Every script starts somewhere: with an image, a question, a feeling, or sometimes an idea that follows you around for the best part of thirty years. This article is about the writing of my twelve-part comedy-drama murder mystery, Backstabbers. Beginnings, characters, themes, and the reasons I have spent so much of my life returning to the fictional Essex town of Falking Hill.
1. THE SPARK
The first version of Backstabbers was written as a feature-length screenplay in 1997. Iâd just seen Scream - belatedly - and fairly soon afterwards, I saw Scream 2 at the cinema. I loved the Scooby-Doo danger and humour of it. In fact, I wish they had leaned into that more rather than the violence.
Naturally, I wrote my own version, titled Backstabbers. Then I banged out the sequel, Backstabbers II. A third was planned, but I knew it was walking too similar a line to Scream. It needed to become its own thing. A couple of elements remained with me: a will-they/wonât-they, Ross-and-Rachel relationship between the two lead characters, Doug and Tara, and the setting - an amateur dramatics community.
The story and characters followed me around for years. Pretty much every day, Iâd think about it. My first child was born and my writing opportunities slowed down, so I made notes on my phone. When the time came to revisit it, around 2011, I had a crack at rewriting it as a television series.
I pitched it at the London Screenwritersâ Festival. The BBC brushed me off mid-pitch. Didnât want to hear it. I pitched it to Sky TV. Thankfully, the next appointment hadnât shown up, so I was able to spend more time talking about it - and producer Jon Mountagueâs interest grew. He said he could see it playing on Sky and advised me to get an agent⌠which Iâve still yet to achieve.
One of the LSF script mentors met with me because my rewrite was now set in 1979, and the nostalgia of the setting had piqued his interest. But the humour of the script still felt somewhat forced, with too much emphasis on banter - my cardinal sin back then.
My second child was born two years later, and Backstabbers went back to being a daydream⌠one that refused to go away. Years passed. More notes accumulated on my phone. When I sat down to have another crack at it, I discovered that I had eight hundred pages of NOTES.
I didnât know where to begin. I bought Scrivener, which helped me map the story out as a novel. I didnât know what I was doing. By this point, I was sick of screenwriting - of things picking up and never quite happening. So I wrote it as a book.
A six-hundred-page book.
Then I figured out how to format it and cut it down to just under four hundred pages. And I was happy with it. It was probably the first time I had written anything that matched what was in my head. I felt as though I had achieved the vision, so to speak.
But I had always seen Backstabbers visually, which meant one thing: it needed to be a screenplay. I adapted the book into twelve episodes, with the finale running to double length.
Now it was ready.
2. THE ORIGINAL PITCH
Initially, in 1997, it was a simple case of amateur actors being snuffed out within a theatre community, without much more beyond that. A lot of the fun came from the charactersâ responses: those who saw opportunities and those who wanted to find the killer and make a name for themselves.
Everyone wanted their slice of fame.
The first rewrite saw Doug - now named Stu - return from America to his home town in Essex, having survived an apparent bloodbath at a summer fat camp. He wanted to seize life and chase his dream of becoming a writer. It was a daft set-up aspiring to BBC comedy, and it didnât last long. Stu was dogged by a sleazy local journalist who believed that the lone survivor of a murder spree couldnât be innocent.
This is what I pitched at the London Screenwritersâ Festival:
LOGLINE: A newcomer to a two-faced amateur dramatics community marks the arrival of its ultimate critic: a shadowy serial killer. Glee meets Scream, in the tone of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead.
EXPANDED LOGLINE: Set in the late 1970s, the lone survivor of an American summer fat-camp massacre returns to the UK to restart his life. Ostracised by society, he is drawn into the bizarre world of amateur dramatics. Discovering a web of complicated relationships, backbiting and jealousy, he becomes the prime suspect when a ruthless drama-festival adjudicator is murdered.
