TIMECODE NAME Dialogue 00.00.01 NARRATOR This is the BBC Academy Podcast, essential listening for the production, journalism and technology broadcast communities, your guide to everything from craft skills to taking your next step in the industry. 00.00.14 JAS RAO Hi and welcome to the BBC Academy podcast with me, Jas Rao. This week we're finding out how to develop a comedy from the star and producer of the new BBC Three series Man Like Mobeen. There are four 20-minute episodes in series one and you can watch them on BBC Three's website. Mobeen's a young Brummie played by Guz Khan, who's also the creator and co-writer of the series, and the executive producer's Ben Cavey, managing director of Tiger Aspect Productions. They both appeared in event in BBC Birmingham hosted by Joe Godwin, director of the BBC Academy. Joe started by asking Guz about Mobeen and how he managed to develop the character whilst being a school teacher in Coventry. 00.00.55 GUZ KHAN So, Man Like Mobeen, the chronicles in a life on an inner-city Brummie lad. Working Class. And the biggest thing for me is... this character came around when I should have been lesson-planning. When I should have been taking my job very seriously. But, news reports, especially in the mainstream media, around Small Heath and in Birmingham in general, are so negative an divisive that I thought... if we can take a character that people have perceptions of, flip it on its head, have him talking some real stuff, some genuine stuff that people can connect with, that might be handy and thankfully the BBC understood the importance of that and we're here now. So yeah. 00.01.28 JAS RAO Mobeen was created partly to explore some stereotypes that Guz came across as a teacher, but also to make use of funny things he'd spotted about people he knew. 00.01.37 GUZ KHAN It ties in with media representations of inner-city Birmingham areas. Also, conversations that I was having at school. Very basic things around race, Islamophobia, social class, and I thought, if I can do it through the vessel of this character, will it work with people who have these views outside of school. That's really where the premise of this came from. Poking fun at stereotypes, at generalisations. I didn't put too much thought into it. I just knew this character reminds me a lot of my friends who make me laugh all of the time. What happens if they had a voice? What happens if they had the ability on a public format to speak. That's where the character came from. 00.02.17 JOE GODWIN Did you do him as stand-up, or in sketches in stand-up? 00.02.20 GUZ KHAN No, I just turned around on my Samsung, whilst I was marking books, did some silly clips and then didn't think anything else of it. So it started pretty organically, yeah. 00.02.30 JAS RAO Mobeen first appeared on social media. Guz uploaded clips he'd filmed on his phone and they started getting noticed. 00.02.36 GUZ KHAN Just the ability to create content. Put it out there without the need for the BBC, Channel 4, Sky, whatever it is, and have the people validate what you're doing. Looking back on it now is a very powerful thing. Because there are no constraints. No-one is www.bbc.co.uk/academy 1 checking over your material. No-one's saying, we should tweak it, we should change it. The fact that it's very raw... if you can get it right at that stage then when you come to developing longer-form things it makes things feel much, much easier. So for me personally, having feedback from the public... and what was nice was people from all different demographics at that early-stage were like, wow OK... It's resonating with people and it's a new way for people to get into the industry as well. 00.03.19 JAS RAO For producers like Ben Cavey social media has changed talent- spotting. He says performers no longer have to risk 10 grand taking a show to the Edinburgh Festival in the hope of getting noticed by a TV talent scout. 00.03.31 BEN CAVEY It's completely changed and actually it's really interesting. Not only Mobeen started with self-shooting but I know that This Country, another BBC Three hit. I think that probably is now the best way to pitch work. People are getting really used to click on this link and watch. I guess technology's hugely important in that. You'll remember in the old days we used to have to send each other DVDs and letters and VHSs. 00.03.57 GUZ KHAN What's a VHS, brother? 00.03.59 JOE GODWIN It's like a wax cylinder but more modern. 00.04.02 BEN CAVEY I think it's going to have an impact across the whole of our business. Even at the other end of it... you've got a big star like Jack Whitehall who I work with. He's launching his own YouTube channel now. Because he wants to be part of that and reaching out directly to people and to have that platform, as well as his other movie and TV platforms. 00.04.22 JOE GODWIN And commissioners and producers can be risk averse. The world's already talking about you, which helps reduce their nerves about whether this might work. They've seen you. They've seen what people say about you. It's actually quite helpful that you get that head of steam before you go near a broadcaster. 00.04.37 GUZ KHAN Yeah, I think also based off what Ben's saying, in terms of hearing that figure... Traditionally, if you want to be seen and if you want to get into this industry, you have to spend £10,000, or thereabouts, of self-investment on creating a show. I know for myself personally that a couple of years ago I couldn't take £10,000 worth of finances meant to go towards living costs, on a chance, on a dream. I think what social media has allowed you to do if you are working class and you genuinely don't have a penny to your name to devote to an Edinburgh show or whatever it may be. You can do it for free on your phone through social media. I think it has opened up a whole different kind of foray for people who don't have the finances to access at that point. I think that's very important. 00.05.22 JAS RAO In terms of what producers are looking for in new comedy ideas, Ben says Mobeen's hit a sweet spot in its depiction of life in Small Heath, on the outskirts of Birmingham. 00.05.32 BEN CAVEY Social realism comedy almost, as I would call it, is starting to hit in a big way. This show's very much part of a wave of that. It's really working for the younger demographic. I think actually if you'd gone back to the pilot, I think there was still a focus of what people www.bbc.co.uk/academy 2 want is a big, broad, silly comedy. Probably something along the lines of Bad Education, which I made previously. So I think both the audience and commissioning started to move. When we made the first pilot, what was great was we just tried a load of different things. I was very proud of the pilot. It was probably a bit goofier and sillier than what Guz would have liked to make. Because Guz was kind of ahead of his time. 00.06.18 JAS RAO The Mobeen series features some prominent female roles. Not just Mobeen's mum, but also his younger sister, Little Axe. In reality, Guz said it was his older sisters who played a big part in his childhood. 00.06.30 GUZ KHAN I was pretty much raised by Mum and my two older sisters and they are quite a bit older than me. So my relationship with what you traditionally see on television from specifically minority female characters is very different. I grew up getting battered every day. Pretty much. I wanted to show strong, female characters who were dominant in the household. That's something that you very rarely see on TV. It was also very easy for me to kind of write towards that from being a teacher and being surrounded by teenage girls, who are the most gangster creatures on the face of the planet. They're the scariest thing of all time, teenage girls. I've got that experience. But also, a big shout-out to the whole team. We'd seen a lot of kids and they were great actors. They were orating what we wanted them to. As soon as we saw Duaa Karim sat there. She was raw, she was natural. Very much an element of myself. She hadn't really done too much before, or thought about doing it before. She's more interested in singing. But she was so natural and kept it so real that I knew straight away her personality, grew-up in inner-city Birmingham, she'd be perfect for the part.