When Beth was first commissioned, it made waves for its format as “Channel 4’s first digital original drama“. Billed as both a YouTube short form mini series of three episodes, and a 45 minute linear short (same narrative, two ways to watch). Given the industry’s current obsession with format experimentation and digital consumption, it was and is a moment, as audience viewing habits evolve and opportunities to shape what that means arise. One both writer/director Uzo Oleh (who last joined us here on DN with his mind-bending sci-fi thriller Edicius) and Dark Pictures founder and producer Yaw Basoah are incredibly appreciative of. But to focus on the form alone would do this incredible piece of storytelling an injustice – it is first and foremost a distinctive narrative, beautifully told. A story of an interracial couple, their longing for a baby, struggle with IVF and moral battle with adoption. We meet them at their highest high and see them at their lowest as mysterious circumstances fracture their relationship and their lives. Oleh’s incredible use of subtext packs so much into the runtime that it’s also a drama which demands attention, evokes emotion and, if consumed on YouTube (versus linear), will begin to redefine what we as audiences should be expecting and how we should be engaging with content from the platform. This is not, dear reader, background or thumb candy viewing.
The creative alchemy of Oleh and Basoah’s partnership was felt loudly and deeply in my conversation with them, even over the screens of Zoom – the magic of which both attribute to ‘Higgonometry’ – which, as I’m fast learning, is the renowned Anna Higgs effect (Exec Producer on Beth, Film Committee Chair at BAFTA, MD at Character 7) who paired the two together and in turn inspired key decision makers in the industry to back them – not least Channel 4 to go ahead and commission it. I for one am sure this is just the beginning of the journey for Beth protagonists Joe and Molly as a world this rich will undoubtedly have much more to come, but for now this is an incredible start that has you as a viewer intrigued and rooting for the couple, even though we’ve spent such a brief amount of time with them.
Uzo and Yaw’s alchemic magic made me wish I was on their set – however, their generosity of insight, spirit and fresh perspective in our interview made me feel like I was… just for a hot minute.
[A heads up, this interview contains light spoilers so you might want to watch Beth first, it’s right there 👇🏾]
Please can you both introduce yourselves and the piece we’ll be talking about – Uzo let’s start with you…
Uzo Oleh: My name is Uzo Oleh. I’m a writer and director and we’re talking about Beth, which is an idea I had a while ago that, without giving too much away, is basically about a family. I was a photographer for many years. I love creating and making things, whether pieces of art or a motorcycle. I like making things basically, that’s my whole thing.
Yaw Basoah: Hello, I’m Yaw Basoah. I’m a film, TV and digital arts producer. I love working with talented filmmakers, that’s why it has been a privilege to work with Uzo on this fantastic film and for people to see the amazing ideas Uzo has in his locker.
And how did your creative partnership come about?
[Uzo begins an elaborate story about dancing in leather chaps in a Berlin nightclub, which I almost fall for until Yaw interjects…]YB: Uzo is such a good storyteller and such a charmer, it is something you can almost believe.
UO: In all honesty, we got introduced by Anna Higgs. The Higgs. You know, the magic maker – Higgonometry. I talked to her about my idea and she was like, “You have to meet this guy Yaw”, so we met up and had coffee. I did most of the talking, which is no surprise and yeah, that was that.
One of the biggest things about Beth that stood out to me was that we’re with these characters for such a short space of time, but you pack so much in that we get to know quite a lot about them. How did you go about that?
UO: For me, it’s all about symbolism and choices. We got so lucky with the cast, they got the idea of the unsaid little moments. For example, there’s a moment where Molly touches Joe’s chest, she knows she’s said something wrong, he starts talking and she says “Yeah, of course” without him even needing to finish. You’re meant to feel that there is so much more there. There’s so much subtext, I love trying to infer things. That’s my taste though. I mean think about it, we all speak the same language spiritually as humans. I’ve lived in countries where I don’t speak the language but you can communicate.
One of our biggest things was to make people fall in love with this couple and feel their struggle. Given the reduced time frame, if we’ve nailed that, then anything else is a bonus.