Anyway, all that got ditched - mostly. I kept the journalist, who became Brookes, written with a 1980s Mel Smith in mind - because the idea kept telling me: âIâm bigger than that. Go bigger.â
Then came the idea of setting it in the 1970s. I didnât want mobile phones and email. I wanted to take it back to a simpler time. And when I think about what the 1970s were like for me, I remember being in a permanent state of fear, mostly thanks to the public information adverts shown on television.
Growing up in the 1970s, it often felt as though everything was waiting to kill you. Deep water. Abandoned fridges. Farm machinery. Tractors. Quarries. Electricity pylons.
These WARNING: DANGER adverts were a cold, stark slap in the face for children. They warned us, in no uncertain terms, that death or severe injury was waiting just around the corner, whether we were setting off fireworks, playing Frisbee near power substations or larking about on railway tracks.
SO: 1970s. Permanent state of fear. Public information adverts.
What if the murders appeared to be accidents?
Chip-pan fires. Rabies. Unsecured rugs.
The films were supposedly there to keep children safe, but they often played like miniature horror movies. One poor decision and you would be electrocuted, mangled by machinery or dragged beneath dark water while Donald Pleasence solemnly - almost mockingly - explained it was only a matter of time before you were going to perish, you foolâŚ
The idea behind Backstabbers was simple:
What if somebody began using those warnings as instruction manuals?
This stuff writes itself! Well, it doesnât.
By this point, I had written a few screenplays that attempted a will-they/wonât-they, Ross-and-Rachel romance but never quite landed it. So I added that to the mix. What if the main character was lured into this alien world of am-dram because he had fallen head over heels for an actress who didnât know he existed?
I researched the 1970s relentlessly. Films, books, music, celebrities, politics⌠it was all going in. Release dates of songs and films. What was happening in the world, month by month, throughout 1979.
The reason it was set in 1979 was that ideas began to grow for a sequel set in the 1980s, followed by a third part set in the 1990s. All of which would deal with so many things I enjoy. Pop culture. Nostalgia. Murder mysteries.
Years of thinking it all over led to this pitch:
When an awkward teenager discovers a dead theatre critic, he must navigate an amateur dramatics community full of secrets, lies and absurdities to solve the mystery - and find himself.
3. WHAT IS IT REALLY ABOUT?
On one level, Backstabbers is a murder mystery.
There is a killer. There are suspects. There are clues, masks, hidden histories, false leads and a climactic confrontation inside a theatre.
But the mystery is really the engine carrying everything else. Backstabbers is about wanting to be seen.
So I created a community of characters who were all chasing their own dreams, although, in reality, only one or two possessed even a modicum of talent - or perhaps they simply hadnât experienced enough of life yet to make something of it.
At the centre of it was Stuart Ostridge, an awkward eighteen-year-old sixth-former, would-be writer and the oldest paperboy in Falking Hill. Stu wants to write. He wants his school crush, Lena Darrow, to notice him. He wants to leave school, escape his family and begin whatever life is supposed to come next.
Unfortunately, he has no idea how to achieve any of those things.
I wanted to open the story with a body, but not just any body. Someone who had lived a long life of disappointments. Someone who was the polar opposite of a naive teenager. A failed writer who had become a bitter critic and accumulated a long list of enemies.
Hartley Rumbelow - the body in question - lies trapped beneath a collapsed bookcase in his cellar, surrounded by boxes of manuscripts, loose pages and unsuccessful creations. His lifeâs work is literally crushing him. Discovering the body, Stu stares at the dead man in horror. But it isnât merely the manner of Hartleyâs death that frightens him. Itâs that Hartley died despised and alone, locked away in his cellar with a lifetime of work nobody wanted.
One writer has reached the end of his life without achieving what he had hoped. Another is about to begin, with no idea what might be waiting for him.
That image is probably Backstabbers in miniature. A life over and a life about to start.
Hartleyâs death appears to be a tragic accident, but something about it bothers Stu. There are unexplained details. More importantly, Stu sees the possibility of a story - and nobody takes him seriously.
Brookes Manders, a journalist for the Falking Advertiser, immediately claims the story as his own. Stuâs family are more concerned about his lack of employment. His teachers think he has wasted his education. The local arts community see him as a useful pair of hands rather than a writer.
