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HISTORY & BACKGROUND
Ask Tony Garnett the Executive Producer of Attachments
where the original idea for the show came from and you
won't get the answers you were banking on. The show is
set in and around an Internet start up and the vibrantly
eclectic group of personalities that fuel passions there
in more ways than one.
"It was two things I suppose." Garnett says casually.
"One is that I was interested in the modern workplace
and how people spend so much of their lives at work. It
seems these days you're either overworked or out of work"
he comments adding "and so many relationships happen at
work because in these kinds of jobs people live their
work."
Tell me about it, with about 50% of people meeting their
partners in the workplace we'd have to agree with that
one. But the second spark must have come from all of this
dot com mania, right? Wrong.
"I was also interested in people around the age of thirty
because I think it's an interesting age. Because in your
twenties you can be promising but in your thirties you
have to deliver."
Just what does he mean by deliver, I panic having one
year left to go and no sofa, property or children to call
my own, please explain.
"You know everything starts to get more serious at thirty,"
Tony states sagely with the wisdom of a man who has been
there. "Relationships are more serious, the question about
whether you're going to have children or not is more serious.
Even where you're living is more serious, people tend
to start a mortgage and think about their responsibilities
and changing careers at not as easy as it is when you're
in your early twenties."
Tony becomes slightly more animated as he continues, he
speaks evenly and softly drawing you into his conversation
in the same subtle way as he draws you into productions
like This Life, The Cops and Ballykissangel.
"I thought about some people facing the big 3-0 and why
don't these people be working in an Internet start up
company because that seems to catch the mood of the times."
So once you have the spark, how do you proceed?
"I got the original idea and it started to grow in my
head, I imagined where they might work and some characters
started to form so I wondered where they came from. So
I gradually over a few months wrote that up into a ten
or twelve page format. But we didn't use that as a gospel
or a bible we just used it as a launching pad really.
And then we put the team together Simon [Heath - Producer]
and Julie [Dixon - Script Editor] and a couple of writers."
Garnett believes in developing talent and has given the
young production team a lot of space to create.
"I wanted them to run with it rather than take it as a
gospel and it grew and changed and we threw things out
and added things, it was like a seed in the ground and
things grew from it."
Attachments will be broadcast in the UK from Monday 25th
September.
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