00:15You still think she's going to walk through the front door one of these days.
00:19I just need to know.
00:21Come on, be brave.
00:31Michael Sleep as a character is such a refreshingly positive and yet snarky guy.
00:38It's a beautiful character in that way.
00:41Could you talk about, Mackenzie, like building that, building the world that this character of Michael could exist in?
00:49Yeah, I love the word fable.
00:52That's great.
00:53It hadn't really occurred to me that it was a fable, but you're absolutely right.
00:57And I've always been fascinated by stories of ordinary people that something extraordinary happens to, which turns their life upside
01:08down.
01:10And yeah, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was my awakening to storytelling, I suppose.
01:16When I was a kid, I saw that film and it came out with my eyes opened.
01:20And I think I've been fascinated by those stories ever since.
01:24And so it was an exercise in setting something in a very mundane, ordinary world, a world where I grew
01:31up, suburbia.
01:33But to add a supernatural element to elevate it, yeah, into a fable.
01:38I really like that.
01:40Hello, Dad.
01:41No.
01:42No, it's fine.
01:43I'm not busy.
01:47You all right?
01:48Hello, sir.
01:49How's Cleo?
01:50Cleo went away, didn't she, Dad?
01:51Nearly seven years ago.
01:53She left one day, never came back.
01:56I know where you can get some answers.
01:58They're called homunculi.
02:00Tiny prophets who lived in glass jars full of water.
02:03I remember this story.
02:05They could answer any question and they had to answer truthfully.
02:09They'll be able to tell you where Cleo is.
02:12That little house is his whole world, both emotionally, physically, intellectually.
02:19You know, he goes out and sees his dad.
02:21He hangs out at the store.
02:22But, you know, could you talk about that?
02:26Yes, he has a very set routine.
02:28He is, he's sort of, his house has become kind of overgrown and the boxes are sort of growing inside
02:40it as well.
02:41And he is growing and he's hairy and everything is going back to nature somehow.
02:49And everything's been taken over by elements of something going on, which is one of the things I love about
03:00it most is the contrast between his home and work.
03:05Like the sort of, that sort of sterile environment where, you know, where, where all the ingredients to fix where
03:14he lives, you know, exist.
03:17He could go in there, use his staff discount, get a few mates round.
03:21He could have a swanky new kitchen like everyone else, get those trees cut down and stuff.
03:25But no, that's not, that's not where he's going.
03:29That's not his life at all.
03:32This place is named after the dog that found the World Cup.
03:36Pickles.
03:38I don't know what the connection is.
03:40I don't think he was from round here.
03:42It's time to give back what's mine, Michael.
03:49What if she comes back?
03:50Claire is not coming back.
03:51What if she does?
03:53Michael, they found her car on the Severn Bridge.
03:55Yes, and she wasn't in it.
03:57Mate, I don't know whether I miss her as much as you do.
03:59I think about her every day.
04:02She was my sister.
04:05But there's nothing I could have done, and I've made peace with that.
04:09This Christmas, it will be seven years.
04:12We can apply for a presumption of death.
04:16I want the house back, Michael.
04:19It belongs to me.
04:20What are you going to do, move in?
04:21I'm going to sell it.
04:22Well, I'll stay on until you find a buyer.
04:25No one's going to buy it.
04:26The estate is in.
04:28Needs to be cleared out.
04:29There might be structural damage.
04:31There might be...
04:32Got to go.
04:34Michael, I drove past there this afternoon.
04:36The gutter is hanging off.
04:37The garden is impenetrable.
04:39Who knows what it's like inside?
04:40It's time to take your head out of the sand, mate.
04:43She's not coming back.
04:57Him in that alleyway with that one guy when he's mistaken for somebody else.
05:01It's such a beautiful thing that he sort of plays into, and yet, even with Mackenzie, when you're playing Gordon,
05:08you know, he's like, well, okay.
05:10You know, there's this timing thing that happens.
05:13One of the earliest things I wrote was back when I thought that this might be a Detectorist spin-off,
05:20that it might be Pierce's character Russell from Detectorist, and I wondered what he did for a job.
05:26And I wrote a bunch of these, those dialogues in the DIY store when he's winding up the customers just
05:36to amuse himself.
05:38I think that the paint, the new colour in the paint, that was, I think, possibly the first thing I
05:45wrote years ago, and just sort of sat on those things.
05:50The mischievousness of it and of him, and that I wanted Michael to be a magnet for strange things happening
06:01to him.
