way from South Africa and the Indian Ocean.

Container loads of Robinson Crusoe’s belongings from the TV series ‘Crusoe’- which was shown on television screens at Christmas and starred Sean Bean, Sam Neill, Philip Winchester and Joss Ackland – have been delivered to Groombridge Place, near Tunbridge Wells, for the new attraction ‘Crusoe’s World’...

...Two tree houses have been built high in the trees linked together with rope bridges and a central viewing tower. They are on several levels with decking and platforms and the houses are sheltered under sail roofs. There is a look-out post high above one of the tree houses, providing fabulous views over the canal, open countryside and the steam trains of the Spa Valley Railway.

Actual props from the film, including Crusoe’s fishing equipment, cooking pots, catapult, boats, barrels, furniture and dummy weapons, are there for visitors to create a little make-believe on their very own desert island.

The Crusoe page on the NBC website is still live, and you can see more of Jonathan's concept work here if you're so inclined.

Crusoe Casting

The Hollywood Reporter's telling everyone, so it's safe for me to say that we have our leads.

Crusoe will be played by Montana-born, LAMDA-trained British citizen Philip Winchester. Susannah Crusoe is played by Anna Walton, fresh from Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy 2.

Yeah, I know that in The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Defoe doesn't give Crusoe's wife a name. If that's bothering you already, you need to pick a different ride. We've got places to go and stuff to deliver.

Neill, Bean, Crusoe

Today's Guardian has some accurate catch-up info on Crusoe casting:

"Sam Neill and Sean Bean are to feature in a big-budget production of the Robinson Crusoe story being made by a UK independent producer for US network NBC.

Crusoe is to be played by Philip Winchester, who featured in the 2004 movie remake of Thunderbirds, while the role of Friday, his companion on the desert island, is yet to be cast.

Flashbacks of Crusoe's life are interwoven with the action, with Bean playing his father James, Neill playing family friend Jeremiah Blackthorn, and Anna Walton playing his love interest Susannah. Joss Ackland will appear in one episode in the role of Judge Jeffreys.


The series, written by Stephen Gallagher and directed by Duane Clark, follows the swashbuckling adventures of the two island dwellers as they contend with marauding militias, hungry cannibals, wild cats, starvation and lightning storms."

One technical inaccuracy in there - I'm not "writing the series". We've got a bunch of good people on the episodes and I'll name them here in due course. I'm the series developer and lead writer, which in this case has involved developing the concept pitch of Executive Producer Justin Bodle for the screen, writing the bible and the two-part opener, setting the arcs and running subplots, creating backstory and writing certain continuity scenes that'll be woven throughout the thirteen hours, and then writing the episodes that will gather up the ends and close the series.

It's a tall order but it's not a singlehanded effort, and the show will be all the better for that.

Writing a Fight Scene

I've meant to do this ever since I saw a script in which a scene contained the unhelpful direction, "They fight". And no more.

Film fights have a dramatic purpose. Gone are the days when personal violence was offered as the test and proof of a hero's moral superiority.  Even in Fantasy, that's a fantasy that no longer convinces. These days even Superman takes a beating and has to resort to ingenuity in order to prevail.

So for a screenwriter to write "They fight", and then leave it to the director and stunt team to work out exactly how the conflict should play out to advance the drama, isn't enough. But nor is it helpful to choreograph every blow and angle on the page. The idea is to provide a dramatic plan, the broad strokes of staging that will release your experts to concentrate on detail.

Here are the script pages and corresponding sequence of a swordplay scene from Crusoe, performed by Philip Winchester and Georgina Rylance. I'll be the first to admit that I'm choosing this example because it went to plan and I'm happy with the way it turned out.

 

For me Georgina was one of the great 'finds' of the pilot; the part of Judy was cast only days before shooting and she nailed it with a strong, subtly off-centre and dangerous-feeling presence. Her showreel at georgina-rylance.com carries more Crusoe moments along with other work.

If you compare script to screen you'll see some differences - the odd line tweak or cut, Lynch's interjections to provide cutaways, bringing the daggers into the fight at a later stage - but you ought to get an idea of how the drama flows through the battle. Action in drama exists to show character, whether the crossed swords are real or verbal. Every incident is there to show us something. There's a corresponding swordfight in the series finale that shows the change in Crusoe over the season's arc; this episode's naive Englishman becomes the seasoned islander, taking Judy's lesson and turning it onto those who betrayed him.

