Have you been listening to the new comedy available on BBC sounds? The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brighty is a brand new live audience four part sitcom that delves into and explores the world of BBC Period Dramas. The show has been created by comedians and writers Christian Brighty and Amy Greaves. The show follows a hedonistic Regency-era aristocrat who has an epiphany and decides he must right all his many past wrongs, accompanied by his radical chambermaid Babs and very reluctant butler Churlington. Today I speak to Christian Brighty to find out all about it.
Hello Christian so nice to meet you and congratulations on the show!
Thanks very much for being so darn nice about it!
How did the idea come about?
My co-writer Amy Greaves and I love period dramas. For the Edinburgh Fringe 2022, we’d made a live show about Lord Christian Brighty “Playboy”. It followed his manipulative escapades as the biggest fuckboy of the Regency. At the end we did the obvious and moral thing, and shot him dead.
To bring him back to life and put that character in a sitcom, where at the end of every episode essentially things revert back to normal, we had to answer the question “What do we do with terrible men?”. I don’t necessarily have an answer. But our working thesis, and the basis of the idea of the show, seems to be ‘make them suffer lots by understanding the consequences of their actions, do their incompetent utmost to repair them, while being shouted at by a chambermaid’.
The show also stars Jessica Knappett and Colin McFarlane – how did they get involved?
Casting for radio happens really late in the process. What’s more, in radio there’s no opportunity to audition! It was a case of sending the scripts off and just hope the actors say yes. (While also hoping that we’d made the right choice).
We asked Jessica Knappett to play Brighty’s upstart chambermaid Babs. For Babs, we really wanted someone with a Northern identity because Babigail is based on Amy and Amy is REALLY Northern. Babs is also the driver of the plot, and the big change in Lord Brighty’s character – she was the first person to tell him exactly what a bastard he’s been. And so finding someone who could deliver forthright anger while also keeping a hold of their own ridiculousness, and not let it dip into self-righteousness, was essential. And Jessica Knappett is the best at that.
We asked Colin McFarlane to play Brighty’s uptight Butler Churlington. For Churley, we needed someone who could bring the gravitas and refined actorly majesty of a proper English butler. But also needed someone who could suffer in a hysterical way, as we, for example, fluster this uptight prude with the having to organise a sex party. And Colin’s comedy chops are second to none.
Very graciously, they liked the scripts and got back to us very quickly. I think it’s unusual to get your first choice for these projects! And very luckily, they were both absolutely perfect.
You and the team really do bring the story to life and it is so energetic was it something that happened naturally or had to develop in rehearsals?
There was actually very little time for rehearsals! The first time we read the script together was 1pm on the day, once more in the afternoon, and then by 7pm we were recording! And so perhaps that freshness is really coming across – we were really responding and playing with each other in a very live way, as there was no time to over prepare!
But there was immediately a real fun and excitement in that readthrough room. A sense of “I can’t believe we’re getting away with putting on something so daft and silly”. I think you can hear that joy in the recording!
You record in front of a live audience, that must be great fun?
It is great fun! Having spent so much time crafting these scripts hidden away, getting to finally play them in front of an audience was the easy bit, the reward! The whole cast wore traditional regency costumes – an absolutely insane thing to do for a radio recording – but the audience really responded to that!
I’ve been to some radio recordings where the comics treat the audience almost as an inconvenience – they put no effort into making something precious happen on the night. But I think we managed to put on a good show. The recordings were raucous. Which, given we were in an old Music Hall, feels wonderfully apt! The ghosts would be proud.
How long did it take you and Amy Greaves to write and create the scripts?
As far as I can remember, my entire life. Too long! And then also too quick. Each script got progressively quicker as we stopped making such horrendous blunders. Our script editor David Reed is a phenomenally clever and patient man, and our producer Ben Walker a great lighthouse keeper, warding off the biggest dangers as early as possible.
Episode one took the longest, because that was us working out character voices, and then the wider strokes of ‘how do we do this’. We didn’t want to write a ‘this-is-how-the-characters-meet’ episode, and so episode one was partly just ironing out the formula of what the other three would follow.
While I was redrafting that, we were also writing outlines for the other three episodes. Once we had all the outlines, I think we wrote three scripts in the month of May – which is too many – and then spent all of June making them actually good. In total it’s been eight months of our lives? When we were done it was just so nice to see our family again.
I assume that you are fan of Period Dramas – which are your favourites?
Poldark will always be my first period drama love. Aidan Turner is just phenomenal and the writer Debbie Horsfield has done such a great job adapting the books.
I love all Austen’s novels, and most of the adaptations. I know it’s embarrassing, but I think I prefer Pride & Prejudice 2005 to the classic 90s one. I think the fact you find out less about what’s going on inside Darcy’s head makes him more inscrutable and compelling and mysterious and then I start fancying him.
I also adore Georgette Hayer. Friday’s Child and Devil’s Cub are hysterical. She was a brilliant and prolific novelist who kicked off our whole obsession with reimagining the Regency. Keeping that grand tradition alive is Sophie Irwin, who is just a fantastically funny writer, with such an efficiency of prose. A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting is magnificent.
What are the main themes you take away from this genre that you wanted to alter in your own show to make it unique?
I think the obvious one is that we wanted to bring some realism to the genre. I know that sounds delusion when our show is so fucking stupid. But I mean it in the sense of the fact that aristocrats, then and now, are unabiding terrible people. Historically, they took what they wanted, with abandon, created a system to protect what they’d stolen, abused that system with impunity, and hid their hypocritical baseness under a thin veil of ‘nobility’. And we point that out. And so our archetypal romantic hero, instead of being a heartthrob who we’re all going to fawn over, is going to be punished for ruining many people’s lives. As a lothario, a landlord, a capitalist.
What are your favourite things about period dramas – are there any specific characteristics that you really love about them?
I love how handsome the men are and all the clothes they wear and it makes me fuzzy in my tummy. It’s so nice to have imaginary men, who are far away and beautiful. As opposed to real life men, who are too close and smell bad.
I also enjoy how melodramatic everyone is. It makes total sense I think there’s a real truth at the heart of them all. Which is that love is the most important thing, and weeping on top of a clifftop when that doesn’t work out is the only sensitive rational thing to do.
The first 3 episodes are already out on BBC Sounds – what can you tell our readers about the final instalment?
We put an incel in the Regency. That character, Monty, is played by Joz Norris. And when I tell you he tore the house down, I mean it. I couldn’t speak in our initial readthrough I was laughing so much.
Finally why should people check out the show?
The plots are so stupid, the cast are incredible, and you get to enjoy a rich bastard’s suffering without having to spend any time with one. PERFECT.
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