In what is likely to be the most 'meta' project MZPtv is likely to devise, Operation: Angry Badger sees some of the network's most well-known members flung together in a bizarre mesh of comedy, action and surrealism. The nutcases behind this venture, Dan Loach and Pete D. Gaskell, sat down with producer A J. Black to talk about what the masses can expect before the badgers get angry on Wednesday October 5th...
The first question has to be... where on EARTH did that title come from?PG: Hoo boy. The creation of this series is a saga in and of itself, and I'm sure will be explained in detail at a later date. The title, though - well, that came out by accident rather than design. I think Dan and myself had been discussing the project for a bit, and we decided to call a certain operation in the series Operation Angry Badger, after a story that Adam had told us in the past. We floated this idea to Adam, who promptly suggested naming the SERIES O:AB - and we ran with it from there. As for where the name originates from, you'd better ask Adam, as that is indeed another story...
DL: Pete's pretty much covered this. We were definitely going to allude to "Operation Angry Badger" because... well how could we not? We needed a title though, and the working title "Deep Space Nine" was taken by some little known sci-fi project a few years ago, so yeah, O:AB came about that way.
How close exactly are the characterisations of Adam, Pete, Trix etc... here to the real life board figures we know and 'love'?DL: They're caricatures. Naturally none of us (apart from my unfortunate trip to Belgium in 2007) has ever been involved in a mass murder conspiracy, and we're not all quite so manipulative or self-serving as the characters we've put together, but I think at their very core they are very much "us." I think, from my perspective that was more important than cracking the big jokes or writing the big action sequences, the characters had to be a version of ourselves put into this bizarre, Edgar Wright-esque universe.
PG: Tricky question. I'd say how we've done this is to take the bare bones of the various characters, both lead and supporting, from members of the board. A few traits that are probably immediately obvious if you know any of us online or in person. Then we've exaggerated those traits to the Nth degree. So they still might strike you to be the same people as you know, but given enough creative licence to fit into the world that we've created. Because if anybody's actually like how they're portrayed here, I'd be very worried indeed!
DANIEL MAYS as 'Adam Scott'
So what will the style of the show be like? Comedy drama? Elements of action? A tinge of pathos? What?DL: We set out to write an comedy with action elements, certainly, but what we’ve got is really a bit of everything. There’s some slightly surreal stuff in there, there’s some fairly hard-hitting character work, and just a lot more. Difficult to say without spoiling it though, so I suppose you’ve no choice but to read it and find out.
PG: Any and all of the above, I'd say. If you want to tie our series down to a nominal genre, then it has to be comedy. But there's several other elements that we're throwing into play - hopefully some good character drama, some violent explosive action, and a definite feeling of comic-book style hyper-realism. It's quite stylised, and hopefully, unique to MZPtv.
Following in the tradition of such heightened reality VS shows as The High Life and Desperate Screenwriters, will O:AB follow in the footsteps of those series tonally or be its own thing?DL: Well this was our point from the start. Those shows were quite similar in a lot of ways, the budding writers and whatnot. We set out to make the “Deep Space Nine” (hence the working title) of “writing about ourselves as writers” genre, something that just took things in a totally new direction. There are definitely a lot of the usual in-jokes and character play, a lot of dialogue lifted straight out of real life in fact, but really that’s where it ends. What we’ve tried to do here is be totally different, completely off the wall, and a little bit batshit insane.
PG: We're definitely heading in a new direction with O:AB. Nothing against the previous shows dealing with similar ideas, but they went about the format as if it were a standard sitcom. We quickly realised that, considering the subject matter we're dealing with here, that couldn't be the case with us. We're looking more at the style of a Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright film like Shaun of the Dead for our inspiration. In fact, probably the closest in VS terms to O:AB would be my own take on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A lot of the style I brought to that is present here.
EDDIE REDMAYNE as 'Pete Gaskell'
Is there not a fear this could all be too in-jokey and alienate MZP members not as au fait with the characters here?DL: Definitely that’s the biggest fear with this one, a comedy where nobody laughs isn’t going to go down well at all, but what we’ve tried to do is set up gags that work without any prior knowledge, and then just add a little bit extra for the ones that know us well. If we’ve done our job, that’ll work just fine, and I think we’ve taken the steps to make it does go as planned.
PG: That's a question that I'm sure is on a lot of people's lips - and believe me, it's one that was at the forefront of our minds whilst we were writing this. There are a few injokes scattered around, yes, but we were determined to rise above that and construct a miniseries that could stand on its own two feet in its own right too. Once again, think like Shaun or Hot Fuzz - if you knew some of the films they were lampooning, then you had an extra layer of laughs - but they're both still damn funny films even if you don't know the genre. That's what we've been aiming for.
And will this be it, or could we see another 'Operation' at some point in the future?DL: It’s entirely possible. There’s a lot more mythology and a lot more narrative hinted at in this series which could be picked up for “Operation Frozen Horse” or whatever we’d go with, but I think for now I’m happy enough with this to let it rest for a good long while. We’ve both got a lot of projects on the go, and comedy is bloody hard to write at the best of times. Certainly I doubt very much that I’d be involved in the writing of any future series, but if Pete wanted to pick it up again I’m sure I could be coaxed into dropping a few ideas and pointers in here and there.
PG: To tell you the truth? I don't know. I know both Dan and myself have tossed around a few potential ideas for the future, but there's nothing concrete as yet. As ever with these projects, it depends on whether there's a story to tell. If we find the right one, then who knows? But for now, this is a six-episode mini with a story that concludes in the finale.
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