There's a version of the scene in better quality on YouTube - click here to see it - but it may be subject to region restrictions.

Director Duane Clark, fight choreographer/sword master Trayan Milenev-Troy.

Crusoe on DVD

On the set of Crusoe

The Crusoe Region 1 boxed set is now officially out, with the first torrented rips preceding it online like pageboys scattering rose petals ahead of the bride.

But really, save your bandwidth and your blank discs; at $19.99 from Amazon piracy really isn't worth the trouble, even when you add international postage.

It's also available from CD-WOW and I've seen what appears to be a legit Region 2 version offered on eBay; I think it's a Dutch release with switchable subs, but don't quote me on that.

To mark the release, here are some of those UK behind-the-scenes shots I promised a while back. Just about all our UK stuff was shot in or close to the city of York, and if there's any interest I'll compile a list of the locations sometime. It's a place I'd recommend for a visit anyway, and in the space of a long weekend one could put together quite a neat 'Crusoe trail' of sites and houses. Maybe if I go broke I should hire a bus and run tours.

Bernie (props) and Mia Maestro as Olivia/Oliver, preparing for her first scene in the Old Shambles, York
Three Graces, York Minster
Production Designer Jonathan Lee
Philip Winchester, Mark Dexter
Anna Walton, Terence Harvey
Sean Bean, Philip Winchester
Sam Neill with director Duane Clark
Though it was a Bank Holiday, we were allowed to close York Minster...
...and bring in this amazing crane for the Crusoe wedding sequence
St William's College, behind the Minster, served as another of our London streets
After the wedding, Newby Hall exterior
Joaquim de Almeida, Yerblogger, and a rare shot of Executive Producer Jeff Hayes captured in a brief moment of near-stillness
Of course, it's not everyone has the legs for shorts

NBC Crusoe Promotion

If you've been watching NBC's Olympics coverage, you'll probably have seen this already; it's the Crusoe promo they've been playing throughout.



Or you can go to NBC's own site for a bigger image, but there you have to sit through an ad first.

But hey, this is showbusiness.

Simon just added this to the Comments section of Crusoe Cast:

Just stumbled upon your blog and may I say it's a real pleasure working on the set of Crusoe. (I am playing an extra in a few of the shots) The team is working very hard and all is progressing well. Without giving too much of the plot away I must say this series is going to be a smash hit.

So far I have been privileged to work alongside Philip Winchester, Tongayi Chirisa, Joaquim de Almeida, the lovely Mia Maestro and a few other well known South African actors.

I really can't wait to see the final product, lets hope it doesn't take too long to be screened in South Africa.

A message from the front line, no less!

The internet is cool.

Daniel Defoe

Channel Five have been running Crusoe episodes every day throughout the holidays.

Despite any initial reservations, now that I've seen how they play I think it's been a good piece of scheduling. The show makes good, old-fashioned holiday fare.

The first hour of my 2-part finale went out today... one regret I have is that in amongst all the credits there's none for Crusoe's true begetter. Despite the expansions, additions and adjustments that we made - I used to joke that if we could only harness the energy, we could power the generators from Defoe spinning in his grave - he has a greater presence in the show than an observer might imagine. Most of the 're-imagined' details of Crusoe's backstory are, in fact, drawn directly from his creator's own life.

The final episode airs tomorrow, January 2nd. To conclude the series, I wrote a closing scene which ties the world of series to that of the novel. We shot it, but it didn't make the cut. But at least my conscience is clear.

INT. THIRD TAVERN ROOM. NIGHT.
Santana (the Spaniard who has sworn to return and rescue Crusoe, played by Joaquim de Almeida) is telling his usual tale to a man who is scribbling notes onto an array of handbills and scrap paper.

SANTANA
It is a tale of pirates, treasure and mutineers, and cannibals and heroes.

DEFOE
(scribbling away)
This is all wonderful.

SANTANA
And I give thanks that you can open your heart and believe it. For I’ve met no one else who will. How long will it take us to prepare for the voyage?

