Writers Martin Collins and Alex Finch  on their new comedy Sandylands

This week Gold airs its new comedy Sandylands, featuring the likes of Sanjeev Bhaskhar, David Walliams, Simon Bird and Hugh Bonneville. Here writers Martin Collins and Alex Finch talk about the quirkiness of the British seaside, their starry cast – and  how they were inspired by the real-life story of ‘Canoe Man’ John Darwin, who faked his own disappearance.

What’s the inspiration behind Sandylands? 

Martin: Sandylands started off as a sketch show about a seaside town where one day the sea went out and never returned. We used to write a lot of sketch comedy and we were writing stuff on the side for sitcoms as well. 

We always have this rule with our writing which is to keep things grounded in the idea that it could happen. Everything is inspired so much by a reality, but it shouldn’t ever go into something too magical. 

Sometimes we find some of our writing a bit of a cheat because we’re just writing people that we know and what we’ve enjoyed. But a lot of it is just taking notes and absorbing stuff. 

Also, a lot of the series is based on the canoe Man [John Darwin] and we’ve kind of combined the world of stuff that we write along with the story of him and his wife. Alex bought a book about it. 

Alex: The wife’s book, called Out Of My Depth, was a great ghost-written masterpiece and showed the ridiculousness of their situation. Obviously, there was tragedy involved and we don’t want to laugh at that, but the situation that they got themselves in was strangely comic for certain reasons. 

Martin: Yeah, he’s a normal Man and when the normal Man does something crazy it makes you think. It’s just the thought of him going out to sea and then swimming back. I think he did pick up some slacks out of a bush that he’d planted. 

It’s just a normal dude and then he’s doing this thing and it just snowballed. And I think there’s been times, within Sandylands, where people have actually gone: ‘Oooh is that pushing it a little too far?’ But we’ve always had him as a reference point. 

The Darwins bought the house next door and smashed through behind a cabinet, so he could dart through and within 30 seconds he’d be out the house. There were all these crazy things, where they didn’t tell the kids and stuff like that, it was quite big as well. 

Alex: It’s a mad story. 

Martin:  Just mixing the slight loopiness of that with the characters of the seaside has been a perfect match and we’ve loved building a world like that.

Alex: I think we always liked worlds and places, British places that are like microcosms of eccentricity. People that are like kings of a very small castle. There’s a quirkiness to little England I suppose, and we always really liked tapping into those characters. Everyone I think in the show is sort of based on something real. 

Martin: There are some direct quotes from friends in Sandylands. For example, there’s one where Tina talks about ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s pie’ and that is a saying from a friend of ours. 

Alex: I went to a B&B once where the owner wouldn’t leave the room because he was showing me all the channels, all the way through for about 20 minutes and that was a real inspiration for Derek. We also went to Blackpool for a research weekend to look around and the owner of the B&B we stayed at tried to do magic tricks to us before we got out the room. 

Martin: I think the seaside does something to people as well. I remember being on holiday in Margate, where we go quite often, and a guy being told to get out of a family restaurant because he was just in his trunks. He was like: ‘Oh yeah I’m just in me pants, sorry I didn’t even think about it!

 What was it like filming in Weston-super-Mare? 

Martin: We fell in love with it…

 Alex: Yeah, it’s one of those places that when I first saw it, I just saw the faded seaside town. But, once we’d stayed there a while, I appreciated it as a community and we just fell in love with the 

 tired majesty of it. 

Martin: It’s just quirk isn’t it? I think London can get so small sometimes. Weston-super-Mare has been sandblasted, literally. The buildings have taken a bit of a beating and so on, but it’s the character there which is amazing and it’s quite beautiful. 

Alex: The people there are lovely, and they were really nice to us

How did you feel when you saw the final cast? 

Martin: It’s really amazing that so many people were so up for doing it and we’re just so chuffed that they liked the scripts so much. 

Alex: I think it gave us confidence in the project, I mean we already had that to a degree, but it’s a great endorsement when such amazing people want to get on that ride with you. 

Martin: We’ve written for a long time and we’ve always stayed really true to what we want to write and that’s meant that it’s possibly taken a bit longer than we’d hoped. But the appreciation that we’ve had for the script has been great. 

What do you hope audiences take away from Sandylands? 

Martin: A stick of rock and a bag of chips! 

Alex: I think it’s a place that you want to re-visit, they’re characters that we want people to fall in love with. I think it’s a very inclusive and warm show and I think that, although there is this crazy ride going on, you fall in love with the people in it and you just want to keep coming back. 

Martin: It was really nice to get back in touch with that classic British seaside. I know that a lot of my friends are now going to places like Margate, which might be a bit more gentrified, but people are holidaying here again a bit more and there’s some great traditions in these places.

 The eccentricity of the places really shows that there is no place like it and no one else does the seaside like the UK.

• Sandylands is on Gold on March 4, 5 and 6 at 10pm

Published: 1 Mar 2020