Don't Forget The Driver and Bognor Regis: A sense of place

My new, and first, TV series is set in Bognor Regis. It follows Peter Green (Toby Jones), a coach driver and single parent as he navigates life in the seaside town after finding a stowaway on his coach.

Why Bognor Regis?

I’m a Bognor boy myself, and creating a series in the town has been a great experience. We’re always told we should write what we know.

For me, drama needs to be set in a specific place for people to be able to relate to it. There are few places I know better than Bognor. To give you an idea, Joy (Peter’s mother – played by Marcia Warren) lives in a bungalow in Bognor. I went scouting the town to find where she should live, first thinking she would live in one of the estates before deciding she’d live by the sea. That’s when I went to Dark Lane, a beach from my childhood, and found the perfect bungalow nearby. Fortunately, the location crew were able to find the owner of the house and they were happy to move out for a few days while we filmed.

Location, location, location

We shot in a number of different locations around Bognor. The main focus was perhaps the area around the pier. Bognor pier blew down in a storm in 1964 and has never been rebuilt. What’s left is a little, stubby pier that only extends into shallow waters, but it’s still beautiful – like a wounded thing.

I imagine that the people of Bognor were interested to see what the town looks like on screen. My dad’s even become a bit of a local expert on the show - going so far as to write a letter to the local paper, correcting something in an article about it. He came to watch us film when we were at Dark Lane beach. It’s been quite a nostalgic process for me.

I hope that the people of Bognor don’t feel like we’ve been disrespectful to the town. We’ve tried to show it for what it is. In the end, that’s how a place becomes relatable to a wider audience. This isn’t a story about people living in a big city like London or Manchester, it’s about people going about their lives in a small town, where the majority of people actually live.

From theatre to TV

I’ve been writing and performing in the theatre for years, but this is my first foray into writing for TV. Not only that, but it’s Toby’s first time writing for TV as well. It’s been a great experience.

Theatre-writing is a stream-lined process. It doesn’t need many people to get a play in front of an audience. I currently tour a solo play which I wrote, learned and now perform – with very few people involved in that process. This gives you an idea of how much singular freedom you have as a writer in theatre.

TV couldn’t be more different. There are scores of people who are going to see your script before it even gets to filming. You need to recognise that once you’re commissioned, it’s the beginning of a journey, not the end. We had a brilliant script editor working on Don’t Forget The Driver, who helped us see how everything fits together and what we could change.

I admire those TV writers who stick close to their vision right up to transmission. Phoebe Waller-Bridge took Fleabag from a solo show in Edinburgh Fringe to the BBC. She was writer and performer – and was very involved in how the TV show should look. Will Sharpe is another example. He wrote, directed and performed in Flowers – and there’s a real sense of an individual’s vision in that show.

Toby and I have been very happy to let other people get involved. We’ve been blessed with an exceptional director (Tim Kirkby), Director of Photography (Jamie Cairney) and editor (Tom Hemmings) – and the whole project has been steered immaculately by Sister Pictures. We couldn’t have asked for better people.

Episode one of Don’t Forget The Driver aired on Tuesday 9 April to 1.3 million viewers, the biggest BBC Two comedy launch across the last 12 months. The series continues on BBC Two at 10pm on Tuesdays and the full boxset is now available on BBC iPlayer.