06:01So that scene that you mentioned in the alleyway, when he's almost robbed, yeah, things happen to Michael.
06:11He comes across kids robbing a security van, and that's sort of apropos of nothing, really.
06:19It's just something that happens to Michael, and it's so Michael.
06:23Those sort of things happen to him every day.
06:25Oh, no, no, I'm only up in the one.
06:27I've got a car.
06:28Leave it here, get the bus.
06:29Where do you live?
06:31Marvin Gardens, just off the Wilmsborough Road.
06:33Oh, my God, yeah, I know.
06:34Listen, it's a 20-minute walk from here, you're fine.
06:37Do you know Danielle?
06:38She used to live on the corner of Marvin Gardens.
06:40I was mates with her at school.
06:42I hadn't spoken to her in years, though.
06:43She went off to catering college.
06:45Oh, my God, there used to be this house on Marvin Gardens, right, that was just, like, full of junk.
06:51And, like, the garden was an absolute jungle.
06:53I mean, this bloke lived there, but nobody saw him.
06:55Well, Danielle saw him a few times, but anyways.
06:59He murdered his wife.
07:01Yeah.
07:02Everyone knew.
07:03I mean, the police dug up his garden and everything, but they never found out.
07:06They reckon he dissolved her in battery acid and flushed her down the loo, so he got away with it.
07:11How long have you lived there?
07:19Oh, my God, that's your house.
07:21Pierce, did you find Michael fairly quick?
07:23Did you have to sort of get into his skin, or was he easy, that cadence, to find with him?
07:30Well, he had, well, because Mackenzie wrote it with me in mind, I could be northern, so I didn't have
07:39to worry about an accent, because I can't do accents very well.
07:42Well, my clothes were nice and loose and comfortable, again, fantastic.
07:46I didn't have to shave or cut my hair, which I absolutely love, because I hate being in the chair
07:51at work, hate being fussed over.
07:56It was all, it was all, it was a dream.
07:59It was an absolute dream.
08:01And then on top of that, to get to say those lines was, I mean, there were, you know, I've
08:07said this to Mackenzie before, I used to skip into work every day.
08:11It was, I used to look forward to it so much.
08:15And there were long days in virtually every scene, but it flew by, the whole thing flew by.
08:22How's it going? Are they growing?
08:24Are you sure you're all right, Dad?
08:26Yes, the prophets, you said you've seen them.
08:29Are they moving? Are they eating?
08:33I can see three.
08:35The other jars are empty, as far as I can tell.
08:38Which three?
08:39Well, I think one of them is the king, he's got a crown.
08:42Yeah, good, that's right.
08:43And the others?
08:44Maybe a queen, maybe an angel.
08:47That'd be the seraph, yeah.
08:49You've got to keep on top of the water changes and the feeding and continue to chant.
08:54It makes them strong.
08:56Dad, what are they?
08:58They look like people trapped in jars.
09:00What am I doing?
09:01Should I even be doing this?
09:03No, no, you mustn't anthropomorphize them.
09:05They're not people, they're not even physical half the time.
09:09They're supernatural.
09:10The show has a lot of heart.
09:12You can be edgy, you can take the piss out of people, but it has a lot of heart.
09:17I mean, with Lauren, even with Bev, the next door neighbor, she loves this guy.
09:22I mean, could you talk about mixing sort of that humor and that little bit of darkness?
09:27Even Sir Michael, you know, same thing.
09:30I love writing uncynical stuff.
09:35It started with Detectorist and that was a very deliberate thing to write something that didn't have the cruelty that
09:40seems so prevalent these days.
09:45All of the actors brought more to these characters than I had imagined when I was writing.
09:50So, like, Clive next door, I wrote as a kind of two-dimensional, you know, the villain next door.
10:00But he brought a lot more to it.
10:02And by the end, I felt for him.
10:06I felt his frustration.
10:07He just wants some order.
10:09And he can't understand how this apparently chaotic guy next door is more at peace than he is.
10:17So, yeah, it's when you when you get great actors on board, they interpret your lines differently to how you
10:24thought they were going to be said and interpreted.
10:28So, that's a real, that's a proper alchemy for me to see it transformed and evolved in front of my
10:35eyes.
10:36Yeah.
10:37I thought that this was just a bedtime story.
10:40I didn't think it might actually be real.
10:42What in the hell is this problem?
10:46What are you actually growing in your shed?
10:48Among your lives!
10:50Get your own, yeah?
10:52Are you two an item?
10:55No, uh, jeez!
11:06This is man's hole.
