Tony Jordan 3

Tell us about how you created your new series Holby Blue.

Well, the BBC came to me and said that they'd never really succeeded since Z Cars with a police drama. I'd had a go once years ago with a show called City Central. So they came to me and I was given a choice: I could either create a police show in its own right or I could use the Holby brand. So that was the first decision I had to take. And I talked to a couple of other writers about it, and said what would you do, do you think it's a good idea to use the Holby brand or not? And they all said "No you mustn't do that". And I was really confused by that and I said "Well why?" And they said "It's kind of beneath you isn't it?"

And I thought that was a really sad indictment of long-running popular dramas, that having a show with Holby in the title, regardless of what the show was like, just the fact that it was called Holby Blue, somehow that would make it a lesser show than The Bill or anything else that we do in that genre. So for that reason alone I phoned the BBC and said, "Yeah I'll do it, and I want to use the Holby brand", much to the dismay of most of the other writers that I was talking to about it. And then that gave me a challenge, because I knew that every single one of those people would, when it finally went out would all be sat back in their armchairs going, "Oh here we go", and I wanted to reach out at the screen and just kind of shake them by the neck.

So when you made that decision about Holby Blue, what were you aiming for?

I think you have to find a reason for things, especially when you're in a genre that's so well trod. So as writers, if you're looking at medical shows or police shows or detective shows, or anything that's kind of a genre, you have to say to yourself: Why do we need another one? What is it about this one that sets it apart from the others? What's the pitch? What is it that makes it different? Because you can't just go and say it's a cop show and it's quite a good one, they'll say no. You have to explain its place in the world. So that was the next thing, once I'd made the decision about using the Holby brand, was - why? What is it about this one that will set it apart from The Bill and other shows in that genre? And the first thing that struck me was that this is the first police precinct show launched since 9/11. Now once I had that, then to me that justified the series. I had a theme, and that bought a place for it in the world. So that's why it started like that.

What about John, your central character - when did he come? At what point?

There's a law about creating a show, which is character first, story second. If you start with a story and then create characters to fit that story, that's madness because they're not real people, they're just story vehicles. And if you had to put the nature of drama into a nutshell, drama is not complicated, you create a character and you find who that character is by how they overcome the obstacles that you put in their way. With Holby Blue, this was slightly skewed because I had to find a reason for the show in the first place, so the character in this case didn't come first, but the basic premise. Then before I had a story, before I had anything else, it was a question of talking about characters.

I wanted a central character to drive it. The reason that I wanted to do that was I was a great fan of NYPD Blue, which was all about that central partnership, and I really loved that. And I think the trap that I'd fallen into with City Central was that I tried to introduce thirty characters in the first sixty minutes. It's impossible, you can't do it. So once I decided that, I needed to know what kind of character am I looking for? And for me it was all about you don't have to be superhuman, or a different kind of human being to be a policeman.

So to me the defining theme for John is the first sequence after the opening titles, when he goes to drop his kids back at his estranged wife's house and sees her boyfriend's car parked on the drive. He smashes the rear light with a torch from his glove compartment, and then gets uniform to stop him because he's got a broken tail light, so that John can then run a PNC check to find out who the boyfriend is. Now that's exactly what I'm talking about, you create a character and then there's something in his way, and it's about how he overcomes that. And so how he overcame that particular obstacle about his wife being with another man defined John absolutely. And then once I had that, once I had that image, then the bowling ball came, and basically what I did was I created a character that would do what I do given those same situations.

How authentic is your research?

We've got a separate police advisor. The thing about research is, you can treat research in two ways. I think for producers generally, the word of the researcher or the expert is kind of law, and they phone you up and say, "Oh I'm sorry, the research has shown that..." and my kind of reaction is "I'm not concerned, don't really give a toss". I think as a writer, what we should do is we should use research to find a way to justify what we're doing. We don't mind turning left a little bit to fit, or right a little bit, but what I want from research is, "This is what I want to do, you tell me how to do it," because if it's the other way round, if the expert's telling me what to do, then it's "Well you go and write the script then, I'll go and get a job." It doesn't work.

So that's the approach I took with Holby Blue. I had a police advisor, and I'd go to him and I'd say, "I want to do this story, and I want these things to happen." And his first reaction was always, "No it doesn't work like that..." And I said, "Well look I don't care how we achieve it, don't tell me what I can do, tell me how I can do that." And he'd go away and he'd come back and he'd say, "Well, I've thought about it, and the only way to achieve that is if you do this first." I'd say, "Okay I don't mind doing this first, but then I can do that." So that's how I approach it.

In terms of the whole series, how far ahead do you plan?

Well you can't create a series without doing everything. You can't just create the first episode. You have to have a serial, but you don't need to know the very very very end. I was really surprised, I was in LA and talking to the producers of 24 when they did that first series and I was really excited about that. I was just completely gobsmacked that when they started they had no idea how it was going to end. But I thought that was kind of cool too, and I think with some shows you can get away with that. Nobody on this planet can tell me that when they started Lost they knew where they were going! When we started Life on Mars we knew what the first series was, but we had no idea where the second series was going to finish. I think in a show like Holby Blue I had to do two things: One is to storyline each individual episode so that every episode had its own kind of self-contained story, its own individual character arc, its own individual character movement, and then a serial arc which kind of went across all twelve episodes. And you can't start the writing process until you've got that.

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