Watching a show you’ve Directed go out for the first time on TV is quite a weird experience, you have lived and breathed the show for anything between 3 and 6 months but it hasn’t been seen by anyone except a close circle of people comprising, yourself as Producer/Director, the Editors (Online/Offline), Audio Mixers, the Series Producer, the Executive Producer from the Production Company and most importantly the Commissioning Editor/Exec Producer from the Broadcaster. 

I have read about Flim Directors who can’t bear to go to screenings and Premieres so why not humble TV Directors? Sometimes I want to hide behind the sofa.

The problem is that I can see things in the show that the viewer doesn’t notice. I know the hurdles I had to overcome, why a particular shot looks the way it does, why a scene is cut shorter than it deserves. I can’t just watch the episode as a piece of entertainment and enjoy it at face value.

To make it worse I often visualise the contributors who have appeared in the show sitting at home watching it for the first time on their plasmas, along with 100 of their friends and family, work colleagues and of course their boss. No doubt I am sure they scream out loud:  ”JUUUUULESSS ! Why did you put that bit in?” or ” That Jules has made me look soooo ugly!”

So how do I watch my own show go out, mostly behind the sofa, audio turned down glimpsing at my screen every so often, smiling when I see a good shot, sometimes I view it between a crack in the door or even stand outside my house and look through the window! Of course I do record everything I make on my Sky Plus and it’s only a few hours later when I feel ready to watch it properly.

Then afterwards I scour the Web. These days with the myriad of TV related forums, and discussions related to the topic of the show it’s amazing to be able to read some instant feedback from viewers, especially if they liked it.

I value this feedback and actually keep the points in mind for the next programme I do.

To be honest one of the amazing things about making TV shows is knowing people in their hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions if you are lucky) are sat at home watching your hard work. I remember once going into a newsagent. The shopkeeper ignored me, he was concentrating on one of my shows on his TV behind the counter, it was great. Come to think of it next time an episode I have Directed goes out on telly maybe I should stand outside one of those huge TV shops in Central London and watch it on 20 widescreens at the same time!