The Future Of Doctor Who

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Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to this episode of the Resters Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition.

Speaker 1 I'm Marina Hai and I'm Richard Osman. Thank you for all your questions, everybody.
Shall we get straight on or shall we?

Speaker 2 We've got some sort of any other business, really, because after our advert,

Speaker 2 my hymn to various adverts last week,

Speaker 2 Caroline has written in and she says, Dear Marina and Richard, it was so lovely to hear you refer to the Boy on the Bike Hovis advert in your latest podcast.

Speaker 2 My wonderful dad, Alan Hepburn, was the advertising manager at Hovis in 1973 and was part of the team that produced this iconic ad.

Speaker 2 In fact, he always said that he and my mum sat by the music centre with loads of classical music LPs and came up with the idea of using Vorjak, which CDP agreed with.

Speaker 2 That's the advertising agency. He is now 91 and currently in hospital with a rather nasty infection.
I'm going to see him later and we'll play the podcast to him. Hopefully it will cheer him up.

Speaker 2 Oh, Caroline, that is so lovely. I mean, it is, by the way, it's not just one of my favourite,

Speaker 2 I think it's routinely voted the nation's favourite ever ever.

Speaker 1 It goes down in history.

Speaker 2 Nostalgia for a time that they were never already passed. It was everything.
So

Speaker 2 it's iconic in all sense of the word and directed by Ridley Scott.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and Caroline, if you play this to your dad as well. Alan, get well soon.
And thank you for

Speaker 1 doing something that most people will never do. What a lovely thing to have made such an impression.
But get well soon, my friend. Shall I ask you a question? Please do.

Speaker 1 And it's a question, we've had lots of versions of this question, but Rob McGough, you are first out of the trap, so I'm going to do your version of it.

Speaker 1 Rob asks, Disney have ended their much criticised co-production deal with the BBC to make Doctor Who. Will Disney consider the whole ordeal a mistake?

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 clearly Disney have ended the deal, so they certainly consider it something they want to get out of. It's strange because it sort of happened quite late.

Speaker 2 It happened almost after the era of what we remember now as the lovely co-production money era, where basically streamers

Speaker 2 were trying to sort of build scale and get a hold on various markets. And so

Speaker 2 lots of things were co-production and lots of very expensive things and lots of, you know, this was the peak TV era, but people were, you know, losing money, huge amounts of money but they wanted to build scale so someone like netflix was just spending enormous on unsustainable amounts of money trying to do these things so we had all these shows this actually came later than that they didn't even put out a statement disney saying that you know it was the statement came from the bbc saying that this was a um they were had been a great partner and so on i mean clearly they're disappointed i think they've been a great partner no listen i'm sure they've been you know they know david harbour but i don't know if they've been great obviously they put it on disney plus and what they it's quite tricky.

Speaker 2 We know what it is because it's very sort of idiosyncratically British. It's a sort of tea time family drama thing that sci-fi as well.
To them, it might have been like, well, is it YA?

Speaker 2 Is it like, or is it, you know, is it like Percy Jackson, which is done a show that's in that kind of space

Speaker 2 that's done

Speaker 2 much better for them and, you know, is on a second season and all of that. Certainly, I'm never sure they quite understood it.

Speaker 2 They certainly didn't promote it in lots of ways like their native shows, as it were.

Speaker 1 And also, by the way, because Russell T.

Speaker 1 Davis was such a big part of that deal and is such a big part of Doctor Who, he was, he, I think they accepted that he was going to have creative control of what it looked like.

Speaker 1 So, Disney executives were not able to say, I wonder if we can make this a bit more Disney, which of course was the thing everyone was terrified of.

Speaker 2 And a bit more categorizable for them in their, you know, much more set categories. And he is idiosyncratic and a maverick and all those sort of things.

Speaker 2 He's obviously brilliant and amazing, and we love him. And so I think in some ways,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 2 as I say, what they want is they want there to be awards and nominations, and it didn't have those apart from, you know, there might have been a technical award or something.

Speaker 2 But I've seen different estimates on the episode cost, and I think there's kind of north end of them where people were saying that it's £10 million an episode. Russell T.

Speaker 2 Davis was like, Oh my God, I would literally be talking to you from my moon base if that was the case. Having said that, it massively and by multiples increased what the budget was before on the BBC.

