Archives for August 2010

The Great British Bake Off, presented by Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, sees 10 homebakers testing their skills in the kitchen to be named top amateur baker at the end of the series.

Expert baker and author Mary Berry spoke to the BBC TV blog about her role as one of the two series judges.

How did you come to work on the Great British Bake Off?

Quite simply - I was asked. I've written about cakes for years, and was thrilled to be asked to be given the opportunity to use my expertise to judge others.

Making a TV programme seems very different to how I imagine writing a cookery book must be - what are the differences that you enjoy?

The processes are very different, when writing a cookery book. With writing a cookery book, you have to research the recipes, then test them, and finally find a way to translate only the best recipes into language that everyone can understand.

By contrast, being a judge was about applying my knowledge, using everything I've learned to deconstruct the perfect bake, which is almost the other way round.

Some of the contestants would come in with recipes that I'd never tried myself, so I had to refer to the basics - texture, taste, appearance - to judge their attempts, but to explain what they could have done better.

Mel says she comes from a tradition of strong baking women - like an army - where did your love for baking come from?

My love of baking came from cooking at school - I wasn't very good at Latin and maths, so cooking was one of the first things that I did that I was any good at.

Baking has been important to my family for generations, both my mother and my grandmother baked. Families are a great resource for passing on baking expertise, and fostering a love of good cake.

Did you do home economics at school? What did your teacher think of your cooking?

It was my teacher, Miss Date, who encouraged me to cook. She gave me every possible encouragement, at a time that I wasn't much cop at school. The first thing that I ever took home was a treacle sponge - my father gave me great praise which I rarely got for any schoolwork, and I've loved to cook ever since.

Are you a messy cook?

No, because it's me that has to clear up later.

Do you ever use ready meals or other shortcuts when you're in private?

Not really - I'll usually muster up something from the fridge and the store cupboard. But I do sometimes take shortcuts, I use puff pastry, stock cubes and I use my freezer as a long term store cupboard.

What's your favourite thing to bake?

Traybakes - they're quick to bake, wonderful to eat and good for every occasion.

The contestants are baking competitively and Sue talks about baking being about "solitude, peace and calm". What feeling does baking give you?

Sue is perfectly right - it's a wonderfully solitary activity. The only company I usually have are my recipes and my dogs, but I love cooking with my grandchildren. It gives me great satisfaction, especially knowing that you're making something that other people can enjoy. It's never work, always a pleasure.

What were Mel and Sue like to work with?

They were just wonderful, and both are quite keen on baking which was a wonderful surprise. But most importantly, they approached every situation with good humour, which made everyone relax, and particularly made the whole experience much more fun for the contestants.

Mary Berry is one of two judges on The Great British Bake Off.

The Great British Bake Off is on BBC Two on Tuesdays at 8pm.

Until 21 September, digital viewers can press red directly after the programme, to learn from the judges how to make a recipe from the show.

To see times of all episodes please visit the upcoming episodes page. You can catch up on all previous episodes on BBC iPlayer until Tuesday, 28 September.

You can see Mary's Victoria Sandwich recipe from The Great British Bake Off, and other recipes from the show, on the BBC Food website.

Mary has also written advice on cake-baking and has answered cookery questions for the BBC Food Q&A blog

If you're inspired to organise a bake sale, you can download tips, bunting and more recipes from the Get Baking For Children In Need page.

Fiona Wickham is the editor of the BBC TV blog.

Our decision to commission a live rock climb, on a dauntingly imposing crag, in a highly remote location with no road access, in high definition (HD), was always likely to provide its own unique set of challenges.

However, receipt this week of the evacuation procedure and list of drugs to be available on site emphasised to me again just how different this will be from a traditional sports outside broadcast (OB).

The production is challenge enough. The location for The Great Climb at Sron Uladail on the beautiful Isle of Harris is stunning, but it's certainly not like organising coverage at a football stadium.

There's no road within an hour's rough walk, so no OB truck. Triple Echo, the production company making the programme, have had to arrange for Portakabins to be flown in by helicopter in which the kit will be assembled.

