Andy Harries on The Crown, the genius of Caroline Aherne, and his much maligned talking dog detective show.

Something a bit different this week - we've got a guest!

Peter and Jimmy are joined by legendary producer Andy Harries. He was Head of Comedy and Head of Drama at Granada, before setting up Left Bank Pictures in 2007. His enviable list of credits include The Royle Family, Cold Feet, The Deal, The Queen, The Crown, and Department Q.

We discuss the BBC’s bemused response when they first received The Royle Family, and their resistance to the idea of a sitcom being shot single camera, without an audience (footsteps in which The Office would follow reasonably successfully just a few years later). Andy takes us back to the crucial pitch meeting where Netflix bought The Crown - a commitment to 20 hours of television across two series at £5m per hour... not a bad Friday at the office. And he talks the importance of risk taking - perhaps unsurprising from the man who sold a 10 ep series of Strike Back to Sky, having not only not read the book, but not even optioned it when he made the deal.

Plus, dressing like the Beach Boys, the debt Cold Feet owes to the Golden Rose of Montreux, and pitching a show fronted by the Two Fat Ladies (even though one of them had been dead for 6 months).

Jimmy Mulville is the co-founder and Chief Executive of Hat Trick Productions. His list of hit shows includes Have I Got News For You, Father Ted, Derry Girls, Outnumbered, and Episodes. In the US Hat Trick launched Whose Line Is It Anyway in 1997 which ran on ABC for seven years and was the first British series to be recreated for American network television by a British producer.

Peter Fincham ran TalkBack, where he executive produced many of their biggest shows including I’m Alan Partridge, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, and Da Ali G Show. He went on to be Controller of BBC1, then he was Director of Television at ITV, before returning to the independent sector as the co-CEO of Expectation, the company behind Clarkson's Farm and Alma's Not Normal.

New episodes every Friday.

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Insiders: The TV Podcast is an Expectation and Hat Trick co-production.

The producer is Owen Braben.

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