Sally Lindsay

Sally Lindsay talks about the process behind writing the hit TV series, how it came about and how it evolved.

How do you develop the story from the initial concept? Does it come naturally, or does it evolve?
Usually, you get a germ of an idea of what it will be and put it on an A4 piece of paper. Madame Blanc came about whilst filming on the set of Cold Call. Dan Ryan (Cold Call, Mount Pleasant) and I were in a car park in Manchester, freezing cold, talking about Escape to the Château. Dan and his wife loved it, and on his recommendation, I watched it. What I loved most about it, was the beautiful setting and the sunshine. I have always been obsessed with that concept of 90s tele; it’s almost like having a warm bath or a glass of wine. It’s like Pie in the Sky, Lovejoy, Boon, that kind of programme where you get the full story in one hour in a place you want to be. I learnt a lot filming Mount Pleasant too. When you watch it, you want to spend an hour with the guys, you want to have a drink in the Dog and Dart, and you want to see Lisa’s and Dan’s kitchen. It’s about being part of something as a viewer, being part of that sunny place, and feeling like the cast are your friends.
I had another idea that I had always toyed with. What if something happened to someone you loved and everything you knew and thought was true wasn’t? So that was the concept of Jene (Madame Blanc) when her husband was killed in a car crash. Everything she thought was normal, true and honest was a complete lie. She had to start again, and that was the concept. I brought the two ideas together.
There was another aspect to this story. Me and Steve, my husband, were on holiday in Majorca about five years ago and we got talking to this lovely lady called Jan. She is actually one of the pundits from Dickson’s Real Deal. What a fascinating lady; she is an absolute expert on antiques and in fact, a third-generation dealer. Their family shop was in Mill Hill, and she talked about it with great passion. Jan told us that she and her husband would drive to the south of France every month to exchange goods with other dealers. What is fashionable in Italy is not in England, and vice versa, so they literally swap. Who knew? This all takes place in these little villages in the south of France, so that was my base, my world. Small towns full of antiques and international people. So, three ideas came together, and Madame Blanc was born.

How did you know you could write a murder mystery?
I didn’t; it came as a complete revelation. I knew I could write drama, but I had never written a murder mystery before. I wrote the treatment…

Can you explain what that is for those who don’t know?
You write a detailed plan of what the series is about; The characters, the world, what it is going to be about, and the episode breakdown (about half a page each). It is to give your commissioner an idea of what you are trying to make. That’s the treatment, and I wrote it over the summer whilst filming Still Open All Hours at Pinewood. In between filming, me and Johnny Vegas would sit next to each other on a trestle table. He wrote his camping programme, and I wrote Madame Blanc.
Channel 5 commissioned it, but because of their business model, we needed a partner, and Acorn really liked it but wanted to see a script. I was on holiday at the time, and they wanted the script within a few weeks. As I don’t write murder mysteries, I started ringing around my writer friends all prolific writers, but everyone was busy. So, I rang Sue Vincent. Sue and I had written comedy together for four or five years, but nothing on this scale. She didn’t even know about Madame Blanc but agreed to come on board and we set about using the formula we had devised on other projects.
I write the beats of the murder mystery, usually about 21/22 scenes, and the family storyline, which is the ‘b’ storyline involving the regular cast. Then we intertwine it. Sue is an over-writer, so she writes far too much of the episode, and we spent about a week trimming and fitting it all together and ended with a finished script. It is an unusual way of writing as most writers will sit together writing line by line, but we don’t. We do our separate jobs and then come together and basically rewrite it together. It works really well, but we didn’t know it would – we didn’t know we were going to be the writers either! We just took the opportunity and ran with it, and it worked.
We have just finished writing seven episodes and a Christmas special and have fine-tuned our formula. We are both really proud of what we have accomplished.

In the series, there are some frames integral to the story of a hand in a car window with red fingernails and a cigarette. Was that something you asked for, or is the film crew doing that?
No, that is me and Sue. Dermot, my director is so integral to this production. He was my director on Mount Pleasant, and I know him very well. When he gets the script, he will ask 1000 questions because he needs to understand it as much as me and Sue do. The details are all on the page, every single aspect is written, and once he understands the concept, he films it and that’s how we work.

So you have full control then?
Well, you never have full control unless you pay for it! To be fair, I would say 90% of my concept goes on the screen. I am also on set during filming, so the buck stops with me.

