Behind the Scenes: PRU, BBC3

PRU was commissioned off the back of a successful pilot and a nurturing relationship with BBC comedy. It builds on an ethos inherent to the DNA of Fully Focused - championing young talent often from underrepresented communities, in front of and behind the camera. PRU is a big colourful riot on screen - who said the revolution would not be televised?!

We’re super passionate about helping to achieve better balance through representation and closing the skills gap - major areas that most seem keen to support.

Ultimately the show is a comedy and we want to make people laugh - to use humour and heart to humanise our characters and shine a light on the world of school exclusion. After all, most people are more likely to guess PRU stands for Pretty Rancid Underpants than Pupil Referral Unit!

We had four episodes to weave the story arc and get our audience to engage with our principal characters - four teens from working class backgrounds and their two teachers.

Authenticity is key for us. Our writers, Nathaniel Stevens and Alex Tenenbaum, who come from a teaching background, happily agreed to include three young writing mentees in the writer’s rooms, a hugely mutually beneficial experience.

At Fully Focused we have 70 young people currently participating on our free-to-access screen industry training course, ‘MYM Academy’.

Script read throughs with these young creatives were organised with the writers, producers and director present so that instant feedback and input could be shared and we could see what was or wasn’t landing with the young target audience. No hiding place, just honest POV’s.

The harder-to-reach youth audience are often all over social media rather than linear TV and we wanted to try and bridge this gap with our show by including young people in not only script development but each stage of the production process.

Casting was a real mixture of methods, as we’ve built a reputation of representing stories and people authentically and had to reflect this.

Jessica Straker who helped cast Small Axe and Rocks, was brought on to work primarily with exec producer Leah Henry and exec producer and director Teddy Nygh, with input from myself and the writers.

Leah’s favourite part of the process was the Insta Lives auditions - a fun, open, democratic and easy way to meet potential talent who haven’t come through traditional casting routes.

We also put calls out to agencies for more established talent and Hannah Walters joined alongside the pilot’s Tom Moutchi. 

There were big financial challenges too. The unwanted formula of Covid + Brexit + inflation + an unprecedented amount of shows in production meant costs, crew rates and supplies were fluctuating.

Luckily, t he BBC was super-supportive and we had over 65 paid placements and almost doubled their diversity requirements.

Providing young trainees with paid real-world work, experience and broadcast credits is so valuable and out BTS scene was also produced and shot entirely by a young team.

Our trainees had mixed experience so needed support and patience which often came from our on-set producers and more experienced crew members.

Whilst we also had our Fully Focused youth programme manager Jade with us on some shoot days, we would definitely employ a full-time welfare producer on-set next time to take responsibility for the trainees and crew’s wellbeing.

The sheer drive, youthful vigour and positive energy that the trainees brought gave our production a vitality, vibrancy and philosophy that put people first and hopefully meant working on the show was an enjoyable experience.