The scribbler looks up.

DEFOE
Voyage?

Santana waits.

DEFOE (CONT’D)
Did I actually say anything about getting you a ship? I just write stories. I thought you understood that. I can get a great one out of this.

Santana slumps, and covers his eyes.

SANTANA
Mister Defoe.

He waves him away. Glancing around guiltily, Defoe quickly gathers all his scraps and scribbles together.

Crusoe

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a new gig that promised to keep me busy through the summer, but I was coy about naming it because it was far from certain.

And I've avoided mentioning it since because my deal was being worked out and my 'take' had yet to win the approval of all the parties involved. Speak too soon in a situation like that, and it's sport for the gods.

But now everything's moved on a step and, from emails I've been getting, the word's out anyway. So I might as well confirm that I'm handling lead writer duties on Crusoe, shooting this summer for an autumn schedule date.

From Digital Spy:

NBC has placed a direct order with British production firm Power for a new adaptation of Robinson Crusoe.

The network has ordered 13 hour-long episodes of an "updated and adrenaline-charged for a 21st-century audience" version of Daniel Defoe's classic tale.

Power founder and CEO Justin Bodle said: "This deal is the first for nearly 40 years where a leading British producer has received an order directly from a US network. It is hugely exciting to be producing a network show for NBC, and to be working with Ben [Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment] and his phenomenal creative team. Power is consolidating on its reputation as the leading creator of high-end event drama in Europe and Robinson Crusoe will be a landmark piece of television in more ways than one."

Silverman explained: "One of our key strategies is to look abroad for great production partners. This was an opportunity that made perfect sense for us. Justin Bodle, Chris Philip and the team at Power create high-quality productions and working jointly with Universal Media Studios, we know they will combine to give new life to this classic tale of adventure."

NBC's remake will be the first (TV) adaptation of Defoe's novel since 1964.

I don't intend to keep a running production blog and I'm not going to give away any information on how we're tackling it, either. But NBC are buying action-adventure. So don't expect thirteen weeks of a bloke learning to milk a goat.

I know there's a lot of curiosity about how the concept will be transferred to the screen, and my stance on that is... you're just gonna have to watch it to find out.

Anything else just wouldn't be showbiz.

Crusoe Region 2

This one sneaked by without my hearing about it... the full season is now available on a Region 2 3-disc set, presumably replicating the content of the Region 1 release.

Which will mean no DVD extras, which is a pity. NBC had a behind-the-scenes crew covering just about every aspect of the show's making, and their material generated a healthy number of featurettes for the Crusoe section of the NBC website. Almost none of which I got to see, because the video streams would only play for US users.

Apart from an initial week of meetings where all of the writers got together with the producers in Power's London office, nearly all my work on the show was done from my study in England by phone, email and internet feed. I was in constant and regular touch with producer Jeff Hayes on the island sets (actually a stretch of the Nature's Valley coastline in South Africa), with the Power team in London, and with the NBC and Universal execs in Los Angeles. I saw auditions via video link and we conferenced for notes calls with sometimes as many as eight or nine people on the line.

I never even got close to visiting our South African locations, which could have been useful. I'd have taken a more practical approach to the way I structured the treehouse scenes had I realised that the base and the platform were separated by a number of miles, and a simple dialogue between Friday on the ground and Crusoe on the deck required a complete crew move!

I did get to be a part of UK location scouting in and around York, in a unique approach that was mostly born of necessity. They'd had a couple of Canadian guys working on scripts and a bible, and that hadn't worked out as hoped. Their take on it was close to the book and not the balls-out, gung-ho adventure show that NBC had been promised. Time was now short but then along came the WGA strike, halting all progress; as an outsourced production Crusoe wasn't actually a struck project, but I didn't want to spend the rest of my career explaining as much and so I only came on board when the strike had ended.

Now the clock was really ticking. All we had was Defoe's novel, Power's pitch to NBC, and some brilliant visual concept work from production designer Jonathan Lee. So here's what I proposed, and how it worked out; firstly, before anything else was written, I'd write the full hour's worth of flashback scenes for the whole season. We'd shoot those and then, as the crew was relocating to the South African base, I'd complete and deliver the pilot. Somewhere along the way, the pilot specification grew to a double episode; by then I was well into it and could see that my script was going to be way over. So I was blase about the challenge, and didn't let on that the extra length was actually the solution to a problem.

