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E-mail to the Foundation, July 29, 2010
We got there in the end, and it’s causing a bit of a stir over here.
Sky, who are the British HBO, have commissioned eight episodes of “Jinsy.”
Jubilation from our little gang!
"The island has enjoyed a long and varied history except for the dull ages" This is Jinsy
E-mail from James Dean ’89, producer of the British comedy “This is Jinsy.”
When I showed the pilot to everyone at the Morehead-Cain Forum last year, it had already been a three year journey with Jinsy, with a few knock-backs along the way.
Jinsy’s such a bizarre world that it took quite a lot of persuading to get the BBC to commission a pilot, with two actors they’d never heard of. But they obviously saw what I saw in it, took a chance, and we made the pilot and a few on-line sketches for them.
They broadcast the pilot this March, in a great slot. It didn’t rate that well – pilots rarely do in the UK – but we got a load of great reviews, and endorsements from some British comedy stars like Matt Lucas (LITTLE BRITAIN) and Graham Norton.
In the end, they decided to pass on the series, to our immense disappointment, so we were left to look for another network to take it on.
The one hope we had was that the new Head of Comedy at Sky (a kind of British HBO) was our original commissioner at BBC. She’d been headhunted from the BBC to come to Sky to start up their comedy department. When we told her the BBC turned down the series, this big smile broke out across her face.
Since that meeting, we had long discussions about how to finesse the show – since Sky are a commercial network and the BBC is not – and we shot some screen tests, and worked out a more sketch-based theme. And after another agonising month or so of waiting, we finally heard that Sky were going to go ahead and commission 8 episodes from us, to air summer 2011.
It’s a real David and Goliath story since our company is a small one, and we were up against huge networks and other giant companies. But we got there in the end. Now, we just have to make the series!
From the website of “This is Jinsy.”
Introd
Jinsy has been around as long as anyone can remember and it is thought that it has probably been in existence since before even that, though there is no evidence to support this theory.
The island has enjoyed a long and varied history except for the dull ages, a period in which virtually nothing happened (except the parish of Kssspp boundary got moved, then moved back again).
Little is known of the pre-speak era, though residents are believed to have worn a kind of smock with a double poncho upper layer, made of sacking, straw and moss, with a pleated collar and a flanged triple-lipped back seam.
Hair was a vitally important part of primitive culture and early islanders could spend up to fifteen hours a day merely preparing their hair or in the act of styling.
Midbit
The first written word, found carved in to a piece of igneous rock at Chokette bay is ‘side-parting’. Very early flint/chalk tongs and curlers were among the first objects found in the digs a the Veen Parish Basin, where Jinsy’s most ancient artefacts have been unearthed.
This has led historians to conjecture that a kind of stone hairdryer was in use long before the invention of the wheel.
Jinsy’s past has involved some serious punch-ups, mainly taking place at Joofer’s Hill, Rintels Point and around the Tezzer cliffs but since the introduction of the tessellator, a new time of peace, prosperity and wellbeing has suffused the isle.
