WHY DO YOU THINK MEET THE RICHARDSONS HAS PROVED SO POPULAR?
Lucy: We really try to just go for laughs. We never wanted to go serious or start talking about our marriage. We've kept it silly. When we first did publicity for it, we said it's a documentary. We can be honest now, it's a sitcom. It's written but so much is real in it.
Jon: There's a movement towards overt discussions of problems, and then there's the very traditional British view that that's all just beneath the surface. You can see what all our issues are, but we carry on as if nothing's happening.
I think people like that sense of pent-up misery and fear that we have. It's edited so the couch scenes go on for days. It's staggering how long we can sit on a couch and argue. But there are no lengthy scenes of playing the awkward silence – it's just a set-up and a gag, and then we move on.
JUST HOW MUCH IS SCRIPTED?
L: I usually write notes of real things that have happened whether in the house or at work, then Tim [Reid] and I look at how we can make them into storylines. So half is real and half engineered.
Our producer was worried there wasn't enough mileage in us but now he thinks we're alright. It could run and run. Luckily Jon's personality is so fitted to a sitcom because he's deeply flawed and has no awareness that he is.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN CHANGES THIS TIME AROUND?
L: We've moved, which I was really worried about because people really liked Hebden Bridge and The Dog And B*****d [their local pub]. Plus we've moved to a big shiny vulgar modern, like a WAG footballer's house, so it's not as endearing. But luckily, it's lifted it.
J: It's put us on the back foot. We've gone from being the powerful ones in the valley to somewhere where the neighbours are taller and richer than us, and don't know who we are.
DAVID AND GEORGIA TENNANT ARE GUEST STARS…
L: Georgia got in touch to say she really liked the show and that they watched it together, and I was like, "Oh my God". The producer and director didn't think they would come on, but they did. They're such lovely people, it was amazing.
J: I'm in awe of people who can sort of switch a character on and off, because I'm just me all the time. There's an alchemy to it. David Tennant had it, where you're chatting away, just as people, and then the scene is he's got to get really angry at me and start shouting – and he's able to do it so quickly and so convincingly, it feels like magic.
WILL THERE BE MORE MEET THE RICHARDSONS?
L: If it wasn't for the team of people behind it, we may have only done one because we film it in the summer, it's about our lives, and as much as we have a laugh, we are arguing. For it to be authentic, we have to share quite a lot. Even though a lot of things are made up, we are letting people see our private life.
J: It still feels a big deal to me, to make and film something in the north, to have a TV sitcom that is written and performed entirely up north, with local crew. The minute people stop stopping us in the street to say how much it makes them laugh, that's when we'll stop.
:: Meet The Richardsons returns to Dave on Thursday March 3.
