Openings are hard. There are so many ways of starting a script - and a series. And each way can result in a totally different effect on the viewer.
Writing the first episode of a second series of Land Girls entailed a fair bit of debate about how best to re-introduce the characters. We wanted viewers familiar with the series to discover who was still on the farm - and for new viewers to meet the characters for the first time. Should we drip-feed it, and re-introduce them over a number of scenes? Or do it, more-or-less in one go? The decision was helped along by the discovery of a vintage plane...
In the opening sequence, brilliantly realised by director Steve Hughes, we see most of the regular cast, Joyce, Bea, Billy, Baby William, and Esther quickly established. We then find Martin - Esther's son - racing across a field, trying to keep up with the Tiger Moth flying overhead. Then Joyce notices the plane and runs to the fence, uttering the first line of dialogue in the series. A bit of tension: who is in the plane?
And later, when Joyce flies off with her husband, Bea is swept up in their romance - we know that she can never have that excitement with her own husband, Billy, contrasting the glamour and romance of one relationship with the more mundane realities of married life on the other. We complete the opening with an exchange between Esther and Martin, underpinning the fact that Land Girls encompasses humour as well as drama.
So the first few scenes re-introduce the characters and establish the tone of the series. In addition, they set up storylines that will develop over the series - the holes in Bea and Billy's marriage; the euphoria of Joyce and John; the mother and son relationship between Esther and Martin; the status quo of the Land Girls working in the fields.
In short, I hope that the opening succeeds in quickly bringing us 'back to the Land'.
Read the script for Land Girls Series 2: Episode 1 in the BBC writersroom script archive.