YB: I would just add a lot was already on the page to work with, that’s testament to Uzo and him getting the performances out of the cast. He pushed them to breathe this reality into these characters so it would be wrong for Uzo to do a disservice to himself and not talk to how much was already on the page from day one and enhanced by the development process.
UO: Aww thanks Yaw, mate, do you think the time constraints we had also helped bring so much out so quickly?
YB: I think so, it made us focus a bit more on character. One of our biggest things was to make people fall in love with this couple and feel their struggle. Given the reduced time frame, if we’ve nailed that, then anything else is a bonus. I fell in love with them when I read the script. There’s so much subtext but ultimately it’s about them two.
The use of clocks, watches and time really stood out to me. What was the symbolism of that?
UO: How spoilery can we go in this interview? [semi-spoiler alert] Well, the clocks. Molly is a woman approaching middle age and time is ticking, each try is another year. So time is ticking, but also every time you see a clock, the time is a bible verse linked to a virgin birth. The time is very symbolically linked to what’s going to happen to/with her. I love all that stuff though, again, so much comes through the subtext.
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I’d love to talk about the cinematography. It was so beautifully shot, quite retro, with some stark moments like the red dress in the bathroom with the pregnancy test. What was your brief/vision for it?
UO: For the clothes, Emily Rose our costume designer went through all of the relevant colours based on what Molly will go through. Then overall I knew I wanted it to be like a movie, anamorphic, seventies lenses, old school vibe – something really textural. I met the DoP Sergio Delgado via a friend. We spoke and I sent him some of my references and he showed me his references that he uses in general, which had a bunch of my references in there so we were like, say no more, we’ve got the same style. It’s a meeting of minds. It was the first time I had worked with Sergio, but it was unbelievable, we were going through stuff so quickly, his team were amazing.
I knew I wanted it to be like a movie, anamorphic, seventies lenses, old school vibe – something really textural.
YB: Yeah, those two went off, had their DoP/Director chats and I’d be like, this is going to be great, never mind how I’m going to pay for whatever they’re going to do. But Sergio isn’t just one entity, his whole team knows exactly what they’re doing. The execution was incredible. The scale and gravity of what we had to do was huge but their work was like a Rolls-Royce. There’s no filmmaking that goes smoothly, everyone knows that there are good and bad days, but we had high ambitions and everyone had the same goal – to make it look brilliant and get people to FEEL something. There was creative magic and everyone was ‘Team Beth’.
Did you use any special equipment on the shoot?
YB: We just had all the toys. Everyone bought into Uzo and him as a filmmaker, that’s how we managed to bring in the calibre of people we did, from the actors to the DoP. All the equipment houses then supported the team so we managed to get the toys for very little money. But it’s one thing to have the equipment, it’s another to figure out the right time and way to use it and that’s the skill of the filmmakers. Essentially, we had a lot of amazing kit that came from a lot of goodwill.
It says a lot about the industry wanting to support doing incredible things despite how tough things are right now. And that brings us on to format, with Beth being the first original digital drama for Channel 4. Tell me about that, what it means, how it came about?
YB: I mean basically it’s a digital commission. Tom Pullen within digital at Channel 4, working alongside drama and trying to push boundaries of what’s possible in different forms and formats. The ambition was great and Tom was a brilliant colleague and ambassador for the project. Any inch he could get at Channel 4 in whatever capacity to put toward this project, he did. We’ve been so well supported in that respect. And with the format, we were open. We love linear long form, but this was an opportunity to do something and give a flavour of the potential of what Beth could be and work within those constraints. Channel 4 always wanted a series of three 8-12min episodes, those were the parameters at the beginning. But once they saw it coming together, they wanted to make a play for linear – Channel 4 as opposed to E4 or More4, and that’s testament to what Uzo created.
How did you approach editing it into those three episodes? I’ve only seen the linear version so am curious about the experience of it as a three-parter and where you cut.
YB: Uzo, you can explain but it’s quite intuitive once you think about the different parts in this relationship, you can see where the episodes will be.
UO: Well, a question for you Nimi. Where would you have ended each episode?
