Sam Bain also reveals Fresh Meat news

Peep Show creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong were lined up to write Flight Of The Conchords' US sitcom but had to pull out when their Channel 4 show was recommissioned.

The pair were 'a week away' from flying to Los Angeles to co-create the series but took the 'horrible decision' not to go after series 4 was given the go-ahead, Bain has revealed.

In a lengthy interview with US broadcaster Ken Plume on his A Bit Of A Chat podcast, Bain also discussed Fresh Meat's 'major new characters', how the show has changed since its conception, and admitted to killing Richard Blackwood's career.

Of the new Fresh Meat team, Bain described home-schooled fresher student Candice as 'naïve' and 'taken under their wing a bit'; and Javier as 'a guy' Vod met in Mexico while travelling around South America with Oregon, who 'appears unexpectedly back in their lives'. Casting for these roles is ongoing.

Fresh Meat was rejected by the BBC 14 years ago, and the current characters are 'pretty similar' to those in the original scripts, though Josie, played by Kimberley Nixon 'was written as Asian, she was called Shazia'. And at one point, Kingsley, played by Joe Thomas, was in a wheelchair.

However Bain and Armstrong subsequently decided that an Asian dental student was 'a bit too much of a racial cliché’. And casting Kingsley as disabled was 'quite a bold decision but ultimately we moved away from it … I think we probably felt, correctly, that it might be a little too much to load on that character, too restrictive in some ways’.

JP, played by Jack Whitehall, is the 'most unchanged' since those first scripts. 'We knew people like that in Manchester,' explained Bain, who met Armstrong on a creative writing course at the city's university, before they became flatmates. 'If you've ever been to university, everyone who goes sees JP. It just felt like “yeah, he's a hole in one”. He's a banker.’

The show was originally more of a 'classic sitcom' but 'the script's a lot better than it was then. And it's different in the sense that it has more emotional content, more story, more drama, all the stuff that we've got better at doing … the confidence to go emotional with your characters takes time.'

He also reflected on his and Armstrong's failures, including Richard Blackwood's 2002 BBC vehicle, Ed Stone Is Dead, for which they were part of the writing team: 'We basically killed his career,’ Bain admitted. ‘He was doing really well. Then that show came out and he basically disappeared.'

Acknowledging Blackwood's comeback in Shrek: The Musical, Bain also spoke of his frustration regarding the two uncommissioned pilots for a US adaptation of Peep Show.

They had no creative involvement with the first: 'no-one saw it apart from us, a weird, alternative, bizarr-o reality show ... hunky Jeremy with his bongo drums in Detroit or wherever they were'.

The second, which included their input and was directed by a New York-based friend, 'was a bit sadder [to not be picked up] because obviously we put a bit of work into it'.

Bain's father, Bill, directed episodes of Upstairs Downstairs and The Avengers, while his mother Rosemary Frankau, co-starred in Terry and June and Yes Minister. His grandmother, Renee Roberts, was Miss Gatsby in Fawlty Towers and his cousin, Nicholas Frankau, played the airman Carstairs in Allo, Allo!

Despite this lineage, he claimed that 'I never got any direct help in terms of contacts from anyone in the family'.

But 'it did help me and Jesse in a very unconscious way. I think it just gave me the confidence without even realising to go, “You know what? We can do this!', which is pretty much the most important thing to have in your arsenal [as a television writer], to think that it's a possibility because most people wouldn't think it's a career option … they think it's something that people from other planets do.'

Remaining tight-lipped about details, Bain also revealed that he hopes to make his own TV directing debut adapting his 2002 novel Yours Truly, Pierre Stone; is developing his first stage play, following 'five years of frustration'; and is working on a number of film projects, some with Armstrong. He added that they were 'quite wary' or making Peep Show: The Movie but 'it's possible, we haven't ruled anything out'.

Asked to host a live, Fresh Meat writers' room 'brainstorming session' at this year's Edinburgh Television Festival for executives, he suggested that: 'I'd rather have my eyes pulled out by buzzards.

'We do that as a team but it's very much a sacred space. You're allowed to be honest, say stupid things and have terrible ideas. If you put that on stage, it's like having sex on stage, something's not quite right there.'

- by Jay Richardson

Published: 17 May 2013