GOODBYE TO AN OLD FRIEND...

Ay-yi yi! 

So, in a couple of weeks, I'm going to be one kid's show down. 

CBBC's 4 O'Clock Club, which I've been working on as lead writer for almost 10 years, is finally coming to a close, and I'm just in the process of writing my final drafts of the last ever episodes. By the time the three-part finale airs, either later this year or early next, I'll have written something in the region of 60 half-hour episodes. I don't know the exact number.

I don't talk about my day job often, but 4 O'Clock Club is now up there with Digitiser in terms of Things Of Note What I Have Done, and I thought I should write a few words on it. 

I was first approached about helping to develop the show in the summer of 2010. At that point, they had little more than a short pitch document - a show about an after-school club - and a DVD featuring a kid and a teacher rapping. That fairly limited brief had been created by the stand-up comedian and rapper Doc Brown. He wasn't a writer, which is why I was brought in to work with him. 

After I came on board, it took four or five months to nail down what the show was - including one draft of the first episode which was tonally completely wrong, and which I offered to scrap and rewrite for free. Apparently, this is unusual for a writer, but I just saw it as part of the job. Other than that, it was a relatively smooth development process.

We had a bit of a contract battle early on, where my agent was pushing for me to get 50% of the format rights to the show. In the end, I decided that having ongoing work was worth more to me, and so I ended up with 15%, but in return I got a guaranteed minimum of at least three episodes every series. It was a wise move, given that the show has never sold terribly well overseas (the main benefit of having format rights). I still get a "created by" credit on every episode. And I always got offered more than three episodes. 

Since then, I've been blessed to work with an executive producer who has always managed to wring the best out of me, and probably the strongest cast(s) of any kids' TV show ever. Plus, the music team have written literally hundreds of songs, all of which somehow manage to sound different from one another. We've even had guest appearances from Bill Bailey and - most insanely - Steve Guttenberg. 

It is, without doubt, the best TV show I've ever worked on.

Somehow, we never won a BAFTA (we always seemed to be up against the unconquerable Horrible Histories) - apart for one for best actor - but we've been nominated a bunch of times, and have won various other awards, including the Royal Television Society Award for best children's show. 

With most long-running series I've been a part of, it kind of gets easier as you go along, as you learn its rhythms and character voices. You build up momentum. In terms of being an engine for generating stories, we managed to build a perfect one, and, apart from one trying year where I had a bit of a wobble, it was never less than a joy to write for. More than anything, I'm really going to miss how relatively easy it was to work on.

I've been saying goodbye to 4OCC since we got the news we weren't coming back in early summer last year. For all that, and it's an old cliche, we had one hell of a good innings. How many shows - let alone kids' shows - make it to ten series? I'm immensely proud of my work on it, the work of the other writers (most of whom have stuck with us since very early on), the music team, the cast, the exec, and everyone else behind the scenes. It's a remarkable body of work, co-created by hundreds of people all pulling in the same direction. 

Apart from the creative satisfaction, I'll obviously miss the income 4 O'Clock Club brought in - the closest to a steady job as you're ever likely to find in TV. I've still got another show I'm lead writer on - Almost Never - but I'll still feel the pinch. 

The third series of AN will likely take up most of my time when I'm not doing Digi things this year. But, without my 4OCC safety net I'm kind of back out in the big wide world, and for the first time in a decade will be looking for jobs again - probably the part of my career that I like the least. It's like a beauty pageant, and for all my experience, I know they're often after new, younger, blood.

But anyhow. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, if you'll allow me a moment of self-trumpet-parping: here's to 4 O'Clock Club, the other thing I wrote for 10 years that was beloved by a whole generation of kids.

Paul