Tony Jordan 2

Life on Mars and Hustle are more high concept than most British TV. Is that something you felt was missing from television?

They just caught up with me, really. Life on Mars took seven years to get off the ground, and the shows that I'm doing at the moment for ITV - Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach - have been in my bottom drawer for twelve years.

But I learnt my craft on shows like EastEnders, and I wrote as a freelance writer on Minder and Boon and Thief Takers - it's a really good way to learn your craft. People put down soaps, but I did a Slater week on EastEnders. That was four episodes, two hours of drama over the whole week, and "You are not my mother!" And we got eighteen million people crying at the same instant. Eighteen million people crying at the same time - how many buckets of tears? And I did that, in my shed! In Wembley, they can get seventy thousand people in, and they roar at a goal... Can you imagine if you make eighteen million people laugh at the same time? Wow!

How did you create Life on Mars?

I did a deal with Kudos. I said "Look if I take a couple of writers away we'll go and brainstorm new formats for you, and all you've got to do is fund them." And they said "Okay, what do you want to do?" So I said, "Well we want to go to Blackpool. And let's not talk about fees and contracts because that's really going to slow things down, so we want a thousand pounds each... in a carrier bag. And the carrier bag has to be a supermarket of our choice. To pay for the amusements and the fish and chips and the bar bill."

And I phoned Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharaoh who I'd worked with on EastEnders, and said, "Do you want to go to Blackpool? You get to choose a supermarket, but basically get a grand in cash in a carrier bag, and we just lock ourselves in a room and brainstorm formats." And so that's what we did. And the funniest thing of all, when we got off the train in Blackpool there was a very nervous production assistant standing on the platform clutching three carrier bags, a Tescos, a Waitrose and a Sainsburys. And she almost cried, "Oh thank God you're here!"

So we had a grand in cash each, and we went to the hotel, we played Daytona, and had fish and chips, and then we locked ourselves in a room for three days and came up with about six different formats. All the scripts were commissioned, everybody was really excited, and none of them got made!

Lots of different people looked at Life on Mars, but nobody got it made until John Yorke, who's the Controller of Continuing Drama at the BBC, pulled me into a meeting and he said, "We're looking for a new show, something that's innovative." So I said "Okay that's a great start for a new show, but I've got a show like that and you've refused to make it". And he said, "Well what?"And I said, "Well it's called Life on Mars".

And then John left the BBC and went to Channel 4. He took Life on Mars with him, developed it and developed it and developed it, did a lot of lunches, people had nettle tea - it was great - and then Channel 4 said "No we don't think so, we don't think anyone'll watch it." So it went away. And eventually John left Channel 4 and went back to the BBC, and he took it with him to the BBC and we got to make it.

The way to create shows is character, it's passion, it's emotional truth, it's caring about it, caring about the world. Don't be a hack, don't just second guess commissioners. If you get a phone call as writers saying, "We've heard BBC2 are looking for a new rural show", tell them good luck and piss off. It doesn't work like that, you write what you're passionate about. And so we were passionate in that room in that hotel. We started talking about the shows we wished we could have written but never got a chance to. Number one on the list was The Sweeney, so we said okay well let's do that then, we're really excited about that, let's write The Sweeney again!

And that started the thought process, and everything else kind of fell into place. We started with that central character of Gene Hunt, who was basically Jack Regan. So then who are we going to put with him that really winds him up? We needed a really official guy, someone who does it by the book, doesn't cut corners, and then we went ooh hang on a minute, there was none of those around really, was there? How do we get that? Ooh, what if... And the only reason we chose 1973 was because we all loved the song Life on Mars, and that was in the charts in 1973.

What can I say, it's not rocket science. It's love, it's passion, all those things. If you feel passionately about a show, or a genre, past or present, that you wish you could write for, and you apply the same logic of character, passion, love, integrity, if you put all those things in a mix you've got a show.

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