New comedy Hang Ups
Stephen Mangan on playing a troubled therapist in his all-star comedy…
People’s anxieties and phobias might not sound like an obvious premise for comedy but Stephen Mangan uncovers the lighter side of psychotherapy this week as he plays an online therapist in C4’s star-studded Hang Ups.
The six-part, semi-improvised series, co-written by Stephen, sees him as Dr Richard Pitt, who provides online sessions for his clients, played by famous faces including Jo Joyner, David Tennant and Sarah Hadland, while juggling his own chaotic family life.
TV Times booked an appointment with Stephen, 50, to find out more…
How would you describe Richard? A mess! You wonder how therapists keep their own lives together with all that unhappiness coming their way. We didn’t want him to be a terrible therapist, though, in the way that Basil Fawlty is bad at being a hotel manager. So Richard’s good at his job but he has his own problems.
Hang Ups is loosely based on Friends star Lisa Kudrow’s Emmynominated US comedy Web Therapy. How did it come about? When I was asked if I was interested in remaking Web Therapy, I thought, ‘No!’ – because with a few exceptions, remakes don’t work. I’ve just done five series of Episodes, which was all about the disaster of moving a successful show to another country. But Lisa was helpful and I realised that you could make it more relevant to now because therapy has become a lot more accepted in Britain and technology has moved on.
Did you meet any real therapists? I wanted it to be authentic, so I did talk to a psychotherapist about the techniques and jargon she uses. I went through every client in the show and she told me her approach.
How much of it is improvised?
A lot. We wrote all the characters and story arcs but we wanted the actors to bring whatever they could. With David Tennant, we sent him three character ideas and he picked one, then we put the cameras on and just started talking. He said it was the scariest thing he’d ever done! What’s next for you?
The second series of [BBC1’S divorce drama] The Split. After the first, people in the street told me how disappointed they were in me because my character, Nathan Stern, started off as a likeable guy before he went in a different direction!
Hang Ups is PREVIEWED on pages 68-69