Lights, Camera, Bracken
Barry Didcock joins the crew filming Monarch Of The Glen to find out what makes a Highland TV phenomenon
MOST television dramas escape unnoticed into the wilds of the programme schedules, there to wither and die or bear fruit and start the slow climb up TV’s evolutionary ladder to the ultimate goal – a Radio Times front cover.
But try to explain the success of Monarch Of The Glen, speak to the actors and writers who bring it to our television screens, and the laws of natural selection seem to falter. Loved by millions, a mainstay of Sunday night viewing since the turn of the century, it appears to have arrived as if by a snap of the celestial fingers. Maybe there’s something in creation theory after all. Maybe God really does smile on Glenbogle.
Certainly the sun is shining the day I visit the corner of Badenoch and Strathspey they now call Monarch Country. The series is filmed at Ardverikie, an estate encompassing 37,000 acres and a not inconsiderable length of the Loch Laggan shoreline, including a sandy beach at the northeastern end which wouldn’t look out of place in a holiday brochure. The estate owners, while happy to be paid for their largesse in allowing access, initially wanted the location kept secret, but it was leaked by locals equally keen for a bit of the action. Now tourists, mainly American, flock to the area to sample a little bit of the Glenbogle magic.
Arriving, I pass the Gatelodge (yours for £525 a week in the high season; make sure you book a year ahead), punch in the code to raise the security barrier and start the drive to the house. Six miles later I turn a corner and there it is, a confection of sky and water and light grey stone pulled into peaks and sharp gullies. A big house on a loch front, it reeks of privilege and tradition. Only the cluster of Portacabins off to one side hint at its fictional identity.
Susan Hampshire plays Molly, the widow of former laird Hector MacDonald. She has been in the series from the outset and is a veteran of stage, film and screen. But even with that wealth of experience, she thinks there’s something about Monarch that’s just a little bit special.
“I thought it had magic,” she tells me, recalling her first days on set, five years ago now. “I remember one day there was a rainbow. We were all standing in the loch in our Wellington boots and the rainbow seemed to be coming down on us and I thought, ‘My God, this is such an omen’. I just felt this is what people wanted. I wasn’t surprised we were commissioned for year two.”
Two became three, four and five and the programme returns for its sixth series next Sunday. The opening credits and theme music have been tweaked slightly, there’s a handful of new actors, but the same winning ingredients are in place: quirky characters, heart-warming storylines and (the real star, everyone says so) that stunning Highland scenery.
Molly is back, of course, but her son, Archie, has departed for New Zealand with his wife, former cook Lexie (Dawn Steele). She will return, though, to find the new laird, Paul (Lloyd Owen), still getting people’s backs up as he comes to terms with his responsibilities. Duncan (Hamish Clark) is still kilted and leather jacketed and daft as the brush his hair never sees. Golly (Alexander Morton) returns as the hard-bitten gillie, as do Jess (Rae Hendrie) and Ewan (Martin Compston). But there’s new blood in the form of aspiring crofter Isobel Anderson (Simone Lahbib), Hector’s estranged brother Donald (Tom Baker) and, from episode seven onwards, new neighbour Chester (Anthony Head from Buffy The Vampire Slayer).
Another newcomer is producer Rob Bullock. His challenge is to freshen things up. He created the character of Donald, aware that the house needed a cantankerous old man to fill the boots of Richard Briars, who played Hector, and he’s brought in new writers and directors.
You can’t tinker too much with a winning formula, though, especially one which regularly draws an audience of around seven million in an era when satellite TV has caused most primetime terrestrial shows to lose viewers, has been sold to 25 countries, and generates vast revenues for the BBC. It’s hard to get an exact figure – actually it’s impossible, BBC Worldwide won’t disclose it – but Bullock believes the show generates “tens of millions”. It’s particularly popular in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, areas the Scottish diaspora has penetrated deeply. But it also screens on the BBC Prime channel, making it available to 19 million households across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. If you hate it – some do – then Patagonia is probably your only safe haven.
As for the secret of its success, Bullock thinks it lies in the combination of engaging stories and great comedy, the ying and yang of television drama. “That’s an incredibly difficult balance to get. The show has been successful, I think, because it’s found writers who can deliver that balance and populated it with a cast who can bring those scripts to life.”
One of those writers, the daddy if you like, is Michael Chaplin. It was in the spring of 1998 that he was approached by Douglas Rae and Robert Bernstein of Ecosse Films to adapt Compton Mackenzie’s novel. Rae, who had had a hit with Mrs Brown a year earlier, had initially pitched Monarch Of The Glen as a film, but after touting it round investors had met with little enthusiasm.
“I was concerned at the outset by the question of how you make toffs popular,” says Chaplin. “How do you create an audience sympathy and regard for people who appear to have everything?”
