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24 September 2014

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Episode Guide

 Eva Pope as Kathy and Neil Dudgeon as Harry

Episode 1 | Written by Danny Brocklehurst
  • Tuesday 18th July 2006, 9pm, Â鶹Éç ONE


    • | Read reviews | Writer's Guide | Update | Music


    Danny Brocklehurst reveals the story behind this episode:

    Any new series has to do a lot of work very quickly. If the viewer isn't hooked in the first few minutes you might lose them forever.

    "After trying various options, we hit upon the idea of 'what I love about being a postman'."
    We originally started with a young woman desperately running with a package, and just catching the postman as he left with that day's collection. We then followed the package through the postal system and it eventually became the item that saved Roisin's life.

    I liked this opening, but it was deemed too low key. So, after trying various other eye-catching options, we hit upon the idea of 'what I love about being a postman'.

    At first I wasn't sure, but as the idea progressed, I started to fall in love with these mini vignettes. They seemed a neat way of introducing our characters, sort of like Trainspotting did with Renton, Sick Boy and co. The first cut thrilled me, but when we added the Dirty Pretty Things track Bang Bang You're Dead, the whole opening suddenly had energy and verve and humour. It was exactly what we were after.

    Harry's story

    "The story encapsulated themes of betrayal, guilt, friendship and the deeply complex nature of long relationships."
    Although Sorted is a gang show, every episode foregrounds one character and Episode 1 is Harry's story. Harry Goodwin was designed as the everyman, a 40something bloke who is good natured, quick with a smile and always happy to put his hand in his pocket for a round. He's a great mate, good husband and solid father. So what interested me was telling a story about what happens when something knocks this solid bloke off kilter. In the space of a week he saves a woman's life, tentatively starts an affair and nearly loses his wife of twenty years in a car crash. A pretty hectic week by anyone's standards...

    The story was one that I'd been mulling for some time. It encapsulated some of my favourite themes: betrayal, guilt, friendship and the deeply complex nature of long term relationships. Harry is a good man, trying to do what's right, but sometimes in life, unhappiness leads us to do things we wouldn't ordinarily consider, hence his flirtation with Roisin.

    Men in Fiction

    "Jack was created to give the show a sense of mystery - who is this man and what is his secret?"
    The strength of Sorted is that we are telling stories about a group of men. And men in fiction often get a raw deal. My ambition was to create a gang of guys that the viewer wanted to spend time with and come back to week in, week out. As a kid, growing up and avidly watching TV, one of my favourite shows was Auf Wiedersehen, Pet - a mainstream drama about the extremes of Thatcher's Britain, but a show essentially about male friendship.

    With Sorted, I wanted to offer the viewer six very different men - different ages and backgrounds, different attitudes and aspirations - who they could grow to love as the series unfolded.

    The only outsider is Jack Donnelly. Jack was created to give the show a sense of mystery - who is this man and what is his secret? We have a natural curiosity about the people around us and if someone is a 'dark horse', it fascinates us all the more. It takes weeks to unpeel Jack, but when we do the truth is heartbreaking.

    Light and Shade

    For me, the key to good drama is light and shade and with Sorted we wanted laughs alongside high emotion. There's no sense in beating the audience over the head for an hour with misery, because life's not like that. Even the darkest days have humour and people find laughs in all kinds of situations.

    Workplaces are full of jokes and wind-ups and banter, and we wanted to truthfully reflect that, hence the 'battle of the radios' and various other strands throughout the series. Iain B Macdonald directs with aplomb and Mark Elliot cut it wonderfully.


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