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03. Introduction by directors IAIN FORSYTH and JANE POLLARD

04. Interview: NEIL GAIMAN

FOREIGN PARTS

06. Episode synopsis

07. Interview: GEORGE MACKAY

FEEDERS & EATERS

09. Episode synopsis

10. Interview: TOM HUGHES

CLOSING TIME

12. Episode synopsis

13. Interview: JOHNNY VEGAS

LOOKING FOR THE GIRL

15. Episode synopsis

16. Interview: KENNETH CRANHAM

18. Contacts

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This new Sky Arts series, made by Sid Gentle Films, is a collection of four distinct, odd and brilliant short stories by Neil Gaiman, that we’ve adapted with writer Kevin Lehane. From these four half-hour episodes our aim was to create a single, bold act of filmmaking and storytelling. Bound within a single framework, these unrelated films share a world. Each has its own lead character backed by an ensemble cast who play across all four.

They are cinematic, dark and strange, with a British wit and a human warmth. Each character is compelled to share their story and we’re drawn into the very act of telling tall tales. They also share a theme: consumption – by love, guilt, obsession or transformation.

All the stories are located in east London, but ours is a heightened version of the city – a dreamworld with an internal logic that makes sense to its inhabitants. We’ve borrowed something here from Alexander Kluge’s philosophical idea of ‘cross mapping’. He talks of hiking through an

“The stories are cinematic, dark and strange, with wit and human warmth”

speaking out of a radio or on a television. Present but removed, speaking a truth that unlocks something of the original motivation for these stories.

There are themes threaded through these four stories: human consumption,

body snatching, psychological cannibalism and destructive obsession. The shared grammar is echoed by our approach to production and costume design. The visual language of the films is rich with cross-references, seeds being sown for later and call-backs to earlier ideas that pay off as you engage deeper with them.

More than anything we wanted to find ways to unleash the heartbeat in each of the stories. These are definitely stories that have to be told, tall tales of the unexpected!

Iain Forsyth and Jane PollardDirectors

inaccessible mountain region in Germany with a London street atlas. So too we imagine this world as a real place, but with each story providing a different map: a different way of seeing and understanding it.

Music and sound design are always a vital part of our storytelling toolkit. We enlisted Jarvis Cocker to create the theme and score the films, bringing his unique narrative-fuelled songwriting to the series. We were also drawn to the idea of music inhabiting the world of these films; it might be a radio in the cafe, a television, a car radio driving past or music bleeding from headphones.

Firmly at the heart of these stories is the act, tradition and pleasure of storytelling. Whether drawn into the ghost story of Feeders & Eaters or the life-spanning tale of Looking for the Girl, we spend real time with each narrator, suspended in the emotion of their compulsion to speak. The original storyteller, Neil Gaiman, appears covertly in each piece. We encounter him

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How would you describe the four stories that make up the series?They have an oddness to them in that, in a peculiar kind of way, they’re all likely stories. Often my stories go off, they can travel a long way from home. And each of these stories, in their own way, is small and close to home. Each of them began with something small and odd and prosaic – I thought, I wonder if I could tell that as a story? Wouldn’t that be interesting? There is definitely a theme of consumption. People being consumed by things; becoming other things; resisting or embracing a fate that is going in some way to change them. The nature of that consumption fascinates me. In Feeders & Eaters, the consumption is very literal. Foreign Parts is based on the idea of somebody essentially being consumed by themselves. In Closing Time, there’s the theme, I think, that the past, a dangerous place filled with secrets that haven’t gone away, can consume you. In Looking for the Girl, you have somebody being consumed by an image of somebody who isn’t there. The idea of somebody feeling their life being marked out in beats and everything ageing but one thing. They definitely feel like a weird little set.

Do the stories inhabit the same world?That’s a tricky question. I think all of my stories happen in different places, but they share a car park. They all join up out the back. You can definitely get to one from the other.