Chaplin got round it by making them poor, updating the novel from the 1930s to the modern day, bringing in new characters and – here’s the clever bit – pitching it to the BBC as a television series. The trio met Barbara McKissack, newly appointed head of drama at BBC Scotland, and struck a deal.
Chaplin was dispatched to the Highlands to research stories and characters. One of the places he visited was Ardverikie, which had been used by Rae in Mrs Brown. “It was this very strange house, on the shores of a loch,” he recalls. “I could immediately see that this idea of representing a world cut off from the rest of Britain would be rich and interesting.”
It was when he entered the kitchen that he had his eureka moment. “It was vast and in the corner was this guy cooking on a modern cooker. He was the Australian cook. I had a chat with him. I said, ‘What do you make of this?’ and he said, ‘It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced in my entire life. It’s kind of weird. But I like it.’” And so the character of Lexie was born – and Chaplin knew that the fictional Glenbogle had found its televisual home. Episode one screened on February 27, 2000. It was met with critical derision and viewing figures that must have had McKissack jumping for joy.
Four years later, little has changed. Critics sniff, but the mainstream Sunday night audience has remained remarkably loyal. Monarch Of The Glen goes from strength to strength.
Today the show employs around 90 people, all of whom live in the local area for the duration of the six-month shoot. The 11 day fortnight means only two long weekends a month in which to return home. Shooting for this series began in March and wraps in a fortnight.
Scottish-born actress Lahbib is missing her husband in London but the upside is she’s nearer her parents in Stirling. And the sheer majesty of the setting still bowls her over even now – she tells me of the morning she set out for work and had to stop her car because there was a deer in the road. “And yesterday I had the afternoon off and myself and a couple of the other actresses went for a really long walk and we found this waterfall with a stream. There was nobody around so the three of us went went skinny-dipping. It was gorgeous.”
Such tales abound, wherever you look, whoever you talk to. It’s as if the very themes the programme aims to present – the knitting together of a rural community – is mirrored in the real lives of the players. “We’re all stranded on Island Monarch for six months at a time,” says Bullock. “Some people go home but the vast majority of the time is spent in this community and that’s what gives it its family feel.”
The other thing everyone’s keen to talk about is the arrival of Baker, whose arrival has had an energising effect.
“He’s very naughty,” smirks Lahbib. “I think he has a low boredom threshold so he’ll deliberately kick up some fun whether on set or off.”
“He’s been fantastic,” says Bullock. “He’s brought so much comedy and fun.”
“Aw, the big man’s just brilliant,” grins Compston. “I think we needed something that just lifted the bar a little bit, and that’s Tom. He’s a joy to work with and a joy to watch, always up to mischief. There’s never a dull take with him and his energy levels are brilliant. He puts me to shame.”
I’ve caught up with Compston in Aviemore where he’s filming a scene with director Robert Knights. We’re in a chalet park with about 20 crew, three vans, two urns (coffee and tea) and one lime green Robin Reliant. The crew are filming a scene in which Compston simply has to drive up and get out of his car. It isn’t going to plan – the car sounds in pain, jerking forward with an awful grinding noise and the occasional splutter. Del Boy would be proud. “It’ll look better with a different soundtrack,” laughs Knights.
“This is a big step for me,” Compston tells me afterwards as we lounge in the baking sun. “It’s primetime TV, it’s really popular. I never went to drama school and here I can watch, I can learn. It’s a great experience.”
It’s also a world away from his other big role, in Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen. So how does he feel the world of Glenbogle relates to the Greenock he grew up in and in which Loach set his violent, gritty film? “It’s fantasy,” he shrugs.
I ask Chaplin what he thinks of the complaint that Monarch doesn’t accurately portray life in the Highlands. “People may think it’s unreal, verging on the incredible, but I always say, ‘Well I had the experience of an urban Englishman visiting these places and this is how it is.’ Daft as it may seem, there is a corner of Scotland, mostly hidden from view, where this is what it’s like.”
More troublesome is the implied message of the programme: that the perpetuation of the feudal system is something to be celebrated, that land rights are non-negotiable outside of the bloodline. Bullock seems unmoved by such concerns. “I am not seeking to get across any political message about the position of land ownership in Scotland,” he says. “What I want to make is an hour of entertaining and engaging drama.”
That, of course, is the nub of it. Hampshire loves the show for its mixture of romance and humanity, Lahbib for its mixture of fantasy and play. The rest of us tune in because, ultimately, it does what any great show does: it allows us to escape to what Chaplin has called “a Highland never-never land”. It’s as simple and as complex as that.
“When I go back to London in two weeks’ time and I’m sitting in my grimy flat in Shepherd’s Bush contemplating the week ahead,” muses Bullock, “I’m going to appreciate spending an hour again in Glenbogle.”
Him and millions more besides. In a place where even the rainbows bow down towards you, how could you not?
Monarch Of The Glen returns to BBC1 on September 19 at 8pm
12 September 2004