But the York production date was looming, and preproduction had to begin before the material was actually written. So armed with only an outline and a rough idea of what I was going to do with it, I went out with the team and we looked for places to match the story. In the bar of the Royal York Hotel each evening, we'd go over what we'd seen and I'd improvise and elaborate on the outline, so the team could take away specifics and start doing their jobs. Exploiting the best of what we'd seen, shaping the unwritten script to avoid pitfalls, getting the best out of that fantastic city and some wonderful old houses in the surrounding countryside. As they set to work, I went home and did the same. I have to tell you, it was one of my best writing experiences ever.

As I recall, we pretty much took over York for the May Bank Holiday. They closed down York Minster for us, cleared out all the seating, and let us bring in an enormous crane. We closed the Shambles for a morning. We filled the streets with extras, horses, dogs, goats, and cables. Miles of cables. Not to mention large numbers of Women of a Certain Age craning for a glimpse of Sean Bean.

(There are more pictures from the York shoot in this earlier post.)

Then everyone headed for the sunshine and I stayed behind. Except... heading to the Southern hemisphere meant heading into the South African winter. During those first weeks of shooting, I'd see the uncut rushes coming up the line with our shirtless heroes framed against the sunset on some glorious beach... with the last few seconds of the shot revealing a crew in thermals and puffer jackets, their breath misting in the cold air.

So maybe I didn't miss out too much. And frankly, with the pressure of shooting, there was no time for me to make the journey. It was an experience, all right; my first time working with an American network.

It was a bumpy ride. But so's the Indiana Jones jeep adventure in Disneyland, and people queue up for that.

Crusoe on DVD

Amazon.com have announced that Crusoe: The Complete Series is available for Region 1 pre-order ahead of its release date on May 5th, 2009.

I haven't been involved with the DVD in any way, so I can't tell you anything about it other than what you'll find there.

I don't know how accurate some of the advance information is, but 3 discs sounds technically stingy for 13 hours of material. It certainly doesn't allow for any extras, and NBC crews shot a wealth of footage around the production. I know because I had to keep getting out of their way during the UK part of the shoot.

Some of this made its way onto the NBC website in the form of streamed snippets about the locations, the production design, the stunts, the special effects... although the early trailers seemed to play worldwide, the later material was access-restricted.

It'll be a pity if it's a bare-bones release. I'd have loved to have seen all the flashback material cut together - it makes a one-hour standalone episode telling the story of Crusoe's life before the island, and includes scenes and extended material that were dropped when the segments were shaped to fit into their relevant episodes. They include a key appearance by Daniel Defoe that ties together the 'universes' of the miniseries and the novel.

All of which is made a little more poignant by the news that, according to TVshowsonDVD.com, the set will include a copy of the novel itself!

Interview

I've been away on Crusoe business - two good days with the incoming writers followed by three equally productive days scouting locations for the UK scenes - and I find on my return that the WGGB site now carries the interview that Tom Green conducted with me back in January.

(No word of Crusoe in there, by the way - the Eleventh Hour 13-episode order was public knowledge by then, so that gets a mention. But at that stage I hadn't even had the Crusoe call.)

It was for the Spring issue of UK Writer, the Guild's own magazine. But if so inclined, the whole world can now read it here.

Someone must have ticked me off the day we did the questions. I don't know how else to explain a response like,

"There’s a lot we can learn from the American approach to running a series. They don’t just buy stories; they hire writers, and instead of being pieceworkers defending their one story to the hilt, those writers come together and make the show. They’re all part of an efficient production structure and they're credited accordingly. I can initiate a £4m drama and I don't even get a pass to let me into the building – I have to be led to the meetings like a chimpanzee in a nappy."

Even more disturbing is the hint of a developing chimpanzee theme in my thinking. It's beginning to surface in the most unlikely places...

Strange Days Indeed

Well this has been one of the weirdest weeks ever. But I mean that in a good way.

If you've been following the blog you'll be aware that I have my name on a couple of shows airing on US network TV right now. I think I may have let it slip out once or twice.

