For as long as I’ve been alive, Brian Sykes has been building up an impressive portfolio in the television and film industries [1]. This illustrious uncle of mine has worked as production designer on such modern classics as Life on Mars (2006) and Psychoville (2008-11) and Nurse (2015). To my delight, he teamed up again with Psychoville’s Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith to work as production designer on the genre-hopping, dark comedy anthology series, Inside No. 9 (2014-present). He was involved in three episodes in series 1: A Quiet Night In (a silent slapstick centred around the theft of a painting by two incompetent burglars); The Understudy (a Macbeth-inspired tragedy about an actor’s bloody rise to fame); and, my personal favourite, The Harrowing (a Hammer-style horror about Moloch house, a Gothic pile filled with medieval paintings of the Harrowing of Hell, which hides a demonic secret on the upper floor) [2].
Mark Salisbury’s brilliant new book, The Insider’s Guide to Inside No. 9, offers glimpses into Brian’s time on set. I felt a rush of familial pride when I read the words of director, David Kerr: ‘I think Brian achieved a minor miracle in producing those three episodes […], which were probably bigger than the first three, for less money’ [3]. Using my industry connections (i.e. my father), I managed to track Brian down for an interview about his work on Inside No. 9 and his reflections on the television industry more generally.
The interview is rather heavily skewed towards The Harrowing, for which I make no apology. Just imagine my joy when Helen McCrory’s character, Tabitha, mentioned the Harrowing of Hell and I heckled the television with, ‘It’s in the Gospel of Nicodemus!’ only to hear the following line: ‘You can read it in the Gospel of Nicodemus’ [4]. It was one of the few times in my life when the ongoing conversation about late antique and medieval texts in my head aligned perfectly with external reality. As discussed in the episode, the Harrowing is a non-canonical narrative about Christ’s descent into Hell following his crucifixion and prior to his bodily resurrection. While there, he frees Adam, Eve and their descendants, including Old Testament patriarchs and prophets – all of whom died before the incarnation [5]. While the apocryphal story celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, the Inside No. 9 take on the Harrowing of Hell is utterly bleak. The episode ends with a teenage girl being possessed by Castiel, the demon of Mischief, who supposedly escaped his infernal chains when Christ unbarred Hell’s gates.
Brian’s production design greatly enhances the ominous atmosphere of Moloch house. At the heart of the building is a gloomy central staircase, fitted with a whining stairlift. The walls are adorned with paintings of suffering. Some of these pictures are famous works of art, such as Hans Memling’s 1485 oil painting of a demon jigging in the open jaws of a Hell mouth and wielding a banner reading, ‘In inferno nulla est redemptio,’ and Domenico Fetti’s unearthly ‘Veil of Veronica.’
But we also see a number of paintings produced just for the episode, including one of a hellish torture chamber, where sinners are being boiled in a giant cauldron, and another showing what appears to be a demonic caesarean section. Despite the claim in the episode that ‘most’ of the paintings depict the Harrowing of Hell, there seem to be none featuring Christ’s descent into the darkness to save the souls of Adam’s kin. I was eager to find out from Brian why these particular paintings were chosen, and how he went about creating such an oppressive yet visually stunning set.
SA: For those who don’t know, what does a production designer do?
BS: It’s changed radically since I started in my 20s. A production designer used to come up with storyboards of how to shoot the show. If you think of how a graphic novel works, it’s like that: you would frame it and say, ‘Here’s the reason you’d shoot it like this. I’ve designed this for the story, for the script.’ Early on in my career, I was trained by a man called Jean Pierre, who was very, very clever. He was an old guy, with an amazing past: ex-foreign legion in the second world war. He’d worked in the film industry as a storyboard artist. So I understood how you’d design the set and then storyboard it with the director. That’s how it worked. I was always referred back to Gone with the Wind, which had three different directors, but it was all storyboarded. It showed that you could change directors but completely keep the continuity. That’s the importance of visuals. Now, I think that way of working has changed. I’m old-fashioned in my views and what I do and the way I approach it. I approach it with drawings and storyboards.
SA: I can see why. Your sketch of The Harrowing really captures the atmosphere of the staircase and the episode.
BS: If you present a production drawing like that – even if it’s parked on the table and you pin it on the wall behind you – the idea is that it might influence the crew enough to travel in that direction, and that’s all you can do.
SA: What was your working relationship with David Kerr [dir. Inside No. 9] like? Do you think you worked together in a compatible way?
