London Town

20 May.  Off to Liverpool St to meet Malcolm and Dan, the exec producer and director respectively, of my latest TV programme ‘Elizabeth’s Secret Armada’ for BBC2’s Timewatch.    It’s a hugely ambitious programme about the wreck of an Elizabethan warship that sank in 1592, four years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada.  Apparently the ship was en route to Brittainy with instructions and supplies for Sir John Norris, Elizabeth I’s famed general, who was fighting the French/Spanish Catholics.   The plan is to tell the story of the ship and film the weapons and artifacts recovered from it by marine archeologists.  We discuss storylines, dates, pieces to camera, living on board the dive ship, helicopter filming, firing the recast weapons from the ship etc.  Far and away the most interesting - and difficult - TV project I’ve been involved in.  Can’t wait to get started.  Filming begins in three weeks. 

Afternoon meeting with Neil Crombie of Seneca Productions, makers of Channel 4’s ‘Rum, Sodomy and the Lash’ (about the Georgian Navy).  We discuss a British Army version, ‘Scum of the Earth’, but decide that something more contemporary would be better.  Along the lines of me in Afghanistan with British soldiers, questioning them about life in the army today (rations, equipment, training, pay, married quarters, service conditions, danger etc!) and explaining how it was very different when the British were last in Helmand province in 1880, possibly by demonstrating uniform, equipment etc.  Very Channel 4.

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