Q&A: Screenwriter Joe Barton Can't Help Himself

This week on the 5AM StoryTalk Podcast, I'm joined by British screenwriter Joe Barton — creator of TV series such as “Giri/Haji”, “The Lazarus Project”, and, most recently, Netflix’s smash hit “Black Doves” starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw.

The best way to enjoy this free conversation is to tap on the podcast play button right now and listen to an unabridged version of it in all its incredibly intimate detail. If you prefer to read these chats, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered; scroll down to the article below, though I want to caution you it has been substantially edited for length and clarity. You can find a less-polished transcription, which Substack offers readers, by clicking on that option.

Joe and I are going to cover a lot in this conversation including:

• The creative and cultural influences on his work, examining how Steven Spielberg and the British approach to storytelling synthetized in his own creative process

• How he crafts stories that sit between reality and fantasy with a light-hearted yet serious tone – even embracing camp

• The unique genesis of "Black Doves" and its serendipitous, almost unbelievably quick route to a green light from Netflix

• How he developed the central relationship of “Black Doves” by subverting our expectations of the “buddy dynamic” of action-thriller stories

• The difficulty of prioritizing “small pleasures” as a freelance artist

• The evolution of TV storytelling and the possibility of a shift away from bleak, unlikable – albeit compelling characters – toward characters and worlds you look forward to spending time with/in

• Jaws, “The West Wing”, Wes Anderson, and much more

A bonus episode with Joe can be found here and below. In it, he and I discuss a seminal piece of art from his life (and mine as it turns out) — Curtis Hanson’s 2000 film Wonder Boys, an adaptation of Michael Chabon’s novel of the same name. Make sure you’re a subscriber so you don’t miss this one!

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Let’s talk all things Joe Barton . I’ve wanted to know this British screenwriter for years, but somehow our paths never crossed, even when I was living in London. After I finished watching the first season of “Black Doves”, which he created, I decided to do something about that and asked his agent to put us in touch.

If you haven’t seen it, “Black Doves” is this fun, sexy, Christmas-set spy thriller from Netflix that stars Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw, and Sarah Lancashire. You won’t believe the story Joe tells me about how he wrote its pilot and spec and set the series up in just a few weeks. I may have wanted to rip my own ears off in a fit of envy as I listened to how it all came together.

Before Joe had Keira and Ben shoot their way across London to a soundtrack of “Jingle Bells”, he wrote a slew of feature films and created several other TV series including The Union just this past year, “The Lazarus Project” and the especially brilliant “Giri/Haji” – which you should check out immediately, if you haven’t had the pleasure yet. He’s had his name attached to a number of major Hollywood franchises, too, from the Matt Reeves Batman-verse to the Cloverfield series.

In short, Joe is an incredibly successful screenwriter whose career is just beginning to really take off – which is an amazing place for an artist to be. You’re going to learn so much from his journey, approach to storytelling, drama, and humor, and how to craft characters and worlds your audience will want to spend time with.

And now, let me introduce you to Joe Barton…

COLE HADDON: Joe, it's great to see you! Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm a huge fan. I'm so glad to finally be meeting you.

JOE BARTON: Thank you, Cole. Thank you for inviting me on. A pleasure to meet you.

CH: Well, so before we get into some of the more, obvious craft and life questions, I have something I need to ask you. You've been professionally screenwriting for a long time now. In every meeting we take, producers inevitably bring up some project or world or even a tone that they're now looking for. Something like, because X just did it really well at the box office or Y turned into the biggest thing on Netflix, now everyone wants something like, say, “Black Doves” – but, you know, different of course. And so, it's reactionary, it's lazy, but how does it feel to be the son of a bitch at the moment who did that to thousands of other writers around the globe? Maybe even blowing up their current projects in the process like you…uh…may have done to a previous project of mine at one point, too. Has it produced any epiphanies in you about how, the sausage gets made or doesn't get made?

JB: Well, I'm fascinated to know what project I blew around. Apologies if I did. No, listen, that's why I do it. I do it to sabotage other writers, and that's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

CH: It's all about crushing our enemies, right?

JB: They're all my enemies. No, that's very nice for you to say. It's interesting. I wonder. I mean, “Black Doves” did, yeah, it did really well. But I wonder if “Black Doves” has done that thing of like, “Oh, we need something like this.” Because it felt like we arrived on such a wave of espionage shows. We were one of several. We had “Day the Jackal”, “The Agency”, “Night Agent”. I feel like because we were one of so many shows in the same space. I wonder if that means that commissioners are now pushing away from that being like, “Don't give us anything like ‘Black Doves” or don't give us anything like ‘The Agency’ because we've all got one.” I'm not sure. I mean, I hope not 'cause I've got like three other fucking spy projects.

