“This Is
Jinsy: Comedy gold on fantasy island”
Cult
sitcom This Is Jinsy has attracted TV's biggest names. Gerard Gilbert visits
the surreal show's creators on set.
Created by a pair of comedy
unknowns from Guernsey and featuring a fantasy island ruled by a man who tucks
his jacket into his shorts and speaks a bit like Kenneth Williams (and where
talent shows are judged by a dog), This Is Jinsy occupies a gentle green space
somewhere between Monty Python and the Mighty Boosh, with Spike Milligan
perhaps beaming his approval from beyond the grave. Add to this the fact that
it goes out on Sky Atlantic – the subscription channel where even Mad Men struggles
to gather enough viewers to fill Old Trafford – and it seems destined to be the
very essence of a cult comedy. So why then does This Is Jinsy continue to
attract such stellar guests?
In the first series there was
David Tennant in snake-skin trousers as the organiser of a wedding lottery and
Catherine Tate as the editor of that must-read periodical, "Glove Hygiene
Monthly", as well as Harry Hill, KT Tunstall, Simon Callow and Jennifer Saunders.
In the new series, Stephen Fry,
Rob Brydon, Sir Derek Jacobi and Dame Eileen Atkins are among those joining in
the fun – and on the day that I visit the Wimbledon studios where This Is Jinsy
is filmed, Olivia Colman, in a tweed suit and protruding false teeth, is
sharing the set with a mechanical parrot. "I got the script through when I
was with David Tennant on Broadchurch," she says. "And he said,
'Jinsy? Do it… do it.'"
"We have to keep pinching
ourselves anyone wants to do it," says co-creator Justin Chubb. "We
tried for Judi Dench and she was on a film, but most people feel quite warmly
towards even if they can't do it.
"Jinsy is a combination of
Guernsey and Jersey although it's more like the size of Sark," explains
Chubb. "It's a Channel Island that has slipped its moorings." Chubb
plays the island's incompetent despot, known as an arbiter – a figure not
unlike the traditional feudal overlord of Sark, the Seigneur. "We quickly
came up with the idea of people overseeing the running of an island and then it
seemed logical that you'd have the person least liked or least able to run an
island running it. So really it's the worst job, and that character thinks he's
the most important and everyone laughing behind his back."
Another characteristic of Jinsy is
that technology seems to have taken a wrong turning in around 1965.
"There's a bit of futuristic technology but you're not really sure in what
era it's set really… Terry Gilliam has always been a massive influence on what
we've done."
Jinsy's most iconic piece of
technology is the "tessallator", which looks like one of those
coin-operated telescopes found at beauty spots, and which delivers electric
shocks as punishment, as well as the islanders' entertainment – interludes such
as "Singing Obituaries", a weather forecaster who speaks in Stanley
Unwin-like gobbledygook and public information films ("'Curtain Disease'
is spreading… leading to ruched necks"").
"I loved Gormenghast – the
Mervyn Peake books – and we both grew up listening to Python records, watching
Python, Spike Milligan… Edward Lear," says Chubb. "And Spike Jones
and the City Slickers, they were very Jinsy", adds Chubb's co-star, Chris
Brand, referring to the outlandish satirical musical-revue show from 1950s
America. Brand plays Arbiter Maven's second-in-command, Operative Sporall.
"Sergeant Wilson to his Captain Mainwaring", he says.
The duo were at school together on
Guernsey, devising DIY radio programmes and shooting 8mm films with their
fathers' cine-cameras and adding noises from BBC sound-effects albums,
eventually singing in bands ("We used to tour Guernsey… often"). The
frequent melodies on the show are their creations, including Jinsy's national
anthem ("Island of silt and sand, twigs and stumps and tilth and hedgerows,
fences…" ) although they think an album like the one released by Flight of
the Conchords is unlikely. "All our songs are 41 seconds long," says
Chubb.
While the interior sets are all
filmed here in Wimbledon – the same studios where The Bill was once produced –
the team return to Guernsey to pick up exterior footage. "The locals in
Guernsey enjoy trying to recognise where things are," says Bran. "And
there are a few little in-jokes about island's names and references to things
that happened in Guernsey. We also use Guernsey surnames and places names –
they have some great names." Names like Roopina Crale, Joon Boolay, Letley
Orridge and Edery Molt – seen in that light, Justin Chubb and Chris Bran
themselves have a certain Jinsy ring to them.
Leaving the Channel Islands, Bran
attended a now defunct but inspiring-sounding media-training centre in
Yorkshire, ArttsInternational, where he met This Is Jinsy's future producer
James Dean. Dean was working in ITV factual programming by 2008, producing
Ladette to a Lady, when he reconnected with Bran, who was now in London and
writing sketches with his old Guernsey mucker Chubb. "The original idea
for a show was to make a Channel Islands mock news programme," says Dean.
"But then we thought that was a bit limiting and the boys came up with the
idea of fictional island."
"As soon as we got the island
to contain stories and characters we started making a big book full of drawings
and maps and concepts," says Chubb, the trio taking a 10-minute demo to
Lucy Lumsden, BBC3's head of comedy, who ordered a pilot. When Lumsden was
later made Sky's first head of comedy, she commissioned Jinsy for the newly
founded Sky Atlantic.
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