Just fun?:

A successful sales rep is brought to his knees by a campaign of unsettling office pranks by his colleagues in the new UKTV drama Sticks And Stones, starring Ben Miller (left) and Ken Nwosu. Jim Maloney reports.

Drama explores the line between banter and bullying.

When does office banter turn into bullying?

This is the central question at the heart of an intriguing three-part drama by Doctor Foster writer Mike Bartlett.

TV newcomer Ken Nwosu plays the ambitious and seemingly confident Thomas Benson, who heads a small sales team for a technology company.

Determined to do well for himself and provide a nice life for his wife and young daughter, Thomas is excited about pitching for a lucrative contract with a large company that will earn himself and his sales team handsome bonuses.

On the day, he is confident that he has done all the research he can and is fully prepared for his sales pitch in front of a room full of people in a bid to clinch the contract.

But as he starts his speech he panics when he is unable to connect his laptop to the internet. Trying to continue talking as he makes one unsuccessful attempt after another, his head starts to swim as he looks at all the people seated in front of him and he faints.

The contract is lost and despite his colleagues seeming to offer comfort and reassurance there is an underlying lack of respect as they begin to make subtle yet loaded remarks to him and embark on a series of pranks at his expense.

As they continue to chip away at Thomas’ confidence, his professional and private life go into freefall.

“Essentially what happens at the presentation is a small thing, really,

but it ends up having a domino effect that he is not prepared for,” says Nwosu.

“It affects him a lot mentally. As a child he was bullied and now it’s bringing all that back to him.

“He imagined that those days were behind him because kids can be cruel, but adults don’t behave in that way. And it is much harder to deal with that now because if you tell anyone it turns you into that little child again. That is why a lot of us, as adults, keep our mouths shut and we suffer in silence and think that we have to deal with it ourselves.

“Also, he is never quite sure whether it’s all in his head and that his colleagues are just having some fun. When he gets home, he tries to make out that everything is fine, after a day of being torn apart at work, but his wife, who is loving and supportive, sees through it.”

When Thomas does eventually complain to his boss, Chris Carter (Ben Miller), his reaction only adds to Thomas’ stress and despair.

“I think Carter is just trying to be fair and to be the voice of reason, but he is a bit old school,” says Miller.

“He thinks it’s just office banter and that Thomas should pull himself together, which isn’t very helpful. The problem Thomas has is that there isn’t anything that he can really put his finger on and say, ‘This is what’s happening to me’ because it’s all such a grey area. And that’s the cleverness of the writing.”

Miller, who played Detective Richard Poole in the first series of Death In Paradise, admits that filming Sticks And Stones has made him think about his own past behaviour in an office environment.

“Until I came across this story I’d never really thought about it as an issue. If somebody shouts at somebody else at work it’s very easy to see what’s going on.

“You can see one person is being oppressed and the other person is the oppressor. But the subtle sort of thing of undermining somebody psychologically is harder to spot.

“I remember when I was younger that there were a number of us doing work experience for a company and we were all on computers and I did this thing where I wrote a little computer programme so that when one of the others logged on, a message ran along the screen saying, ‘Emergency! Wiping files! Wiping files!’.

“And I watched this person’s shocked face as it happened and he said, ‘Oh God, I’ve put the wrong password in and it’s wiping the database’. He was panicking so much and I remember laughing and laughing.

“And I’m thinking now, in the context of this, that is bullying, isn’t it? I feel guilty about it now because I thought I meant it as a joke but he didn’t really find it funny when I told him what I had done.”

“When he gets home, he tries to make out that everything is fine, after a day of being torn apart at work, but his wife, who is loving and supportive, sees through it.”

– Ken Nwosu with on-screen wife Alexandra Roach