“it’s rare that a television show actually changes people’s lives”

BEHIND THE SCENES

The Horrible Histories TV show is a phenomenon, and is now in its 10th series. But let’s rewind to the beginning. How did it start?

Richard Bradley: It began with a bedside chat with my son – who, to give you a sense of how long ago this was, is now 26. He absolutely loved Terry Deary and Martin Brown’s hugely successful series of Horrible Histories books and said: “Dad, you make history shows on telly. Why don’t you make the books as a TV show?” I thought it was a great idea, so we contacted the publishers, Scholastic, and got the rights to make it – but then we had to work out how to do that.

It was a huge, exciting challenge, but we had fantastic allies. [Director] Dominic Brigstocke and [producer] Caroline Norris came on board, along with the wonderfully gifted core cast – recently seen in [BBC sitcom] Ghosts. We worked out that we wanted to do a sketch show with a similar tone to Blackadder or Monty Python, but for kids. Our goal was the best show about history that had ever been made for kids.

Ben Ward: Richard doesn’t give himself enough credit, because there had been lots of talk about adapting the books. I was approached in 1998, for example, to see if I thought it would make a good BBC Radio 4 series, but I didn’t have Richard’s vision.

What was great was that the books had done so much heavy lifting with their anti-authoritarian, irreverent tone. Because that tone was already established, we could concentrate on making a sketch show that kids would have as their own. It needed to be theirs. Terry Deary told us that the series had to be three things: historically accurate, horrible, and funny, and those have been the guiding principles of the whole show.

How does the writing process work? It must be a fun show to work on...

Jess Ransom: All the humour starts in the research. Our amazing