Making Beecham House

(gentle music) - [Gurinder] My name is Gurinder Chadha.

I have made eight feature films, including, "Bend it like Beckham," and "Bhaji on the Beach", "Bride and Prejudice", "Viceroy's House."

This is my first venture back into TV after a long time.

And I am thrilled to be making a long running six part TV series.

So I can really get into the stories.

- [Cameraman] Director, first day.

- First day.

- How you feeling?

- Look, we're blooming hitting the ground running aren't we?

- [Woman] Always.

- Follow me through to the set.

I was inspired to write Beecham House with Paul, my partner, after working on our movie Viceroy's House.

We spent a lot of time researching the history of the end of the British Raj for that movie.

We decided that we would like to explore that world further.

And so I came up with the idea of Beecham House as a vehicle to go back to the early days, pre the Raj, and look at that very key relationship between Britain and India.

And re-examine it from my perspective, as opposed to, from the perspective of the history books, perhaps that I had when I was growing up.

- [Cameraman] Okay, at once please.

So we're about to do rehearsal, which I'm going to go and watch.

So come with me.

- John Beecham I forbid you to leave this house again.

- [Gurinder] This is the fabulous courtyard.

One of the courtyards in Beecham House here in London, Ealing.

The rest will be shot in India.

(festive music) We have worked really hard to give this show scale.

I'm doing a lot of shots that are very cinematic on a TV schedule, and that's tough.

We have 12 days per episode.

In a movie I have, two months, three months sometimes.

So I do find myself trying to be sort of over ambitious sometimes with crane shots and other shots.

- I'll pan them into the center of this.

- Into the center of that.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- [Gurinder] We were shooting a wonderful scene with Tom Bateman, who is cutting down some of the hedges.

- There is not a single day that I miss being a soldier.

And I missed the sweat.

- [Gurinder] During the scene, Neil's put a little bit of smoke in to make it look misty.

What they didn't realize it was above in the trees were about three or four beehives and suddenly all the smoke brought these very angry bees out and the whole set was sort of full of swarms of bees like in animation.

And everybody went running for cover like this.

We had to stop filming.

- Gurinder has this bottomless pit of energy.

She's literally flying around the set coming up with ideas.

Every single time I imagine a scene being somewhere, she goes, "Nope, let's do it on the stairs.

Let's go upstairs, let's move.

Get it on the move."

It really keeps you on your toes but also your imagination is infectious.

Her imagination it really is just sort of, everyone's firing on all cylinders.

- [Pallavi] I've never gone with this sort of a project.

It's either been archetypally Indian or an outside in perspective.

But I think this is somewhere in between.

Mrs.

Beecham, I note your position.

Ms.

Osborne, he is not in need of an English governess.

- The only thing about that is Daniel was blocked as he came through the door there.

The rest of it was great.

- I think it has a level of historical authenticity, cultural authenticity, that is way above any kind of TV series.

It is something different.

(gentle upbeat music)