INTERVIEW: A law onto himself
0 Comments | News Letter (Belfast, Northern Ireland), The, May 2, 2003
Byline: Jeff Magill
BANGOR-born Colin Bateman is going to Florida on a well-deserved holiday.
Since his debut novel Divorcing Jack hit the shops in 1994, the 41-year- old author has been working flat out. Eleven years since Divorcing Jack won him the Betty Trask Prize, and the former deputy editor of the Down Spectator has 11 acclaimed best-sellers under his belt, has had two of his books turned into films and has written or adapted countless screenplays.
In short, Colin in Northern Ireland’s hardest working and most sought after writer and he is determined to strike while the iron is hot.
After his short break away from ringing telephones, beeping fax machines and constant deadlines, Colin is planning to get straight back to work to develop a handful of ideas, including the next instalment of his Dan Starkey series. For now, however, he can relax, safe in the knowledge that his most recent project, the BBC One police comedy/drama Murphy’s Law is a resounding success.
The series, which is packed with black comedy and gritty storylines, follows Murphy, an Ulster detective forced to work in London after the death of his daughter.
A pilot of the show was show last year to critical acclaim and soon Colin was asked to devise the first series. The first episode may only have been broadcast last week, but the author has already been commissioned to start work on the second series.
Murphy’s Law sees Colin, Ulster’s hottest wordsmith, team up with the Province’s most in-demand television actor James Nesbitt, who plays the title role.
“Jimmy Nesbitt and I were fans of each other’s work,” says Colin. “He’d always wanted to do stuff with me and he’d been in a short film I’d written and he starred in Wild About Harry as well. I know him reasonably well and we’d always wanted to work with each other, so it made sense for Tiger Aspect Productions, who make Murphy’s Law for BBC Northern Ireland, to get us together so that we could have a chat about the sort of thing we could be doing.
“I was basically given a blank sheet and told to go away and come back with something,”he says.
With a second series of Murphy’s Law in the offing, the show’s protagonist will be Colin’s first re-occuring character since Dan Starkey, the hapless Belfast journalist with the big gob who stars in five of Colin’s novels. But despite both Murphy and Dan being dysfunctional misfits from Belfast, Colin says that there is little comparison between the two.
“Dan is very much more happy-go-lucky. The way I like to think of him is if you put an ordinary eejit into a film like North By Northwest, how would he react? He reacts like most normal people would react – he runs away and he hides and cries and he’s scared. He’s someone who speaks before his brain is in gear,” says Colin.
“He has become a little bit dark in the last few books because in the end of Shooting Sean, his son died. In a way, that’s how Murphy starts at that point because he’s an undercover cop forced to go to London because his child has been killed in Northern Ireland. He starts with this big cloud behind him and deals with that through his humour.”
Colin’s next book to hit the shelves is a bit of departure for the author as he has penned his first children’s book. Fans shouldn’t despair, however, as his outing into the teen market should still be littered with that good old Bateman humour.
“It’s coming out in September and it’s about teenage gangs in Belfast. It’s called Reservoir Pups. It’s really a children’s version of the adult book. It’s a rollercoaster of an adventure,” he says.
The author is also working on ideas for the next Dan Starkey instalment, which is tentatively titled Driving Big Davey.
As well as the literary side of things, Colin is also planning to continue his work in films. Divorcing Jack and Wild About Harry have already made it to the big screen and the author is harbouring ambitions of directing his next film himself.
“My long-term ambition is to direct a feature-length version of Mohammed Maguire and I’ve got some development money from the Northern Ireland Film Commission for that.”
With goals to write more and direct, one has to wonder is there anything Colin isn’t afraid of trying his hand at.
“Well, you know, then I’ll be singing on the soundtrack, he says, laughing.
“The thing is, you start off typing away at home trying to write books and no-one takes you seriously and then one person likes what you do and suddenly you’re an author. You only live once – and it’s probably a Northern Irish approach to things – but I tend to think I can be as crap as anyone else. Lots of other people are making crap films so I might as well give it a go.”
The good news is that, even if Hollywood beckons Colin, he’ll still be writing about his homeland.
“Absolutely. It’s where I’m from and where I grew up and I’m very proud of that fact
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