Sam Bain

Sam Bain on bringing Babylon to the screen

With the series available on DVD and Blu-ray from today, co-creator Sam Bain spoke to Digital Spy about the challenges of bringing Babylon to the screen.

After a pilot which felt slightly underpowered given the calibre of creative talent involved, this comedy-drama has really clicked into gear over a full series. While never quite becoming The Thick Of It for the eternally beleaguered Met, Sam Bain, Jesse Armstrong and Robert Jones's creation has trampled irreverently over all manner of sacred cows concerning our law enforcers' dealings with the media.

The penultimate episode of Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong's slightly strange drama/comedy proposition, and the show remains perched on the edge of a Charlie Brooker-style dark drama, without quite breaking through. Still, there is some strong satire, great acting and excellent jokes. As ever, the armed response guys get the best lines, even in the middle of a cover-up ("I've shot him in the back. You can't make it out on these cameras"), while Liz attempts to turn a missing child into a career opportunity.

What did we think of the first episode?

Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain are on fire at the moment, aren't they? The seriously funny minds behind Peep Show and Fresh Meat, and who worked on the likes of The Thick of It and Four Lions, have turned their satirical eye on the Metropolitan Police in Channel 4′s Babylon last night.

It is to the police what Twenty Twelve and W1A were to the Olympics and the BBC, though bolder, sharper, swearier. Maybe more like The Thick of It then, with which it shares some creative DNA. And, like TTOI, there are, in with the deadpan insanity, some truths. About the police, their image issues, target culture, political interference, privatisation etc. As well as - as you'd expect with Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong writing - some glorious lines.

"I'm on 24-hour-a-day storm watch yeah, I sleep like a cokey meerkat on an electric fence, that's me relaxing, I've got a map inside my head of all the trouble in the world and you just popped up on the radar like Godzilla's hard on, and I will cut you loose if you ever, ever fuck me again Charlie, all right?" says Commissioner Richard Miller. Played by James Nesbitt, who looks like he's enjoying himself after - during - all the misery of The Missing.

The cachet of its creators - Danny Boyle, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain - meant the pilot of this Met police comedy-drama premiered to much hype in February. Yet its ambitious scope - all the way down from the upper echelons of the force to the terminally bored on-the-ground teams - and odd tone (as cynical as a satire, but never ridiculous enough to be properly funny) meant it was hard to love. Those are things that still blight this first series proper, but its makers are, hopefully, playing the long game.

The title of this show is Jamaican English slang for police officer... just in case you were wondering.

And there's plenty else that will have viewers scratching their heads here, too.

It's both a serious drama about coppers, corruption and crime in the capital, and a whip-smart comedy written by Peep Show's Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong.

A feature-length pilot directed by Danny Boyle aired earlier this year.

"It's fabulous that it is now getting a full series," says James Nesbitt, who plays Commissioner Richard Miller.

"I loved the character and the writing.

"I also knew it was going to go to interesting places so I didn't hesitate for a minute to sign up for a whole series."

In the opener, Richard declares, "London is safe, Big Ben's on time, all is well", to his PR executive Liz Garvey (played by screenwriter and film producer Brit Marling).

He then has to deal with a riot in a youth offender's unit caused by the failings of the institution's private security company.

Nothing is as it seems.

Writer? Don't fear the writer-performer

The situation isn't quite as bad as James Cary makes out. Writers do still have some clout in the comedy creation process - Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, for instance, continue to create their own shows, while Graham Linehan can choose what he wants to write, and when.

Babylon, a new series by Peep Show writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, has no shortage of coppers, as it's set in New Scotland Yard. But it's not by any means a crime procedural.

Instead, the pilot, directed by Danny Boyle, focused on the press office, where a new American boss (Brit Marling) was attempting to establish her authority while a serial killer was on the loose. The fraught relationship between public relations and policing reality is promising territory for caustic treatment, but this suffered from cynical overload. Everyone appeared to be horrified by everyone else, with the characters either speaking in the sort of scathing comic lingo familiar from The Thick of It or in halting disbelief, as though no one could quite believe that everyone else was that cynical.

There were, as you'd expect, some funny lines. "You can't hold back time," one character complained. "You're not Michael J Fox or L'Oréal." But the tone veered all over the place from surreal comedy to dramatic suspense without every quite mastering one, let alone situating it alongside the rest.

You could call it ambitious - and it was - but as a pilot it was a bit of a mess. Still, there was more than enough to suggest that once it has settled in, some of those ambitions may yet be realised. "The problem with cops," said another character in what was a meta-comment on the police on TV, "is that they're cop types."