Speaker 2 Whether you need that or not, you know, there'll always be people saying, oh, we like cardboard sets and just great stories.

Speaker 2 I personally, and this is nothing from anyone on the show, but I think they had a problem with the casting of the lead character. I think Shuti Gatwa, I am told, he didn't particularly love doing it.

Speaker 2 And it's not for everyone that role. And you are so much more than the lead in a particular drama.
When it came back, and under Russell T.

Speaker 2 Davis, there was Christopher Eccles, and he did it for one season, and then it clearly wasn't for him either. David Tennant revolution, you know, brought it.

Speaker 1 It's fair to say it was for him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was for him, but he was a who he was a doctor who obsessive. So was Peter Capaldi who came next but one and they fully understood what the nature of that role is.

Speaker 2 You're not just the lead in that thing. You are an ambassador.
You do all sorts of other things and all feeds back.

Speaker 2 But it's a really, you know, it sort of occupies a role in the life of the nation to some degree. Matt Smith, who was so young, who is absolutely one of the most amazing Doctor Who's of all time.

Speaker 2 I think he's incredible, sorry, one of the most amazing doctors of all time.

Speaker 2 I think he's incredible and it's extraordinary that he played it with such sensitivity and he was both old and young at the same time. He did it amazingly.

Speaker 2 But he also understood that you're a form of ambassador. I didn't get that at all from Shuetigawa at all.
I think he had other projects. He wasn't that committed to that thing.

Speaker 2 I definitely think that the Americans thought that he wasn't necessarily 100% available there to be a kind of...

Speaker 1 He's definitely in demand for obvious reasons.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and he's done lots of different things and he's done theatre. He's done, you know, two plays and whatever in the time of all of that.
He said, I, you know, I'm getting old. I'm 33.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 As I say, it's a failure to call someone who fully understood the full implications and weight and responsibilities of the role.

Speaker 2 And also, actually, I think if you are the lead in a big American TV show, and this... for this purpose is both, there are certain things that might be expected of your time.

Speaker 2 And perhaps that didn't occur.

Speaker 1 And it's absolutely a deal that made sense for the BBC and made sense for Disney.

Speaker 1 You do all sorts of collaborations in this business and a lot of the times they don't come off for lots and lots of reasons. But you have to look back and go, was this a mistake? I don't think it was.

Speaker 1 I think that Russell T. Davis felt that he would have the same creative control he would have elsewhere, but with more money.

Speaker 1 And I think Disney were thinking, we've got this piece of IP, this franchise, that if we can just get a bit of traction on this, this can serve us for the next 10 years because we can have lots and lots of spin-offs.

Speaker 1 We can build a whole universe around Doctor Who, this thing that we feel has been undervalued. And there are lots of places.

Speaker 2 And they're already starting to do that. There's the spin-off, the war between the land and the sea, and things like that.
So they are coming.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but so absolutely made sense for both sides. Yet, sometimes, for whatever reason, it just doesn't work.
And sometimes personnel change in organizations. And sometimes...

Speaker 2 And cultural change, I have to say.

Speaker 2 I'm afraid in contemporary America and contemporary Disney, where they're thinking, oh, we corrected too closely towards what, I mean, for want of a better phrase, a woke agenda.

Speaker 2 They're now moving away from that and back to some form

Speaker 2 and back to some form of what they consider to be returning to some form of mainstream. Again, I don't, you know, I can tell you what those sort of thoughts are.
And Russell T.

Speaker 2 Davis is an enemy of all of that and he'll do whatever he wants.

Speaker 1 He's not going to compromise. But the reason that Disney signed up is the same reason that lots of other people will sign up as well, because it does feel like it's it's an underutilized piece of IP.

Speaker 1 Yes. So if I can just talk about the magic of show business for a moment.

Speaker 1 You know, it feels like you could really create a huge world out of this.

Speaker 1 And there are plenty of big media companies with very deep pockets at the moment, content companies at least, that you know, somebody else, it would be worth their while to put some money into this.

Speaker 1 And BBC are very good now at doing deals with other people, you know, whether it's an all-encompassing umbrella like Disney, which comes with certain expectations, as you say, and where there has to be, suddenly there is a corporate thing that is bigger than, you know, Disney is one of the few corporate things that is bigger than the BBC.