What made you want to become a storyteller? What do stories mean to you?I don’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t driven by stories; when they weren’t the most interesting and exciting things there were. We, as human beings, are designed to find stories, to listen to them, to remember them and then to repeat them. We use stories to explain the world and because they satisfy us on a deep level, because they are the lies that we need to make sense of our world. There’s also a joy in all stories. Whether it’s in film or radio,

whether somebody tells you, whether you read it… you experience emotions, you do things that you wouldn’t otherwise do, you look out through eyes you normally wouldn’t look out through, you even die.

“I’ve written scenes that made me feel sick; that astonished me”

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And then you look up and are unhurt, you close the page and walk away. And that’s fabulous, that’s power. Never think that just because something didn’t happen it doesn’t matter. And never think that just because it’s not true, it didn’t change you. Stories change us.

What’s your approach to storytelling?The biggest difference between writing and telling a story is that when you are writing a story you are doing it in a quiet place and nobody cares. Even if you’re doing it in a Starbucks, nobody cares. You can write the funniest thing in the world, nobody’s gonna laugh. You can write the scariest thing in the world, nobody’s gonna shiver. You can write the saddest thing in the world, nobody’s gonna cry. Whereas the action of storytelling is something that immediately presumes an audience, and presumes an audience who care and are interested and are fascinated. And you want to grab them and pull them in and say, listen I have this thing I want to tell you. You’re saying come with me. I’m trustworthy. Hold my hand. We will walk together, you and I, into dark places and it’s gonna be OK, because I’m holding your hand. And they look at you and they trust you and they listen to you. And you take them by the hand and you walk into dark places with them, then you let go of their hand and you run away. That’s storytelling.

Where do your ideas come from?It’s two things coming together. Something

that you know, something that you’ve thought or seen a hundred times, and then something that could be. Suddenly you have something that’s the beginning of a story, you have something that’s the beginning of an idea and you watch it grow and you watch it twine, interconnect and build.

What’s your attitude to short stories?I love short stories and have done since I was a kid. It frustrates and fascinates me that the short story is less popular, less read and less loved than the novel. I wish it was the other way around, because there’s something magic about a story that can take you all the way across the universe and bring you back by teatime. I also like the idea of compression, the fact that every word in a short story should be doing something. It should be creating character; it should be moving the plot along. It should be creating atmosphere.

You’ve never been frightened of dealing with the darker aspects of humanity. Is it important to venture into those areas?You don’t need parameters to the imagination. The idea of how far is too far is something that you normally find by going beyond. I would so much rather go out there and say the things I shouldn’t say, think the things I shouldn’t think, than stop before. I think we make progress by going too far. As writers, we sometimes

make progress by shocking ourselves. I’ve written scenes that made me feel sick. I’ve written scenes that astonished me. I’ve written scenes that I didn’t know I was going survive. But I knew they had to be there and I knew those tales had to be told. And when people say, well did you write that to shock? No, you don’t write that to shock. You write that because that’s where the story goes.

Although there’s also usually a blackly comic edge as well?Life is fascinating. It doesn’t follow any kind of genre rules, it is an absolute mess. You can get slapstick, you can get tragedy, you can get comedy. You will probably get pornography. You will get scatological material that you could not actually show.

All of this stuff is what it means to be human. We cross genre all the time. We push boundaries all the time and we don’t think about that. You don’t think about the fact that you can go from tender romance to tragedy. And then you don’t have to stay in tragedy, because strange high comedy can happen with a friend’s body in the next room, after they’ve passed away. Life has no respect for genre boundaries.

There’s also a fairy-tale quality to these stories. Do you enjoy blurring the lines of normal, everyday reality?I’ve always liked kids’ fiction, where things are beyond reality. That always seemed far more interesting than the idea that reality was what you got.

“Never think because something didn’t happen it doesn’t matter”

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In Foreign Parts, there’s a sense that time is running out. Our narrator, Simon, is like a man sinking in quicksand. He’s a man of routine. Rising, dressing, travelling to work on the DLR. Every day is the same. His sense of self is slipping away as he becomes (perhaps literally) someone else.

