Scott & Bailey — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Production team

Scott & Bailey is produced by Manchester-based Red Production Company, which itself is majority owned by StudioCanal following an acquisition estimated at £30 million in December 2013. Nicola Shindler, who founded the company in 1998, is the programme's executive producer alongside writer Sally Wainwright and Tom Sherry. When speaking of Shindler, Wainwright said: "Nicola is just a genius. She makes you raise your game. So if you're good, she'll make you better".

The role of producer was undertaken by Yvonne Francas for Series 1, and from Series 2 to Series 3, Tom Sherry. Sherry, who has worked for Red Productions for over 15 years, described his job as "the opportunity to meddle in all departments – it's about being able to have a passable stab at everyone's job and to be able to empathise with what they're trying to achieve". For the production of Series 4, Sherry undertook the role of executive producer alongside Wainwright and Shindler, while the position of producer is staffed by Juliet Charlesworth. For the fifth series, filmed in 2015, Suranne Jones became an executive producer alongside Shindler.

The involvement of Diane Taylor as a consultant producer is credited with maintaining Scott & Bailey's "rigorous authenticity". According to Jessamy Calkin of The Telegraph, "the attention to detail is more extreme on this series, say many of the crew, than others they have worked on". During the filming of Unforgiven in 2008 (written by Wainwright and also starring Suranne Jones), Wainwright was told to meet Taylor by Grant Montgomery, the show's designer. After meeting, the production was given the green light by ITV and the script was largely re-written, with Wainwright commenting: "I wasn't writing a single line of dialogue that Diane hadn't influenced". Wainwright is responsible for writing the majority of episodes.

Amelia Bullmore, who plays Gill Murray, wrote three episodes; Wainwright had wanted to get other writers involved in the process. For her first episode as writer, "Bullmore was given a brief – that everything must be from Scott and Bailey's point of view – and she was given a murder". Though she had been a professional writer for almost two decades, Scott and Bailey marked the first instance of Bullmore writing and starring in the same production. Due to Wainwright's increased workload on her other drama series Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley, Bullmore was chosen to be the head writer for Scott and Bailey's fourth series in 2014. She was joined on the writing team by Lee Warburton, who wrote two episodes of the fourth series. and returned to write Scott & Bailey's fifth series in 2015.

The directing of Scott & Bailey is undertaken in a method whereby "each director directs a 'block' of two or three episodes, dictated by the schedule – when each episode has finished shooting, the director goes into the edit and a new director takes over for the next block", according to Calkin. The most prolific director of Scott & Bailey is Morag Fullerton, who directed seven episodes.

Casting

Jones, who had always envisaged herself playing Rachel Bailey when the idea of the project came in to mind, was given the role, though at the programme's pre-production stages the character had a different first name, Cathy. It was originally intended that Lindsay would star with Jones in Scott & Bailey, but she became pregnant with twins, so the role of Janet was given to Lesley Sharp instead; Lindsay received the smaller role of Rachel's sister, Alison. Lindsay approved of Sharp playing the role; Jones also felt pleased at the prospect of working with Sharp, saying "I was really excited on the day of the read-through". Regarding the casting of her husband Nicholas Gleaves as Scott's lover DS Andy Roper, Sharp stated that it was not a contributing factor in his casting, stating: "Nick's an actor and I'm an actress — we don't have the same agent. There's a script with a role in it that was right for him and it so happened that there was a role that was right for me and we both got cast, but it wasn't a conversation that we had that it would be a good idea if we did a television series together because that's not the way life works".

Both Rachel and Janet are Detective Constables in the Major Incident Team of the fictional Manchester Metropolitan Police Service, with the team headed by DCI Gill Murray (Amelia Bullmore), who is loosely based on Diane Taylor. Producers were undecided on what age DCI Murray would be, but had originally pictured an actress older than Bullmore. After auditioning, Bullmore returned a month later, intent on playing Murray "tough", however, when meeting casting director Beverley Keogh in the toilets beforehand, Bullmore recounted that Keogh said to her: "That's not what we've got you back for. We were interested in seeing a warmer side".

Danny Miller joined the cast as series regular Rob Waddington in series 3 and Tracie Bennett also appeared in the third series as DC Bailey's estranged mother, Sharon. In a continuing story arc for the third series, Nicola Walker was cast in the role of Helen Bartlett, a character driven to emotional instability by past events unearthed by the Manchester Metropolitan Police. In preparation for the role Walker visited a psychologist in order to build upon her characterisation.