The production team will walk in and walk out. There's no mobile signal, so in an emergency it'll be a satellite phone or something called an emergency locator beacon, which I hope I'm not expected to operate. Then there's the weather. And the midges.

However, cutting-edge and groundbreaking as this may be, as far as I can see it's nothing compared to the physical challenge Dave Macleod and Tim Emmett are proposing to take on this Saturday.

The cliff is over 200 metres high. It overhangs by about 50 metres across. To be honest these figures mean nothing to me either; you will only appreciate the challenge Dave and Tim face when you see them like tiny dots on the wide shot of the rock face next Saturday.

In short, it looks impossible and may well prove to be exactly that. We shall see.

We could of course have mocked something up that may have looked difficult to the untutored eye, but which was actually quite easy to climbers of this standard.

That wouldn't have been the same though, and I doubt Dave and Tim would have wished to be involved in the climbing equivalent of a cabaret act.

Yet if anyone can get them up there it will be Dave Macleod, a Scottish sporting phenomenon who would be a superstar if he operated in a more mainstream environment.

The sight of him and Tim pulling their full body weight up the rock suspended only by one fingertip is truly incredible and I recommend you do not miss it. A lot of shows promise drama, tension and excitement; hopefully on this one, weather permitting, it is guaranteed.

David Harron is executive producer of The Great Climb.

Photo above is kind courtesy of Triple Echo.

The Great Climb is on BBC Two (Scotland only) at 1.35pm and on BBC HD from 5pm this Saturday, 28 August. It is streamed live on the BBC Sport Scotland website and also available to watch in iPlayer after the broadcast.

It's mid-August, it's raining and blowing an autumnal gale and the Edinburgh TV Festival beckons. Must be time for BBC Four's autumn/winter launch.

This time last year I wrote about the pleasures of three artistic women's lives dramatised - Enid, Gracie and Margot. This year, it's the story of how one man rewrote the rule of British television drama when he created in a single moment ITV's premier TV asset, Coronation Street.

Tony Warren's story of ordinary working people's everyday lives, set in a backstreet of a northern English industrial town was a sensation from the moment it hit the airwaves - live, no less! - in December 1960.

But it very nearly didn't happen. The Granada TV bosses decided people wouldn't want northern working classes voices in their living rooms via the telly. How wrong they were.

What was at first called Florizel Street went on to become Coronation Street, one of television's most enduring dramas.

It's not the only great show of course.

This autumn sees the always-excellent Michael Wood stand centre stage in Michael Wood's Story of England, a major series that tells the story of the English through the ordinary garden discoveries of people living in a small market town in Leicestershire - and you've never seen so much excitement and fuss over a few bits of broken pottery!

But it is amazing, truly, to see just how close to the big historical events even this village is, that this village's story of ordinary people through the ages, from Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Tudor, Georgian, Industrial Revolution and onwards, is reflected in this place. Terrific.

One other highlight I'd raise is BBC Four's Germany season. Yes, I am German, brought up on a farm in north Germany, and as a (semi) foreigner I have always been struck by how little the British seemed to know or comprehend of Germany's extraordinary culture, physical beauty and history.

Of course two World Wars don't half obscure the view and I understand that. But in Andrew Graham-Dixon's lovely series Art Of Germany I hope you'll see a new side of this country, culturally speaking, and in Julia Bradbury's charming German Wanderlust you'll hopefully be astounded and wowed by the sheer physical beauty of this vast country.

And, finally, I hope you'll be entertained by Al Murray's German Adventure (yes the Pub Landlord himself) as he tours Germany and finds out more about the country on a whistle-stop tour.

There's plenty more interesting programmes - from The Story Of British Sculpture to Anna Nicole - The Opera, the new Royal Opera House piece on glamour model Anna Nicole Smith, to the return of Jo Brand in Getting On.

And now, back to the rain, the wind and August.

Richard Klein is controller of BBC Four

I think one of the most exciting things about the Digging For Britain series is that it shows archaeology in action.

