The business of creating Barmy Dale

Martin Skellern and Stuart Wheeldon are the writers and producers of Barmy Dale, an audio sitcom centred around a fictional Derbyshire town. Launched in lockdown, the comedy has grown to the point it now features the stars of shows such as Hi-De-Hi!, 'Allo 'Allo!, Radio Active and Brush Strokes amongst its cast list. Here the duo explain how they started the show, and built up the project...

In the spring of 2020, during the now infamous first lockdown, we were chatting about the world in general over Zoom. It soon became apparent that the world had become barmy! This, after much deliberation, turned into the sitcom Barmy Dale.

Inspired by the comedies of the 70s and 80s, the main influence behind Barmy Dale was to create sitcoms as they used to be; where a family of all ages could sit down and listen to the maverick adventures of the characters that were slowly formulating.

The first series was a very quick turnaround. A three minute script was sent to BBC Radio Derby, to see if their BBC Upload section would like what we were working on. A couple of emails later, and a rushed recording over Zoom, resulted in the very first episode of Barmy Dale being broadcast in July 2020.

The idea behind the show seemed to attract some interest, and the team at Radio Derby asked if there was any more material. We had ideas, but at this point didn't have a long term plan. Over the next five months, five more 30 minute episodes were written in quick succession. These were all broadcast over five days on BBC Radio Derby.

It was during the writing of the second episode that we began to think about putting out the show as a podcast. We researched this area, and set up an account with Acast. We released the episodes in full after the last episode was broadcast on radio.

All of the recordings for the shows were done remotely and on Zoom. This did cause some problems with glitching etc, but it was easy to retake scenes and - with the introduction of better microphones for the actors - the sound quality began to get better. Editing was performed using Audacity and MixPad.

Initially the listening figures were okay. The episodes attracted a mixed demographic from around the world, but it soon became apparent that the UK and the US were the main listeners. We also saw the episodes attracted a 50/50 split male to female audience, but with a listening age of the over 35s, upwards.

By the fifth episode of Series 1, the idea of a Christmas episode was hatched. The cast of Barmy Dale was slowly growing, but really was still mostly actor friends filling the roles. We began to think about further casting for the Christmas episode. Stuart, a regular on Twitter, began looking for actors who had appeared in shows such as Hi-De-Hi! and 'Allo 'Allo! and began sending tweets out; figuring that these actors were, just like everyone else, stuck at home in a pandemic.

To our amazement Jeffrey Holland, Vicki Michelle, Michael Fenton Stevens and Karl Howman all agreed to take part in the Christmas episode. They've since become regular characters in the show.

Barmy Dale is now about to embark on its third series with our regular cast and more guest performances from the world of comedy.

The show is now recorded on Riverside.fm [a software package] and Zoom. We have thought about just moving to a studio to record the episodes, but there is something nice about the sound quality that comes from recording remotely, in some ways it gives it a nostalgic feel.

Editing is still currently performed using Audacity and MixPad, however the use of Pro Tools is being looked at. Better microphones is something we have learnt really makes a difference in the sound quality.

Eventually we are looking at a television pilot for the show, hopefully in 2024... watch this space!

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You can find out more about Barmy Dale a via barmyproductions.com and barmydale.org.uk

The show is also on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook