Sexy Murder

Céin McGillicuddy and Andy Kinnear interview

Céin McGillicuddy and Andy Kinnear are the creators behind BBC Three's Sexy Murder, and worked on the show as the unusual combination of co-writers, director and editor, respectively. Here they explain more about how they made the comedy...

What is Sexy Murder?

Sexy Murder is a take-off of true-crime documentaries like Making A Murderer, The Jinx, Serial and The Staircase and tells the story of American documentary filmmaker Christoph Spinetti, who comes to the UK to document a woman's mysterious disappearance.

Spinetti is intent on defending a man wrongly accused of her murder. However, no one is being accused of anything yet. So in his efforts to find who will maybe be accused of her possible murder, he winds up implicating Tom Jessop, a completely innocent man. Unfortunately for Tom, the longer Spinetti is trying to defend his name, the worse it gets.

How did the project come about?

It all started because we love the true crime documentary genre, and we love taking the mickey out of things we love. We've been really enjoying this new wave of dramatic true crime docs, and that's what we found ripe for parody; how they're made to be so entertaining yet also illustrate facts, and the natural conflict of interest that brings.

Documentaries should really be impartial and factual, but often you're subliminally made to think 'Listen to that villainous music, he blatantly did it' or 'Look at all the carefully chosen footage of this guy smiling with his family, he can't be a murderer!'. Sometimes entertainment takes precedence over objectivity. So, consciously or not, true crime documentaries are often in the business of making murder sexy.

We had worked with [production company] Roughcut on our BBC Three series Top Coppers, which we also co-wrote and directed/edited respectively, so we already had a strong working relationship with Ash Atalla and the BBC commissioner Chris Sussman, so the commission came quite quickly off of the back of that. The odd crime themed synergy between Top Coppers and Sexy Murder is genuinely a coincidence. We are capable of making comedy without death, we promise.

Can you tell us more about the development...

The character of Spinetti was actually an unused villain character from Top Coppers, who we had originally come up with from watching way too much Cheaters when we lived together. Cheaters is a really trashy American reality show that hunts down love rats and exposes them. It was presented by a guy called Joey Greco; very slick, goatee, controlled and earnest. There was something really funny about him seeming like such a beacon of morality, yet he was presenting such an exploitative TV show. There was a contradiction there that we found really funny and it stuck in our minds. So when the new wave of true crime documentaries started landing, the opportunity to write Sexy Murder came up and we knew Spinetti's time had come.

We felt it was important not just to make a one-off parody of the genre but to create characters that had bigger potential. For example, you can picture Christoph Spinetti or the lawyer Simon Schinwald doing much more, making other documentaries or ruining other people's lives with their respectively terrible documentary making and litigation skills.

We've worked out an interesting backstory for Spinetti; what some of his previous documentaries have been about, his torturous relationship with his ex-wife, etc. we find having that depth to your characters gives the comedy a richer feel, even if the details never make it on screen.

We always impose a set of rules on ourselves for whatever we're writing, which are rules to the universe of the idea and the format we're making it in. Top Coppers had a very different set of rules, so they vary greatly depending on the idea. We find this important to keep the show focused and cohesive, as we think audiences like to know where they stand. For example, as opposed to Top Coppers, we wanted Sexy Murder to have a sense of realism. Because if you can believe this might happen, then Tom's situation feels funnier. The authenticity makes it that little bit darker.

Another rule was that each episode had to follow a very simple formula: Spinetti tries to do something to help Tom, but in being driven by making the show as cool and sexy as possible, he somehow ends up making Tom's situation worse.

We thought a lot about Spinetti's motivation, as we didn't want it to feel like he was doing all of these things to Tom on purpose. He's not a Machiavellian villain trying to ruin Tom's life, he's just trying to make a cool documentary. So Spinetti's starting point is always, "How can I help Tom? But in a sexy way?". Maybe he could make a reconstruction using the actual crime scene, in order to make it as realistic as possible. There's a twisted logic to that, though deeply flawed in practice. Keep an eye out for the look Spinetti gives to camera at the end of chapter two. That moment sums him up perfectly.