Speaker 1 But it's such a great franchise. And you could see a way through this that Doctor Who lives forever on a different streamer.
So yeah, I think, you know what, wrong place, wrong time, right idea.

Speaker 2 Okay, Richard, one for you from Jamie, who says, I'm on holiday in Turkey. It's lovely.
Thank you for asking.

Speaker 2 And I saw someone reading a book with the worldwide best-selling author on the front cover. It made me think, what do you you need to do to be classed as a worldwide best-selling author?

Speaker 2 Does shifting a few copies in Latvia and Chad make you worldwide, for instance?

Speaker 1 It is a very specific thing, actually.

Speaker 1 If you want to call yourself, so there's lots of different things to see in the front cover of a book. A Sunday Times bestseller, you might see.
Now, that means it has to be in the top 10.

Speaker 1 of the Sunday Times. It only needs to be there for a week and it only needs to be on one of their charts.

Speaker 1 So if it's, they have the hardback fiction, paperback fiction, hardback non-fiction, paperback non-fiction. If you're in any of those top tens, you are a Sunday Times bestseller.

Speaker 1 You will then sometimes see number one Sunday Times bestseller. That is self-explanatory.

Speaker 1 That means it was number one.

Speaker 1 I remember in week two of Thursday Mender Club when that came out, it went to, I think it went to number two in Ireland because Graham Norton is always number one in Ireland.

Speaker 1 So after the first week, we call it Sunday, number one Sunday Times bestseller. From the second week, because it had been the top 10 in Ireland, you're allowed to call it an international bestseller.

Speaker 1 Very good. Essentially, it means if it's in two territories, you're in the official best.

Speaker 2 Two countries. That's a trend.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that is a trend. Worldwide bestseller, I think, is not an official thing, but you would not be able to do that if you had not been in more than two charts around the world.

Speaker 1 The Latvia and Chad question is interesting because

Speaker 1 if you

Speaker 1 they would not be the first territory that you had sold to if you weren't already an international bestseller. Yes.

Speaker 1 So if you sell in the UK and you sell in America and you sell in Germany or Italy, the big, big, big markets, that's when all the other markets come along.

Speaker 2 So how does it go just out of interest? It goes

Speaker 1 UK, US. It would go.
Well, the first place we sold Thursday Murder Club was Germany, where it is the first deal we signed before we'd even signed the UK deal, just because

Speaker 1 the UK deal took slightly longer for lots of reasons. So, Germany was the first country to buy Thursday Murder Club, which is lovely for me because they had no idea what point this was.

Speaker 1 They just liked the book. It would normally go UK, and sometimes you would do a UK, well, and UK, and UK is often UK and Commonwealth.

Speaker 1 So, if you sell to the UK, your publisher will also then have the rights in Canada, South Africa, all the Commonwealth territories, essentially. It's not always the case.

Speaker 1 Mine are carved out, so I have different deals in different territories.

Speaker 2 I bet you do.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that would be the normal thing.

Speaker 1 You would often on submission, which is when you send a book to

Speaker 1 different publishers, you would send it on submission to the US and the UK at the same time. That's normal, because there's lots and lots of links between those territories.

Speaker 1 So UK, US, Germany, because it's the next biggest market. And then, you know, you have your Italy's.
Yeah, I was going to say. France is.
France is always tricky. France is the place.

Speaker 1 That's the place I don't think. How tricky are they?

Speaker 1 But some people sell millions in France. And I just, I go over there and everyone's like, no, this book we don't like.
And you're like, come on, guys.

Speaker 1 So Italy, those big European countries. And then all the Eastern European countries will come in.
South America then comes in. And then if you're out in Japan, China, that would tend to be

Speaker 1 six months later when they've seen sales figures from other places. But yeah,

Speaker 1 so you cannot call yourself a bestseller if you haven't been in that top 10. You cannot call yourself an international bestseller if you haven't been in

Speaker 1 two top 10s. So now we can, we're like New York Times bestseller, which is another lovely thing to be.
But yeah, you can't fake any of those things at all. So it always means something specific.

Speaker 1 Worldwide, I assume, is the same as international. I assume it would be

Speaker 1 a thing. But yeah, you can't do it unless you've been in two top tens, and you can't be an international number one bestseller if you haven't been number one in two territories.