It’s a similar story for Dr Benham, stuck in his STD clinic watching a parade of patients come and go. In his parallel story of metamorphosis he’s being spat out by his own life. He too is becoming a different person, from the feet up.

CASTGeorge MacKay Simon PowersPaul Ritter Dr Jeremy BenhamMontserrat Lombard Nurse BronwynMonica Dolan Dr MarshallDenise Gough Celia Benham

NEIL SAYS“When I wrote it this story was unsellable. The men’s magazines didn’t like it because it wasn’t exactly sex positive and the sci-fi magazines didn’t like it because there was all this weird sex in it. Then AIDS began cutting this huge and terrifying swathe through the world and I was losing friends. I had to take it out of circulation until things settled down.”

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Tell us about your role in Foreign Parts…The series is four Neil Gaiman short stories dealing with the consumption of the self but via different means, whether it be insecurity, greed or something more metaphorical. I play Simon Powers in Foreign Parts. He hasn’t had sex in years and then one day wakes up with an STD that he obviously doesn’t know how he’s got. It is a manifestation of all that he’s ignored about himself up until that point, and it starts to take control of him. That’s as much as I can give away, really…

What was it like working from Neil’s writing?It was wonderful. I didn’t get a chance to meet Neil and I wasn’t as familiar with his work as others were beforehand, but reading the scripts was absolutely fascinating. He has such a wonderful style and throughout the series there are – for fans of his work – little nods and in-jokes dotted about, and much of the texture of the show is part of the amazing wider world he’s built… whether it’s tonally or through those little references to his other work.

And with directors Iain and Jane?Working with Iain and Jane was really fantastic. I didn’t realise how much of a background in art they had. My first introduction to them was the Nick Cave documentary 20,000 Days on Earth and that was obviously done in such an artistic

way, but I didn’t realise the extent that they were – for want of a better word – literally artists before branching into filmmaking. It was just all so wonderful. I remember we talked beforehand and they said: “Look. We’ve got creative licence with this and we’d like you to have the same so just be as playful as you like, because we’re certainly going to play around as much as we can. No we won’t have that much time, but in the time we do have just completely do what you want with it and really explore.” And there was plenty to explore. The idea of someone who’s being taken over, whether that’s in a figurative sense or more physically, the idea that your body doesn’t belong to you… yeah, it was fun.

“He hasn’t had sex in years but he wakes up one day with an STD”

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What most attracted you to the project?First and foremost, it was the script and the chance to work with Iain and Jane, and then it was also such a different part. It was just a project I really wanted to be involved with. It just seemed so interesting, although interesting is a rubbish word for it. It’s an intriguing, artful, darkly comic kind of venture… And then also I liked the different way of presenting it, with the four short episodes making it like a film in smaller parts. It seemed like such a slick quartet to be a part of, a wonderful piece of material to be working with.

The series has a very unique style. Was it a challenge to get the feel just right?Iain and Jane gave me plenty of references. They work in images, all different kinds, and that was amazing, that was something that really opened my mind up. If you’re looking at an image you can be sure you’re looking at the same thing. Whereas if you talk about an idea you might have your interpretation going on in your head and then something else in the other person’s head, and you might end up smiling and nodding assuming you’re talking about the same thing, but actually you’ve got your own distinct vision. So working like that was great, getting a sense of the tone and style thanks to images they collated before we started.

There are obviously darker elements running through the series, but there also seems to be a sense of playfulness. Do you agree?Definitely. There should be that playfulness because they’re like dark fairy tales, it’s important to have those elements of light and shade. I think if you were trying to make them too gloomy all the time, they wouldn’t be as effective. They should be stories that you enjoy because the more you enjoy them, the more you invest.

“It’s an intriguing, artful and darkly comic venture”

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We’re caught in the nocturnal world of the all-night cafe. Joyce, a very pregnant young waitress, is our way in. A man from her past, Eddie Barrow, appears as if from nowhere with a pressing urgency to tell his story. Joyce wants us to hear it.

