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Production notes

Neil Morrissey returns to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ ONE in Carrie & Barry, a brand new comedy series written by Simon Nye and from the team behind Men Behaving Badly.

Candid, warm, funny and sometimes really rather rude, Carrie & Barry is about a modern-day couple dealing with the ordinary things in life: sex, work, friendships, tenants, fantasies and step-children.

Neil plays part-time cabbie Barry with Claire Rushbrook as his wife Carrie, Mark Williams as his best mate Kirk and Michelle Gomez as Carrie's friend and fellow beautician Michelle.

Sarah Quintrell plays Sinead, Barry's teenage daughter from his disastrous first marriage.

After the multi-garlanded Men Behaving Badly, Hartswood Films went on to work with Simon Nye on two pre-watershed sitcoms, Is It Legal? and The Savages.

Executive producer Beryl Vertue comments: "I had been keen to work with Simon again on a laugh-out-loud, post-watershed comedy that had some real warmth and he came up with Carrie & Barry, which fits the bill beautifully.

"Simon is wonderful at writing characters. Just like Men Behaving Badly, Carrie & Barry has a very low concept. MBB was about two men living in a flat together. This is about a married couple, their two best friends and a step-daughter."

Producer Sue Vertue was equally excited about the new project: "I think Carrie & Barry is very raw and very real. These are conversations that married people really do have, and that was what appealed to me about the idea.

"It's warm and funny, not about an angst-ridden couple having a horrible time. The series is optimistic, but not sickly - they do argue sometimes!"

In some ways Carrie & Barry marks a return to Simon's sitcom writing roots:

"I was very proud of Is It Legal? and The Savages, but they were pre-watershed family shows really. They were deliberately filled with the sort of jokes which wouldn't embarrass you if you were watching and your nine year old walked into the room unexpectedly.

"It is great here to have the opportunity to allow yourself to depict life as it is.

"We also deal with other issues, which has been interesting to write. For example, we have an episode about a short guy moving in next door.

"The boundary between good and bad taste in comedy is always worth exploring, and compared with lots of comedy shows which are at the dark end of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TWO schedule, we are really quite cheery and wholesome!"

With a script in place, casting could begin, as Beryl explains: "Although we had got together the same production team, it was not our intention to go the whole Men Behaving Badly route.

"But when Simon drafted the first script, which he always does with no particular artists in mind, we all read it and thought, 'Well, that's Neil, isn't it?'

"Barry has some of the characteristics of Tony, the character he played in MBB, but he is much more grown up and definitely a bit more mature - although not entirely!"

Simon takes up the story: "Although I didn't write with Neil in mind, he just fitted the bill so perfectly.

"I had a feeling towards the end of Men Behaving Badly that the comedy led to Tony being clearly more buffoonish than Neil is in person, so it was nice to write something for him that picked up on his obvious intelligence.

"Neil is very warm and identifiably human as a person, which makes it easier to write, really. But Barry certainly isn't straightforward - good comedy works best when the characters are deluded in one way or another!"

He continues: "Tony had a lovable quality that people responded to, but he was lacking in even the most basic self-awareness.

"Barry is different. He is aware that he loves his wife and aware that what comes with a stable marriage is a certain amount of effort to keep the relationship interesting and alive.

"So the series is a sort of exploration of what a couple does after the first thrill of marriage and settling down, how you make your life interesting really, and how you deal with the inevitable crises that come up."

With a long-term partner and four children of his own, Simon is somewhat different from the characters he creates:

"When we were making MBB, I always thought that people were disappointed to meet me - I wasn't a lager swilling lout but looked rather more like a tired looking geography teacher!

"From a personal point of view Carrie & Barry is a chance to put a bit of my life in there. I like to write about couples, because people generally fall into them sooner or later, so I did use that aspect of myself.

"I will be amazed if my girlfriend Claudia doesn't recognise herself in there, although it isn't quite as personal as Coupling so I should get away with it!

"Comedy does always seem to come back to sex because that is the trickiest subject of all.

"I mean house-buying is all very well… It's interesting but actually not quite as interesting in the long run as what you get up to in bed. And it's fraught with all kinds of embarrassments!"

With the first script drafted, it was time to meet up with Neil Morrissey.

Beryl takes up the story: "It just so happened that Neil was out in America at the same time as Simon and I were so we all met up.

"It was really weird meeting for drinks some 6,000 miles away to talk about a new series! Drinks turned into dinner and went on for absolutely ages, and we all felt really good about it. Carrie & Barry felt just right for Neil."