Rather than just presenting history as a series of accepted facts we're seeing how the interpretation develops, during excavations and careful analysis in the lab.

Excavations we've been following in the series that have also hit the news include the discovery of the massive hoard of Roman coins in Frome, and the bizarre and chilling evidence of infanticide from the Yewden Roman villa site in Buckinghamshire.

Both these discoveries are featured in detail in episode one, Romans. The Yewden Roman Villa site was excavated ages ago - in 1912 - but archaeologist Jill Eyers has been taking a fresh look at the finds from that dig.

She knew there had been numerous infant burials around the site - 97 in total. In fact, infant 'burial' sounds a bit too respectful for what had actually been found - the remains of infants shoved unceremoniously into pits in the ground.

When Jill found the infant bones themselves in the museum stores, she sent them to Simon Mays, human osteologist at English Heritage.

He ascertained that all the infants had died around the time of birth - and suddenly the burials seemed even more suspicious.

Ninety seven infants all dying at birth: death from natural causes was now extremely unlikely.

When I looked at the bones, I also spotted what looked like cut-marks on one of them - the infant's body may have been dismembered. A horrible thought. It's very sad to think about those 97 little babies who never got the chance to grow up.

And so it does look like those babies were put to death. We know the Romanspractised infanticide, but this was baby-killing on a massive scale.

Jill thought the villa may have been a brothel. It's an interesting hypothesis, and one which may stand the test of further investigations as Jill continues to explore the mystery of Yewden Villa.

As a new mum myself, I felt the sadness around Yewden particularly intensely. I'm so used to looking at human remains but these little skeletons were so much more than just objects: they were telling us a dark secret from the past, and they were all that was left of those tiny human lives that were extinguished so brutally.

Were they unloved and unnamed when they were placed in the ground? Or - perhaps even worse - had they been eagerly awaited by their mothers but born into a society that thwarted that natural love and protective urge? What had those mothers gone through?

I'm not an archaeologist myself, but I'm certainly allied to the field in a number of ways. I'm an anatomist and an osteoarchaeologist, or human bone expert, and I've specialised in looking at disease in old bones.

I've had a strange career path, I suppose, but I've enjoyed every minute of it. Starting as a medical doctor, I branched off to teach clinical anatomy and study old bones, and ending up working in television and writing books. I still teach anatomy and look at the odd skeleton, though.

My favourite moment from the series was being able to look at the skeletons from the Mary Rose, which features in the Tudor programme, the final episode.

I clearly remember watching the ship being raised on Blue Peter. And more recently, I had wanted to look at the skeletons for my PhD, which was about problems around the shoulder joint (I suspected the Mary Rose archers might have suffered from something called rotator cuff disease - which afflicts a lot of us in old age, but also affects athletes like cricket bowlers and baseball pitchers in their youth), but I had to stop somewhere.

So this was a really special opportunity for me to check the shoulders of a couple of the individuals from the ill-fated ship.

You'll have to watch the series to see what I found, but now I want to look at all of them. This was one of the great things about doing this series. I was making a television programme but also getting to indulge my own curiosity - meeting fascinating people, seeing interesting sites, and being able to examine ancient artefacts and bones.

Dr Alice Roberts is the presenter of Digging For Britain.



Digging For Britain is on Thursdays at 9pm on BBC Two and at different times on BBC HD. You can watch the first episode on the BBC iPlayer.

To find out all future episodes of Digging For Britain, please visit the upcoming episodes page.

For more information on Roman history, please visit the BBC History site.

I'll be honest with you, The One Show has been a whirlwind because I've only known for three weeks that I've had the job and everything has happened in the space of about four and a half weeks.

I feel like I've been in some sort of film - I got the call and literally within hours my whole life changed.

I've sort of been going from one interview to the next to having a hair cut, to having some new clothes, to going into The One Show to meet the team. I mean, it's the same as anyone who starts a brand new job - there's a lot to take in!

