"Grant Morrison and myself are working on, I wouldn't call it a secret project, but a project with Stephen Fry and it's a thriller set in Scotland. Me and Grant have been friends for a while and we wanted to do something together, and Grant went off and wrote a treatment, so it's at the treatment stage at the moment... It's seven episodes. It takes place over seven days around an event that happens in Scotland. It's a modern take on an old fable or fairy story. If you know Grant's work you might have an idea of what it will be like. It's like Twin Peaks meets Brigadoon! It's off the wall and smart but in a watchable commercial way. It's still in the early stages but I'm very excited about it."I'm always delighted when a British TV genre series comes along, particularly when there's credible writing/directing talent involved. No offense to other writers with a background in soaps or cop/doc dramas, but it's just easier to get psyched when a renowned comic-book writer and successful British film director are involved in a project.
We have lots of great directors and writers in this country, but so many of them disappear to Hollywood or choose to focus on books/comics (where their imaginations aren't tethered by budgets), so it's great to see more taking an interest in UK television nowadays. Undoubtedly because of Doctor Who, Life On Mars and Torchwood's success, sci-fi/fantasy is finally a buzzword in the British industry and (more importantly) it feels like execs realize they need to ensure quality and can't just offload a halfhearted piece of tosh with some famous names attached.
McGuigan's also directing episodes of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss' upcoming modern-day Sherlock Holmes series, too.
Oh, and if you're unaware what musical Brigadoon is, here's the blurb from Wikipedia, which perhaps give us a flavour of what this project might resemble:
"Brigadoon tells the story of a mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every hundred years, though to the villagers, the passing of each century seems no longer than one night. The enchantment is viewed by them as a blessing rather than a curse, for it saved the village from destruction. According to their covenant with God, no one from Brigadoon may ever leave, or the enchantment will be broken and the site and all its inhabitants will disappear into the mist forever. Two American tourists, lost in the Scottish Highlands, stumble upon the village just as a wedding is about to be celebrated, and their arrival has serious implications for the village's inhabitants."