Filming

Principal photography for the first series took place in a twelve-week window from November 2010 onwards, it was reported by Female First. The series was filmed on location in and around Greater Manchester. Jones mentioned that "On the first day of filming [she and Sharp] were stuck in a car on the moors". Oldham was another location chosen for filming, with local press reporting that Beal Lane in Shaw was used for filming. The Oldham Evening Chronicle supplied specially mocked-up newspapers to be used as props in filming. Other locations such as Manchester Crown Court were used for filming. The Major Incident Team's headquarters for the first three series were filmed in an old Barclays branch on Silver Street, Bury. The filming location used the team's new station, the fictional Oldham Road police station, took place at former Greater Manchester Police Grey Mare Lane police station in Beswick. A local mortuary was also used for filming scenes. The programme was also granted permission to film in HM Prison Risley in Cheshire, where locations manager James Muirhead and a crew of 35 filmed for a day.

When discussing the filming of Scott & Bailey, Jones said "I can't pretend it wasn't a tough shoot, both emotionally and physically, because it was", before adding that on the last day of filming she had to shoot a gruelling scene involving her chasing a suspect from a crime scene, while Sharp and Bullmore "were having massages and facials ready for the wrap party".

When Scott & Bailey was recommissioned for a second series it was announced that production on the series would commence at the end of October 2011, to be aired in 2012. In November it was reported that while filming on Hamilton Road, Whitefield—the set of DC Scott's home—that an emergency call was made after a member of the television crew, a lighting technician, became stranded on top of a "cherry-picker style platform" 12 metres (39 ft) above the ground. Fearing the mechanism could fail and cause the crew member to fall to the ground, they sought assistance from firefighters, who safely brought the technician to the ground.

Filming for series 3 began in November 2012, with an airing date scheduled for May 2013. As the fourth series had a different air date (its television broadcast began in September, unlike May for the three previous series) it became the first series not to be filmed in the winter months. A longer break in production between series 3 and 4 was the reason that the fourth series was instead filmed in summer.

Critical reception

Scott & Bailey has received generally good reviews. Tom Sutcliffe of The Independent remarked that although it was a "less-than-courageous decision" for ITV to commission a detective drama for Sunday nights, Scott & Bailey had "genuine signs of life in the thing". Sam Wollaston of The Guardian, however, questioned the plausibility of the idea that the character of Rachel would not realise her partner of two years was already married, considering she was a detective, and described the series as "Lewis with skirts on". However, Grace Dent, also of The Guardian, described it as "of great televisual comfort". Alexandra Heminsley, another writer for The Guardian, described it as "a genuinely gripping crime series" and added: "what about a second series?" Euan Ferguson of The Observer stated that it was "actually rather gripping". Horatia Harrod, reviewing the third series for The Daily Telegraph, praised the programme's script and its likeness to reality in portraying the professional conduct of modern policing, stating: "this is a beautifully engineered programme: it's both pleasingly sudsy and deliciously grisly, but manages to transcend both the soap and detective genres [...] Somehow Sally Wainwright, the show's creator and writer, has made the traditionally dull quality of professional competence seem positively thrilling".

John Preston of The Daily Telegraph gave a mixed review: though he commended the acting of Sharp and Jones, he stated that "it badly needs some shape and tension". The Metro took a decidedly critical stance, with its reviews getting progressively worse with each new episode; first describing it as "comforting but could have been so much better", then later quipping that "Scott & Bailey will never be compelling TV", and that the programme was "a mediocre crime drama amidst a saturated market of mediocre crime dramas".

One of the more persistent criticisms of the show (especially its first two series) has been its indifferent or decidedly negative depiction of male characters. Dianne Butler, who reviewed the programme upon its airing in Australia, made a similar point, questioning the relevance of the show's male characters: "there are some men in this but they're fairly incidental". The Guardian's John Crace expressed his belief that most of the programme's male characters are deficient in some way, writing: "surely it must be possible to make a show with women lead characters without having to make every male a complete dork? From Janet's useless husband and Rachel's idiot brother who can't boil an egg without burning down the kitchen".

The performances of Amelia Bullmore and Nicola Walker in the Series 3 finale were highly praised. Julia Raeside of The Guardian commented that both "give an incredible acting masterclass that will take your breath away. Truly gripping and the jewel in ITV's increasingly impressive drama crown. Splendid stuff." The series was nominated for the BAFTA TV award for Best Drama Series in both 2012 and 2013.

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