Of course the first show is going out at seven in the evening on Monday and I think Jason Manford and I have got to the point now where reality's kicking in. We are feeling a little bit nervous but we've had loads of rehearsals. So I think that'll really help to make us feel settled because, of course, we haven't been back to the sofa since the screen-test.

We've watched Gabby Logan and Matt Baker who've done a fantastic job filling in for us. We've watched them do live shows but of course it's completely different when you're sat there yourself.

We've done what they call 'dry-runs' where we'll be running the programme to time. They get some researchers from the office to sit in as the experts who'll be there on Monday and we watch the films that are going into Monday's programme.

They'll run these time a few times - a dress rehearsal, make-up, and everything. But I don't think anything can prepare you really for when the red light goes on come Monday.

I think we'll settle in and I'm quite looking forward to the beginning of September, where we've done a few weeks and know the routine.

Starting a new job is difficult anyway. There's new people and a new way of doing things, so I think it'll be nice a few weeks in when everybody can breathe a bit.

I suppose my ideal line-up would be Take That. With Robbie, of course. Not half a job now. All of them back together.

The good thing is, it's quite a small sofa, and it's already Jason and I, so with another five that'd be seven, so we'd all have to sit really close together to make them all fit on.

Since going in for the first interview and the screen test we've met different members of the team - they're all just absolutely lovely. I'm sure everybody says that about the office that they work in but it's a really lovely team of people and that's the one thing I don't feel nervous about.

It is strange because when I've spent over ten years presenting through a medium of a different language, Welsh.

Jason's already sort of picking the odd word up and he's been texting me in Welsh, which I think is really impressive. I think we'll stick to English though, so everyone knows what we're saying, but there may be the odd word chucked in.

You train your brain - because it's such a complicated language which has got really complicated words and mutations. Nothing's happened so far but I'm sure there will be. I'll be like, "Shw mae Whoopi Goldberg, oops, I mean how are you!" It'll add to the charm!

I don't think I'll be relaxing too much after the first show because there's still Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to go!

But after the first week it will be nice to see my friends and family. Hopefully everything will have gone brilliantly and I can have a nice glass of Sauvignon Blanc to end the week with.

Alex Jones is the co-presenter of The One Show.

You can read more on Alex's thoughts on starting at The One Show in an interview with the BBC Wales Arts blog.

The One Show is on weekdays at 7pm on BBC One and BBC HD. To find out when the next episode is please visit the show's upcoming episodes page.

The first time I ever heard about Beckii Cruel, was when my executive producer phoned me on my day off and said the following: "I've just found out about an eccentric programme for BBC Three. It's about a girl from the Isle of Man who danced on the internet to Japanese pop music and became famous in Japan. I thought of you, are you interested?"

I definitely was interested.

Beckii, I quickly discovered, was just a very normal 14-year-old school girl who had experienced a very unusual rise to fame.

After developing an interest in everything Japanese a few years earlier, she soon discovered Japanese pop music and began copying and recording the dances and posting them on YouTube.

One day last summer, she recorded a dance to a rather crazy song called Danjo - and it turned out to be the song that changed her life. Not long after uploading it, she found herself being watched by half a million people 6,000 miles away. She had become famous in Japan practically overnight.

The first time I met Beckii was in a hotel room in London. She was sporting a very small, very blonde wig and looked totally different to the Beckii I'd researched on the internet.

Her managers were trying an image change for a new music video she was making and she was almost unrecognizable.

When I finally convinced myself that I was with the right girl, we introduced ourselves and I instantly began to film Beckii getting ready.

Time was of the essence. We were off to Tokyo in a week and I'd never filmed her before. I wanted to make her comfortable with the camera as soon as possible.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried. She showed almost no self-consciousness about being filmed. For a 14-year-old that is amazing, I thought.

The fact that Beckii was so used to being filmed became both a positive and negative in terms of making the documentary. Because she was so used to going on live TV and being interviewed by news crews from around the world, she wasn't fazed by me following her around with a camera.

But I soon realized that Beckii's experience had taught her a particular way of speaking and reacting to the camera, which wasn't quite what I was after as a documentary maker.