Speaker 1 So it's very, it's very, very, very specific. And people are getting an awful lot of trouble if they put something on there that they couldn't then back up.

Speaker 2 Who do you get in trouble with?

Speaker 2 Who are the book police?

Speaker 1 That is such a good question. I imagine that,

Speaker 1 yeah, the Publishers Association. I don't know.
I mean, there are sort of big publishers, and if one of the publishers broke rank,

Speaker 2 they wouldn't be invited to parties anymore i think is how it works that line of work in that line of work is youch is yelch yeah it really is

Speaker 1 thank you jamie marina gary powell has a question for you hi gary on vinyl sales it's a simple question keeps it tight who is making money from the resurgence in the popularity of vinyl well keeping my answer tight at least at the start gary i would say record companies and artists.

Speaker 2 You are completely right that it's climbing as a share of revenue for the UK recorded music industry, which I think, which was worth, I've written this down, it is,

Speaker 2 last year was worth

Speaker 2 1.49 billion, and vinyl accounted for 145 million. So as you can see, it's a lot.
If you add in CDs to that, so physical copies of music, it's 246 million. So

Speaker 2 you wouldn't say no to it. No, I mean, it's and in the US, it's even bigger.

Speaker 2 It's a much higher margin per unit, obviously, with a physical copy of music than it is for any sort of stream. As you can see, there are certain people who really have driven it.

Speaker 2 Someone like Taylor Swift, who is,

Speaker 2 you know, there's so many different editions, physical editions of Life of a Showgirl. I was saying to you earlier, my daughter, my daughter asked for one of them.
She asked for the,

Speaker 2 you know, the record. And I was like, do you know what this is? I mean, you don't have anything to play this on.
I mean, what? And she's like, no, I just, you know, want it. It's a collectible.

Speaker 2 And people, in an era when people have grown up sort of renting everything, you know, people used to sort of treasure their copies of movies and things like that.

Speaker 2 Everything is rented, everything is streamed.

Speaker 2 It's strangely, people have come back to it. And it's also, obviously, music retailers, as in actual stores, bricks and mortar stores, they're seeing more footfall.
And

Speaker 2 it's, there's more of it, but... And obviously, vinyl pressing plants, all of those sorts of things.
But in general, you make so much more money, obviously, from a physical copy of anything.

Speaker 1 There's a proper old school thing, which is that there is a margin in it.

Speaker 2 But they're trying to make it new school.

Speaker 2 And you see someone like Taylor Swift, who really doesn't have need of doing this, has put so many of the latest albums, there's so many different physical editions you can have.

Speaker 2 Record companies and artists, and every artist nowadays, in the old days, as we've talked about before, would have had some sort of blanket deal on what they took.

Speaker 2 And now everyone's got these individual contracts because otherwise, sometimes they don't even need to be with a record company.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's almost like merch these days, a vinyl album. You know, it's like a t-shirt.
Yes. But you're,

Speaker 1 I think we need to get a record player. Not you and me.
Yeah. But I was talking to Ingrid about it the other day.
He was saying we would get a record player. It's nice.
It's just nice. Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's something nice about putting the needle down.

Speaker 2 I was trying to explain it to my daughter and thinking, yeah, you know, it would be really nice to be just doing that. Yeah, I know what you mean.

Speaker 2 And obviously lots of other people are having these sort of thoughts. So anyway, that is the relatively brief answer to that question, Gary.

Speaker 1 I would sell an album for cost price, but I would then do a cheaper version which had adverts in between each track.

Speaker 2 It's fun.

Speaker 2 You'll just do your own deal for definitely.

Speaker 1 Always thinking. Always thinking.

Speaker 2 Shall we go to a break now?

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's do this.

Speaker 2 Shall we go to an advertise break? Yes.

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Speaker 2 Welcome back, everybody. This is a question from the entire Stuart family for you, Richard.

Speaker 1 Yes. As in the Tudors and the Stuarts.

Speaker 2 Yeah, actually the different spelling, but I feel that they are their own dynasty. And yes, I'm treating them as such in the asking of this question.

Speaker 2 Can you please help me with an answer for our inquisitive six-year-olds?

Speaker 1 Yes, that might be our youngest questioner yet.

