Unproduced Scripts

Everything Happens For No Reason

Hello again. Here’s another of my many sitcom scripts that never got made, though this one nearly did. In fact as well as the full pilot script for paid subscribers I am including the 11 minute taster tape we made for the TV executives, which stars Noel Fielding, Jessica Knappet and Ben Bailey Smith (and a little cameo from me).

This is my favourite of all the scripts you’ll read here and the one that I really thought was going to make it. Everyone loved it, apart from the person at Channel 4 who made the decision about whether it was going to happen. Which is maybe apt because it’s a script about alternate universes, which means there are infinity universes out there where it actually got made. Sadly I live in one of the many more infinitity of Universes where it didn’t.

The original script was from around 2015/6 and thus came out ahead of most of the glut of alternative universe projects that would get green lit, including the Oscar winning, similarly titled “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once”. There are, I suppose, some similarities with later Rick and Morty, but that was not my inspiration. As the script suggests it comes from my fascination and disappointment with other shows like Sliding Doors and Goodnight Sweetheart (it’s not a coincidence that the main characters are called Gary and Yvonne) and I also threw in some Quantum Leap and Doctor Who (though in this reality time travel is definitely not possible - you can only move sideways).

Enough time has now passed that I am sure this project won’t get off the ground (though pre lockdown I was thinking of doing it as an audio podcast), mainly because it now feels like a bit of a passe idea. And it’s interesting that with another decade gone by a lot of the references feel too dated.

Channel 4 liked it enough to pay for a taster tape and we filmed an 11 minute version of the script (with a couple of major characters taken out) and looking back on it, it feels like it’s working (though Noel did say that he wouldn’t wear such stupid clothes is we did it again - that wasn’t quite right) and I think it’s a mistake to have such a Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy theme tune.

I suspect the person who commissioned the series had moved on and it was a different exec who had to make the decision and they turned it down along with notes that showed that they didn’t really get it. Noel met the executive at a Christmas party and berated them for not picking up this series and I was actually called in for a meeting. I assumed we’d get green lit, but instead they just told me all the same notes in person and I told them they didn’t really get what it was about and the meeting actually stood up and left the room and suddenly we were in the corridor and going home. I did write another script for a later episode (which I’ll put up next month) which is about a Universe likes ours, but full of sex robots.

I sort of think this was my last shot at getting a script on TV and it did get really close to being made. So below, for paid subcribers is the pilot script (there were a few different versions and I think this one was done to show what might be possible in the series, so there would have been rewrites) plus I’ve included documents where I said what I thought the series would be about, and one with some episode ideas. I don’t really like doing stuff like that as I like to find out the direction of a show as I do it and any forward planning is only to ease the nerves of execs. It would almost certainly have been something quite different.

But also paid subs, you can be the first people outside of the production to view the taster tape, and decide if you would have commissioned it. Please keep this to yourself and don’t post it anywhere else. It’s just a little perk for your support (as this whole post is). If you want to see it then why not pay to subscribe!?

SCENE 1 - INT YVONNE AND GARY’S BATHROOM

YVONNE PIDGEON is standing in her dressing gown, looking with disdain at

a scrunched up wet towel on the floor. The floor is damp from shower

water. Her boyfriend, GARY is in the bedroom as yet unseen.

YVONNE

(shouting, annoyed)

Why don’t you ever hang your towel up?

GARY

(shouting, off)

Oh stop going on. I was going to do it later.

YVONNE

(shouting)

You never fucking do it.

GARY

(shouting, off)

So what, nothing’s going to change

because I’ve not hung up my towel.

YVONNE

(shouting)

Not for you. But I have to waste my

valuable time picking it up.

GARY

(shouting, off)

You’ve wasted more of your valuable time

nagging me about it.

Yvonne goes to pick the towel up. But decides against it.

YVONNE

(to herself)

No, fuck you. This time I’m not fucking doing it.

She uses her foot to gingerly clean up the water with the towel. She spot

suspicious spillage by the loo and wipes that up too. She is pleased with

herself, but disgusted too. She heads to sink.

Gary has been shaving and all the tiny hairs and foam are still stuck round the basin. We see her about to shout but then

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