Having gained access to film Beckii's story for the first time, I wanted to get a real sense of what it must feel like to be 14 and to have become famous in such an interesting way.

Getting to that story required Beckii to see me in a different way, to not just see me as a news interviewer after a quick story. What she was very good at was delivering good, short sound bites about her discovery how it had come about, how amazing it was.

I could tell (quite understandably), that she had tired somewhat of telling the same story over and over again. What teenager wouldn't find that a little boring?

Beckii and I had a very good chat very early on in the filming process, as I needed her to understand why this was something different to what she had done before.

I explained that I wasn't part of a news crew and what I really needed her to do was open up to me, and most importantly to think about the questions I was asking her rather than just firing off answers.

Beckii never failed to amaze me the way she would take on board comments like this and try hard to change. From that point on, she made a real effort to not give me the stock answers she had given so many others.

I was always conscious that although Beckii was used to media attention, she was also just a 14-year-old girl.

Asking any 14-year-old to open up their life for an hour-long documentary is a huge deal. There were definitely times when I'm sure Beckii would have preferred to be out with her friends, or practicing a new dance.

But I also knew that she was desperate for people to understand her and see past the news headlines. For this reason, she was always determined to put effort into the filming and to talk about subjects that were sometimes sensitive or difficult.

Although Beckii has a huge fan base of people who think she's amazing and inspiring, she also gets a tough time from negative commenters on the internet and some hassle from kids on the Isle of Man.

She really wants those people to see the real her, to understand that she isn't an arrogant, conceited superstar, but a normal teenage girl who is taking the opportunities that have come her way.

She is always the first to admit that she isn't the best dancer on the internet, or the best singer in the world, that what happened to her is a once in a lifetime lucky thing, but she doesnt think that should stop her grabbing hold of opportunities if they come her way.

One of the biggest problems with making a film about 14-year-old Beckii, was that it was so easy to forget she was 14. Quite often when she spoke about the business, her direction, her image or her fan base, you could easily mistake her for a 17 or 18-year-old.

This is the consequence of being a child in an adult's world. In order to be taken seriously and understand what's going on around you, you are often required to behave older than you are. This can result in a speeding up of the natural growing up process.

I sometimes worry that Beckii puts pressure on herself to be old when she is still very young, but I know this problem isn't exclusive to her as a child star.

I think Beckii copes with fame quite remarkably. I still can't work out how she has such a wise brain inside such a young head, or how she holds on to a real inner strength when she puts up with so much.

I was always surprised by how easily she could go from being adored and mobbed in Tokyo, to being a normal school girl on the Isle of Man.

She wouldn't expect attention at home and she wouldn't really miss it. In fact she was often happy to leave it behind.

Her group of very lovely close friends at home always serve to make her feel normal, and rather than resent that she thoroughly embraces it, perhaps subconsciously knowing that in the tough world of showbiz, she needs to hold on to something real and honest to keep her grounded.



Ellena Wood is the director of Beckii: Schoolgirl Superstar At 14.

Beckii: Schoolgirl Superstar At 14 is on at 9pm on Thursday, 12 August on BBC Three, and is part of the channel's Adult Season.

You can read more on Beckii's story, in her own words, on BBC Slink

Some months ago, a letter was posted through our door from a production company looking for a possible house location for Mistresses. I phoned the location manager and arranged for her to pop round and see if our house would be suitable.



I didn't really have much hope as the place is pretty tatty, but thought it worth a punt. If nothing else, we thought our 10-year-old daughter Maia would find it interesting. I made the whole family spend all weekend cleaning and tidying before the visit.

Dee, the professional and approachable location manager, was surprisingly positive. Over the next six weeks, we had an inspection visit every week from what seemed to be everybody in the film industry bar the gaffer, building up to the director and producer and culminating in a firm's outing of 25 arriving by charabanc.

Then the Man From Ecosse, he say Yes. We were all chuffed and excited but not certain how it would be received in our street. After a wee bit of friendly haggling, contracts were duly agreed and signed.