Eddie tells us a love story – a strange, Gothic, warped and weird love story. He tells us about Effie, the old lady who lives in a room opposite his in a boarding house. Effie is a remarkable, magical woman. However, she needs raw meat to survive.

CASTTom Hughes Eddie BarrowRita Tushingham EffieCorvierMontserrat Lombard Joyce

NEIL SAYS“There are very few things over the years that I’ve actually taken from dreams, but every now and again you will find a treasure. Feeders & Eaters mostly for me was a dream. I remember waking up with the beats of the story in my head, knowing what it felt like and thinking I have to tell that story.”

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What’s your role in Feeders & Eaters?I play Eddie Barrow, who’s a man of about 30 years, late 20s, and we meet him at a point where he walks into a cafe and he bumps into the younger sister of an old friend of his. She’s pregnant and working in the cafe and kind of introduces the story to the audience. Eddie’s not seen this woman, this old friend of his, in quite a while, and he’s a changed man. He’s gone from being young and full of life, a youthful, optimistic bloke, to seeming haggard and drawn. And he starts to tell his story about what happened, how he ended up being the guy he is, who we meet at the start of the story. There are plenty of twists and turns, a deep and dark kind of story that we find out about.

Were you excited to be working from Neil’s writing?Very much so. Neil’s writing and stories are very dark; they can almost exist in a different realm. But there’s also humanity in them, so you get this lovely balance where nothing feels too far-fetched. It feels very rooted in the real world even though it contains some extreme ideas. So it was great to work with that.

What was it like working with Iain and Jane?They were both incredible. They’ve got a real depth and warmth as people, as well as being great artists. It was great to have that balance. Plus, with all the intricacies within the character and the story, the fact that Rita [Tushingham] and Montserrat [Lombard] were involved and knowing Jarvis Cocker was going to be doing the music… the whole combination meant it was a project that I was really, really excited to be involved in.

What attracted you most about the role?It’s always three things for me. It’s the character, the story and the director… and if I can tick all three boxes then that’s great. In this case, the writing was obviously there. Neil’s got a very unique voice and the writing within that was fantastic. The adaptation of Neil’s story that we had was so detailed. Jane and Iain were obviously there and then the part, Eddie Barrow,

“The writing has a lovely balance – nothing feels too far-fetched”

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was so fascinating because everything about him was a contradiction, and it’s always those elements of characters that I’ve been drawn to. I like looking at the contradictions within us and also the lies that we tell ourselves, the actions that we allow ourselves to go through in life… the paths that we’re led down. Those are the characters that I’m drawn to, so this one ticked every box. I was excited to be involved.

What was the biggest challenge?Neil’s voice is so unique. The show has things that will excite but also challenge an audience. You’re showing them something they’re not used to and taking them on a journey; you have to make sure that rather than being alienating it will be quite the opposite. The challenge was leaving the door open and taking them down the rabbit hole.

What kind of audience will this appeal to?

I would hope fans of Neil would come to it and enjoy it, but I also hope there’s something in there for other people too. They have a different tone and depth. We get drawn into things that are outside the run of the mill and the everyday, and I think this beautifully bridges two worlds. It feels very real and visceral, but at the same time has those fantastical elements. That’s something that will hopefully appeal to a wider audience, young and old. It was also a real treat for me to play a part that was a step away

from the last few things I’ve done. A lot of the actors in this are going against the grain and hopefully that will be interesting for the audience as well. I think it could be quite a lot of people’s cup of tea. I think people will get a kick out of it.

Neil has such a devoted, almost cult following. Was there any added pressure living up to fans’ expectations?I think with anything you have to simplify

your job and just worry about the immediate challenge of what you’re doing. For me it was about taking what was on the page, the depth of the character and story… bringing that to life. Then you have to trust in the people working around you and – with the team we had – there was an inherent trust right from the beginning. That allowed me to focus on my job, bringing life and humanity, and hopefully humour to the character… then leaving the rest to other people and looking forward to the final result.

