11th March 2025
Two gems of advice have stuck with me for years: know where the wires go and listen to the sales team.
My first job with a production company was at Basement Video in Manchester. The guy who ran it, Tosh Ryan told me that if I knew where all the wires go it will give me some sort of power. Daring to go around the back of the edit suite revealed a giant pile of multicoloured cables it was like being stuck in a giant plate of spaghetti. It gave me an instant headache, a bit like today when I press the menu button on a new camera.
Basement Video was a small team who mostly filmed local gigs and made arts films. Everyone there could use cameras, do the sound, arrange shoots, edit and come up with ideas. It set a good standard.
Years later at Sky as a new commissioner, Dawn Airey suggested I spend a couple of days observing the sales department – an area of TV I’d never experienced. In a completely separate building miles from Isleworth sat a bank of desks with blokes on the phone. Tuning in they were talking about our precious ideas like East End barrow boys. I left with a much better idea of what ideas performed better than others. I also remember their eye-rolls as I told them about the exciting new content I had on my slate.
More recently, I have been involved in the emergence of a new brand, where both these nuggets of advice come into play.
Channel 4 wanted something new for Saturday peak to combat the ratings drain by the shiny floor shows on BBC and ITV. We were told that the only subjects that seem to stem the flow of viewers were trains and Ancient Egypt. The following Monday Ancient Egypt by Train was sent in an email.
This had the feeling of a brand that the sales team would be pleased with, it was both populist and intelligent. From the Romans to the Ottomans and the Ancient Greeks, this is a train with many stations to call at.
But it wouldn’t be a straight commission from Channel 4, instead it was commissioned by the sales team at Bossanova, who had originally sourced the intel about ‘trains’ and ‘Ancient Egypt’. Bossanova also had a masterplan of piecing together enough pre-sales money from international networks to de-risk it for Channel 4. This was at the start of the TV slump, and it proved to be a smart move.
The money was far from the dizzying heights of a traditional high-end peak time budget. So now, in the hands of Spark Media, we needed to hone the format to make it work for the money. Everyone in the small team was carefully cast. They had to be able to multitask and work hard. We could only have 4 days filming for each episode.
Filming for longs days back-to-back in extreme heat and always on the move is a massive challenge on its own. Thankfully we were working with Alice Roberts who mucked in, carrying kit and bags, whilst also writing pieces to camera and figuring out the story. It was more like filming an ob-doc than a pre-scripted historical travelogue. But the team spirit was the best I’ve experienced. Even late, late at night, we were backing up footage, charging batteries, fixing kit and, crucially, planning the next day’s shoot. Cancelled trains and unreliable timetables added an extra variable to deal with. Every day was like running a marathon.
Editing was almost the same. 5 weeks to cut each episode isn’t easy. Again, the casting of the post-production team was just as crucial. Talented preditors are gold dust and the team at Radiant are brilliant at putting together the jigsaw of rushes that traditionally emerges from ob-doc shoots.
Having now filmed in Turkey, Greece and eastern Europe with our nimble unit and tightly honed schedule we seem to have set a slick shooting format.
This summer we hope to film a fourth series, and we have offers to do civilisations by train in some fascinating places for the next few years. Understanding where the wires go and gleaning intel from the tough-talking sales people felt like they’d come together perfectly on this exciting new brand.
Ancient Greece By Train airs on Channel 4 from 8pm on Saturday 15th March. Stream episodes on channel4.com