The beginning of last week found me in Los Angeles for not unrelated reasons... a couple of days of intensive meetings and a day at the studio, meeting the Eleventh Hour creative team and generally bonding with a whole new bunch of people. I'll write more about where that's leading when the time is right.

Eleventh Hour made its debut on CBS a couple of nights before I flew in, so I didn't get to see it go out. But I arrived in the midst of intensive publicity campaigns for both shows; so I drove out from the airport past giant Eleventh Hour roadside billboards, switched on the TV to find a Crusoe trailer every twenty minutes or so, radio spots for the CBC and NBC evening lineups...

I caught the second episode of Eleventh Hour in a motel room in San Luis Obispo, held up on the road and missing all but the last few minutes; caught the whole of Crusoe in another motel, this one in San Juan Bautista (a charming little town, first visited on a research trip in 2003; its Mission was used as a major location in Hitchcock's Vertigo, though the bell tower from which Kim Novak fell was added in a matte painting).

And I've just been told that Eleventh Hour's ratings increased in its second week, and Crusoe "topped NBC's season-to-date average in the Friday 8-10 p.m. slot by 23% in 18-49 (1.6 vs. 1.3) and 50% in total viewers (7.3 million vs. 4.8 million)."

Whatever that means.

But hey, maybe now I can get a meeting at the BBC...

Jeff Hayes 1953 - 2021

The entertainment industry's a sociable business, but mostly you're working in an ever-changing team that reconfigures with every project. It's always great to see the good people again, and you can try to avoid the not-so-good people the next time around. 

But meeting someone professionally and quickly getting the sense that here's a friend for life - well, that's not so common.

Jeff Hayes, who died on March 8th, was already in place on Crusoe when I came on board. It was a show made by a British production company for NBC, and they'd needed to bring in a producer with the experience to handle an international drama to the requirements of an American network. Jeff had done it all, from VP of Paramount's network TV division (where he'd overseen the development of Star Trek: TNG) to building a production operation on Australia's Gold Coast as President of Village Roadshow Pictures TV. He was Hollywood born and bred - his father was a talent manager and his mother an in-demand actress, and - as he told my Disney-freak daughter - as a toddler he'd been there on Disneyland's opening day.

But far from being the corporate type, Jeff liked making stuff. It wasn't about money, power, or status; "in it for the joy" is the phrase we used. He was my first American producer and the way we worked together changed my outlook for ever.

Crusoe faced some problems when I got there. A Canadian director/writer team had turned in their take and it didn't match the swashbuckling brief that had secured the network's involvement. Time was ticking away and they had no show to go with the title they'd sold. I thought I was pitching the London office for an episode assignment when I asked what the showrunner's angle might be; instead I was invited to offer one. A couple of weeks later I was on the phone with Jeff, planning a production strategy for a show that hadn't been written yet.

Here's what it took me a while to get my head around. My position in the team was not what I'd been used to. My screenwriter relationships up to that point had largely been that of supplier and client. To Jeff I was the story guy he was making the show with, and now I was here we could get on with the job.

The series pitch to NBC specified flashbacks to Crusoe's life in England. We'd yet to engage any episode writers, so I proposed writing those scenes in a block so we could get them shot while everything else was being firmed up. With Jeff I met no question over whether I could deliver; it was my responsibility and it left him free to focus on other things. 

We spent a week of scouting in and around York along with production designer Jonathan Lee and line producer Andrew Warren. Each evening in the bar of the Station Hotel I'd describe the scenes I could picture for the locations we'd seen that day. At the end of the week, Jeff went off to prep them and I went off to write them. In what seemed like no time at all we were back, taking over the Shambles and clearing out York Minster for our enormous camera crane. Jeff was everywhere, quietly, pleasantly, firmly making it all happen. When we'd wrapped on that, he and partner Lisa went to set up a production base in South Africa and I set about writing the pilot.

Jeff spoiled me for life, I admit it. It's a collaborative medium but so often the collaboration's heavily weighted to one side. Now when I talk to screenwriting students I urge them to think, not as writers, but as showmakers.