“There are plenty of twists and turns. It’s a deep, dark story”

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Our narrator in Closing Time is a raconteur, a writer and late-night barfly engaging in the tradition of weaving club stories for his fellow drinkers. Feeling the warmth of company and loosened by drink, he expertly draws people in as he spins his tale.

He’s also suppressing a painful memory. Guilt-ridden thoughts have haunted him since childhood and they manifest themselves as a ghost story, his past consumed by the human instinct to mythologise memories when they hurt too much.

CASTJohnny Vegas DanielMontserrat Lombard HelenaMonica Dolan NoraPaul Ritter MartynJohann Myers Paul

NEIL SAYS“I started thinking about the 1980s in London and the fact that for a very small period of time I had wound up belonging to a now defunct late-night drinking den. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do a club story but at the same time subvert all of the tropes of a club story?’ I had much too much fun writing it.”

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What can you tell us about your role as Daniel in Closing Time?Well, he’s a writer who spends plenty of time in one of those classic Soho drinking clubs. He’s the type that wanders the night, wanders the world looking for stories. He enjoys a drink and has a little group of mates. To me he seems like the type who made his way up through the NME. He probably started doing music reviews and then branched out.

I would say he’s also prone to the odd bit of writer’s block and enjoys nipping out to see if the next big story is perhaps at the bottom of that glass somewhere. One night he’s out drinking with his mates and they’re talking about ghost stories and urban myths.

He goes on to tell a creepy little tale from his youth and we’re unsure whether he’s just good at spinning a yarn or if it all actually happened. It seems sincere, but of course it’s his job to tell stories. And then there’s a twist at the end, like there is with all great stories of this type.

Neil’s spoken about the four stories being linked by the idea of consumption. What is Daniel consumed by? Gin… I think, as a night person, it’s the idea the next story is out there somewhere, rather than it coming from within. He’s a nightcrawler, the type who enjoys seeking out inspiration from others’ experiences.

What attracted you to the role?The script, the producer-directors, Neil’s writing… all of it. It’s just a great little piece of storytelling. Who doesn’t want to get around a table and tell a ghost story?

I was chuffed to be asked to do it to be honest; it was just a lovely opportunity. There were such great people already involved and I predominantly do comedy, so it’s always nice to come in and do something a bit more dramatic.

Plus I heard Jarvis Cocker was doing the music for it which was very good of him. He came down to the set and got me out of a huge predicament regarding Christmas and a present for my wife.

“Who doesn’t want to get around a table and tell a ghost story?”

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Kenneth Cranham mentioned drawing on his own experience for his part in the series. Was that something you were able to do?

Well, it really was all on the page. It’s that well written you can just enjoy playing it out and getting into it. There are elements, though. The idea of a kid who’s a bit of a loner and then finds these other kids to pal around with. We’ve all got that.

We’ve also all been spooked at one time or another haven’t we? When I was younger I went through an obsession where me and a friend were in junior school and we thought we’d uncovered this witches’ coven or some kind of black magic coven.

We used to go out looking for them, trying to see if there were any sticks that had fallen in certain ways. It was a bit Blair Witch, like a dark version of Enid Blyton. I think every kid has that brief obsession with things like that… a point where you like to be scared a little bit.

Were you a fan of Neil’s work beforehand?I certainly know people who are much bigger fans, but I had just bought his version of Hansel & Gretel a few months before getting the script. It’s beautifully

theirs and we were all reading off the same story sheet.

What was it like working with Iain and Jane?Brilliant. They’re fabulous people with such a love for the subject matter. They’re so enthusiastic about everything; they really, really care. They just want to put the best possible version they can on screen…they’re the real deal when it comes to labours of love.

In that sense, they’re infectious people to work with, the type who get an idea in their

done and it felt like such a bizarre little coincidence, like somebody up there was telling me I had to do the part.

