New Disney+ comedy series Alice and Steve asks a simple question: how would you react if your best friend started dating your adult daughter?
For creator and writer Sophie Goodhart, the idea came from asking the same question of herself, when speaking with her own friend.
“The germ of the idea came from me talking to one of my best male friends, and we were joking in a very inappropriate way about, ‘Oh my god, can you imagine if you dated my daughter?,” Goodhart explained.
“And immediately it was like, ‘Oh, we should do a show about it, we should call it a wrong-com.’ He’s not a writer, and he’s not in telly, so I say ‘we’ very… but anyway.”
Goodhart was speaking to us as our latest guest for The Radio Times Writers’ Room, in which we get to know what makes screenwriters tick. You can watch her interview in the video above.
Goodhart started working in documentaries and factual programming, before a very specific experience led her to reevaluate her career. She then went to film school and transitioned into writing fiction.
Her first screen project was the short film My Blind Brother, which starred Tony Hale and which she later made into a feature, starring Adam Scott.
Since then, Goodhart has written on some of Britain’s biggest streaming shows, including Sex Education, where she worked on the first three seasons, Rivals, which she has written for since the beginning, and Slow Horses. Her work on the latter show will be seen in its upcoming sixth season.
“I just knew [Alice and Steve] was a good premise,” Goodhart continued. “And because I’d done Sex Ed, and also intergenerational stuff in Rivals – but I think I started this pre-Rivals – it was quick to get picked up, but slow to get greenlit.
“Because it’s not an obvious… it’s not based on any IP, and we needed to have enough written to get the cast, so it was quite slow.”
Across her conversation for The Radio Times Writers’ Room, Goodhart spoke about working on many of her previous projects, including how she came on board to write one episode of Harry and Jack Williams’s Boat Story, and her initial reaction to Danny Dyer’s casting as Freddie in Rivals.
She also delved deep into her new series, Alice and Steve, which stars Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement in the title role, while Yali Topol Margalith plays Izzy, Alice’s daughter with whom Steve forms a relationship.
An early scene in the first episode of the series sees Alice encouraging Steve to date a younger woman, setting up that her issues with Steve and Izzy down the line are deeply hypocritical. For Goodhart, this was crucial.
“Even in the pitch document, I wanted it to be clear that Alice is being deeply hypocritical. She does have a moral position, but she’s morally hypocritical. She would happily let her best friend go out with a younger woman, just as long as it’s not her young woman.
“Because otherwise I felt like it didn’t have the depth to it, and also it’s not funny to me. The show isn’t funny unless Alice is a hypocrite.”
Goodhart also said that “Alice has certain similarities to me”, and in a separate conversation with Radio Times‘ David Craig, explained that she wanted to explore the “double standards” which exist when it comes to age-gap relationships.
“I wanted us to have some respect for their relationship, and for our sympathies to shift during the show,” she said. “I go out with a much younger man, but as a woman, I feel like people are like, ‘Yay, well done you!’
“But when a man does it, it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s disgusting!’ And so, I was quite keen to sort of point out that double standard.”
Another point of comparison comes in the form of Val, Alice’s mum who is played by Marcia Warren.
“Val is very [much] like my mum,” Goodhart told Craig. “Big drinker, enjoys talking about sex… And I do think that older women are just OK with saying exactly how they feel and what it is – sort of being a bit ‘stuff and nonsense’ about things.
“And then Marcia just made Val come to life in the most exceptional way. She’s an incredible actress, like every time she’s on set something funny is happening.”
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You can watch the full video at the top of this article right now, and look out for more trips to The Radio Times Writers’ Room soon.
In the meantime, you can catch up with our previous chats with Mark Gatiss, Harry and Jack Williams, Noah Hawley, Neil Cross, Steven Knight, Chris Chibnall, Jack Thorne, Sarah Quintrell, Stefan Golaszewski, Richard Gadd and James Graham.
All episodes of Alice and Steve are available to watch on Disney+ now. Sign-up to Disney+ from £5.99 a month.
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