You have a lovely front room.
Thank you very much, Roses....
That's just what's going on camera.
I love it.
Thanks for joining me today.
Thank you. Thank you for joining us.
All right.
So, I mean, I've only seen the first couple of episodes of the series,
and I mean, from the title alone, it seems a little bit misleading.
There wasn't much of the romance there,
which, you know, I'm
not complaining about that, But but there was a whole lot of,
like, guilt ridden anguish, especially for Romesh,
your character, that they could, um.
Can you tell our audience a little bit about what they can expect
from the series?
Um, well,
I guess what they can expect is two people
who are in
love and desperate to have a child and can't do it,
and the expense of IVF forces them to do something very extreme.
And the series kind of plays out what the ramifications are of that.
You know, they're incredibly desperate.
They want to make this happen.
They've been through the mill.
And so they decided that this drastic step of stealing from their work
in order to to help them from their IVF and
you watch them undergo the stresses
of the fallout of that basically is kind of
you know, it's a relationship comedy
set against the backdrop of a very high pressure crime situation.
I mean, so it's kind of those things running
concurrently alongside each other.
But and in regards to the lack of romance us, because Katherine
Ryan made it very clear that she didn't want to touch Rachel in the course.
So that's true.
And that's because I feel like romance can come in many forms.
And some people are quite physically intimate and passionate,
and other people have married for nearly a decade
and they show romance through, you know, acts of loyalty, acts of service.
And, you know, I think the romance does heighten, though.
You won't you won't read it immediately as like passion.
But these two are very united and very much in love.
But just trying to get away.
Yeah, assuming just assume that every time that on
camera they're absolutely smashed and they're going to
as an image are needed to keep
Romesh,
you also co-created and wrote the series and it's quite an original concept
as well.
I mean, where did with this idea come from?
Ben and I had this idea of like,
of seeing what the fallout is from committing a crime.
And we just sort of thought that
we self watched, you know, things that Ocean's 11 and stuff like that.
And you see the you see a crime being committed.
And then we just thought, what happens?
We just thought we wanted to show something that happened after that.
But we didn't want them to be we didn't want them to be criminals.
We want them to be regular people just because we just felt like for a comedy,
it would be easier.
It's just better is better for comedy if these people are kind of
thrown into it as a result of their circumstances.
So that was kind of the starting point.
And then everything else kind of grew from there, really.
We wanted it to be a relationship thing.
We wanted to put those two people under stress
and we wanted that relationship to be convincing.
So we kind of put all of those things together
and it was like there were a lot of iterations of the show.
I mean, we we played around with how much we wanted
the crime to be at the forefront,
how much one of the idea has to be at the forefront.
And we wanted to achieve a balance and hopefully we did. But
yeah, the starting point was very much like,
what happens if two people end up committing something pretty radical
in a very kind of regular, normal backdrop?
And so that was that was always a starting point.
Also, it's that you've just mentioned the IVF and the fertility.
That can be quite a touchy subject for some people as well.
And to back that up in a comedy storyline and with the whole culture,
you know, where everybody's offended at the slightest little thing these days.
Was that a worry for either
of you to come filming this, knowing how it might go?
Cause I mean, I think in my stand up and on my podcast,
I've talked a lot about struggles with fertility and non-linear journeys
to creating families and pregnancy loss, and I think lots of comedians
touch on a variation of subjects that might have darkness
and might be very traumatic and very relatable to people.
And our intention is never to poke fun
in a cheap way or minimize
those terrible parts of people's lives, but to put lightness in the dark
and to deal with real world situations and to write comedy, lifting them,
surrounding them, but never to take the mick out of the actual thing
that's causing pain. I feel like
fertility
journeys are a part of life, and comedy is about life.
You have to have some drama in the comedy and you can still
hopefully make people feel better about their situation or even distract them
from the darkest parts of their situation and never be like,
you know, diminishing the actual thing like we were in.
Romesh, I mean, you can talk more about this.
I did like research and was certainly very sensitive
surrounding the subject of IVF.
Yeah.
I mean, we we wanted to handle the thing sensitively and make sure
it's difficult because as you said, that's quite a serious thing.
And we were all in an accommodate and so we wanted to make sure
that we handled that properly.
And a lot of thought,
like a lot of thought went into how we portray it in the show.
Like we you know, we didn't take that responsibility lightly.
But at the same time, to your point about so people get offended, I
don't think that should be a driving force behind what you decide to write about.
I don't think you should allow yourself to not write certain things or tackle
certain things because you're worried that people are going to get offended.
I mean, I'm not I'm not looking to offend anybody.
I'm not looking to antagonize anybody.
But at the same time, that's not really.
I think the moment you start allowing that to become part
of your creative process, you've got a problem.
Really? Yeah.
And now this show has quite a few comedians that comedy actors
within the series from just the two episodes I saw them was quite a few.
Were you ever
worried that there was like any too many cooks in the kitchen?
Quite a scenario going on at any point?
Was there any clashes, comedy clashes, shall we say, behind the scenes?
I don't.
I think if you've got a comedy, you just want to run it
for as many funny people as you possibly can.
And, you know, I mean, I don't think you know, and the thing is
like, you know, Kathryn's a very generous performer.
I want the show to be good.
And so if somebody comes in
and absolutely smashes a scene and is hilarious, that's great.
I mean, I'm not I'm not sitting there going, bloody hell,
they are funny than I was in that same way.
You know, I don't give a shit about that.
You know, like, I want the show to be funny.
And, you know, for example, Tom
Davis appears in a lighter episode.
You know, Johnny Vegas is a steam sailor.
There's no denying that.
And when Tom Davis turns up, he's unbelievable in his scene.
And I just think when I watch somebody be absolutely brilliant, as Kathryn
was throughout the whole six episodes, you just go, how amazing is this?
Like this,
this show that we're working on that's got these people being really brilliant?
I mean, I don't see any negatives in that really, that there were no classic
gig, isn't it. Yeah, and yeah, exactly.
It's the same any gig unless it's a prick.
And then you just say, oh, I'm. But, but
I think
we're in a very privileged position of knowing a lot of people and who are funny.
And so you kind of want to populate it with your friends, really.
You know, if that's how that I wouldn't,
you know, I wouldn't use nepotism to almost anyone.
And it just because I might imagine I much as many of my friends
would want to be, but yeah, I kind of wasn't worried about that at all.
I just thought we're really lucky.
And a lot of these people that agreed to do it, I just thought,
you know, I just had you sort of like pinch yourself.
You can't believe that they're willing to come and do it.
So it was it was a proper treatment.
We're really happy.
Yeah.
You mentioned in Friends
that you two have been friends for quite a few years, haven't you?
Yeah. Yeah.
But you were co-writing.
Did you have Kathryn in mind to take on the role as Alison?
Yeah, it was written for Kathryn .
You know, when we when we first started developing the show,
the first decision that was made was that Kathryn
Ryan was going to be in it if she was up for it. So
and I text Kathryn when I was still originally developing that
when we first had the idea and we got to a point
where we knew that was was definitely going to be attached
text Kathryn straight away and said what do you think of this as an idea?
And she said, Yes, because at that stage there's no commitment,
because most TV shows never make it to screen.
But yeah, so that's
the only way I'll ever be in anything because I'm terrible at auditions.
So I'm just very lucky
that I have very wisely
hooked on to the coattails of my super talented friends.
And then when they have something going on, I could be like, I'm pregnant again.
Please, I need a job.
So, yeah, it was always going to be Kathryn .
Yeah. Okay.
Kathryn , your character, Alison, she's a bit like the cheese
to the chalk, she would say.
And she's a bit more blasé in the fact that they've stolen this money.
And at one point early on, she spends over a grand on a handbag,
which obviously sends the can spiraling if you want to expectedly
come into a ton of money.
What what would make you so frivolous.
I did unexpectedly come into a ton of money.
I used to work in an office and before that I was a waitress
and I never imagined that I would be embraced by comedy fans in the UK.
And I would get to tour and I would get to buy property in the UK.
So I mean that genuinely, I feel like
in a roundabout way I robbed Johnny Vegas
so that I could support my child.
I the most frivolous thing
I've ever purchased was a horse and he wasn't.
You know, British horses are not that expensive.
You could just see a horse in a pub.
He's not a racehorse.
He was like a little pony that my daughter rode,
and he turned out to be a little bit problematic.
He was mounting some of the mayors
and the mayors are bigger than he was, and they would really beat him up.
So the farmer across the road rang me and he said, You got to stop this pony
mounting the mayors or else he's going to get killed.
And I respect mayors because they look after each other
and they look after themselves.
And if you are a little white pony who tries to mount them,
they will kick you into the dirt.
So I had to change his feed, take all the sugar out of his diet,
which I didn't even know lowers the libido in men.
And eventually we gave him to my daughter's best friend for free
because he was such a liability in my life.
So that was money absolutely wasted.
My daughter fell off him a couple of times.
He got beat up by some mares and I gave him away.
And that was the most frivolous, expensive ever made.
Well, thank you so much for your time today.
It's been a pleasure.
And I can't wait to see the rest of the series
because the first two episodes had me bawling.
Oh, God. Thank you for that. Thank you very much.
That's very kind of you. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye bye. Yeah.