PRIS01_cover_1715x2575Big Finish executive producer Nick Briggs is a man much in demand and is heavily involved in many of the ranges that the company releases. At the end of November, he took an hour out to chat with Paul Simpson, looking back at some of the 2016 stories and ahead to next year – starting with a project very dear to his heart, his own reworking of the classic 1960s series The Prisoner…

When we spoke in early January, The Prisoner had just been released. What was your reaction to the reaction it received?

It was the reaction of a man who had sort of unknowingly leapt across an abyss, managed to get to the other side, bizarrely assuming during the whole flight that it was no problem, and then stopping, landing, looking back down into the abyss and thinking, “Oh my goodness I could have gone down there. I could have really died.”

I was retrospectively really tense and nervous about it but extremely grateful because they do say, do they not, that if any idea’s worth doing, you can explain it in a couple of sentences as a pitch, or at least a sentence – I don’t know how these clever people do things – but I couldn’t explain what I wanted to do with The Prisoner in a sentence. I just had a feeling how to do it, and luckily ITV trusted me and said, “Oh yes, the spelling and grammar’s very good in your proposal”, and that was great and it really did pay off.

I think a lot of people who really thought they’d hate it said, “Oh, I don’t quite know what you’ve done but it seems to work. It’s very like the original, but it was worth doing because it’s significantly different, but not in a way that horribly messes with the original.” So I’m happy and proud and all those things.

prisoner-living-in-harmonyWhat did you learn from writing and producing and doing everything on volume 1 that you’ve taken into volume 2?

That’s a really good question. I feel like saying “nothing” because I’d done it before and…

I learned from the audience that they were really keen on stuff being a bit different. People were saying, “We want more new episodes as opposed to just adaptations”, and what I’m delivering with the second box set, is on the surface of it, they all look like adaptations but actually the episodes are very different. The adaptations are wildly different. One episode has the title, Living in Harmony, but it isn’t that episode – the title fitted and I thought that would be a fun thing to do. Living in Harmony in the second series is an entirely original – entirely new episode. It’s difficult with the use of the words new and original, isn’t it! –and the other three are adaptations but they are radically different.

I suppose that I learned that there is a thirst for a real difference – I hope people can now trust that we can do that Prisoner style thing. A lot of that is to do with Mark Elstob doing a brilliant job as Number 6, and the sound designer Iain Meadows and Jamie Robertson doing the music. I think in the audience’s mind they’ve established the authenticity credentials.

In terms of the writing and directing, I suppose I learned that I can really let my imagination run free with the writing; Jamie Anderson is the script editor on it and he says that every time he read one of my storylines for the box set, “I feel like I’ve had a nervous breakdown, because they’re just so crazy”. That’s a lot of what The Prisoner was about. It’s meant to be mindboggling and strange and unfathomable and taxing and intriguing.

pvi_4_image_largeWas there any pressure or resistance from ITV to doing more original stuff? Are they happy with the balance?

No – they’re very happy with the balance. I have a good relationship with them there and they have been extremely supportive. I’m tempted to say I have no idea why, but bless them! They’re very supportive of me. I speak to them fairly regularly on email and I bumped into them all at the big Thunderbirds 1965 screening at the BFI fairly recently; they were absolutely charming and told me how much they trusted me. I realise that that trust could be rescinded at a moment’s notice if I put a foot wrong so hopefully I will continue putting my feet in the right place and they’ll continue to trust me.

They very much liked it; they listened to it and thought it was really good.

What’s the timeframe for the second box set now? I noticed in Vortex you basically things were running behind…

The timeframe is that it’ll be released in August 2017. It was meant to come out January 2017 but one can’t underestimate the effect that doing the 10th Doctor and the War Doctor in quick succession at the end of 2015, in production with it all, has had on my brain. We had to do a lot much, much faster than we normally work because of actor availability and that did leave me a little bit frazzled. That’s not to say I stopped at all but The Prisoner kept being pushed aside by other things.

The solution is to get someone else to write it but let me tell you: that’s not happening. Not for this box set anyway – who knows what will happen in the future? Perhaps I’ll finally relent.

prisoner_tThe minute we got The Prisoner, all the Big Finish regular writers said, “I’d love to do that.” And I just said, “yes, I’m sure you would! End of comment…” very selfish of me, I know!

I’m writing it at the moment and hope to record it February/March. We thought, because we were going to delay it anyway, because I was behind on it (which I can’t apologise to anybody reading or listening enough, literally – it sounds insincere, but I do mean it), someone mentioned that of course the 50th anniversary is on the 29th September – my birthday – in 2017, so we thought, “why don’t we have it out in time for that?” The schedules seemed to look good for August; that’s also a concern with anything we release, that there’s always so many things coming out, we’re loath to load up a month that’s already loaded with releases.

That’s the state of play, and we’ll start talking about that more once the recordings have been done, hopefully in March. I’m having lots of fun writing it, and were I not talking to you now, I would be writing it.