Simon Mayo

How do you decide which players to cast or to concentrate on, James?

Because obviously you have 11 players in a team and there's all the backroom staff.

And Jodie Whittaker plays Dr. Pippa Grange, who introduces some very interesting dynamics.

But for telling this story, presumably you have to think there are two or three players

of the footballers that we're going to have to tell this story through.

We've talked a lot on the show about masculinity in the last couple of years, a lot of that fuelled by adolescence, written by the equally prolific Jack Thorne.

But I wonder if, in a way, your play and Gareth Southgate were ahead of the curve here because they were trying to change the perception of masculinity years earlier.

I mean, I gave up on Ted Lasso after the first series, but I think the damned United would probably be up there as...

Obviously, there is a big, as you mentioned, big political context to everything that we follow over the four episodes, the political situation in the country, Brexit and COVID and so on.

Towards the end of the second episode, we see a clip of the Queen's broadcast to the UK where she concludes with the lines, better days will return, we will meet again.

I remember thinking at the time, as most people were struck

by the resonance of those lines, the brilliance of those lines.

As a screenwriter, going back to those lines, they were extraordinary, weren't they?

Finally, James, you work on many projects.

Famously, you've got a number of different things going at the same time.

What is most exciting you about James Graham work, which we are about to see at some stage in the future?

Well, ink sounds extraordinary.

Jack O'Connell, Guy Pearce, Danny Boyle,

And James Graham.

I mean, that's all we need to know.