Writer Hugh Travers spoke to David Hennessy about horror/ comedy series Video Nasty as it screens on BBC.
The dark comedy drama Video Nasty has just launched on BBC as well as Virgin Media in Ireland.
Described as combining the nostalgia of Stranger Things with the dark and retro style of End of the F**king World, Video Nasty is set in 1985.
It follows three friends who travel from Dublin to ‘the middle of nowhere in the middle of middle England’ on a quest to complete their collection of the infamous banned Video Nasties.
The only problem is on the way they become murder suspects and public enemies all while being hunted by the real killer or killers.
The new series contemplates themes such as family, growing up, identity and censorship as well as moral panic.
Shot entirely in counties Monaghan, Cavan and Tyrone, Video Nasty boasts a young cast includes Justin Daniels Anene (Sanctuary, The Tourist), Cal O’Driscoll (September Says, Sanctuary) and Leia Murphy (Fair City, Small Town, Big Story) as well as Oliver Finnegan (Outlander, We are Lady Parts).
We caught up with writer Hugh Travers (42, from Killester, Dublin) last week.
What inspired Video Nasty?
“The idea went back several years.
“I had been reading about the video nasty scare in the 1980s.
“I was vaguely aware of it but in particular, I had heard this phenomenon, that the actual video nasties list was only 72 films and that it became kind of a collectors list for horror aficionados.
“That just made me curious, like: That’s a real fun way into a story where you have the obsessive collectors trying to complete a list and because it’s a list of films, they can kind of go on a quest and there’s an opportunity to play with the genre of films that they’re actually collecting.
“I had that idea and then various things happened to me.
“I was involved in a project that had a bit of a reaction.
“It was a script that was set against the backdrop of the famine and when word got out of that, the project was widely misunderstood.
“There was a bit of a furore around it and it was, I suppose in some ways, shut down by a slightly public outcry.
“And that experience kind of got me thinking about ideas of censorship but also kind of moral panics and culture wars and why people tend to be afraid of things that they don’t quite understand or ideas that they feel are dangerous.
“I then began to think there were nice, interesting themes to explore within this kind of fun idea.
“I originally thought it might be a feature film but it was a difficult project to put together as a feature.
“It was only when I began to see short series in this theme that were kind of slightly dark but also nostalgic that I kind of felt like, ‘Oh, this is a story that can work on TV’.
“So the combination of those elements really caused me to put together a pitch for the TV version of Video Nasty which I brought to Deadpan Pictures about four years ago.”
You must be happy with the reactions to it so far..
“It’s great.
“So much work goes into it, the gratifying part is when it goes out to an audience and you get the sense that people are really enjoying it.
“As a series. It’s a bit of a wild ride, a bit of an adventure and it seems like people are enjoying going on that ride.
“It’s very nice to see people are having a good time with it and really responding to the characters.”
Video Nasty blends horror and comedy. Were you inspired by things that have come before like Shaun of the Dead that were funny while also taking the horror genre seriously?
“It was always a challenge to kind of balance the tones, the various elements in it.
“I never wanted to do a darkly serious horror because the basic notion of kids, teenagers going collecting videos is kind of a fun concept. I didn’t want it to be this broad comedy where you could never really invest in the characters and if it was so funny, you couldn’t really be scared.
“You have to find this balance between the horror not being too oppressive so that you can enjoy the fun of the journey and yet the comedy can’t be too silly that so that you can’t get scared or you can’t invest in the characters.
“I think the through line in that is to always try and treat the characters’ problems and issues with truth and respect and treat them as if they’re real.
“Then that kind of allows you to just slightly dip into some funny stuff and then dip into some horror.
“It’s a kind of a difficult balance to strike but definitely things like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are nice references because they also do a good job of being funny, scary but also you do invest in in the characters.”
There are a couple of horror references that are actually mentioned by a character- the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Wicker Man. Was that your way of paying homage to them?
“It’s funny, I would never have considered myself someone who grew up being obsessed with horror movies.
“I got a job in a video shop where I worked for three or four years through college.
“It was only really then that I started widening my horizons and kind of consuming every source of film including lots of older trashier horror movies.
“That’s when I would have seen a lot of stuff that I really like now and we’re kind of paying tribute to in this.
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Wicker Man are mentioned in the thing, you’re never quite sure what sort of horror movie they’re walking into. Are they walking into some town wide conspiracy like The Wicker Man? Or are they walking into a slasher where it’s one villain? Or is it a Texas Chainsaw thing where it’s like a family of villains?
“They’re not sure what they’re walking into and the audiences aren’t quite sure what they’re walking into so it was nice to play with those genres.”
Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and many other horrors, your charaacters are isolated in the countryside which means no one can hear their screams.
It also does have that touch of The Wicker Man in that they could dealing with an evil society and even if they call the police, the police man could even be in on it..
“Yeah, it’s definitely a lot of fun to play with those references.
“I try not to get bogged down in them.
“There’s lots of fun references there but, ultimately, you don’t want to be kind of shifting your story or your characters out of the way to try and get just shoehorn in film references.
“You want to just let them occur naturally or where they’re helpful or where they’re funny, we never really went out of our way to pay homage.
“We never started with the intention to reference things.
“We’re always just trying to concentrate on the characters and the story and when opportunities to make references or pay homage came up, we definitely lent into them.”
It’s described as a mix of Stranger Things and The End of the F**king World, how do you like that as a description?
“Again, I would never be trying to write something that is like something else but sometimes those references are helpful when selling a project.
“Certainly The End of the F**king World was an eye opener for me.
“I guess that was one of the things I saw and realised that this could be a TV series.
“I thought it might be a feature idea but seeing The End of the F**king World, it was kind of dark and violent and a bit genre-y, a bit cinematic.