[I got one wrong and one right!]UO: So we end the first episode when they’re in the bathroom and they’re waiting for the pregnancy test. That’s probably about 12 minutes, something like that.
YB: 12 minutes, 34 seconds, I think.
UO: Oh, my God. Wow. This is what I love about Yaw. He’s not messing around! Then the second one is when the baby is born, which ended up being 7 or 8 minutes.
YB: It’s just under 8 minutes so it just hit that threshold of 8 to 12 minutes.
UO: I’d always seen it in three parts in my head, even when writing it, but where we ended up making the cuts and the length of each episode surprised us all in the edit to be honest.
I’d love to hear a bit more Uzo about your process for writing and directing. As you write, do you think through the director’s notes, treatment, roles, etc.?
UO: Definitely! I just imagine what’s happening, I let them do their thing. It’s emotionally expensive. There are scenes and moments that you think through before you’ve even written them down and they break your heart, they really upset you. I cry a lot when I’m writing, which is quite funny. I remember being in a meeting with Anna and Tom at Channel 4, and Tom was asking me about the character of Joe and his upbringing. We were hashing some points out, and I was defending his position on adoption and getting quite emotional. Anna put her hand on my knee and it was only at that point I was like, “Oh, I’m crying. Oh dear, excuse me.”. So it’s emotionally expensive, I just see it and I imagine. My whole thing is just ‘make what you’d like to see’. Your taste carries through.
There are scenes and moments that you think through before you’ve even written them down and they break your heart, they really upset you. I cry a lot when I’m writing, which is quite funny.
I guess I’m also asking that because you use some lines which say so much – like the one in the car where Joe says, “You’re thinking out loud” – and the body language does that too, telling so much of the story so quickly, but in a good way.
UO: I’m feeling emotional listening to you, because you don’t know how much people are going to get and why you make those choices so it’s really beautiful hearing that. I really appreciate you noticing those little things. And Nicholas Pinnock, what an actor, it was an honour to work with him. He said to me, “It’s my job to serve you. If you’re happy, I’m happy.” That’s his approach and he was just so collaborative.
How do you direct your actors? Like the scene with the mother in the hospital, how do you get that out of someone?
UO: It’s interesting because we cast Louise Bangay very late so our first conversation was on set.
YB: That was actually her first scene and it was the first time you’d met her. It had been a crazy morning. We had a baby on set (who was amazing), her mum is a midwife and they were just brilliant. But back to Louise, it was all in the room. Uzo and Louise were just given space and he explained what he needed out of that scene. Broke it down and I think at one point Uzo even acted it out. We were under so much pressure that day, but it’s about how effectively you can communicate to the actor and still give them the space to bring themselves to that performance. That’s what Uzo did and that’s why she nailed it.
UO: It’s so interesting to hear what you were seeing Yaw. But I’m never doing that again! Meeting someone so late in the day and going for it that is. Louise and I had a really good creative moment in that scene, because what she had in her head as to what this would be like versus what I was shooting for were actually mismatched, and I could see that from the first version of the take. She then totally understood my vision, took it and was totally on it. And she actually pulled me up on something, which I really like, and Nicholas pulled me up on something. They were like my heroes because I felt that there was enough trust for them to look at the script and say, “I don’t think the character would do that,” and it was brilliant. Especially when they can feel the instinctual behaviours of the characters. It was really collaborative.
Through everything we’ve talked about, you’ve packed in so much through the film’s subtext.
UO: You’ve picked up on some of the biggest points. For example with Joe, imagine being so consumed that passion takes over and you miss the important points. We had to make sure Joe’s character was open and the internal conflict he was having was apparent. We had some really tough scenes, and had to be careful of optics and let each character be in their zone and not predictable.
They were like my heroes because I felt that there was enough trust for them to look at the script and say, “I don’t think the character would do that,” and it was brilliant.
