Toby Whithouse

Toby Whithouse trained as an actor at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His first play, Jump Mr Malinoff Jump, won the 1998 Verity Bargate award and was the opening production at the Soho Theatre. He has also written for Attachments, Hotel Babylon, Doctor Who, and Torchwood, and created No Angels for Channel 4. Most recently he created and wrote Being Human for the BBC.

You started out as an actor. What made you decide to become a writer?

Being an actor I had a lot of spare time on my hands and so I just started to write. I had an idea, literally just an idea for a gag. So I wrote it down. Then I thought, well if somebody says that then you need the feed line into it, and then somebody would say that afterwards. And it expanded in both directions until characters started to take shape, and these two people who were talking suddenly became brothers, and they were in a café. And it built up from there until eventually I had the first draft of a play.

The plan was that I put it on myself in some little sticky-carpet pub theatre with my other unemployed actor friends, but it took on a life of its own. I got a literary agent from it. We entered it for the Verity Bargate which it won, and suddenly they could get much better actors than me in it, and that was that.

On the basis of that I started being offered TV work, and then one thing led to another and now I’m talking to you.

Did you always know what you wanted to do as a writer?

I wanted to write sitcoms. And I had this plan to spend a few years writing conventional television drama because that will teach me about character and about how to construct a story. I thought if you use that same discipline and foundation for writing a sitcom (which was ultimately my real passion) it makes for a much richer experience. Then when I finally got the opportunity to write a sitcom I absolutely hated it.

I never had much difficulty writing gags in straight dramas, and so consequently I thought oh this is easy, I can just write as many jokes as I want. But I found the artificial discipline of writing five or six gags per page very difficult. It felt like such an unnatural way of constructing something. So I wrote the pilot for this sitcom, and then I wrote the next two episodes, but we didn’t get commissioned. And I breathed a sigh of relief, to be honest.

Aside from that I’ve never had any plan other than the next job. I’ve never thought in five years time I want to be doing this, five years after that I want to be doing that... I think it comes from my background as an actor where you just live from job to job.

What was your first job writing for television?

My first television gig was an episode of Where The Heart Is. It was an ITV show - back when they had two commercial breaks within the hour - and so consequently you have a three act structure. If the writers are doing their job properly you don’t tend to notice as a viewer. But suddenly having to use that structure I found quite tricky.

It took me five years to write that first play. The process within television was much, much faster and I found that I quite liked that. Also, having been an actor for so long, it was a novelty to be paid to do something.

Have you ever been tempted to write yourself plum roles?

I would hope everything I write could get better actors than me. When I had my first play on we had an at the time very little-known actor called Martin Freeman in it playing a psychopath. And it was a brilliant part, even if I do say so myself. Beautifully written. And all the time I was thinking: if Martin falls down the stairs I could do that. I’d love to do it.

And then I watched him in rehearsal and there’s no way I could ever do anything like that. He was utterly, utterly chilling. Quite an extraordinary performance.

So pragmatism overtakes vanity. I think it’s better that I stick to the writing.

Do you remember the point where people started coming to you and saying "We want you?"

I think it was probably after No Angels. Because the thing about No Angels is regardless of any qualities the show does or doesn’t have, it was recommissioned twice. Within TV terms that means it’s an absolute runaway success. People would try to get me into meetings because I’ve written a show that got recommissioned. They wouldn’t necessarily have seen the show. But it got recommissioned, equals success.

There was a show in this country on Channel Four called Buried, about a male prison, which I think is possibly the best-written drama we’ve ever had in this country. It didn’t get recommissioned and so no one knows about it. But ultimately in terms of quality of writing I don’t think we’ve done anything that can touch it.

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