Bluestone 42: New challenges in our second series

I’m the producer of Bluestone 42, a comedy set in Afghanistan, following a bomb disposal detachment.

I was incredibly excited to get working on series two, having had such a brilliant time on the first series.

I couldn’t wait to get back out to South Africa in the sunshine with our fantastic cast and crew.

Stellenbosch, South Africa is a really beautiful place to shoot in, even if it is swarming with deadly snakes. 

A fact we did not know on series one, but are now all too aware of having had to employ a full-time snake wrangler! They were kept very busy with puff adders and cape cobras.

Launching series one was more sensitive than a usual comedy series due to the subject matter.

We were keen to do it in the right way, which included involving families who have lost loved ones, talking to bomb disposal charities and screening episodes to a military audience.

The response to series one was fantastic from the military community, with soldiers coming to us from all over the place to offer up stories, a lot of which would genuinely be unsuitable to show on television!

Bluestone 42 is a unique show. We get to have some really funny scenes with excellent comedy characters, right next to very serious moments and fantastic special effects.

Series two was easier in many ways – we know the show inside out, we know the set and the South African crew, and the cast know each other well.

Our biggest change was the addition of Matthew Lewis, who plays new guy Towerblock and is best known for Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies.

It was excellent to have a fresh team member to add to the existing dynamic, and I know how much the team enjoyed introducing someone new to the delights of Cape Town and Stellenbosch with the occasional night out.

It turns out that Harry Potter is very popular in that part of the world, which made for some very interesting evenings out and mountain runs being followed by a regular troupe of fans.

Series two also brought with it new challenges. Not just to make the show even funnier and with more action, which I hope we have done, but with new and unusual weather, of all things.

It turns out that we had an unusually dry spring in series one. This time, sadly, we had an unusually wet one!

A lot of our show is set outside and although it actually does rain in Afghanistan, nobody really knows or believes that, so this presented us with a few issues.

On two occasions we lost half a day filming. Once when it was too windy to film an explosion that had taken three hours to set up , and another time when the storm was so ferocious and terrifying that we had to abandon ship.

I’d never seen weather of such biblical proportions! Unexpected to say the least. What happened to the sunshine?

The special effects and stunts are always great fun to film, if incredibly time consuming. 

The car rolling precariously down the hill in episode one and exploding took four hours to set up and another 30 minutes or so to film, for what would be 23 seconds on screen.

This takes a lot of planning and patience, and we only ever get one shot at getting it right, so we rely heavily on our special effect guru Antony Stone and his team (which includes an ever present dog named Pyro!).

But it’s that tension, planning and a little sense of the unknown that makes it all so exciting!

Michelle Farr is the producer of Bluestone 42.

Bluestone 42 continues on Thursday, 20 March at 10pm on BBC Three and BBC Three HD. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

More on Bluestone 42

BBC Media Centre: BBC Three announces new comedy commissions

BBC Writersroom: Bluestone 42: Read the script for series two, episode one

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.