CityLife

Red Productions' proudest achievement

NICOLA Shindler’s production company Red (named after her favourite football team, Manchester United) has always had a close relationship with Russell T Davies, producing not only Queer As Folk, but also Bob and Rose, Mine All Mine and The Second Coming. Queer As Folk, however, was Red’s
first commission.

How did the concept of Queer As Folk arrive at Red?

I set up Red in 1998 and one of the people I wanted to work with was Russell T Davies. I knew his writing and I’d always wanted to work with him. I had a small development deal with Channel 4, who also wanted to work with Russell. They’d already spoken to him, and said something which was a stroke of genius really… they said “In your work there is often a sub-plot involving someone who is gay. Why not make that the main part?” Russell did already have characters in his head for a long time – Stuart and Vince. And into that came their relationship with a younger character. I then left a message with Russell who at the time was away for two months – his last holiday ever! – and he then got back to me and it all happened very quickly.

What were your first thoughts when you read Russell’s initial scripts?

I was completely excited, because it was very funny, very fresh, quite daring. It was provocative and cheeky rather than gruesome or graphic. I loved it, I loved the tone, the world, and the humour basically. Most of all I loved those characters – their warmth just shone out of it from the very
beginning.

Taking Queer As Folk as an example, what does your day-to-day role as Producer involve?

From the very beginning it’s about working on scripts, and getting them to a stage where they can go to a broadcaster. And then when the broadcaster green lights it, it’s about putting together a team who is going to make it, and a budget that’s going to make it work. So, you work long and hard on the budget and long and hard on hiring the right people. The first people are a production manager and a line producer who can take care of the practical side of the crew. So then, all the crew is hired. My big job, while still making sure the scripts are ready, is to hire the right director – or directors in the case of Queer As Folk. And of course, there’s casting. So, that’s all pre-production. So, once you start filming it’s about being there every day, watching the rushes every day (the material filmed the day before). Generally making sure everyone is happy. Looking after re-writes, constantly doing re-writes, reacting to production problems which might involved more re-writes.

Are you quite closely involved with keeping on top of the story?

Absolutely, yes. As a producer you are more involved in the creative side – you have to make sure that everything run’s properly. And then when you’re editing, which is when you have finished filming, that is very intensive… getting the music right, getting the sound right… and then put it all together and try and sell it!

Is it fair to say you are involved at every single stage?

As producer of Queer As Folk, I was yes – and everything I produce through my company. If we hire a Producer now, we’ve often developed something for two years and a producer will come in later and leave earlier. On Queer As Folk I was producer and executive producer, which shouldn’t have been allowed really!

How long does it take from delivery of the script to actual broadcast?

It so depends. If you’re talking about Queer As Folk that was very quick. I think Russell and I started to talking in February, and we had scripts pretty much by the April because he’s very quick, and we were green-lit very soon after that. So literally it took less than six months. These days it’s very unusual if something takes less than a full year.

Queer As Folk was, for the time, filmed in a very distinctive way, in terms of wide angles, the lighting (especially of Canal Street!). It almost looked like an American show…

Myself, Russell and the Director really loved our American series. Ally McBeal was very big at the time, and to be honest we just went for that look. You put practical lights behind everything, you put everything on a long lens, which means the foreground is very sharp and the background is very soft, so you can take advantage of the beautiful lighting and colours.

The impact of Queer As Folk was huge – did you have any idea of the impact if might have not just on the gay community, but on the television landscape?

When you’re working on something if you’re thinking of its long-term impact too much, you’re probably not serving it best. So no, when you’re working on it you just want to make it absolutely brilliant and appeal to as many people as possible. In retrospect, the people above me, and Russell, had more of an idea that it would have a wider impact because they think more globally, whereas I’m very specific to the project. I knew that there hadn’t been anything done like it before, and I knew it was very, very good. And Russell was obsessed about the fact that representation of the gay people had only been about representation. They’d never been real. They always had to carry an ‘issue’ with them. He was absolutely adamant that HIV wasn’t going to be mentioned and that it would be about every day people’s lives. Which is where all the warmth and the humour came from. And I guess that’s why my approach was very different. I wouldn’t know the impact it might have on someone from that community. I did know it would blow away cobwebs and dare to do something different.

Although the story was always at the forefront, along with the characters, because the gay community had never seen anything like it, we did look to it for role models…

Well yes, except Russell did get a lot of flak – especially between the first and second series, because there is a certain element of the ‘organised’ gay community who felt he should be more responsible in his portrayal, and that you shouldn’t show underage sex, you shouldn’t show people using drugs. Whereas Russell is saying that he is just portraying the people he sees and is not representing the gay community…

And those people, those characters, are still around today…

Of course they are. They are in every community – gay, straight, whatever…

Can you tell us about the reaction you had – both positive and negative - the day after the first episode was shown?

