The Responder writer reveals the real-life personal inspirations behind his new Sheridan Smith drama

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

On the wall of Tony Schumacher’s bright, airy office in the heart of Liverpool, there hangs a collection of pictures, posters and things that tell the story of who he is. A montage of a man – a memento, trophy or talisman in every frame.

There’s one of his book covers from when he wrote novels, a poster of a 1970s housing estate like the one he grew up on, his “Dad corner” full of photos and scrawly drawings. “I’ve got a five-year-old son,” he says, proudly. There’s a front page of the Liverpool Echo from when Everton won the FA Cup in 1966, a poster of his hit cop show The Responder, another for the 1938 Will Hay film Ask a Policeman (a gift from former colleagues in the police force), and a map of the Shipping Forecast. “I’ve always wanted to write something about the Shipping Forecast. It reminds me of being a taxi driver… listening at 1am and 5am.”

Finally, there are two Bafta nomination certificates (“I’ve got a few awards but I don’t like putting them out because it’s embarrassing”) a guitar he’s never played and never will and a poster of The Sopranos – “the ultimate in TV writing”.

And in the middle of it all, there’s Schumacher’s prized possession – a sketch of Yosser Hughes from Boys from the Blackstuff as drawn by the writer of the 1982 drama, Alan Bleasdale. Holding it as if it’s a holy relic, Schumacher speaks reverentially of the inspired, inspiring Scouse writer, and later he’ll talk in similar tones about another local writing titan, Jimmy McGovern.

The sketch is, of course, extraordinary in and of itself – a cultural artefact from Margaret Thatcher’s Britain and a time when television drama dared to be genuinely political. But it’s also significant for what it might symbolise. When Bleasdale handed Schumacher that sketch, you might surmise that he did so because he was all out of batons.

If Schumacher’s life is up there on his office wall, distilled into a handful of images and objects, it’s also in his work, but there it informs every script, is diffused into every scene. The Responder – raw, brutally truthful and a drama that really connected with audiences – was based on his experiences, not all of them pleasant, as a police officer. When Martin Freeman read the script, he noted admiringly that it had clearly been “written by someone who meant it” – and Schumacher meant it because he’d lived it. It’s that sincerity that gives Schumacher’s writing its power and, to employ a much over-used word, its authenticity.

And so to The Cage, his new drama about casino workers Leanne (Sheridan Smith) and Matty (Michael Socha) who each discover the other is stealing from work. Their reasons differ, their desperation doesn’t. In telling the story of two people trapped by their circumstances and caught in a system seemingly designed to not just disadvantage them but use them to others’ advantage, Schumacher delivers a tense, funny, humane thriller that’s also a scathing critique of consumer capitalism and an exploration of addiction.

Schumacher says that he writes what he knows – “I definitely dip my pen in my head and feel those experiences” – so whence The Cage?

“My brother Philip was an alcoholic who passed away last year. In 2019, when I came up with the idea, I was going through a bad period with Phil, who was drinking quite badly. I had a meeting with two brilliant producers Hilary Martin and Simon Judd, and I think I brought it up. We started talking about addiction, but alcoholism felt too close to home. I used to work on cruise ships and everyone who worked in those casinos would gamble like mad the minute they weren’t working. They all had, and I can say this with a degree of certainty, a bad relationship with money, which fascinated me.”

That idea became one script, then several and Schumacher was soon ready to approach the actor he had in mind when he wrote the scripts: Smith. She, then Socha, signed up and Schumacher was almost ready to go. Just one last casting to confirm – that of Liverpool itself as the location. Was Schumacher conscious of depicting the city as having a grubby underbelly populated by gangsters, liars and delinquents?

“When I did The Responder, I was genuinely scared that I was going to get abuse for it,” he admits, “and I’ve spoken to other Liverpool writers who shall remain nameless, who won’t set stuff in the city for that reason. But I think about what making a show here gives back to the city. Financially, the three series I’ve made cost in excess of £30 million to make and a large percentage of that’s been spent in this city.

“We made a bit of profit on The Responder that we fed back into the Liverpool Film Office. We spent money on training apprentices on The Responder who were fully qualified working on The Cage. And on top of that, you’ve got Martin Freeman travelling the world, on chat shows and at awards shows, saying how fantastic this city is – and it is.”

So what does he say to those who complain about representation of Liverpool as some sort of Gomorrah on the Mersey, “Have a bit of confidence about yourself. This city is incredible. I’m fairly certain people in Birmingham aren’t complaining about Peaky Blinders.”

As with everything he says, Schumacher is utterly sincere. However, he does allow himself a smirk when he says, “Imagine I set a show in Manchester. I mean, I love Manchester – I used to do stand-up comedy there, badly – but imagine how people in Liverpool would kick off…”

For like so many Liverpudlians, native and transplant alike, Schumacher is rooted in the city. His resolve to stay true to those roots, in his work and in his life, is what assures him of that sincerity, his subsequent authenticity and, ultimately, his success.

“I still go to the same café in the morning, I’ve still got mates on the taxis, and I’ve never been to a f**king dinner party. I’ve never been to a party where people have made dinner as it seems anathema to me. You have your dinner before you go to a party. Apart from Martin [Freeman, star of The Responder for whom he wrote the part], I don’t have showbiz mates. And I hated going to the Baftas.”

Excuse me? But they always look so much fun. “Like any award show, they’re awful. Absolute hell on Earth, I can’t stand them. But I went because I might never get the chance to go again and I love the people I work with and I want to be with them enjoying their moment because it isn’t just mine.”

Schumacher would probably go so far as to say that he enjoys going to the tip more than awards shows. “I used to work at a council tip and, the other week, I took a load of cardboard to the tip and had a cup of tea with the lads for three quarters of an hour because they’re friends and I love them. If anyone asks me what I do, I tell them I drive a cab.”

Safe to assume that Schumacher won’t have his head turned by the intoxicating world of telly, then. Partly, this is because he got into it “older and less concerned whether or not people like me” and also because living in Liverpool gives him distance from “the industry”.

“I’m forever going backwards and forwards on the train, which costs a fortune, but I do think that distance enables me to defend what I’m doing from too much outside influence.”

Schumacher has a “no d**kheads rule” about the people that he works with, which clearly serves him well. But overall, he sees “the industry” as, well, unwelcoming to people like him. “By calling it imposter syndrome, it makes you feel as if it’s in your head and you’re the one that’s in the wrong. But it isn’t and you’re not. The television industry wasn’t built for working-class people. We’re not meant to be here. When I go to a meeting, I find it astonishing that, not always but more often than not, I’m the only one who grew up in a s**tty house. Someone said to me recently that they were too embarrassed to get their laptop out in a meeting, and to me, it’s unbelievable that we still live in a world where that’s a thing. But that’s not just this industry, that’s this country.”

I ask Schumacher if he sees himself in the mould of Bleasdale and McGovern and he actually blushes. “I’d love to be in that canon but I’m not.”

Not yet, anyway. “I’d do the petition for them to replace the liver birds [as emblems of the city]. I still get a buzz when I get a message off them and it’s astonishing that I have the opportunities to sit with them lads and listen to them. I never met them before they were Alan and Jimmy but I doubt they were any different 50 years ago than they are now. If I was working with young writers and they asked who they should model themselves on, I’d point to Alan and Jimmy.”

He’d be too humble to point to himself, of course. “I don’t want to be famous. I don’t want to be recognised,” Schumacher says. “I just want to sit in this office and do what I’m doing. That’s enough for me.”

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The Cage starts Sunday 26 April at 9pm on BBC One, and will be available as a boxset on BBC iPlayer.

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