Some Things That Might Not Be Obvious About the Making of Finnemore's Ninth

 I'd forgotten I'd already written about the production of JFSP Series Nine, back when we first started recording in March, here. The home recording set-up in that first session, however, turned out to be insufficiently broad-bandy, so most of my remaining lines were recorded half an hour's stroll away, in the Nathan-Barley-themed escape room of Bloomsbury's Syncbox studios...

 

 

 

  I would usually have had only two hours' sleep the previous night from the excitement of knowing this was coming. Sometimes I'd be lucky enough to be joined – in the opposite corner of the studio, no hugging – by Carrie taking a break from the ambulances she now drives, also on about two hours' sleep. John, being John, wouldn't have slept since Christmas of 2020. On such little sleep, a crucial advantage of not performing the series live turned out to be the opportunity for retakes, and the chance for our producer Ed Morrish to direct, well, specifically, me. "Try that again, warmer," was a common note, while Carrie got it, and got on with it.

 

 I'd hoped my tiredness might help me stop overthinking "the point" of a scene, but I'm suddenly remembering how she'd still, occasionally, have to give me an additional note to just "do the thing John asked"... Was it really necessary to have so many scenes of Jerry making up poems, I remember thinking, for example, having no idea yet of the revelations in Episode Five... As I said on the tweetalong (and I've enjoyed seeing how many listeners are surprised by this), we all knew John had a big idea for the shape of this series, but none of us – with the possible exception of Ed – knew what that shape was. And John, again being John (one of his best qualities) would still ask open-endedly for feedback or suggestions, but to take him up on this felt like kicking the tyres on the batmobile. 

 

 

 In fairness to my lack of understanding, quite a lot of Jerry's episode was recorded first, and there wasn't that much to piece together back then. (Only tyrants have favourites, but Jerry might have been the character John found least inherently difficult to create.) But even the author didn't have a clearer idea than was needed of the big picture two sessions in. Take the first recording of the scene where Alex asks Russ about his tattoo...

 John on Zoom: "Okay. Simon. Could you read Alex in this?"

 "Okay. Who's Alex?"

 "Yes. I should probably decide that, shouldn't I."

 "Someone Russ is meeting at a party?"

 "No. Maybe Russ's partner, or husband. Let's decide... Okay, yes, his partner or husband."

 "And is this them meeting at a party?"

 "No. This isn't a party."

 "Shall I give Alex an accent?"

 "No." 

 If you haven't listened to the series, Alex ended up being an Australian, played by John. So yes, of course there was a plan, is what I'm saying, a pretty perfect plan as things turned out, but there was also – perhaps the greatest advantage of the costume-less, set-less, on-book medium of radio – a big temporal overlap with that plan's execution.

 Series Nine is still being repeated nightly at 11pm, the tweetalong will be continuing tonight or, if you have any questions, you can post them below, and you can still hear the whole thing any time you like here.