Olivia Hannah is part of our Northern Voices writer development group based out of Salford (pre Covid). She describes a recent workshop for the group which broke down the process of creating and writing an episode of CBBC's hit animation Danger Mouse.
So, 2020. That was a year. I spent most of it as part of the BBC Writersroom Northern Voices group, which began with monthly trips to Media City in Salford and ended with a Zoom party. The scheme comprised a series of writing workshops, covering just about everything script and TV-related. We had dedicated sessions on structure, character and genre, on writing for comedy, children’s TV and continuing drama, and Q&As with writers, agents and indie producers. Alongside this, we worked with script editors to write a spec' script and pitch document to send out at the end of the year. It was challenging, fun and eye-opening. When Lockdown 1 landed, the workshops moved to Zoom and the post-workshop pub debriefing moved to WhatsApp. One of the benefits of this was that there was a little more flexibility to add workshops to the schedule, and so in December we had an additional session with Andrew Burrell on writing Danger Mouse.
Full disclosure: I was crazy about the original Danger Mouse series as a child (he may even have been my first crush...) and was completely uninterested in the whole idea of a reboot. I couldn’t imagine it would have half the charm of the original. But when the workshop was scheduled, I started watching it and was delighted to find I was totally wrong in that assumption. All the best things about the original series have been preserved: the sarcastic narrator, the wit, the bonkers, action-filled plots, and - most importantly - the essence of the central characters and their friendship. I felt nostalgic for David Jason, but the new voice actors are brilliant. I immediately loved it, and made my sister watch some episodes with me (“the Queen is a CORGI”).
So I went into the workshop with Andrew with fairly high expectations of a fun time, and I wasn’t disappointed. We began with a fairly painless ice-breaker (possibly easier because us Northern Voicers already knew each other), talked a little about the series, picked an idea from a few we’d submitted ourselves before the workshop, and then got started on breaking the story for an episode. The idea we picked: Danger Mouse has a bad hair day.
We began by talking about the importance of DM and Penfold’s friendship, then about DM’s flaws and how having a bad hair day might affect him. We decided his vanity wouldn’t be able to take it and he’d lose his mojo. We decided the bad hair day was caused by Penfold doing DM’s hair and making a mess of it, making it grow uncontrollably. All the way through, Andrew nudged us to think about how ideas could play out as action on screen and we soon had DM battling wildly growing, sentient hair. More and more wild ideas followed, on a galactic scale. We talked about who would make a good antagonist and decided Count Duckula was the best fit for a story about vanity.
As we worked, Andrew steered us through the structure, explaining the four-act structure most commonly used for animated shows, starting with The Simpsons. It follows the arc I’ve become familiar with, from set-up and inciting incident, through rising action to a midpoint and beyond, to a resolution. Our protagonist recognises the flaw standing in their way and changes to overcome the antagonist. It’s all there, in a simplified form and with some specific features, like an apparent win that instead worsens the crisis in Act IIa and a moral decision in Act IV.
Structure is the element I have struggled the most to master. Another Northern Voicer (I’m afraid I don’t remember who!) said it’s like physics and I strongly agree, in that I know it’s important and underpins everything, but it is incomprehensible to me and I just kind of hate it. I can’t hear the word in a writing context without shuddering a little. Not in this session, though; it was very painless and made sense. I found it was much easier to think of what job the action should be doing at each stage, and find some ideas that worked.
As we threw in ideas, discussed them, focussed on what worked and discarded what didn’t, Andrew wrote everything up and read through it once we’d finished. It was so satisfying to hear a funny, coherent story come out of all the jokes and suggestions and what-ifs we’d thrown into the mix. We then created a logline, and there it was. Our outline for an episode of Danger Mouse.
After I’d logged off, I had a big grin on my face. Talking about ideas and creating stories is my favourite part of the process, and the fun thing about doing that with Danger Mouse was that it felt like absolutely anything could be on the table. Should DM also get a wicked set of acrylics? We decided against it in the end, but you know what? I’ll always have that mental image. The experience also solidified a thought I’ve had for a while, which is that working in a writers’ room could be a really enjoyable job for me, and probably a logical next step if I can swing it.
The other feeling I was left with was a sense of completion. Everything we’d learned in the craft workshops came into play: protagonists and antagonists, structure, storytelling through action, loglines and treatments. Although I’ve spent months thinking about those things as I wrote my pilot, there was something very clarifying about bringing it all into play for one episode outline. Things clicked into place. It almost felt like a final exam (albeit a very fun one) and a very fitting way to round out the year.
Find out more about our Northern Voices group for 2020/21
Andrew Burrell on the Danger Mouse reboot
Read Danger Mouse scripts in our library
