Hannah Fry

Of course, because you hate being told to watch modern TV.

There's nothing Caroline hates more than being recommended a TV show.

Being recommended anything.

I hate being recommended a restaurant.

You recommended a film with Tom Conti in the 1970s.

Yeah, yeah, that'll pick up.

But you hate being told to watch...

So do you though We're the same in this But you just also But you also just don't You don't watch Masses of new TV Do you?

No I actually think The most important thing As a T As any kind of writer For inspiration Isn't reading And it isn't watching I think it's the quality Of your personal relationships Do you really think that?

I believe it's the quality Of the conversations That you have with people Yeah

I do think you're right on that I think the conversations you have are the things that inform your characters and your dialogue maybe maybe you can learn about story and plotting yeah yeah from watching stuff but which is why I just never understand this idea of like the secluded writer yeah because I just think your writing is only as good as the as the conversations in the pub basically but then what about all these like amazing famous writers who like famously had one friend or whatever

I think you, I think they, I think that happens as you get introverts, you know, I think that happens as you, I think that all of those people who went and lived on a hill, if you read like early life on their Wikipedia page, the likelihood is they were around loads and loads of people.

They would have had like a big family or they would have, you know, worked in a job with loads.

I just think that's the only way that you learn about human behavior.

And it's like that,

classic thing of every general meeting that you take for as a TV writer what they say is what we're looking for is like serialized rom-com like a TV rom-com and Nobody Wants This is really good and I'm really enjoying it but it definitely shows the challenge of doing a TV rom-com which is how do you keep

two people apart when they're the main focus of the story over eight hours repeatedly how do you bring them together and pull them apart it's like you do kind of run out of tricks and the key the thing that really worked with Ross and Rachel is that it was it was it was not the highest story in the mix yeah oh you're so right so they could so it could fade away for a while and then come back exactly and that's how we were kept wanting more

And I find that very interesting.

That is interesting.

Because also, I suppose what is so interesting about Ross and Rachel, which you don't see in other rom-coms,