Therapy

for a cheap night out — bussing them in and out so they can’t escape. Sometimes you get a party from an old people’s home who are too gaga to follow the plot, or too deaf to hear the dialogue, or too short-sighted to see the monitors, and once we had a group of Japanese who didn’t have a word of English between them and sat in baffled silence throughout, smiling politely. Other nights you get a crowd who really enjoy themselves, and the cast surf through the show on continuous waves of laughter. The unpredictability of the studio audience makes sitcom the nearest thing on television to live theatre, which is probably why I get such a buzz out of the recording sessions.
     
    Heartland TV’s Rummidge studios occupy a huge new building that looks a bit like an airport terminal from the outside, all cantilevered glass and tubular steel flying buttresses, erected three years ago on reclaimed derelict industrial land about a mile from the city centre, between a canal and a railway line. It was intended to be the hub of a vast Media Park, full of studios, galleries, printshops and advertising agencies, which never materialized because of the recession. There’s nothing on the site except the gleaming Heartland monolith and its enormous landscaped car park. The People Next Door is recorded in Studio C, the biggest one, big enough to house an airship, with raked seating for three hundred and sixty running its entire length. On the floor, facing the seats, the permanent set is laid out — a particularly large and complex one, since there are two of everything: two living rooms, two kitchens, two hallways and staircases, all separated by a party wall. Party Wall was my original working title, in fact, and the split-screen we use for some scenes, with action going on simultaneously in both households, is the visual trademark of the show, and frankly the only innovative thing about it. About a million lights sprout from the ceiling on metal stalks, like an inverted field of sunflowers, and the air-conditioning, designed to cope with all of them at once, is too cool for comfort. I always wear a thick sweater to dress rehearsals, even in summer. Hal Lipkin and most of the other production staff sport The People Next Door sweatshirts, navy blue with the title sloping in yellow cursive writing across the chest.
    This is a long hard day for everyone, but especially for Hal. He’s totally in command, totally responsible. When I arrived in the late morning he was down on the set talking to Ron Deakin, who was standing on top of a stepladder with a Black and Decker power tool. It’s a “party wall” kitchen scene. Pop Davis is in the process of putting up some shelves under the sarcastic goading of Dolly Davis, while Priscilla and Edward next door are having a worried conversation about Alice, distracted by the whine of the drill. At the climax of the scene Pop Davis pushes his drill right through the wall, dislodging a saucepan that nearly falls on Edward’s head — a tricky bit of business, which depends on pin-sharp timing. They’ve rehearsed it of course, but now they’re having to do it for the first time with real props. The lead on Ron’s Black and Decker is not long enough to reach the powerpoint, and there’s a hiatus while the electrician goes to fetch an extension cord. The cameramen yawn and look at their watches to see how long it is to the next coffee-break. The actors stretch and pace about the set. Phoebe Osborne practises ballet steps in front of a mirror. Making television programmes consists very largely of waiting around.
    The day’s routine is slow and methodical. First Hal directs a scene from the edge of the set, stopping and starting to re-block the moves if necessary, until he’s satisfied. Then he retires to the control room to see what it looks like from there. Five cameras are positioned at different angles to the set, focused on different characters or groups of characters, and each one is sending its pictures to a black-and-white monitor in the control room. A colour monitor in the middle of the bank of screens shows what will be recorded tonight on the master tape: a selection made by the production assistant, following a camera script prepared by Hal, in which every shot is numbered and allocated to a particular camera. She chants out the numbers to the vision mixer at her side as the action proceeds, and he presses the appropriate buttons. If you’re sitting in the studio audience