Simon adds: "We were very showbiz and met up in the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. Neil was actually living there, so he had the added chic of being a resident.

"He had various other fish to fry in the shape of his burgeoning hotel business in Wales, so we thought he might not be able to do it. But when he said yes, it freed us up hugely in casting the other characters."

The casting of Carrie was vitally important. Beryl explains that Claire Rushbrook was rehearsing at the Almeida Theatre at the time of the auditions and as a result had to keep cancelling at the last minute:

"We had reached the stage where we were calling people back and had to make a decision.

"Somehow, thankfully, we finally got Claire in. The weather was appalling and she managed to scrape in on time looking very wet and bedraggled after getting caught in one of those thunderstorms. But we could instantly see her in the role of Carrie - the chemistry was beyond our expectations.

"And although Claire had never done a sitcom in front of a live audience before, she took to it like a duck to water."

Simon adds: "Claire is fantastic. I know people might compare her to Caroline Quentin because she has got this brilliant comic timing and she looks vaguely similar, but to me Caroline is quite scary and very good at playing frightening women, whilst Claire has brought a more vulnerable side to Carrie, which is fun to explore."

Sue adds: "It was very important that we got the chemistry between our two lead characters right, and Neil read in with Claire at her audition to see how it worked.

"Claire is very funny and has very good timing, but she is also incredibly warm and you just believe that the characters are actually together and from week to week you feel as if there is a whole life going on that you just haven't glimpsed.

"It's as if we dip in and out now and again. And sometimes we dip in at a slightly intimate moment!"

Fate lent a hand in the casting of Kirk, Barry's best friend, as Beryl explains:

"Neil was spending a few days at his hotel in Wales with his old friend Mark Williams. He had taken the script with him and they began reading it together.

"Neil called with great excitement and said that Mark wanted to talk about the part of Kirk. I think Mark is terrific, so we were very happy to audition him.

"He came and read the part as if he was someone we didn't know, made us all laugh and he got the part."

Sue adds: "We were slightly nervous when Mark came in to audition because we were hoping he would be as good as we thought he might be, and he was - he was fantastic.

"You can really feel that deep friendship there which means they can be the kind of friends who niggle each other.

"Barry and Kirk have also known each other for ages. In fact they were probably at school together and decided one day that they were going to be taxi drivers and do The Knowledge together.

"There's a real familiarity both on and off the screen."

Simon was struck by the parallel with the casting in MBB: "Neil and Martin Clunes were old friends before they starred in Men Behaving Badly together, and I think that showed on the screen just as it does with Neil and Mark."

He adds: "Mark is offered a lot of work, so I was rather pleased that he wanted to play the part of Kirk.

"They had a wonderful time on set. He is also full of anecdotes from the film world which are fascinating for us TV bods."

Carrie's best friend and fellow beautician Michelle is very different from Carrie.

Beryl comments: "Michelle is quite sharp-tongued. It was a part that needed to be cast carefully so that she was also likeable and sympathetic, and Michelle Gomez has struck just the right note.

"She is very funny, but you also sense beneath the acid tongue a vulnerability, which is why she and Carrie are such good friends."

Sue adds: "Their very different characters come over on the screen. Michelle is much harder, straight down the line, quite acerbic and very funny."

Simon adds: "As a character, Michelle is one of those unpredictable people, which is nice to see on screen but a bit scary if she is looking after you, especially in a beauty salon!"

Casting the part of Sinead, Barry's teenage daughter from his disastrous first marriage, was much harder.

The team saw a lot of young hopefuls at first without much joy, as Beryl explains: "We were having a read through at an early stage so everyone could meet each other and we could see how they gelled.

"The part of Sinead had not yet been cast, but we had seen Sarah Quintrell and asked her if she would read the part, although at that stage we could not guarantee that she would get the role.

"However, she was so good on the day that we had absolutely no doubt that she would be perfect.

"She is fresh out of drama school and has done some theatre work, but this is a real break for her. When we told her she quite literally whooped with delight, which was lovely and made me feel like a fairy godmother!"

Simon adds: "I know that not all teenagers are sulky and difficult, but I do like the chemistry between Sinead and Carrie.

"They are stuck on the same family tree through marriage, albeit on different branches. It can be quite a strain, so they have to learn to tolerate each other!"

Beryl adds: "We were all completely thrilled with our cast and it meant that when Simon wrote the second draft he had them all in mind.

"They gelled so quickly that you would never think it was the first time they had all worked together."