BS: Yeah, I do, and I think it shows. I’m usually brought on to underfunded projects, so they’ve got to listen to me. Otherwise, where do you travel? I had a good working relationship with David. Because he was talented, he was very happy to listen. And there were points where he’d go, ‘No, I don’t think that’s right, and you’ve got to change it,’ and I’d go, ‘Yeah, okay, that’s valid. I’ll do that.’ A lot of the paintings on the wall in The Harrowing had to be changed. So me and my art director, Rebecca, spent the weekend repainting pictures on the wall to make them more demonic.
SA: That’s interesting. The Harrowing of Hell is about salvation, right? But what struck me about the paintings on the wall was that they were depicting demons, Hell mouths and suffering. Was it a conscious choice to go down that dark route?
BS: Yes. I think one of the key paintings is the one behind Helen McCrory. I think it’s a demon giving birth, or it’s given birth. It’s got delapsus resurgam written on it. Now, if my Latin is correct, that means, ‘When I fall, I shall arise.’ The paintings were very considered, and David was very much involved with that, as were the writers. It all stems from the writing. Their writing is second to none. If the writing is clever and you can bring stuff into it, you’re well away. You feed off what’s written on the page.
SA: So delapsus resurgam refers to the demon, Castiel, coming back into the world and possessing the female character at the end of the episode?
BS: Exactly.
SA: What paintings were you going to use originally, before you went down the more demonic route?
BS: We had one painting that was done by a very clever scenic artist – Humphrey Bangham. He painted the main one, but there were other paintings which Helen McCrory and Aimeé -Ffion Edwards had to walk by. So we went round prop houses, but of course, prop houses only have religious paintings. They don’t have demons giving birth and the Harrowing of Hell. We put those religious ones up and said, ‘If you go past them quickly, they might just be a blur and we can get to the main one.’ And the director went, ‘Er, no.’ We’re shooting on Monday, and this is Saturday. Your time period is zero. I went, ‘Yeah, okay, you’re right.’ So basically, on Sunday, me and Rebecca painted another four or six paintings. I think it was six in the end. We had the frames, but we made up the canvases – we had no money. Because it was a hand-to-mouth operation, we had an influence on it. What’s nice was that we could say, ‘There are your paintings. We can shoot now, because it’s five-to-seven and you’re going to shoot at eight o clock.’ You can see that some of the canvases are still wet and a bit wrinkly. And what we had there was an old empty house, which we’d used on Psychoville, so we knew it as a location and I knew the staircase and what we could do. We had to put a stairlift in, so I made a stairlift. A stairlift actually costs thousands of quid, so we had to make one out of nothing at all. We had it on a rope that you had to pull.
SA: With the sound effects of a stairlift?
BS: It was just horrible. But, because you’re dealing with David – lovely – and a very nice DOP [Director of Photography] and, of course, the writers, you can do it. They’re incredibly appreciative. But not in a well done, pat on the back sort of way; they understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
SA: Did you also make the painting in A Quiet Night In? If so, what influences were you drawing upon?
BS: We had so little money that me and Rebecca did that painting all on our own. With that one, because it was an episode done in silence, the idea was to make the artwork as black and white as possible. It’s a nod to a black and white film.
SA: And The Understudy? I read in The Insider’s Guide to Inside No. 9 that you painted the walls green because it’s considered an unlucky colour in theatre. What else influenced the design?
BS: The Understudy was about Macbeth, and one of the big influences that I used was Orson Welles’ Macbeth. The other influence I used was The Trial. In that, Welles has this ceiling which is just made up of criss-crossed lines. In The Understudy, there’s a glass brick pavement above with those sorts of lights coming through. It’s a nod to Orson Welles in that way and therefore a slight nod to Macbeth. If you look at Macbeth, it’s about a man going mad and having to face the truth about himself, and that’s what drives him deeper into evil. To be able to take the truth, he becomes even more demonic, and he actually has to lie to himself more to be able to look himself in the mirror – so, of course, you’ve got the mirror in the dressing room, and Reece’s character has to look at himself to do the make-up. Then you’ve got the shower room, where he can wash away the blood, which is a nod to Psycho and things like that. If you don’t want to face the truth about yourself, you have to pretend you’re something else. Norman Bates, of course, becomes his mother. There’s a very slight nod to another thing which is about truth: a pipe there with Asbestos written on it. At the end of the episode, they made the whole room pretty and tried to make it nice and brought in a sofa and everything else. The only thing that hasn’t been painted out is the little Asbestos symbol on the pipe, which is a nod to what really happened. You can paint it out, but it’s still there. That was my little nod to the washing out of the spot, the blood that won’t go in Macbeth.
SA: It strikes me as being quite a similar way of working to Reece and Steve themselves. They take a lot of influences from films they love and literary allusions and incorporate them into the script. Would you say there was a mutual understanding?