CH: I've heard it three times now in about the past two months, twice from U.S. producers, who were looking for something like that. And the other was from a British producer who was looking for something with that fun edge – a bit of the lightness that came with the central relationship, I think. Something that people were going to enjoy watching and not feel it was just another thrilling drama.

JB: Oh, well that's interesting. So, so not so much actually the genre, but the tone of something. Yeah. Well, maybe, yeah.

It’s a specific kind of tone and possibly…yeah…I wonder. It'd be interesting if at the moment commissioners are like, “We want stuff that's a bit lighter touch. Like, don't give us, don't give us anything harrowing, or too depressing.” I mean, from what I hear, a lot of commissioners are looking for almost the hard comedy, continuing drama, like almost sort of soapy stuff, like workplace stuff, like almost like back to those traditional, easier to watch shows. I guess undemanding. Things that are going to sort of lift the viewer up. But maybe that is a reaction to other shows that have done well or it's just a reaction to the times that we're living in or anything like that.

But basically, if you want to write something that has the same tone as “Black Doves”, just throw a few gags in, just make everyone a bit irreverent and silly. In “Black Doves”, no one took anything seriously until they took things incredibly seriously. There's, a campness to it, I think, and I think to a lot of the things I've written, I would say they're in a sort of, kind of, camp drama. I was trying to figure this out in a sort of self-obsessed way, probably thinking about myself, what makes me tick. [Laughs] I think the characters in “Black Doves” and a lot of the things I've done, like, yeah, they don't take anything seriously until they take things incredibly seriously – they're heartbroken, or they're in love, or their lives are falling apart, but at the same time they are acerbic and irreverent and throwaway. [The series] exists in this weird sort of liminal space between this is real and this is fantasy – and it kind of steps between the two, if that makes any kind of sense.

CH: It does. Where does that come from and how conscious are you?

JB: Well, I think you become conscious of it the more you do it or – certainly for me it's – there's sort of dawning realization, “This is just the way I write.” When writing a scene, you have options of which way you can go tonally or whatever. And if there's ever the option of putting in a joke or like a kind of line that slightly offsets the drum or whatever, I always take it. I can't help myself.

And so, you know, scene by scene, the tone of it becomes these characters who are, yeah, always just trying to be funny and just trying to be witty, and – hearing myself say that makes me want to punch my own work in the face. [Laughs] I feel like it is at this point just the way my head works or the way my mind works. And I don’t know if that's like, based on anything specific, I growing up, like maybe I just watched too much of “The West Wing” or some fucking stuff like that, or I don’t know, I don’t know where it comes from. Good question.

CH: That's a great reference for what you're discussing, though – “The West Wing”, that borderline camp that somehow pulls off hard drama alongside of it. But camp is a bad word I've found in British television. How has that worked for you? Did it take a while to sort of seduce producers into that tone and trust you with it?

JB: Yeah, I think so. It took a while to get my own show, and so maybe it took a while to convince people to let me do it. I think it's how you present it to people. With something like, "Giri/Haji" – which is the first, show I wrote that was mine – I look at that as being like, yeah, I think the storytelling and that is quite camp and, like, quite sort of over the top in a way. But we sold it as a crime show. We like went in and we were like, “This is a modern crime show. It's thriller, it's holding a mirror up to society, it's about relationships.” You know, you sell it with all the usual bullshit that you sell things with. But we’re also like, “It's going to be funny, as well. There's going to be lightness, there's going to be darkness, there's going to be romance and pathos and all this stuff.”

JB (cont’d): You sell it as this thing that they understand. And then, once you've got the money, once they've said yes, and they've green lit it, then you can go away and then the trick is to navigate making something as you want to make it with people who are watching over you, who have paid for the whole thing and want it to be a certain thing or whatever. Then you're into the practicalities of just, like, you know, how good are your producers? How good are your commissioners? How much do they trust you? How good is the thing you're making? Can you get away with it? But yeah, I don’t know if you walked in and said, “I'm going to make a camp crime drama…” I don’t know. Some people would go for it, some people wouldn't. But yeah, would be harder probably.

CH: Let’s talk some more about “Black Doves”. You don't seem uncomfortable rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood buddy comedy. The series is legitimately fun. And so, I'm just curious, how does this kind of story happen in the U.K. where I don’t think it’s an obvious fit?

JB: I wrote it on spec. I wrote the first episode in a week, and I started on Boxing Day, and I finished on New Year's Day. And it had just been that thing where I was like – occasionally it'll happen, not as often as I'd like, but occasionally – I'd sit down and an idea will just sort of, you know, come out.