Neil has a very unique voice as a writer. Was it a challenge making sure you stayed true to that?I just trusted in Iain and Jane on that one. I had a notion of how I wanted to go in and play it and if that was yards off the mark hopefully they’d rein me back and point me in the right direction. Fingers crossed my feeling on it was similar to

heads and just have to make it happen. It’s always great to work with people like that, you feel it’s important to get stuck in and help them make it happen.

What kind of audience will this speak to?That’s a really good question. I hope a broad one. I hope it will bring in an audience of people who weren’t necessarily fans of Neil’s work beforehand because it’s just such good storytelling. I hope it appeals to the masses. I hope it goes global. I hope it leads to a three-movie deal.

“Jarvis came to the set and got me out of an Xmas present predicament”

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Dean Smith is an ageing photographer. He’s almost 70, but there’s still a glint in his eye. TV’s ‘face of culture’, Miranda Walker, is interviewing him for television and asks about his muse. Once the cameras are off the question unlocks a story about Charlotte, aged 19, a Penthouse model.

As old magazines and photographs are pulled from shelves it emerges that he’s a man consumed by an untouchable fantasy. A two-dimensional image sparked a moment of sexual awakening that he’s spent a lifetime trying to recapture.

CASTKenneth Cranham Dean SmithMonica Dolan Miranda WalkerChloe Hayward Charlotte

NEIL SAYS“I remember asking one of the Penthouse girls if she felt exploited. She said it was better than working the night shift in a biscuit factory and that, for her, the people being exploited were the men buying those magazines. I thought there was something weird and odd and beautiful about that. A sort of emptiness, the idea of people becoming pictures.”

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What can you tell me about your role as Dean Smith in Looking for the Girl?Well, I partly improvised and partly performed the script I was given. I was cast because he’s my age and he lived all his life in London, as I have. And Soho was central to his life, so I added quite a lot of stuff from my own memories of Soho… of Ronnie

Scott’s and all the things that went on. It certainly fit the span of my own life. He ended up, the character in the story, being a successful photographer. He’s got a friend who’s curious about what’s happening to him, and so he talks to her. It’s him talking to her on camera. You get the story of his life, in particular his obsession with a girl that he saw a photo of in Penthouse and how he tries to hunt her down and locate her, and he eventually succeeds. I think that’s everything, really.

You mentioned bringing in elements from your own life, can you expand on that? Well, it’s because I’m in my 70s and I did live through the 60s. I’m just a wee bit younger than the Stones, basically the same age,

“I added from my own memories of the things that went on in Soho”

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and I actually saw them when they didn’t even stand up, they all sat down…that’s all they did. So I really have lived that span of London life, and Soho was where you went. If you come from the suburbs as I did, if you come from Tulse Hill, Soho was a magic place. I’m sure you can imagine.

Were they any particular challenges in getting the character right?Well, I did try to make him as non-salacious as possible. It’s an old man talking about sex so you’ve got be very careful.

What was it like working with the directors, Iain and Jane?Well, they came to see me in The Father because they wanted me to do this one. They also sent me a film they made about Nick Cave, which I was very taken with. I didn’t know much about him, so it rather surprised me that he was somehow a blend between Philip Larkin and Vegas Elvis. I was really impressed by it… it was very interesting. But working with them was great. They really encourage a feeling of spontaneity, they actually tell people to walk in and interrupt while you’re performing. So it’s not going to be someone totally in command of what they’re doing, it’s going to have a feeling of spontaneity about it… which I think is quite interesting.

Were you excited to be working from Neil’s writing? I didn’t know about his work, but I enjoyed the script. This story was written for Penthouse and that was absolutely central to it.

Who will enjoy this show?It will depend, I think, because each story has the character of the narrator. Johnny Vegas, somebody I’ve worked with before, is in one of the episodes and he has a particular charm. He’s very different to me, though. We’re not really the same beast.

“Iain and Jane really encourage a feeling of spontaneity”

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Madeleine ChambersPublicist – Sky Content PRmadeleine.chambers@sky.uk

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Anthony ClarkeEditor – Sky Content PRanthony.clarke@sky.uk

020 7032 1484