Speaker 2 Yes. What's the process for the author and illustrator working together in a children's illustrated book? Is it words, then pictures, or more of a collaboration done in stages?

Speaker 2 Also, how do illustrators get paid for this type of work? Is it a one-off fee or royalty-based or a combination?

Speaker 1 Thank you very much for that question. What a good question.
Yeah. From a six-year-old.

Speaker 1 Everyone else has got their six-year-olds in the back of the car just going, when you ask a question like that, then we can be on the the podcast um it genuinely it changes from book to book so if you are a writer with a love a great children's story then often a publisher will put you with an illustrator or you know when you spend a lot of time in children's publishing you kind of know illustrators and so you know if you get the combination of julia donaldson and axel scheffler yeah who you know are the are the best-selling authors pretty much in the whole world you know they've worked together forever and ever and ever.

Speaker 1 Sometimes people will do both themselves. You take someone like Nadia Shireen, who's one of our great children's book writers.
She does the illustration and she does the words.

Speaker 1 And so she doesn't have to worry about what comes first. But I asked Nadia Shireen, genuinely, if you've not read her book, she is, I think, our finest children's author.

Speaker 1 This is the definitive answer from the definitive author. She said, what often happens is that an author will write a story and submit it to a publisher.

Speaker 1 The author may have someone in mind they would like to illustrate it, but it is the publisher who makes the pairing.

Speaker 1 The publishers will probably show the story to different illustrators and see who's the right fit and also whose schedules match up.

Speaker 1 If you're an illustrator who already has an impressive portfolio, then publishers will search around, they'll do it the other way around, for a suitable text, as they will be keen to use you.

Speaker 1 And this is where having an agent is useful too, as they will be able to share your work with as many publishers as possible. So if you're a writer, they'll look for an illustrator.

Speaker 1 If you're a great illustrator, they'll look for a writer. The author and illustrator will typically both be paid in advance.

Speaker 1 And if the book sells loads of copies, they may start to get royalties after they've earned out that advance.

Speaker 1 If the book doesn't sell loads of copies, the author and illustrator will get to keep their advance anyway. All different groups of people work very, very differently.

Speaker 1 So Axel Scheffler, for example, Julia Donaldson, some of the first books she did were based on things that she'd already written. So songs she had written.

Speaker 1 So Axel would take a look at that, do the drawing, send them to Julia. She would send something back, say, oh, I'm not sure about this, I'm not sure about that.
Like Elton John and Bernie Torpin,

Speaker 1 for a reference that your six-year-old will understand.

Speaker 2 Did she ever once ring down to a hotel front desk like Elton Dennis, ask if they could make the wind stop blowing?

Speaker 1 Julia Donaldson, I genuinely doubt it. Although that's a good name for a book, Could You Make the Wind Stop Blowing?

Speaker 2 He's hilarious about it, by the way. Very, very funny.

Speaker 1 Julia Donaldson.

Speaker 2 He is of overindulgence.

Speaker 2 Dari has a.

Speaker 1 As I say, six-year-old answering the question. Julia Donaldson's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet.
In fact, almost all children's authors are the nicest people you'll meet in the whole world.

Speaker 1 I went to a reception recently and Julia Donaldson was there. Chris Riddell was there.
Chrysler Cowell, he does How to Train Your Dragon. She was there.

Speaker 2 I mean, Chris Riddell's books are so beautiful. Yes.

Speaker 1 And again,

Speaker 1 he will often do both or sometimes he'll work to other people's things. The big gossip there was, I said, talk to me about this celebrity's doing kids' books.
Come on. I said, who do you not mind?

Speaker 1 Who do you not mind doing this? And the name they all came up with, all of these are the,

Speaker 1 Nadia Shereen was there as well. like also all the greatest of our children's authors and illustrators.
I said, Who do you not mind? And the person who got full marks from everyone, Dermot O'Leary.

Speaker 1 That's lovely to know. They said, No, we love Dermot.

Speaker 2 I thought that's everyone loves Dermot. I love Dermot.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, Axel Scheffler is, you know, is on a back end for the book, so that's how he gets paid.
So, he'll get his money up front. It's the same with it, Julia, Will.

Speaker 1 They're a team, and he will also get money at every book you sell. There are illustrators for hire.