And so, I'd written this thing, not really planned it or anything, just wanted to see where it would go. The one scene I had in my head was, the spy is approached by her handler to be told that her secret lover is dead – and, by the way, everyone knows what she'd done. This is in the first episode with Sarah Lancashire and Keira Knightley.

So, I had that, and I wrote this script really quick, and I sent it to my manager. I don’t know why I'm giving the whole pot in history. Just so, I don’t know if it's helpful, to sort of explain how it sort of came about in this way that was also serendipitous.

I sent it to my manager like the second January or something after, after I finished it, or maybe like a week later, and the day after I sent it to him just to be like, “I've written this thing, tell me what you think,” I got an email back from him being like, “Oh, by the way, Keira Knightley, who is represented at the same management firm, is looking to do high-end television. You know, she'd like to do something that's set in London, you know, 'cause that's where she lives, kids go to school, all that kind of stuff. Like practical reasons and creative reasons. You know, something good, high-end, blah, blah, all this stuff.” And I was like, “Well, I just wrote this thing over Christmas with the, you know, female lead her age, and she would be great in it, blah, blah, blah. Why don't we send her that?” So, my manager was like, “Yes, yes, yes, let's send her reps straight away,” and then they liked it.

CH: Sorry, sorry – Friday you sent the script to Keira Knightley that you wrote over four or five days. Was that all the work that went into the script before it showed up in her inbox?

JB: Yeah.

CH: Wow.

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JB: Well, so I'd started on Boxing Day [December 26^th) and Keira got it probably 10th of January. So, it went from not existing at all to Keira gets it to read over the weekend. I get email like four days later being like, “Keira's read it and she loves it. Would you like to meet her this week?” I was like, “Um, yeah, sure, great, I'll do that.” [Laughs] So, I jump on a train, go up to London, have a coffee with Keira – who's lovely – and we chatted about it and she's like, “Yeah, I really like the script. What happens next?” I was like, “I don't know, I have no idea what happens next.” I was like, “I literally have no idea how it ends, but I think it could be fun to find out if you wanted to.” So, I went home, you know? Like, “So, that was nice. I met Kiera Knightley, had a nice chat, blah, blah, blah.”

At the same time as that, I'd emailed it to Sister Pictures who are the independent production company that I work with quite often, and I have a company with them. Jane Featherstone, who is sort of British TV royalty, is the producer there. I sent her this script and I said, “I wrote this over Christmas.” This is still like January, by the way. “I wrote this over Christmas. I'm about to meet Keira Knightley. She likes it. Do you like it? Would you like to do it?” And she read it, and she was like, “Yes, I really like this, and it'd be great if Keira's doing it.”

At that time, she was in Budapest making a show called “Eric” – the Benedict Cumberbatch show – with Netflix. She was out to dinner with Anne Mensah, who is the head of Netflix UK, just having dinner, like chatting away. And she's like, “What are Netflix looking for?” Anne Mensah, head of Netflix UK, said, “Well, the things I'm really looking for is, I want British espionage with female led A-list talent.” And so, Jane Featherstone is like, “Well, you'll never guess. I've got the script I got yesterday that Keira Knightley is interested in being in. By the way, can I give it to you?”

So, then Anne Mensah at Netflix has got it, Jane Featherstone is in, and Keira emails back like the next day being like – well, her agent's email back – “Yeah, she's in.” And then suddenly Netflix were like, “Yes, great. Of course we want to do it. Keira's doing it. It's good script. We like it.” So, like, it went from not existing at all to being greenlit with Keira Knightley attached in, like…I don't know, by February probably.

It was just this crazy, crazy thing. Yeah. and then we were shooting in August or September or something. So, the whole thing was so quick.

CH: That insane, start to finish. I'm, I'm a little speechless. Serendipitous is…I don't even know if that's an adequate word for how perfect that is because they don't happen like that. That's amazing. Yeah, well done.

JB: Yeah. Yeah. I've never, never experienced anything like it. It's crazy.

‘Black Doves’. Source: Netflix

CH: The relationship between the two leads is, I felt, something I hadn't seen before, this female/male relationship in an action film, but the idea of making the hitman gay, the spy a woman, that they had this buddy relationship – this undying love almost – for each other. Did you understand that relationship from the start?

JB: No, no, that was always baked in really early. Like, I always fundamentally wanted to write something about a friendship and because the premise was this woman whose secret lover has just been murdered. So, it was never going to be romantic. So, I knew I wanted to pair her up with someone and I knew she's a spy. I wanted to do a thing about hitman, and I was like, I want him to be friends. I just want it to be platonic. 'Cause I'm really interested in writing about friendship and platonic love. I'm always really interested in those relationships, which I think get underserved quite often in film and television. And I always wanted to – and I sometimes struggle to like how to articulate this – so, without sounding like I'm just this sort of outsider, I was really interested in writing about a straight woman and a gay man and that relationship and that friendship.

