I’m currently in London finishing post-production on Our Girl series three – I directed the closing block, episodes 3 and 4, in South Africa. To be broadcast by BBC 1 later in the year.
The show is written and created by Tony Grounds who is a lovely man, a natural collaborator, and very funny to boot. Had many adventures in Cape Town and the Karoo desert with a superlative cast and crew.
It’s my first time directing an army drama and there was plenty of gunfire, explosions, helicopters, abseiling, and angry shouting. Which, as it turns out, is a lot of fun – even for a pacifist (read: coward) like me. A little like pretending to be soldiers in the playground… “Bang, bang — you’re dead!”
It’s also given me a new-found sympathy for the average squaddie and the frightening situations they find themselves in, the extraordinary things they see and do… All because (in many cases) they wanted to escape their humdrum home town, and a dead-end job.
An aside: I didn’t go cage diving with Great Whites as the ecologically minded locals talked me out of it. Apparently swimming through “chum” enrages them and encourages them to interact with humans, which has – possibly – lead to an increase in attacks on surfers. Did the right thing, in the end… with a very heavy heart!