The more people tell Stu that he doesnât know what he is doing, the more determined he becomes to prove them wrong.
Writing the story as a novel gave me room to expand Falking Hill, explore the characters and let the various deaths, grudges, relationships and theatrical disasters breathe. It became a living place: pubs, schools, theatres, shopping centres, market stalls, council offices, local newspapers, badly attended gigs and people who have known each other for far too long.
Clearly, it was too large for a film, so I adapted it into a television series.
Falking Hill is filled with people who believe they should have been more successful than they are. Writers who have never won plaudits. Actors who never escaped amateur dramatics. Directors convinced that the world has failed to recognise their genius. Journalists who dream of Fleet Street. Musicians waiting for their big break. Local politicians who regard the mayor from Jaws as someone to aspire to.
Everyone is performing a version of themselves.
Stu wants to become a writer, but he doesnât yet understand people - including himself - well enough to write about them honestly.
Stu approaches Hartleyâs death as a sad story about a forgotten old man - but drama requires conflict. If Stu wants to write, he must stop observing life from a safe distance and start digging into why people behave as they do. Good writing advice, delivered by someone who may not be a particularly good influence.
Backstabbers is also about failure. Not failure as a final verdict, but the fear of it. The creeping suspicion that life is moving forward without you. That everyone else has been given the instructions and you somehow missed them.
They say, âWrite what you know.â What did I know?
The brutally honest answer is the fear of failure, persistence despite disappointment, and the difficult emotional terrain of coming close, but not quite close enough. Working hard towards something, only for it to go south at the last minute. Rejection. I know about all that!
When Stu discovers Hartleyâs body, whether he realises it or not, he sees a possible version of his own future. A lifetime of writing. A room filled with work. Nobody interested.
That fear sits beneath much of the comedy. The characters behave badly because they are frightened of being insignificant. Falking Hill isnât just populated by suspects. The people have careers, grudges, thwarted creative ambitions, romantic preoccupations and private versions of their own importance.
They gossip, exaggerate, compete and undermine each other because recognition is in short supply. Everyone is trying to secure their place in a very small spotlight. The killer simply takes that need for control and recognition to its most extreme conclusion.
4. THE INFLUENCES
As mentioned, the Public Information Films were the most obvious influence, but the world of late-1970s British television is embedded throughout Backstabbers.
The series opens with a Hitchhikerâs Guide-style narrator, commenting on Stuâs life with mock authority and treating his unfolding story as though it were a matter of historical importance.
Stu is part of the first generation whose lives were shaped by pop culture. He views the world through the prism of music and movies, interpreting his small life through them. His top ten of fanciable women becomes a Top of the Pops-style chart rundown. His fears include being eaten alive by Jaws or that freaky alien at the end of Star Trekâs closing credits.
The songs of the era were my starting point, as always. I tried to avoid the obvious classics, opting for slightly lesser-known, quirkier music where I could.
The characters are mostly based on - or are riffs on - characters and performances from 1970s television and films. I didnât want them to be direct, knowing spoofs, as in Spaced. I wanted the influences to be subtler and woven into the fabric of the scenes.
There are elements of the traditional murder mystery, but I didnât want Falking Hill to feel like a picturesque village populated by charming eccentrics. It is working-class and aspirational. The town smells of the brewery. People work at the car plant. The pubs are full of bad bands and frustrated artists who recognise each other but would rather they didnât.
The theatre world brings in elements of backstage farce. Everyone is supposedly working towards the same production, but beneath the rehearsals are rivalries, affairs, jealousy, wounded egos, casting disputes and arguments over line delivery.
By the final episode, the community play and the murder plot have become inseparable. The drama being performed onstage is competing with the real-life drama happening behind it, and Stu has to choose between fame and notoriety.
5. THE CHARACTERS I KEPT / LOST
Doug became Stuart Ostridge. Tara became Lena Darrow. The 1997 script also had a comedy double act who became Stuâs best friends, Alan and Gary. There were two actors with the same first name, who became Big J and Little J.
