01x99 - Extras

Episode transcripts for the 2016 TV show "The A Word". Premiered March 22.*
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"The A Word" follows a family after their son is diagnosed with autism.
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01x99 - Extras

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Lee Ingleby: It's been great in the Lakes. It's, er, it's such... I don't know. It seems to be every corner that you turn, there's a different landscape.

You know, if you haven't got the lakes itself, you've got the big fells and hills and valleys. It's amazing, you know, there's always something interesting to look at and it's part of the character of the piece as well.

Morven Christie: This... You know, the exterior locations for the Lake District, so it's been kind of great cos we get to see...

We've moved around a lot and we get to see quite a lot of the Lake District and it's so beautiful. It's good to sort of get that into you before we start sh**ting all the interior stuff, so we really know where we live, erm... So, yeah, it's been good, challenging, the weather's gone up and down quite a lot and that can make things very difficult but it's... That's life, isn't it? And it's... Yeah, it's been really good.

Christopher Eccleston: It's been going very well. Logistics are always, er, slightly more difficult when you're in the Lake District, er, unit bases and stuff like that. It's harder to get to but the benefit is that we get this on the screen, so it's been a bonding experience for the cast and crew, the Lakes.

Lisa Millett: Had some challenging weather, we've had some sunshine and we've had some wind and some rain and some mud, but that's glorious England for you.

But in terms of the work, I think we've done some really nice stuff, establishing all the different characters and the different relationships and it's looking really good. I think it's really starting to get a feel of the story and how all the stories connect and intertwine.

George Bukhari: Nothing like it out there at the moment and I think it's touching on a subject which is gonna interest a lot of people, yeah, so I think it's great and the little boy who plays... Max in it is absolutely fantastic.

I watched a bit of the show the other day and it warmed my heart, so I think audiences are going to love him and you've got the likes of Chris Eccleston in it, who's absolutely phenomenal. As a younger actor, to be on set around a man like that is just like... you're in awe, you know what I mean?

I mean, I really like the Lakes.

Although it's...

Yeah, no, it is, it's... Although it is quite cold.

Yeah, it's a bit cold in here, but it's nice to be a tad warmer.

It was cold but the people in Broughton were amazing, weren't they?

Yeah, really nice.

Molly Wright: We completely took over, completely took over.

Thomas Gregory: Erm, they were great. People in Broughton, we hope you're well and we hope that your homes aren't damaged too much.

Because we need to get...


Because we need to use them.

Yes.

We've got that amazing bus shelter as well.

We hope that's intact, although I think...

We need to take over your town again, so let's hope it's in one piece.

Lee Ingleby: It's been amazing, really, I mean, you know, I think already, you know, there's friendships forming and everybody's just on board, cos it's an amazing piece and it's a beautiful script and I think we all know that and we want to give it the attention and the love that it deserves, so it's great. I feel like we've got a little family going already, you know, like a wider family within the crew and everybody, but, yeah, brilliant, I'm loving it.

<font color="#0E7521">Ripped & Corrected By mstoll</font>

Marcus Wilson: The first thing that attracted me to The A Word was the fact that it was written by Pete Bowker. I've been a huge fan of his work and jumped at the chance to work with him.

Lee Ingleby: It was kind of one of those scripts that when you first start reading it, it just grabs you straightaway. I don't know, it was just so beautifully written and beautifully paced.

It was funny, it was sad, it was heartbreaking and warm.

Morven Christie: I like stories that are about people and about relationships and that's what this is. It's a family story and Pete's really great at writing that kind of multi-generational, just the truth of being in a relationship.

Greg Mchugh: Peter Bowker has got a fantastic ability to make, in some ways, what might seem quite simple on the page kind of funny and touching, but not overly melodramatic.

He's just got a really nice balance in his writing which I really admire.

Vinette Robinson: The bigger themes I find really interesting, in terms of it focuses on a little boy who, by definition of his condition, can't communicate very well, but it expands that to how all of us have difficulty communicating and the gap between what we want to say and what we do say and all those difficulties.

Marcus Wilson: The show lives or dies by us finding the right actor to play the part of Joe. It was the central role around which we built our family and we started a long, long way out from sh**ting, looking for the right actor.

Peter Cattaneo: Andy Pryor, the casting director, then has a team, they go out and contact schools, drama groups, agents, anything, you know, put it on the radio, go online.