“Even though it was set in the present day, the production design was very nostalgic and throwback.
“There’s no real mobile phones in it so it feels kind of 70s, 80s- y and it was in seeing that that I was like, ‘Oh, Video Nasty could be a series in that vein’.
“That provided almost permission to go and try and develop this but then, as you’re developing it, you don’t start going, ‘How can I make it more like The End of the F**king World?’
“You just make it what it needs to be in itself but The End of the F**king World definitely almost provided permission to develop it as a TV series because it was a kind of an inspiration.”
Let’s talk about the cast.
You must be pleased with the entire cast but in particular the three central figures: Justin Daniels Anene as Billy, Cal O’Driscoll as Con and Leia Murphy as Zoe.
Three young and promising actors..
“There are several things that kind of surpassed my hopes and expectations when it came to the actual making and shooting of this but one of the things is the cast, I just was so delighted with them.
“Three brilliant actors, three lovely people to hang out with.
“Great on set, great attitude, hard working.
“It’s very hard to teach or capture the basic likability and charisma that they have on screen and ultimately no matter how well you write the thing or even try to direct the thing, if you don’t enjoy spending time with these people on screen as you go on this journey with them, you’re not really going to enjoy the show.
“The three of them just have so much likeability even when they’re being really narky with each other and kind of mean to each other and doing things that are somewhat unlikable.
“The presence of these three cast on screen is so likable that you just continue to go with them on the journey.
“Just so delighted with them.
“They’re all at the start of their careers to varying degrees.
“They’ve done bits and pieces before but hopefully now this is a really great showcase for them and they’re just going to go on to huge things in their future, but not before they do future series of Video Nasty hopefully.”
You must also be happy with the wider cast that includes great Irish actors like Simone Kirby, the comedian Kevin McGahern and other familiar faces like Jade Jordan and Barry John Kinsella.
“We were lucky.
“Simone is brilliant.
“She just feels like she had so much fun with the role.
“She definitely seemed to enjoy herself on set.
“She’s kind of scary but not without fun either.
“The parents as well.
“Again it’s that thing of you’re going on a journey with the parents so you have to enjoy spending time with them. You have to enjoy the dynamic between the three of them.
“The three of them got on so well on set, such lovely people.
“It makes such a difference casting people who are good actors but also likable.
“The fact that they are great to hang out with and lovely people just makes the whole process so much nicer.”
In the story the characters of Billy, Con and Zoe stumble into the village of Ashdale at the time of their famine sacrifice commemoration.
Is that a real thing?
“There is a place that in the 1600s quarantined themselves to stop the spread of plague.
“About half the town died.
“They saved the surrounding area.
“And they commemorate the plague in a much more civilised and normal ways than the people of Ashdale.
“We made a very particular decision to fictionalise it because it wouldn’t have been fair to anybody to depict their town like that.
“We had to fictionalise it in order to have fun with it but the inspiration came from a real place and places that do weird commemorations like that everywhere.
“Even in Ireland there are weird things, even the Puck Fair.
“There are just weird traditions that build up over time, that commemorate strange things in strange ways.
“There’s always just a bit of fun to be had with that.”
Another thing I was curious about was the show contains several news broadcasts.
There are some that refer to three Irish suspects in a murder that are obviously filmed and aged by yourselves but there are other news pieces about video nasties, are they genuinely from news archives?
“90% of the archive stuff is all real.
“It was important to me that the social context of the time was kind of just embedded into the texture of the piece.
“That was always an important element to it.
“It was always envisioned that we would use real archive and then there’s just certain things that we had to do.
“Some of the voice over lines are written and put in by us and then obviously things about the kids are staged.”
Going back to the tone, were things like Scream an influence I the postmodern way that these kids know they are in a horror movie and ‘the rules’?
“I wouldn’t necessarily say influenced.
“I’d say when you have an idea like this and then you realise it puts you in certain territory like post modern horror, where the characters are kind of aware, on a meta level, of the kind of rules of horrors, you can’t but be aware of Scream in particular where that’s the whole point of it.
“But it was never really like, ‘Oh, I want to do a kind of 80s Scream or anything like that’.
“It was just once you do are in that space, Scream kind of insists upon itself so you just need to be kind of careful not to repeat what Scream is doing or trying.
“I think it would be too much to kind of be referencing a self-referencing thing.
“Referencing Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Wicker Man works but referencing Scream not only would be anachronistic because that came out in the 90s but if you were even like winking to the audience about Scream, it would just be too much.
“It’s too meta, too knowing, too post modern.
“It’s something I would have been aware of but more to try and just avoid kind of accidentally copying it more than anything else.”
The scary masks of the villagers are an effective image. Much like Leatherface, Jason or Michael Myers, the mask is so important for the horror..
“That’s the power of the mask really.
“That’s why it’s such a feature in so many horrors.
“When you don’t know what’s behind the mask, it’s more terrifying than when they’re revealed.
“I like that.
“Just the notion of these people commemorating the plague- When that idea hit, then it provided the possibility of the plague mask which in itself is kind of freaky but then also gives you the mystery of who’s behind it and an iconography for the show.
“That was a really nice confluence of ideas where the plague gave you that iconic mask.
“You can’t have a good slasher without a good mask.”
You said before you would like to see the actors return for further series, is a second series coming?
“Series two is currently in development which means we’re working away on the story of it and chipping away at the whole process.
“It remains to be seen if it will ultimately go into production.
“But everybody, all the partners involved in the project, were very buzzed by it and really happy with series one.
“Everybody seems keen on the second series so just kind of hoping to stars align for it to happen.
“We had a great time shooting the first one.
“We’d love to get to do it all over again.”
Video Nasty is screening on BBC Three and all episodes available on BBC iPlayer.
In Ireland it is screening on Virgin Media on Mondays.