I've always been really lucky to have been surrounded by lots of gay people, lots of women in my life, and I've always been really just interested in that dynamic and, and how the gay men in my life and the straight women, how they interact and connect and the different kind of friendship that they have, and the different sort of shared experiences. And not in every case, of course, like it's not one homogenized group of like, “This is what all gay men and women are like when they're together.” But I've often found it just to be really interesting, beautiful dynamic and it's been explored a lot in film and TV and, and often in quite regressive ways of like the gay best friend or, you know, the whole “fag hag” thing in the 90s.

But that's what, so I always want it to be, yeah, straight women and a gay man, best friends come back together, them against the world. He's going to help her. She's going to help him. And that's going to be the emotional heart of it. Yeah, that was day one.

CH: Well, so we're going to come back in a moment, to talk about Wonder Boys, which I'm really excited about. But one last question for right now.

It's a bit, of an esoteric one, I guess, about television, but I think it's inspired by “Black Doves”. For me. I've come to believe that “peak television” ushered in an era of compelling, unlikeable characters located in bleak worlds, and I am beginning to realize I miss spending time with characters I genuinely enjoy in worlds that I want to be in. I'm rewatching “ER” right now. I'm rewatching “Northern Exposure”. A lot of the British shows I watch, there's a sense of community, or people trying to form communities, which I think is also true of “Black Doves”. The characters are forming this sort of dysfunctional but extended family. Do you have any thoughts on that? Do you experience that, yourself with television?

JB: Yeah, it's interesting. I know what you mean. I think there is something to be said for, on the basic level, just wanting to spend time with these characters or wanting to spend time in their world. I always remember my dad, going back to “The West Wing”, which as a child – I can't remember when it came out as a teenager probably – “I watched religiously with and with my parents who both loved it. It's like their favorite show and they've watched it like six times through or something. But I always remember my dad telling me – he's like, “Oh, this bit's so cozy.” He's like, “Oh, this is a really cozy moment.” He's like, “This is nice being here with them, isn't it?” Like, “God just like this, like sitting around, like listening to President Bartlett talk. It's really cozy, isn't it?”

It was like, this is a show about a family. And I think that's always struck me as fundamental, whatever you are writing, to have those moments where you’re allowed into these characters’ worlds. And I always enjoy that. So, a series always pushes me away when it's do with anything that's too nihilistic or too, you know, or just too sort, “Oh, fucking hell. Like, it's dark, it's depressing and there's…” – I mean, you can do incredible, incredible drama and work with nihilistic or, you know, depressing, or whatever. But for me, I think I watch stuff because I want to feel welcomed into a little world.

I love Wes Anderson movies. In most of his films, he has like a moment or a scene where you are just invited into the structure of these characters’ lives or the little world or the little place. Like, he does it in The Life Aquatic where he has done a great sort of shot where you just see how the cutaway of the boat and it's like, “This is a sauna room, this is where you make the film.” It's not “you're just here.” The characters, this is the world they're in. There's a bit in Fantastic Mr. Fox where you, where you go into Badger’s Club and you just see, “Oh, here's where we're cooking dinner, here's where blah, blah.” He always finds space to just be like, “Here are these characters that you now love. This is the space they live in and we're just going to spend a couple of minutes just with them.” And I think there's sort of something to be said for that. And maybe, yeah, as a reaction to, I don’t know, the current state of the world or whatever, maybe we will see a return to sort of those sort of ideals.

I mean, “ER” is a great example. Because you just love those characters and want to spend time with them, and I don’t know if that's like a revolutionary sort of thing, but…I don’t know. I hadn't really sort of thought about it, but I think that is for me as a viewer and a writer – those moments are really important.

CH: I think for me, I think it's true of my writing as well, but the time that I give to television today? I find myself reverting back to when I was a teenager. I’m looking for an extension of my family in some way like you were describing about your father’s reaction to “West Wing”. You invest a lot of time of your life into these things. And I, at 48, I'm now finding I'm rejecting things that leave me feeling uncomfortable and miserable for long periods of time. So, I need shows like “Black Doves” – so, thank you for that.

JB: Thank you.

CH: See you in a moment to continue this conversation. As for the rest of you listening today, thanks so much for spending your time with me here at 5AM Story Talk. Don't run off just yet though as promised. There's a bonus episode to come. Joe returns to discuss a seminal piece of artwork from his life – Curtis Hansen's 2000 film Wonder Boys, which is an adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel of the same name – a novel that quite literally changed the course of my own life, as you’ll find out. I hope to see you there!

Listen to Joe Barton’s bonus episode here.

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