Day Six of Mr Blue Sky series 2. Though I didn’t log it, yesterday was Day Five, which was actually a half-day, and I wasn’t able to attend the recording due to my Guardian Telly Addict videocast, which had to be moved in order for me to be available for the whole day tomorrow, which will be Day Six and the final day of the recording. Yes? (Telly Addict will go up at the usual time, around 4pm on Friday.) Having recorded Simon Day – who cameos in this series as the book-burning neighbour Mr Leopold – and Mark outside in the car park on Tuesday, and Claire and Navin in a van in the car park yesterday, studio director Wilfredo had us all outside in the cloudless sunshine again this morning for some more exterior scenes (you type “EXT.” in a radio script, and you do not imagine you’ll actually be outside, but Wilfredo is something of a guerilla sound recordist). Frankly, it was lovely to be able to process some Vitamin D after a week of being anything but free range.
Above, in a photo taken by production assistant Rob, you can see producer Anna, Justin Edwards (who plays Harvey’s best friend, the oncologist Ray, and has had a nice neat haircut for his part in the new series of The Thick Of It, which he is making concurrently), Michael Legge (who plays Harvey’s megalomaniac boss Sean and is, in real life, hungover), Mark (method acting the sound of Harvey climbing into a van), and Wilfredo. Below, for a later scene in which Harvey and Ray drive to Gatwick (hey, no spoilers!), Wilfredo records them in the cab of the same van.
Hitchcock style, I appear in the next photo, too. And that’s not my iPhone, as I will never buy an iPhone, it’s Anna’s.
This happened last year, on the recording of the first series: a certain degree of hysteria has set in. There is a lot more mucking about in the studio. It’s fine. Mark and Justin were telling jokes in there this morning and kindly offering them to Michael for an upcoming stand-up gig. None of them are suitable. This is how you want actors and comedians to behave under pressure. It’s been kind of the opposite of a rollercoaster ride, the recording, in that it’s pretty steady – despite the massive emotional ups and downs of the scripts, naturally – working our way through the scenes, ticking them off, or making them go green on Anke’s grid. I have to say, it’s been as physically draining and mentally demanding as I remember Series 1 being, except cranked up, as we’re doing half as many episodes again this time. (“Physically draining” sounds unlikely – not to mention insulting to everyone with a physical job – as I am mainly just sitting on a chair, listening and eating biscuits, but I’m not used to eating so much wheat, so it does take it out of me. After seeing what happens when Richard Herring occasionally suggests that his job is hard, I’m not going to make the same mistake. I’m not even paying for these biscuits.)
I can’t believe we actually finish tomorrow. (Finish recording and say goodbye to the lovely actors; the edit begins on Monday, of course, with just three weeks to go before the first episode airs on Radio 4.) As I sign off, I am listening to a professional actor saying the word “recalcitrant” in the studio, a word nobody except Will Self says in real life, and which I only put in because I’ve always liked the sound of it. As Harrison Ford famously said to George Lucas during the filming of Star Wars: “You can write this shit, George, but you sure as shit can’t say it.”
Never Knowingly Underwhelmed 
You must be logged in to post a comment.