BS: I’d say there was. They’re incredibly generous. They’ve got immense talent, and they’re willing to listen and have ideas thrown at them. And their writing is suburb. My time on Psychoville with them was brilliant because not only were they there, but there was a very clever director who was very good, and a brilliant DOP who’d gone round the block and knew exactly what he was doing. He was open to ideas from everyone else. He was a gentleman. If you meet a gentleman who’s willing to listen and work with you, then God, you’re having a wonderful time.
SA: What other productions were fun to work on?
BS: One of the best things I’ve ever worked on is Nurse – everybody was involved in which way to push it forward and understood what they were doing. What I enjoy is sitting down in the production meeting and people saying, ‘That’s where we want to get to. The story is this.’ On Persuasion (1995), I was joint designer with a very talented man. I was brought in because this designer was from theatre, and they wanted a production designer to come in and help to create what he had in his mind, from theatre to television. We knew where we were going with it because the writer who had adapted it said, ‘So has everybody read Persuasion? Do you know what it’s about? This is the essence: Anne Elliot has been persuaded not to marry the sea captain, Wentworth. Do you know what he was? Do you know his status? You’ve got to understand this. The whole of London – if you look at Trafalgar Square – was built on one battle, which was pivotal to us winning the Napoleonic Wars and not being enslaved by Napoleon, and the whole of Europe not being under a tyrant for years. These ships were the biggest man-made objects in the world, they were the most powerful objects in the world, the most destructive objects in the world. The equivalent to that is basically Star Ships round Jupiter fighting an alien invasion force. And if they lose, the whole world is enslaved. And the person who walks through the door who she sees, the person she was persuaded not to marry – he was Captain Kirk. That’s how snobbish and how strong society’s influence was. Now you understand the story.’ So once you’ve got that in your head, you know what you’re designing for.
SA: What films and TV shows would you recommend from a production design perspective?
BS: Chernobyl [dir. Johan Renck, 2019] is a masterpiece. It’s a phenomenal piece of work in every aspect, from the writing to the camerawork to the visualisation to the minutiae and accuracy of the props. Just incredible. For film, look at The Lady from Shanghai [dir. Orson Welles, 1947]. Look how Orson Welles frames the shots. There’s a bit where Welles’ character goes into a funfair and he’s trying to find someone who’s being stalked by the killer, and he’s actually painted – he’s physically painted – sections of the scenery. That’s what I call somebody who visualises and sees a concept. Frederico Fellini was another director who drew, and you could see the connection between his drawings and the visuals on screen. More recently, you have Slow West [dir. John Maclean, 2015] – a visually stunning work by the design team. There’s a stamp there that’s just beautiful. The production designer must have had a say, because there’s a magical appearance to it. Also, The Devils [dir. Ken Russell, 1971] is a masterpiece: visually, story-wise, acting-wise. The team who did Inside No. 9 will come up with something like that one day. That’s your goal. That’s where you should be travelling.
Notes
[1] Brian’s portfolio can be found on his website: https://briansykes.co.uk/index.php?p=home#portfolio Some sketches are reproduced here with his permission.
[2] I discuss The Harrowing in more detail in my article, ‘Local Gothicism: the everyday horrors of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith,’ Horrified Magazine (2020).
[3] Mark Salisbury, The Insider’s Guide to Inside No. 9 (London: Hodder Studio, 2021), p. 55.
[4] The scripts for series 1-3 are now available: Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, Inside No. 9: The Scripts (London: Hodder Studio, 2020).
[5] The story can indeed be found in the Gospel of Nicodemus, which is also called the Acts of Pilate. The text falls into two halves, the first of which is a fourth- or fifth-century account, purportedly by the ‘eyewitness’ Nicodemus, of Christ’s trial before Pilate (Greek A, chps 1-16). The second part, the Harrowing or Christ’s Descent into Hell, is a later recension, written in the fifth or sixth century (Greek B, chps 17-27). An even later Latin version of the Harrowing was circulated in the Middle Ages, inspiring retellings in the Golden Legend and the fourteenth-century allegorical dream vision, Piers Plowman. The Greek and Latin recensions were translated by M.R. James (of ghostly fame) in The Apocryphal New Testament: being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Apocalypses with other narratives and fragments (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), though the scholarship is now out-dated. James’ translations can also be found online: http://gnosis.org/library/gosnic.htm. Another modern translation can be found here: https://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/lbob/lbob10.htm. The above information on dates and recensions of The Acts of Pilate are from The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha, ed. Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett, Tobias Niklas and Joseph Verhayden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 30-32 and p. 335.
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