Julie Graham
Getting inventive in lockdown Julie Graham shares with the RTS how she created an original online drama with a little help from some famous friends 18
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‘W
hen the going gets tough, the tough get going.” The 1980s Billy Ocean lyric, no doubt part of the soundtrack to the teenage lives of the six menopausal women in new, Brighton-set “dramawith-funny-bits” Dun Breedin’, could be the mantra of its creator, Julie Graham, who starred in ITV’s Benidorm She and Andrew Green, a co-founder of Blonde To Black Pictures Two, made the series featuring a cast of six – plus extras – on six different sets, with no crew, just basic lighting and sound and a camera kit consisting mainly of iPhone 7s, while keeping to lockdown guidelines. And all in three weeks. Produced by Jackie Green and Claire Baylin of Manic Butterfly Productions, Dun Breedin’ recounts the lives, loves and losses of six friends, putting women’s sexuality, agency and worth under the spotlight. The star-studded cast includes EastEnders’ Tamzin Outhwaite, Tracy-Ann Oberman and Alison Newman, alongside Coronation Street’s Angela Griffin and Denise Welch. In April, Welch, with her “presenter’s hat on”, joined Graham, Griffin and Dun Breedin’s Bafta-nominated director, Robin Sheppard, whose credits include Harlots and Benidorm, for a lively RTS North West online discussion. Graham said: “I was developing it as an eightpart, half-hour series when [Andrew] had this mad idea to start filming it virtually, in 10-minute chunks, and putting it out almost like tasters.” The 12 10-minute episodes began streaming on 30 April on YouTube, landing every subsequent Thursday at 3:00pm. Viewers are encouraged to donate to the Trussell Trust, which supports food banks. “What was wonderful was that every single person I got in touch with said yes,” said Graham. “It’s amazing that everybody wanted to put their neck on the line [in the sense that] it was an experiment and a huge learning curve. “We just wanted to do something creative. For actors, [lockdown] has been very frustrating.… We can’t just go out into the street and start acting at people, we’d get carted away. I wanted to do something that would utilise the time in this very strange world that we’re living in.” “I’d been playing the part of ‘Isolation Ange’ in a series called