We communicated constantly throughout the shoot, building as we went. As the end approached, the money was running out and Jeff reckoned he'd run through just about all of the local guest talent. We hatched a plan using our principal cast and burning the sets, and that two-part season finale is one of the pieces of TV that makes me most proud.

We stayed in touch after, met up when we could, always keeping alive the idea of working together again, making new plans as recently as February. When the bad news came my daughter wrote on Twitter: Jeff was one of the warmest and friendliest people I've met in this industry, with absolutely brilliant anecdotes for all occasions - he will be greatly missed. 

 And I can't really add anything to that.

 Jeffrey M Hayes 1953-2021

Crusoe to UKTV

From C21 Media:

UKTV has picked up a trio of scripted series from UK-based producer and distributor Power, including NBC drama Crusoe... The 13-part adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s classic novel stars Sam Neil and Sean Bean and was originally commissioned by NBC in the US and produced by Power.

Crusoe was last shown on British terrestrial TV as a Christmas season special on (if I'm remembering correctly) Channel 5. The shows have been acquired for UKTV's Drama channel, which is free-to-air on Freeview.

More here.

Crusoe Cast

I said I wouldn't be leaking any Crusoe insider info on this blog and I've pretty much limited myself to passing on what's already out there; this stuff also appears on NBC's own website so I reckon I'm safe.

Photo shows Anna Walton and Philip Winchester. Friday is played by the brilliant Tongayi Chirisa, whose picture I'll add when I can get hold of one of him in character.

The off-island and passing-through cast includes Sean Bean, Sam Neill, Joss Ackland, Mia Maestro, and Joaquim de Almeida as a character whom Defoe names only as "the Spaniard".

Filming's well under way now, with the 2-hour series premiere set to air at 8.00pm on Friday, October 17th. That's a week after the debut of Eleventh Hour, which will start its run in CBS' post-CSI slot on Thursday, October 9th.

I was on set for some of the UK shooting and I've been seeing dailies of the island footage and, biased though I obviously am, I have to say it's looking awesome.

The Return

This Saturday, January 31st, 8.00pm on NBC; the second and concluding part of the Crusoe season finale.


No, that's not him on the slab.

As far as I know there are no plans for a second season. I understand there's some debate over whether Crusoe is a cancelled show or a completed miniseries.

Miniseries is what they told me when I came on board. My brief was to deliver an arc with the satisfaction of closure, and no cliffhanger ending.

Knowing how the ground can shift in the course of production, I laid in a few strands that could serve as a starting-point for a further season. But an early network note was always to treat the show as self-contained and complete in its thirteen hours, and that's how we went on.

CBS Fall Schedule

It's just been confirmed that Eleventh Hour will air in the post-CSI slot on Thursdays at 10pm in CBS's Fall schedule. In the words of one of the people who passed me the info, "This is huge". It had already been tagged as "the biggest television deal ever made during development season" - which, if I'm honest, probably says more about Bruckheimer's industry muscle than it does about anything else.

But with Crusoe on NBC at 8pm Fridays, it means that one way or another I get my grubby fingerprints onto twenty-six hours' worth of US primetime this year.

No, I'm not sure how that came about, either. But I'll tell you what I'm struck by, and that's the speed of movement when Americans make TV. Because of my exclusivity clause I can't be directly involved in production on Eleventh Hour, but I'm having a great time on Crusoe. The pace can seem ruthless but it's also exhilarating. For a screenwriter it's the nearest thing you can get to live performance.

Friday Night Crusoe

Forwarded to me by Avrum Jacobson:

At its first of several upfront presentations to advertisers today at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York, NBC outlined its 2008-2009 season based on a 52-week schedule. The network will introduce the 52-week lineup this fall with a slate of new original programs and continually add other new originals throughout the year, with some timed to coincide with major events such as Super Bowl XLIII.

Fall 2008:

Monday: Chuck, Heroes, My Own Worst Enemy
Tuesday: The Biggest Loser: Families, Kath & Kim, Law & Order: SVU
Wednesday: Knight Rider, Deal or No Deal, Lipstick Jungle
Thursday: My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, The Office, The Office, ER
Friday: Crusoe, Deal or No Deal, Life
Saturday: Dateline, Knight Rider [r], L&O: SVU [r]
Sunday: Football Night in America, NFL Sunday Night Football