Speaker 1 So, you know, someone has written a book in the celebrity world as well, and someone will just get paid for doing the drawings and that that would be a what you call a buyout which means you get a certain amount of money that that money will that's all the money that you're going to get but the loveliest books always look into if you're buying books does someone do it all themselves or if there's an author and an illustrator you can you can find out if they work together you can find out if they like each other you can find out if they've done stuff before if there's a book that doesn't tell you for example who did the illustration

Speaker 1 i mean come on shame on that book yeah yeah exactly it's all different things for all different people but you know the great the really really great well either people who do it by themselves or the great teams like julia and axel it is just an absolute combination of just two people who are in sync with each other who know what each other need and what each other want lots of little technical things like but you absorb each you you have a sort of you develop a combined aesthetic that has come from working in concert for so long yeah exactly that lots of little technical things like if a you know how big does a speech bubble need to be how or you know the speech at the bottom and things like that.

Speaker 1 But that all gets worked out in the process. But yeah, so with Julia Donaldson, it'll usually be text, and then Axel will work around it.

Speaker 1 Sometimes it'll be different to that, but lots and lots of different ways of doing it.

Speaker 1 But it's lovely if someone does it all themselves, or if you have a team like Julia and Axel, who you know just adore each other and work completely in tandem.

Speaker 1 And, you know, the real takeaway is that they all love Dermot. Marina, a question for you from Gina Walsh.

Speaker 1 Gina asks, do writers care about online fan theories? What happens when a fan theory is better than the actual plot?

Speaker 2 Okay, okay. Fan theories is

Speaker 2 the practice of people having theories about how a show is going to pan out story-wise. And obviously with things within, sometimes it'll just be a limited series drama and people will think,

Speaker 2 you know, I think Hugh Grant did it. I think Nicole Kimmett or whatever it is.
And I think there was this Easter egg in episode one or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 So while something's kind of on air.

Speaker 2 While it's on air.

Speaker 2 But in the shows that run for many seasons several seasons i mean you know we live in a you know the first big one of this in the modern era was something like lost where people were saying okay what's happening is the island moving is you know what how what is to explain all these things that i'm seeing on screen and it became a sort of and that also took off um in a time where people were using the internet more than they'd ever had done and people so people develop theories about what's going on in shows but it's become completely you know there are subreddits there are every there's everything devoted to this and there's just ordinary social media people talking in real time and what what's going to to happen in shows.

Speaker 2 And they're very proprietorial about them, fans. It can be quite difficult for writers.
A lot of writers say,

Speaker 2 you know, some of the biggest shows of our age are sort of teeming with fan theories, severance,

Speaker 2 yellow jackets, things like that. People try to say,

Speaker 2 I know what happens, or I know what's going to happen. Writers, it's difficult because they do talk a lot about,

Speaker 2 even in writers' rooms, people talk about, oh yeah, they'll be screenshotting this particular frame because they know that fans will like literally pause it and then look around and think, and they notice everything.

Speaker 2 I remember when I was being, you know, taught literature as a teenager and you'd be doing a novel and you'd be they'd be saying, and this symbolizes this, and you'd be like, yeah, but did they actually think about all of this when they're writing?

Speaker 2 Now, the answer in certainly in modern television, which is quite close to the novelistic form, yes, they have thought about all these things. Now,

Speaker 2 the big thing is that do you get swayed? They all say, any writer will tell you, don't get swayed.

Speaker 2 Don't, first of all, stay away from them and don't read the fan theories because it will get in your head. Don't be swayed by them.

Speaker 2 If it comes out that people have guessed the, you know, a lot of these shows do have big denouements and big explanations. And, you know, what has actually

Speaker 2 happened in Yellow Jackets, which is about a plane crash that happened. And Yellow Jackets is interesting.
There are lots and lots of mysteries.

Speaker 2 It has a 90s timeline and it has a current timeline when the girls who are in this kind of plane crash are much older. And so, there are lots of mysteries to uncover in all of those.

Speaker 2 And the showrunners have said, Yes, who are a married couple, Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, and they've said they will reveal, you know, everything will be tied up.

Speaker 2 And it's very possible that lots of fans have guessed some of those things.

Speaker 1 Other people say, if a thousand people try and guess the end of it, I mean, somebody gets it.

