Production
McGowan and Ancona first met at a comedy club, and later started dating. They worked together on a number of projects, with their first television series being The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand de Bargos in 1989. After performing in his own show in Edinburgh in 1998, McGowan was approached by a BBC executive about working on a series, which he wanted Ancona to be involved in. Alistair McGowan's Big Impression first aired on BBC One in 2000, with the couple splitting up just before filming began. Speaking with The Independent, Ancona said working on the series was "exciting but it was tricky and there were some very low points. But, if anything, the tension added a little frisson to some of the sketches and it made the show better."
For the fourth series in 2003, McGowan's name was dropped from the show's title.
Speaking to the Daily Mail about the ending of the series, McGowan said: "We were just getting into our stride when suddenly it felt that there were five other shows all saying: "We'll do that as well." It felt like there were lots of people fishing in a small pool." The BBC wanted the series to continue, but he found his "enthusiasm had gone and without that, the show wouldn't have happened".
Read more about this topic: The Big Impression
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)