Do you know about Zahavian Signal Theory? This really gets me going. Basically, in the wild if a lion is about to catch a gazelle and the gazelle can’t run away, didn’t escape with the rest of the family and it starts jumping up and down madly its signalling to the Lion, I have so much energy that I can waste it in front you and still outrun you so let me go. So we have these Zahavian signals in our day-to-day lives – Diamond ring, choosing to wear ripped jeans, driving a Mercedes… These signals can halt emotions that are expected so I wanted to create signals that put the character of Joe off. Take the apartment scene, when he goes to collect his mother-in-law’s tablets and he sees Molly in the coffee shop. He didn’t know how to respond to her energy in the scene when she came back and saw him because her weirdness threw him off. It was interesting trying to get that across and for some people, it may or may not land. But she’s just had a huge revelation of what’s happened to her and she’s trying to make sense of it.
And on that, where did this whole idea come from?
UO: Well, I used to be an optician and then a photographer and in my apartment basically, I had a bunch of French Vogue and Scientific Americans as the only two magazines I loved, oh and Numéro magazine. I remember reading about parthenogenesis a long time ago and I love it. You just go down a rabbit hole and I kept asking, “Why is no one talking about this?” Imagine if humans could do it. You think about the story and the most interesting version of that story, that has drama, emotion and a struggle we’ve never heard of before – imagine Mary saying it to Joseph.
And did you work with the scientific community at all?
Yes! Our scientific advisor is Dr Eyman Osman, who is so experienced and she was incredible. She’s like a sister to me and was so supportive. She really helped us navigate what the scientific community would find credible but where we could find the stretch for a fictional story.
What would you say to people to encourage them to watch Beth now that it’s available?
UO: I think people should watch it because it’s a really interesting story, told in a really interesting way. There’s so much richness in it. It’s full of emotions we can all relate to. It’s a beautiful story beautifully told, which is testament to all the cast and crew.
Without being reductive, is this a love story?
UO: I mean, yes. That’s part of it, but we now live in a world where love is way more complicated than it used to be and you see that complicated nature in Beth. It’s true love, that kind of true love where it’s not all, “Oh my God, I’m in love with this person, they’re amazing.” It’s like, “No, I love this person because they’re a bit fucked up.” Joe is struggling with the fact that she hid the truth from him because they are each other’s person and he can’t forgive that. He could probably forgive her for cheating on him more than that.
Yaw, what would you tell people to inspire them to watch it?
YB: It’s the most distinctive bit of drama on Channel 4 this year, that’s why they should watch it. They’re not going to have seen anything like it. Ultimately, people are craving it from the commissioning side. When you’re looking at making films and TV, one of the buzzwords is ‘original’. We want something original. What’s original? Most things aren’t original. If you study narrative, there are only a few actual types of stories. What you’re looking for is something really distinctive and this is just such a distinctive, emotional piece of filmmaking. There’s not anything I’ve been pitched that is like this and where it can go from this already amazing point is what’s really interesting about it. So I’ll say, definitely watch it for this flavour of this new, exciting, brilliant filmmaker who is gonna go off and do all sorts of incredible stuff.
There’s not anything I’ve been pitched that is like this and where it can go from this already amazing point is what’s really interesting about it.
And finally, just stepping out of Beth, where do you guys think the industry is going in terms of formats, developing for platforms like YouTube, etc.?
UO: From my point of view, I honestly think it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s how you do it. Industries go through these waves. When it comes to telling stories, we need stories and we do it in so many different ways. The problem at the moment (and it’s been a problem for a while) is that the people who are accountants are obsessing over eyeballs and followers, and what you actually need is more people who love it, but you also have to be comfortable with people hating it. Be comfortable in making something that’s someone’s favourite thing. You don’t want to be the TV on in the background vibe that everyone is like, “Yeah, meh, I saw that thing.” For me, as a filmmaker you want to be pushing the boundary, it has to be worth it and pull its weight. That stuff will find an audience.
YB: I agree 100%, and I’m very grateful to Channel 4 for giving us the opportunity to do this and to get it out there as well. It’s not a given for anyone that they’re gonna have a career but you can already see what Uzo is capable of doing on this sort of scale. He’s only going to make bigger and better stuff when he gets even more money, so yeah, I’m really happy to be here at this stage in his journey.