Speaker 1 Someone's going to get it.

Speaker 2 And a lot of people say, oh, well, then in that case, they should change it to keep it fresh.

Speaker 2 It's like, you can't upend an entire sort of creative universe and a meticulously plotted narrative arc and all of these sort of things that you spend absolutely beyond months of you know years on.

Speaker 1 And also, by the way, you are leading people to you are deliberately leading people to something. Yes, it's not.
Just because a couple of people have been led towards it, you're like...

Speaker 2 It's going to not make sense and it's actually going to be worse.

Speaker 2 And also, don't forget, although there are some extremely online people, and it is a big, big thing for anthropologists and it is a huge part of it for lots of people, but it's not the majority of people watching this show.

Speaker 1 Almost

Speaker 2 almost everyone as you always say is not doing this thing so definitely don't change it but it's it is difficult and it used to be that writers were really resentful about this sort of thing and i it slightly reminds me of newspapers in that in the old days used to write an article and you handed it down like a stone tablet just like a tv show and people took it and they accepted it and you never knew what they were really thinking and then in the era when you could see all their feedback people say well i think you're wrong about this you'd think well i'm so sorry but you know i was the writer of this article i mean mean, I grow up, okay?

Speaker 2 Feedback's fine, and it's just, everything has changed.

Speaker 2 The relationship is very different. We no longer live in a stone tablet era.

Speaker 2 And actually, whilst it was painful for a lot of TV writers at the start to see all this stuff online and think, no, we're the ones, you know, we're the gods who are making these things happen.

Speaker 2 Actually, what they've come to realize, it is an intensely amazing marketing tool. It means that fans are totally engaged with your show.
They're talking about it all the time in real time.

Speaker 2 Sometimes, you know, they're free framing frames to look and see what the picture, you know, the mounted photograph in the background, who's in that, you know, they are obsessively interested and engaged with your show.

Speaker 2 Yeah, do you like it? And they are promoting your show in a completely organic way that is not dependent on taking out advertising and billboards and all those old things. It's a form of love, okay?

Speaker 2 And it may feel tough at times, but it's a form of love.

Speaker 2 So actually, I think almost all writers would kind of be annoyed in the moment about certain fan theories if it either revealed what they are doing or just felt like people were just getting it all wrong, but in general, are grateful for them.

Speaker 2 And they exist as a fact of our world now.

Speaker 1 It reminds me a tiny bit of whenever you were in writers' rooms for things like, have I got news for you? And when Twitter came along. So, you know,

Speaker 1 you're the first responders when you're in that. Have I got news for you, writer's room? Or the news quiz or something on Radio 4.
And so, you know, you're the first people who can do the gags.

Speaker 1 And on the Friday night, the gags go out. And then when Twitter came along, you're like, oh, everyone can do a gag immediately.
And again,

Speaker 1 it sort of, I mean, people didn't really look at them, but it raised people's games a bit. And it was, it was, yeah, I agree, definitely on that show.

Speaker 1 It certainly changed the rules.

Speaker 2 And you saw that they put some of the gags out on Twitter during the week to build, you know, socials for have I got news for you.

Speaker 2 So you've, we all live in this world now, and it's, I think it's all, it's all helped. And how can you care about people caring about your show?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think that's our start.
I think it is. Yeah.
So we're going to see each other later for our live finale streaming. live and unleashed.
Live and unleashed.

Speaker 1 Maybe not unleashed, but certainly live.

Speaker 1 Yeah, our reaction to the final of the traitors. Yes.
And night.

Speaker 2 10:15 on YouTube. We will tweet out the live stream link or it will be emailed to our members.
And then we also tomorrow. No, hang on.
We've got tomorrow. We've got a bonus episode for members.

Speaker 2 We have indeed. You can join at therestersenttertainment.com and get ad-free listening and so on.
And this is going to be a series on the story of MTV, which is an incredible story.

Speaker 2 And sadly coming to an end now. Yeah.
Anyway.

Speaker 1 So hopefully everyone, we will see you this evening for our live traitors finale. If not, we will see members tomorrow.
And if not, we'll see you next Tuesday.

Speaker 2 See you next Tuesday.

Speaker 2 This episode was brought to you by our good friends at Sky.

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