Holly Walsh talks about making The Other One interview

Holly Walsh is the co-writer and director of The Other One, the BBC Two comedy about two families from very different backgrounds who are brought together. Rebecca Front, Ellie White, Siobhan Finneran and Lauren Socha star.

Hi Holly. How did the concept for The Other One come about?

A friend of mine was telling me about a friend of her parents - back in the 70s - who had two families. He called both the children the same name, so as to reduce any confusion or ambiguity. I thought it sounded like a good starting place, though I was less interested in exploring the bloke's double life - and more how everyone else felt about it. I've always enjoyed writing about messy funny women, so those are the people I focused on.

The pilot was broadcast back in 2017. It's taken several years for the full series to be ready. Has that been a frustrating time?

Not at all - it was actually a lovely experience to write. We got the commission to write it (I wrote it with my friend Pippa Brown, who also produced it) when I was pregnant, so I had a baby, wrote the second series of Motherland with that writing team and then got to work on T.O.O.

Having done another series of Motherland certainly helped my confidence with writing my own show, so it worked out really well.

Did you learn anything in the process of making the pilot, that then informed the writing of the series?

How amazing our cast is. I don't think Ellie and Lauren knew one another before the pilot but they got on like a house on fire and they had an amazing chemistry on screen that was a joy to write for. We also knew that we could give Siobhan and Rebecca anything and they'd take it up to another level. It's a really collaborative show and I think that's what I'm most proud of.

Can you talk to us a bit about the importance of characters in a sitcom, and creating reasons for them to have conflict?

I mean, character is everything. Some of my favourite shows have pretty loose plots but none of it matters if you're in love with the people you're watching.

I guess our show is classic 'odd couple' territory, but Pippa and I focused on what their similarities were above all else. It's clear they're not the same - from very different backgrounds - but we wanted it to be like a love story where you celebrate where the sisters connect. I suppose with the mums - with Marilyn and Tess - we concentrated more on their differences to find their jokes.

Does any of the dialogue need to change when cameras are rolling, or is it all locked in?

I think that was the beauty of being a writer-director. Had I have had somebody else's script, I think I'd have been a lot more precious with each line - because I know as a writer how much you slave over that stuff. But as it was our show - and Pippa was there on set with me - we were constantly fixing bits that didn't work, or that could work better in the space we had - or adding jokes that came organically out of the filming process. That said, our show is still pretty true to the original scripts.

You have to really trust in a director, to take the vision in your script and display it on screen? As however many stage directions you put in, a lot is still up to the director?

Yeah. You have to really trust everyone you work with. I saw a talk with Christopher Nolan once and he said his whole career has been trying to close the gap between what's in his head, and what eventually comes out on screen.

I think, as I co-wrote and directed it (with the help of Mark Nunnely, who directed 15 Stories High - he did a couple of eps and was very generous with his expertise), I had a clear idea of how I wanted things to look and so I had to learn quickly how to communicate that and what not to compromise on.

Presumably you'd like to make a second series?

Yes! I'm desperate to get Cat on a horse and Cathy on Bake Off.