"Do you want to be in a TV show?" And then they just start meeting people, just doing... I just gave them a very simple, "Sing Mardy Bum with headphones on." And that was it, really.

Peter Bowker: We narrowed it down to four or five boys and then we looked at them on tape and, frankly, Max Vento, who is playing Joe, was everybody's first choice. From the moment we saw him, he has a real natural presence on screen.

He has an energy that's right.

He's been remarkable.

Morven Christie: I remember when I first read the scripts thinking, "This is a lot to ask, "you know, "of a five- or six-year-old child. "This is quite... This is going to be really challenging," you know.

I can't imagine them having found anyone other than Max.

But he does it with brilliant humour and good grace and, you know, I think he's enjoying it.

Greg Mchugh: It's obviously a very challenging thing he's got to do. He's six years old, he's having to play a child with autism.

I mean, I don't really think it gets more difficult than that.

Molly Wright: He's so funny, he's like a little pro. He's a little old man but he's amazing. He's so... He's brilliant. He's a little pro.

Christopher Eccleston: You know, it's a massive, overwhelming thing to be involved in a production like this and he's done... he's done a fantastic job.

I don't know... Yeah, I don't know how he does it.

Maybe he could tell me and give me some tips!

Marcus Wilson: Every day through preproduction, we wondered if we would find him and every day through sh**ting we wondered how we'd been this lucky.

He's been brilliant, he's been amazing.

Setting the show in the Lake District was a key decision.

It is the canvas upon which our story plays out.

Peter Bowker: It's stunning, it just changes all the time and the landscape is both incredibly beautiful and always carries a thr*at and I thought, if you thought you were living in paradise until the moment you had a child who might be vulnerable, then I think that's the interest and the landscape plays a role in the storytelling then.

Morven Christie: We sh*t the first three weeks in the Lake District. We did all the exterior stuff first so we got a real sense of the environment they live in. I think for any character in any story, that's key. It's massively important for the character of Joe, that wilderness, that space.

Vinette Robinson: It serves as a metaphor for how he, dealing with his condition and his autism...
Greg Mchugh: Having some days of sunshine and rain, you kind of see how tiny people we are and... with all these massive things around us and how you begin to concentrate on your little clan, your little family, when you get that bit of news, so having a very vast setting, that's very changeable, I think, is absolutely perfect.

The A Word is about how families communicate with one another and how sometimes we think we're communicating and actually we're not and any audience can look at The A Word and hopefully see themselves, or people they know, reflected.

I think they'll really connect to it because they'll connect to this family and they'll see all the same dramas and hopes and fears and battles that everyone has within their family.

Christopher Eccleston: I think it's a nice blend of comedy and drama. I think it reflects how we all get through life.

Molly Wright: It's got everything and I think that's amazing, for something so simple as well. I mean, it's just a normal family.

Greg Mchugh: It's funny, it's very touching.

It's got strong characters and a complex family dynamic and it also doesn't shy away from the issue.

You know, there's no bells and whistles and by that I mean, you know, there's no car chases, there's no special effects, there's no, er, you know, m*rder or anything like that. It's just about a family and it's very honest and it's very open and it's almost a simple story but... beautifully complex and beautifully told... I hope.

Marcus Wilson: Setting the show in the Lake District was a key decision.

It is the canvas upon which our story plays out.

It serves as an incredibly dramatic and beautiful backdrop to a family drama.

I knew when I wanted to write this, that I wanted it to be in a place that was both remote but lived in, if that makes any sense. A place where there was a community but was distant enough for there to be problems to seek help, particularly for Joe, the central child.

Gary Barnes: They were very generous with the prep on this, because we knew the locations were going to be important, so I basically went round, I spent three or four weeks going to every single village in the Lake District.

I had a map in front of me and a marker pen and I just went through them all and photographed them. Then we went on a sort of pre-recce with execs and producer, Marcus, and we looked round the ones we thought could be possibilities, narrowed it down to three or four.

Then went out again with more people, and the director, Peter, and sort of picked out what made our village life in our story from two or three separate ones.

From, just purely from an aesthetic point of view, it's both beautiful and it carries a thr*at.

But also, I think the Lakes, as beautiful and stunning as it is, always remains a kind of working place. You get a sense of industry, you get a sense of people going about their business in a way that's not at all picture book, I guess.

So that was important, too.

Paul Spriggs: The first process was to go to the Lakes and look at the locations that we had to find.

The most important one was the Hughes' and Scotts' house. The script was very specific about how they lived next door to each other, so it was trying to find a location which worked geographically for the story but also gave us a real sense of the Lakes. We were lucky enough to find the house that we did, which was in an incredible location. Although it was in a fantastic house, the architecture was... It was a collection of small rooms, and that didn't really work for us filming. Although we took the footprint of the actual house, it was great to be able to open it up for filming. We made a decision to build the interiors here in the Space Project in Manchester.

Let's take a look at the Hughes' house.

This is the dining room, the living room, and the study, opened up to make it easy to film.

This is the hallway, and this is the kitchen - the heart of the Hughes' house.

There's a lot of scenes that take place in the kitchen, so we tried to make it a reasonable size but not too big.

We really wanted to have a sense of it being a proper family house.

In reality, only this part of it is the main Hughes' house that we filmed in.

We basically took all the walls out to make it easy to film and to give it, to give the space some depth.

We made sure that we could see literally from one end of the set to the other.

Gary Barnes: One of the reasons why it appealed to me is that the locations are really important to this. Peter, the director, wanted it to be all kind of quite sort of foreboding and, you know, big hills, and more that than rambling green fields, so we can see the jeopardy in what might happen there from the beginning.

So that's what we were looking for, really.

Paul Spriggs: It's been a really lovely job to work on. They're fantastic scripts, an amazing environment to work in the Lake District but also a real challenge to bring a sense of that into the studios.

And also, the gastro-pub probably the most challenging part of the show for me because we started with basically a cow shed and during the process of, four months we've had to convert it, with all the various stages of building which Peter's written, to bring it to life in a pretty challenging and muddy environment.

I think we've had about three storms during the course of the sh**t which have caused it to be just that little bit harder.

Even though it's been hard work, I think that makes people push a little bit harder, if you think that you're making something worthwhile and something good.

Marcus Wilson: The Lake District has been a fantastic place to sh**t. We couldn't have asked for more support from the people whose locations we filmed in.

The Lake District has been a great home for The A Word and has given us a huge amount of production value and visual splendour.

Keren Margalit: The show in Israel is called Yellow Peppers.

This series was always for us about communication and not about autism, and what's a better set-up to check it if not with families?

Which is the craziest, funniest, weird thing.

Sara Johnson: I watched a trailer for this series and sat in a meeting with tears rolling down my cheeks, thinking, "This is very, very beautiful. Wouldn't it be wonderful, wouldn't it be a wonderful dream if we could find a way to bring this here and work out what we could do with it?"

Marcus Wilson: The journey for The A Word coming to the screen has been quite a long one. The show is based on an Israeli series called Yellow Peppers, written and directed by Keren Margalit.

One of the great challenges in doing this show in another culture, in another country, is to have a writer that will have that sensitivity, that will have that vision.

And we were so lucky to find a writer that took the Israeli show, made it a totally British show.

Sara Johnson: In order to bring a show and try to remake it or reimagine it into a whole different place, into a whole different country, into a whole different language, the first thing you have to find is the writer who completely loves it and sees the potential in it.

Pete Bowker developed it with Patrick Spence at Fifty Fathoms.

Pete was inspired, very inspired by Yellow Peppers, that dealt with a family living with a child with autism. And he wanted to reimagine that in the way that only Pete can.

I love the original Israeli series, it's a towering achievement, but I felt there was enough in there for me and enough in my head about this subject matter to do something different with it, and to do something that would become our own.

Marcus Wilson: What I love about Pete's writing is the way that he takes very personal stories and makes them speak to everyone, so you immediately empathise with his characters and the situations that they find themselves in.

And he does it with such empathy but also with huge amounts of wit and humour, so you really enjoy spending time with these people.

I suppose what I loved about the version that I have kept is how much humour there is in it and how much humanity there is in it.

It's very easy to write a drama about autism and to make that full of angst and full of sorrow. And I wanted to be able to capture the struggle without necessarily making it po-faced.

So the big thing was the Israeli series gave me permission to do that.

I go where Pete goes, I just find his voice extraordinary.

So, we developed the scripts together, took them to the BBC, and they... they said yeah.

So we've spent 2014, '15, developing the storylines, prepping the show, and began filming in the summer of 2015. And hopefully soon it will be on people's screens in early 2016.
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