The character Trudi's taste is very different to ours. The painters moved in and transformed all the rooms they were filming in, using some very strange colours.

It was unnerving having your house redressed and decorated in colours you would never choose or even think of but we actually decided to keep the striking, deep plum colour chosen for the kitchen. We were pretty happy too when they fixed our garden balcony stairs. Shame the stained ceiling wasn't going to be in the shot as well!

The filming schedule eventually crept up from the planned six days to 18 days but moving out wasn't a great hardship as we went to Majorca for 10 days. Unfortunately it rained the whole time - not something the production company could fix!



We only had to stay in an apartment for a week on our return, which was great because any longer, would have driven us all mad. Being out of your house for so long is unsettling and we were very glad to go home when the 18 days were up.

The production team were always helpful and made it clear we could go back to the house during filming anytime we liked as long as we let them know. It was usually easier to go back in the evening when they had all gone home and tiptoeing round Trudi's house was a strange experience.

We went to watch filming one day and got to meet the gorgeous Joanna Lumley who lived up to all expectations when she greeted Maia with her inimitable beatific smile - "Hello sweetie" - and a big cuddle. All the crew and cast were really friendly and made a huge fuss of our star-struck daughter (and Dad!).

Our neighbours were by and large fine with the experience and supportive. They had enjoyed the star-spotting. The film crew had been as helpful as they could be, helping people with their shopping and moving their vans if need be.

Overall, it was a very positive experience for us as a family. We enjoyed the banter with the props crew, James, John and Jane and we'd definitely do it again.

Claire Bush is the real life homeowner of the house used as Trudi's home in Mistresses.

Mistresses starts at 9pm on Thursday, 5 August on BBC One and BBC HD.

To find out times of future episodes, please visit the upcoming episodes page.

I guess I should consider myself very lucky. I get paid to do what most folk have to do as a hobby. But after six series of walks with Julia Bradbury, Dan Snow's Norman Walks has thrown up a fresh new set of challenges - and, it has to be said, a whole new level of walking fascination.

Since the age of five when I first visited the Lake District, I've been obsessed by the great outdoors. I wouldn't say I pursued a career in walking shows - that was just a lucky break. But having got here, I have to say, the view is rather good.

I've known Dan for a few years now. We're the same age, come from the same part of the country, played rugby against each other at school (Dan was far too tall even then) and, most weirdly, both had fathers who presented Tomorrow's World.

In between several conversations entitled 'where on earth did our twenties go?' we've discussed the odd programme idea, but little did we think that the niche sport of Norman walking would be the one to take off.

As series producer I got to scour the country, in this case with Alice Robinson, the assistant producer. From the Sussex coast to Pembrokeshire, and from East Anglia to the Scottish borders, we went in search of three great walks that could shed light on what our Norman predecessors were up to 900 odd years ago.

Three historical facts proved incredibly fortuitous:

1 - With the Normans hailing from northern France, they were obliged to invade a coastline. (Always good for walking.)

2 - The Normans built a great many castles in the wildest and most rugged parts of the country. (Ditto.)

3 - The Normans established a great many monasteries in the quietest and most remote parts of the country. (Bingo.)

And so Alice and I were drawn to Hastings, the castles of the Welsh borders and the abbeys of North Yorkshire.

Here we studied Ordnance Survey maps, sprinted along as many footpaths as possible and spoke to as many local experts as we could find. Then, we went away, scratched our heads for a bit, and returned to lead Dan and the film crew through a bespoke 'Norman Walk'.

For once, on these walking shows, the weather was almost always lovely. Paul, the sound recordist was giving praise to the Icelandic volcano for removing the aircraft that normally blight outdoor filming in Britain.

And Dan was fantastic, bringing the vast history knowledge that we all knew about, but also a childlike enthusiasm that grew with every passing motte and bailey. I truly hope some of these qualities come across in the final show.