Beyond that, the rest of the 1997 characters were culled.
In the novel, Stuâs object of affection was Harriet, whose role was eventually folded into Lenaâs story. But Stu remained the person through whom I saw Falking Hill.
He is romantic, defensive, jealous, frightened, imaginative and frequently ridiculous.
He wants Lena to notice him, but has built her into such an impossible figure that he barely knows how to speak to her. He wants people to recognise him as a writer before he has written anything they want to read. He wants to be brave, but his instinct is usually to run away and think of a better response several hours later.
He is not a conventional detective. Heâs almost Jeffrey Lebowski-esque at times. Heâs not particularly interested in solving a crime. He doesnât have specialist knowledge or an extraordinary gift for deduction. He simply has a sense that something is wrong and a growing refusal to accept the explanations he is given.
Stu isnât trying to become a detective. He is trying to become somebody. The mystery gives him a purpose before he has developed an identity of his own. That makes his investigation emotionally necessary rather than merely plot-driven. And for a lot of the time, Stu is torn between the mystery and his satisfying his own dreams of greatness.
I was careful not to write the cast as merely orbiting Stu. He is the anomaly in their world. They all have lives of their own. They have their own ambitions, romantic disasters, rivalries and delusions.
Yes, there are many characters, but tell that to Twin Peaks.
Most of all, the story needed Stu to live inside the mystery rather than simply solve it.
6. WHAT I THINK ABOUT IT NOW
I often think about what Peter Jackson said when King Kong was being released, suggesting that he had made The Lord of the Rings films just so he could get to direct King Kong.
Not to self-aggrandise, but Backstabbers is probably where it all lies for me. It is my favourite script in terms of achieving what I set out to do. It is certainly the one closest to who I am.
That doesnât mean Stu is me, or that Falking Hill is a factual recreation of my life. But I recognise Stuâs internal battles. The awkwardness. The daydreaming. The inferiority complex. The feeling that everybody else is moving more confidently through the world.
I understand his need to make something of himself without having the slightest idea how to begin. I also recognise his belief that becoming a writer will somehow explain or justify his existence.
Looking at Backstabbers now is strange because I began writing it when I was still relatively close to Stuâs age. I could remember all the teenage humiliations, romantic obsessions and uncertainty. I remembered being single and young, with all that selfish tunnel vision.
Returning to it years later gave me the benefit of hindsight. I was able to write it with an eye on: âLittle do you know whatâs coming.â
It is funny without treating the deaths as meaningless. It is nostalgic without pretending the past was kinder than it was. It is a murder mystery in which the emotional question is as important as the identity of the killer:
Will Stu discover who he is before everybody else decides for him?
I pitched it to comedy producer Gina Lyons (Breeders, Dreaming Whilst Black), whose reader said:
ââŚItâs very well written with excellent characters, dialogue and a thorough grasp of story structure. The story world is engaging and well-crafted⌠The period elements⌠give the piece a distinctive feel and also compliment the comedy itself. It is funny, and the overall tone is fun and engaging⌠thereâs real potential here. RECOMMENDATION: READâ
The script also received some mentoring from producer Phil Hunter of Tall Story Pictures (Criminal Record, Vera, Midsomer Murders), who said:
âI enjoyed [your script]⌠it successfully transported me back to the period you are writing. The way you write characters is authentic and relatable. There are some lovely moments in the script where you really capture the setting with great atmosphere and texture.â
7. CLOSING THOUGHT
Backstabbers is a sad-funny coming-of-age story disguised as a flamboyant murder mystery. And one that will span the decades to come, which I find really creatively interesting, watching these characters grow older together (or not). Iâm half-way through writing the novel for part 2, with part 3 roughly planned out.
I would suppose it is my signature project. Not necessarily because it is âbetterâ than every other screenplay Iâve written, but because it seems to contain the widest and most recognisable range of things which interest me.
Which sounds absurd for a story containing dancing puffins and a man killed by a discarded chest freezer. But there ya go.
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