You've got a great cast...

We had worked with Rich Fulcher previously on Top Coppers and absolutely loved him, both for his performance and on a personal level. He's genuinely the nicest, most chilled-out guy. He's obviously a very funny man, but it's his enthusiasm and commitment to his characters that we find so infectious. One of the most exciting things is that, when you start rolling, you never know what he's going to do. Yeah, there's a script and he'll say those words, but then you'll get a whole load of other words you never, ever expected, and that's a huge part of his appeal. "Punch her in the face, hydrochloric acid", etc. was all him just going off on one.

Likewise, Nick Mohammed as Tom's incompetent lawyer Simon Schinwald just embodies the character and offered up so much more. He's a real tour de force, we can't wait to work with him again.

We were really lucky with our whole line-up in all honesty: Maggie O'Neill, Shaun Williamson and Marcia Warren alongside Lolly Adefope, Daniel Barker and Phil Wang. They're all immense. Actually, we had also worked with Phil on Top Coppers and we love him probably that a little bit too much. Don't tell him though.

Our producer Bertie Peek at Roughcut is very knowledgeable of the comedy scene and brilliant at spotting up-and-coming comedy talent, which is really useful as it's always been important for us to cast the best and funniest person to play a character, regardless of how famous they are. So on Sexy Murder, we cast complete newcomer James Gordon as Tom. He hadn't acted professionally before, but he just nailed exactly what it was about Tom that would be funny: that frustrated, annoyed yet helpless expression, and just so clearly an innocent man. James is fantastic and we believe destined for bigger things.

Tell us more about the filming...

The whole production was very low budget, coming from a BBC Three online commission of 6 five minute episodes. But because we write the script that we're going to direct/edit, it means we can factor this in early on, and script it in such a way that we maximise the money available. Also, our production manager Jemma Gershinson was incredible, so when it came to the shoot we were able to pretty much do everything we had planned! We shot over 5 days in total in and around London and it was pretty smooth considering the relatively small team we had.

One of the very first things we shot was Spinetti's long, single-shot final monologue to camera, so we kind of threw Rich Fulcher in the deep end with that one. Sorry Rich!

You mentioned above how important music is in a crime documentary...

Something that's become a large part of our style is how we use music. In Top Coppers we considered it a character in itself; punctuating jokes, enhancing jokes or even creating jokes, and we knew that it was going to be just as important on Sexy Murder.

We first met our composer Holley Gray when we were at university in Bournemouth. He worked with us on the very first 15 second version of Top Coppers in 2006 and we've worked together on pretty much everything ever since.

We find music and how it can be used in comedy is often overlooked. It's such a powerful driving force and gives you a brilliant shorthand for emotions and comedic emphasis, as well as greater control over tone and timing.

In Sexy Murder, it was all about authenticity. It had to feel like real true crime music, so Holley composed and recorded an entirely originally theme. This is the violin part being played by multi-instrumentalist Dan Baker:

An Executive Producer thought we must have nicked it from something! We love working with Holley, his talent and commitment is second to none. Don't tell him either.

What's it like to take on multiple roles?

We find the combination of co-writing, directing and editing has a lot of advantages. We're able to plan more ambitious concepts and unusual gags or set pieces, because we're both involved at every stage to see them through. That was a huge advantage on Top Coppers, where we worked in some bizarre ideas! But also for Sexy Murder, as we could throw ourselves into it and maintain the authentic true-crime feel from conception to completion.

It wouldn't necessarily suit every production, but sometimes you can feel a deep love in shows that have been created that way. The Office, The Mighty Boosh, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Fleabag, etc. There's often an attention to detail that may seem overzealous on its own, but when they're all put together make for a much richer comedy experience. Well, that's what we strive for at least!

Watch Episode 1 here... or you can now watch Sexy Murder as one single 30 minute episode via BBC iPlayer