But they're a frustrating bunch those Normans! Far too often they carelessly left their Abbeys to be dissolved, their battlefields to be built on and their castles to be 'redeveloped' by every passing Plantagenet, Tudor or Roundhead.

I will long remember the expert (who shall remain nameless) who told Alice that we were "wasting our time. The Normans are archeologically invisible," he concluded.

Well, in places, he had a point. But I believe this merely made the investigative nature of Dan's walks all the more interesting. How much evidence could we find? And how much can we really be certain of?

With the addition of the aerial filming that always forms part of our walking shows, I've come to believe that walking could be an ideal companion to TV history. It will be interesting to see whether the viewers agree.

The show has allowed us to take the Normans, quite literally, at a walking pace, pay some close attention, and see what the landscape can reveal.

The whole Norman walking process was, I have to say, an absolute blast, and I hope the BBC let Dan and I loose on another period of history very soon.

Owen Rodd is series producer of Dan Snow's Norman Walks.

Dan Snow's Norman Walks starts at 10pm on Wednesday, 4 August on BBC Four and is part of the Norman Season.

To find out times of all future episodes please visit the upcoming episodes page.

Croatian actor Goran Visnjic (who played Dr Luka Kovac in ER) spoke to the BBC TV blog about his role in the new drama, The Deep, which is set on a submarine.

How would you describe Samson, your character in The Deep?

He's a marine biologist and he's part of this team that is going to do research. And also their mission is to find out what happened with their identical twin vessel - a submarine that went down a year ago and they don't know what happened to it.

So he's the guy who is highly committed to this job. These trips in submarines are extremely expensive. He's part of a team which is highly praised. Everyone on this vessel is a one-of-a-kind person.

He's one of the experienced part of the crew, along with the characters Jimmy [Nesbitt] and Minnie [Driver] played. Samson is one of the organisers of the whole task and he was a very good friend of Jimmy's character's wife, who died in the previous crash.

There's a lot of emotion involved, especially for Jimmy's character because we find out his later his agenda is that he wants to go down because he believes his wife is still alive.

Everybody thinks it's impossible because it's been all these months since those guys disappeared but he has this strong, almost mad feeling in him that she's still alive and we'll see how we're going to prove him right or wrong.

So there's a lot going on, it's not just pure sci-fi, there's a beautiful love story and a family strength and honour story going on at the same time. That's what attracted me to it - it wasn't a flat science fiction action kind of thing, there were a lot of layers under that that were very human. Everyone is going down for a different reason.

Is it the first time you've worked with computer-generated imagery (CGI)?

Well we did use some on ER and on a couple of movies, tricks and stuff like that. But this was the first time that the creatures that you see in front of you, like the giant squid, whales you know, all kind of different animals were CGI. And mostly exterior shots of the big submarines.

The small yellow sub - the Lurch - was a real submarine that was built on the stage.

So when Samson goes off alone in the Lurch - you were physically sat inside it?

Yes. We had to build the small one because there are scenes that pull it up on chains and push it on a rail. It was really cool, they were driving it on a crane. And then we do actually submerge the submarine all the way down in the moon pool. So it was the real deal and it was able to go into the water.

And did you actually go into the water inside the Lurch?

Yes but not underwater, that would be dangerous because, of course, it wasn't built as a real pressurised thing.

So when you were inside the Lurch, you were having to use your imagination as to what you were seeing in the ocean around you, because it was all CGI?

Well, we were laughing about it. Jim O'Hanlon, the director, would sit in front of the monitor and he would describe what I would see and sometimes it would turn into a funny thing. People would start saying "Imagine you're seeing a big... " God knows what! I don't want to go into details! (laughing). Dear oh dear, it was fun.

So he was there all the time, talking you though it and helping you visualise what you had to be reacting to?

You know, it was actually quite a helpful tool. We would do all these scenes in one long, big shot, so we just rolled the camera. It was high definition and it looks as film. This new technology is quite awesome, but it was digital so it means you don't have to change the hard drive like you do with a film every couple of minutes.

So we'd be running seven, eight, God knows how many scenes in one big piece and he would just guide us through and you would have to imagine what was going on. It helped speed up the filming a bit.