There was a huge amount of positive feedback and there were actually very few complaints to Channel 4 – in fact, there was a massive amount of praise for Channel 4. It was very positively reviewed, almost universally. I think A A Gill hated it, but I always try and avoid his reviews! I think most of the response actually happened before it had gone out. The Daily Mail had gone mad on it before they had even seen it; and we’d had loads of press conferences. It was almost an anti-climax after it had eventually gone out. But what you get then are people’s personal responses.

How important was it that Queer As Folk reached beyond the gay audience – which you were going to get anyway – and was more universal?

You don’t set out to claim a certain audience. You set out to claim everyone. Romance on television is very hard to do, and Queer As Folk is very often unrecognised as a romantic story. We actually had more single female viewers than we had gay men.

Can you tell us anything about the planned Queer As Folk spin-off?

We were asked to look at developing a twice-weekly half-hour serial (The Misfits) which Russell was keen to set inside Hazell’s house and include a few old characters, but mostly new characters – perhaps have Vince pop back. It was about exploring the idea of people coming together and living in a strange house. It would have been very funny, and very good. Channel 4 then changed their mind about half-hour dramas. We were very close to production to be honest with you.

The last scenes of Series Two showed a montage of what might have happened to the main characters. Was this a glimpse into what Misfits might have been about?

No, because we didn’t know then. Misfits wasn’t going to be about those characters. Actually, Hazell would have married her policeman.

We spoke to Russell recently and he mentioned that you’d both very briefly flirted with the idea of returning to the Queer As Folk universe and equally as quickly decided against it. Would you ever consider returning to that world?

I would never say never to it. I don’t know if you’d go back to those characters, but I think Russell has a lot more to say about that world. And of course he was doing it about a very specific time. It was about people turning 30, which back then felt like such a milestone. But now, clearly, there’s a lot to be said about turning 40! I think he’ll revisit that world, but I think those characters stories have finished. But… you never know.

So, 10 years later, what impact do you think Queer As Folk has had on the television industry.

I think in terms of colour and cameras and pace of storytelling, a lot of stuff did seem to follow it. It went very mainstream, I remember seeing ‘Cutting It’ and thinking how much it looked like Queer As Folk. The director we worked with had always tried to make things look like that, but nobody had been as into it as he had. I’d worked with him on two other projects and he’d always tried to use those lenses and make things looks beautiful. I don’t know whether we broke new ground or not, we just wanted it to look very special. I think as well, because I was setting up a production company here in Manchester and everybody had very big preconceptions of what Manchester would look like – that it was grimy and grey, and everything had always looked a certain way. I was doing the same thing with ‘Clocking Off’ at the time – I tried to bring colour into that to make it look very attractive. It was more of a general point for me.

Canal Street did look very attractive…

That was the brilliant designer, a woman called Claire Kenny who just designed it beautifully. She brought fairy lights on to Canal Street. And they’re still there now!

Are you surprised that Queer As Folk is still being talked about 10 years later?

It’s hugely unusual, but I expect it now because it just never goes away. And if people ask me ‘what has your company made?’, I always mention Queer As Folk even though it was ten years ago, because it’s always the thing that people remember. I’m hugely proud of it.

What did you think of the American remake?

I didn’t see a lot of it, and what I did see didn’t appeal to me hugely. It felt a lot more graphic sexually in a way that felt unnecessary and just a little more… not bland… but they had a hard job, they had to do 22 episodes whereas we did eight. They hard to make those storylines extend. So it didn’t appeal to me, but I did only watch three or four episodes. They did consult Russell a little bit, but he just had to say ‘go ahead and do it, it’s yours.’ But he would never had let anyone call the central character Brian! We were excited that someone else had taken it on though. You can’t make a success of something if someone if hampering you – so there was never any bad feeling on our behalf about the remake. It was never big enough in the UK to take over from our version, even though it was played here.

Russell has already mentioned he has the ‘seed’ of an idea for a ‘gay drama’ and you have such a great track record of working with Russell. Would you like to work with him on this project?

I’d bite his hand off to do it. I’d absolutely love to do it, and I hope that’s what he’s thinking about. But he’s just so busy and I don’t want to put any pressure on him. But yes, the idea is once he’s finished Doctor Who, we’ll work together.

There will be young people arriving on Canal Street now who were six, seven or eight-years-old when Queer As Folk was first broadcast. Do you think they need a Queer As Folk of their own, or are they better served now because of Queer As Folk and all it achieved?

There might be a need for it for certain reasons. I think there’s a need because gay characters have gone back to being very much the minority and becoming marginalized again. So yes, I think that someone does need to put it centre stage again. But it’s about finding the right voice so that you’re not just doing it because it’s a ‘gay drama’ – and that’s the really tricky thing. It’s also about finding the right channel at the right time, and actually Channel 4 is probably the right channel now. It wasn’t for a while.