5 MINUTES WITH...
British TV favourites Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, back together in a very entertaining new Sky comedy about the world of contract killers...
What appealed about Hitmen?
MEL, 51: The script, the stories and the characters. We just read it and thought, ‘This has made us laugh just reading it off the page’. And that’s quite rare, isn’t it?
SUE, 50: Mel and I have been friends for 30 years, and these characters have known each other since they were kids.
How did Fran and Jamie end up being killers?
SUE: The back story is that we were cleaners in a very big, smart office block. A heavy had come on to me in a nonetoo-savoury fashion, and after a tussle, Mel had saved the day and killed him. The heavy was connected to a gangland boss who gave us a choice – either he killed us, or we could go and work for him…
And it’s a comedy?
MEL: We didn’t want it to be overly gory or sick, or cartoony.
We didn’t want to revel in the violence. SUE: We had quite a hard line on the fact that all of the people we kill deserve it. They sell drugs to kids, for instance. You don’t actually miss them when they’re gone, although they are really funny.
Do you do your own stunts?
MEL: Yes. The most terrifying was quite a long wrestle, which involved kicking a gun out of somebody’s hand. That, and wrestling on a forest floor – and I find getting up off the floor increasingly hard these days... SUE: We’ve also been hung from a tree. There’s a very loose sort of choke chain around your neck which takes the pressure off, and you just have your tip toes on the floor. I really enjoyed it.
What’s good about it?
SUE: Each episode is a rollicking 24 minutes, and it’s been one of the great joys of my working life to do this.