That's interesting.

Yes it's interesting but it's a pain in the neck too (laughing)! We had to go through five different days in five minutes!

How did you like filming in Glasgow?

I loved it. I was there for about two and a half months and I love Scotland so much. I was so excited because Scotland was one of the places I always wanted to visit.

When this came by, my agent was like [downbeat voice] "Oh, you're not going to be at home, you'll have to be away filming in Scotland..." and I was like, "Scotland! Oh my God! I want to go!"

So every weekend when I had time, I would take my rental and go all over Scotland. I was up in the Isle Of Skye, I was at Eilean Donan castle - I think it was the one in the old Highlander, the first film. A really beautiful castle and when it's low tide, it becomes an island and you can walk to it. Really beautiful. I went to Edinburgh and saw a great show in the Lyceum Theatre. A really good friend of mine lives in Scarborough so I went to see him too.

Did you have your family with you?

No, they were in Zagreb in Croatia. Once you have Europeans living in America, they start thinking that all of Europe is a very small place (laughing). So my wife was in Zagreb, I was in Glasgow, and we met once in Paris and then we spent Christmas and New Year's in Zagreb. It was very nice.

How did you get along with the rest of the cast?

Great because Jimmy and I worked together on my first international job, Welcome To Sarajevo. It was really great to see him after all these years. We had a lot of chat, he's just a great guy.

It was a cool shoot. Everyone else too... Minnie, Sacha [Dhawan] and Svetlana... I mean Vera [Filatova]! My God, I keep calling her by her character's name (laughing)!

Everyone worked every day so whenever we got a day off we would go out together.

What were the highlights of filming for you?

The coolest part was playing with those toys, the submarines, that was the highlight. And the whole idea, I've never done this kind of genre before. So I was excited to come and be part of it. And I had an opportunity to see a bit of Scotland, which I never had before, so that was great.

Are you one of those actors who hates watching themselves on screen?

Well there is a bit of that. You know, if you're not happy with what you've done. A good thing can always turn into a bad thing... but you are excited to see what you've done. It's like 'Oh my God!' (laughing).

I hope I'm going to be happy about The Deep. It's just I'm actually quite curious. I want to see it as soon as possible. They were bringing me a copy here to Los Angeles but the trip was cancelled so I guess they're going to mail it to us or something!



How different is it filming TV dramas like this from films like Welcome To Sarajevo?

You're talking about budgets pretty much. If you do film, you're going to spend more time and it's going to be more detail-oriented. That's the main difference.

If you make three categories - actually, four categories in the States. You can make a soap opera one category, then network television, then cable television and then you've got features. Each step up you go, you see the improvement in the picture quality, production design quality and how much time you spend on certain things.

On soap opera they're going to do 15 to 30 pages of script maybe in one day of filming. In network television you're going to make maybe eight pages, in cable you're going to do four. And in film they'll do one to three maybe. So the major difference would be how much time and effort you put in.

So in features normally you have more time on your hands and the details are going to be done a little bit better.

But for me, my part of the job is the same. If you have enough time to prepare yourself, there is no difference for actors really.

As a child, did you always want to be an actor, or would you have liked to do something like Samson's job in a submarine?

I actually have been crazy about flying, always. I did 13 jumps out of a plane with the Blue Angels, which is a US Navy acrobatic group - from an F/A-18 Hornets airplane, which was probably the highlight of my life (laughing).

So those were my dreams, but I kind of fulfilled them in a cheating way. I didn't finish the school to become a pilot or whatever but I had a taste of it. So it's a little bit similar in that adventure kind of spirit but to go on a submarine - I've never done anything like that.

But I was born by the ocean and have been diving since I was a kid. The ocean was a huge part of my life.

Goran Visnjic plays Samson in The Deep

The Deep starts on Tuesday, 3 August at 9pm on BBC One and BBC HD. To find out times of all episodes, please visit the upcoming episodes page.

Fiona Wickham is editor of the BBC TV blog