How do you juggle everything? You are a mum, a wife, an actor, a writer, a producer… How do you fit it all in?
I have the most amazing husband. Steve does the music for all my shows. He did the original score for Madame Blanc, and that’s why it’s so special; it’s a family affair. His band, Hague and White are phenomenal. He was asked to do the theme tune for Cold Call, and now it’s pretty much his full-time job. Although it’s very different to his past, (drumming for The Style Council and Paul Weller’s band), there are parallels, and he really enjoys making music for TV.
He is a wonderful husband and the main carer of our children when I am abroad. He believes in the concept of Madame Blanc so much because he is a part of it. I am extremely lucky to have him and couldn’t do it without him.
I think all busy women have to juggle; we are very organised because we have to be. Sometimes it does get too much, then I take a step back and think, it’s only tele. I am not a top surgeon dealing with life-or-death situations, it’s just tele, and that helps me through, even though I believe that culture is very important in our society. The UK is the best in the world, bar none, at producing drama, yet we don’t shout about it.
I tried to do two things on Madame Blanc. One was to celebrate female writers. Only 14% of writers on prime-time terrestrial tele in the UK are female. It’s a disgrace. Soaps are different; 50% of writers are women, and there is no problem on Netflix. Saying that Channel 5 have been fantastic, they believed in us and gave us a chance for which we are so grateful.
The second thing is diversity. I created Madame Blanc to be like a modern classic; you think you’ve seen it before but haven’t. In the second series, we have a lot of gay relationships and diversity, but it’s never mentioned. It’s just there, and I really believe that’s the way forward in drama. I wanted to normalise what I see every day. I’ve got gay friends who are married, and it’s the least interesting thing about them.

We know Madame Blanc doesn’t speak French, but do you?
No, I’m rubbish! Although I’m getting better at it. My business partner, Caroline, has a friend who is a French lawyer, so she translates everything for us and makes it in the vernacular.
Madame Blanc has been received really well internationally, but that comes with its own problems because Channel 5 would like us to make it as local and British as possible, and Acorn would like to make it as international and understandable as possible. So, as a writer, you are walking a tightrope trying to make it warm, northern, and funny, but you can’t go that way too much because no one will understand it. I remembered something from when I did Wallace & Gromit. Nick Parks fell out big-time with Dreamworks because he wanted to put Eccles cakes in, and they feared no one would understand what it was. I know what a Walmart is, but I’ve never been to one. I still know it’s a big supermarket! That’s always held me in good stead.

In 2008 you chose Carry on Films as your specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind. Where did that love come from and who was your favourite actor?
I absolutely love Carry On films—they are really comforting. I can’t really pick one actor, but my top four are Barbara Windsor, Sid James, Kenneth Williams, and Hatti Jaques. They are Carry On to me.
The Carry On concept is the same one that I’ve worked into Madame Blanc, just to tie it in, or anything I do that is light and happy. It’s a concept of a vision of an England that never was, but we like looking at it because it’s nostalgic and looks like an England we used to live in but wasn’t. It was horrible in the ’70s, full of strikes. It was hard the ’80s were hard, but when we look at a Carry On film, we think, ‘Oh, wasn’t it brilliant, wasn’t it great?’. They created a world that didn’t exist, and in the same way, I’ve created a town where everyone’s mates. It’s full of crazy characters who all go to the pub at the end of the day and have a drink and a lovely time. That doesn’t exist in any town, ever.
Me and Steve share a love of Carry On. When I was doing Mastermind, we had a Carry On question book. We would sit in bed, and Steve would ask me questions. I’d have to watch them all again, so it was fresh in my head because I don’t have a photographic memory, unlike Steve. Not the general knowledge; that was just lucky. That’s when I met Caroline, my business partner. She was the executive producer in 2008. It’s weird to think that all these years later, we are working together. We have a female lead production company called Saffron Cherry, and the first programme we ever made was Emily Pankhurst: Making Of A Militant.

You and Suranne Jones are the best of friends. When did you meet?
We met on the set of Coronation Street, and we’ve been best friends ever since. Our lives are very similar; therefore, we completely understand each other’s world. Her husband is one of Steve’s best friends; our lives have been so intertwined, and she’s been a great comfort and a wonderful friend to me. I absolutely adore her. We will work together on something one day; it’s just never been the right thing. We were, of course, due to work together on Scott & Bailey, but as we approached filming, I fell pregnant with the twins and couldn’t commit to a lead role. I ended up playing Suranne’s sister on the show.