The Way I See It: Ben Taylor

I was born in Cambridge in 1977, but grew up in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. It felt as far away from the film industry as you could possibly get. The prospect of working on set was always an impossibility - I didn't dare to dream about it, because it was something other people did in other countries.

My earliest memory is probably watching The Dukes of Hazzard with my parents. It was an episode where one of them is locked in the boot of a car with a rattlesnake. It stuck because I think it set off my life long snake phobia.

My mum was a nurse and my dad was the headmaster at a small prep school. I'm the middle of three brothers, and we grew up on campus. It was full of boarders, but we were living in the house at the bottom of the hill. 

Cinema just got me and never let go. 

Because I was a bit of a naughty little shit, I used to be sent to see my dad. That was when we would cross paths at school.

All of my ambitions, self-image and self-worth were based on films and film characters. At various points I definitely wanted to be a ninja, definitely a lawyer, definitely an architect... staple characters from American movies.

Cinema just got me and never let go. To this day, I think it’s the best way to spend time. 

Going to movies didn’t make me antisocial - I had friends and stuff – but I knew that film was my gang. That has carried on to this day.

We had a beautiful old art deco Odeon in Scarborough. I vividly remember going to see Ghostbusters. My mum and dad took me. Going in, it felt impossibly big and immersive - like the IMAX does to us now as adults.

I know it’s not a cool thing to say, but I miss people smoking in cinemas. I remember the texture that gave it; being able to see the projection beams.

Above: Lunchtime Is Coming for Hodor actor Kristian Nairn in Taylor's spot for KFC.

I did a degree called Film, TV and Radio Studies. I dropped the radio part of it on day two. It had never been part of my life. It’s crazy to think now, in the world of podcasts, that it’s probably the biggest element.

I was always keen on the practical side of things. When we got access to cameras and the edit suites, everybody else would put it off for a couple of months, until the last minute, but I was in on the first Monday of that week, shooting.

After graduating, I moved to Toronto to ‘find my fortune’. I was a PA and a video assist, but my visa was only a year long. I did meet my wife over there - 24 years ago - and we came back together.

In London, I finally got an interview with [legendary music video director] Phil Griffin, who turned out to be one of the most important people in my life. Instantly we were, and still are, firm friends.

In my first year as a director, my niche was McFly videos and Ministry of Sound pastiches.

Phil was one of the biggest deals in music videos at that point [2000]. He ran his own company [Alchemy Pictures] with his brother. I was his assistant and we made mega-scale pop videos at high turnover rate.

We were never the coolest team, but we were the envy of other people because we were getting to work on bigger budgets with bigger toys.

Phil was a brilliant salesman, and an amazing director of talent. He made people feel good - especially when directing women and girl bands. People just gravitated towards him.

In my first year as a director, my niche was McFly videos and Ministry of Sound pastiches. You can sort of see a through-line to what I do now: comedy. I'd always grown up on comedy.

Above: The Fiery Hawk sketch for Cardinal Burns, shot by Taylor, which went viral.

I was always aiming for feature films, but my TV career was the first to take off.

The first thing I did was a sketch show called Cardinal Burns. I was a mega fan of theirs [writer/performers Seb Cardinal and Dustin Demri-Burns] after seeing them in Edinburgh. I’d be asked before in general meetings, “What do you want to do?” and I’d find it hard to articulate because I just wanted to do everything. But every so often, something will present itself as such a clear-cut answer, and at that point I could answer: “What I want to do is them.”

When you’re watching live comedy, you’re watching the finished product. They’ve written it, so they know how to perform it. With Cardinal Burns it was like I was part of the team with Seb and Dustin; visualising it and executing it for a new medium.

We shot some stand-out sketches. One of which, Fiery Hawk, they had filmed before me, but I was lucky enough to reshoot it with them. I always watch the Top 50 Sketches of All Time shows on TV, and it's never on that list. I genuinely think it's better than any of the Monty Python stuff. I think it’s perfection.

[Sketch comedy is] the perfect format for getting your break into commercials.

There’s a dearth of sketch shows now, which kills me. They’ve taken different shapes - TikTok and YouTube is where that form has now migrated to. It’s still the perfect format for getting your break into commercials. We would churn through characters and locations and costumes.. You’d put so much effort into a single character and prosthetics, and then you were literally binning them at lunchtime, never to use them again. It’s just eclectic.

I got really lucky that the creatives at Swatch liked my stuff and liked me. I got to travel around the world and make commercials with them. They were humorous but non-dialogue based, because it was an international brand. And I got to work with DPs that I’d admired - DPs that wouldn’t touch me for music videos. 

The piece I found most influential was pretty non-traditional. It was a Choose Your Own Adventure online film for Lynx which, at the time, was incredibly cutting-edge and ambitious.

When we [Taylor and MindsEye’s Hughie Phillips] pitched it, up against far bigger and more sought-after directors, they were like, “Do you think you can pull it off?”. And we, younger and stupider, went, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this is fine.” They made it clear that it would involve days of filming and weeks of editing but we just went for it. When it was put together by a programmer, it worked thank god. And it was brilliant. We were just making the most of any and every opportunity and trying to over deliver. 

That’s been the story of my career, really - it’s never been planned. It’s always just been taking the best opportunity at the right time, and hoping for the best.

Above: Clips from Netflix show Sex Education.

What you hope for as a director with new material is that you have a really clear vision of how you would execute it, and that was the case with Sex Education. So, in my first meeting, I went in and said, “I would do this. I wouldn't do this. I would change that." It was quite a ballsy take-it-or-leave-it approach because I didn't think I was available for it anyway. But they liked what I had to say, my other job fell through and I came on board to pitch it to Netflix. That early involvement makes it stand apart from the other shows I’ve done.

The show was designed to feel different. And I think that was a big part of its success. I took a lot of shit for it at the time, because people said, “Where and when is this set? My British school experience wasn't like this." It wasn't supposed to be representative of anybody's experience. It was a fantasy, a love letter to John Hughes, who was instrumental in me doing what I do now.

[Sex Education] was designed to feel different. And I think that was a big part of its success. 

The casting was a joy. I love casting, and I think I’m good at it because I’m optimistic and enthusiastic in every session. Lauren Evans, the casting director and dear friend, has great taste, great access, and great vision. Ninety percent of the cast had never been on set before. 

Connor Swindells, who played Adam, was the first person we hired. He’s genuinely one of the finest actors I’ve ever worked with. In the show he has, like, a 10th of the words everybody else has, and yet is one of the most indelible characters.

Maeve was the hardest role to cast. We saw great actors, but none of them quite had that thing. Emma Mackey came in, and I remember thinking, "Please be good, please be good." The moment she started, it was clear - she wasn’t just good, she was extraordinary.

Watching young actors I’ve worked with go off and become superstars is such a joy.

Above: Catastrophe, Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan's hit show, on which Taylor directed three seasons.

With Catastrophe the scripts were already perfect, so I felt my role was to do justice to what Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney had written.

When you're lucky enough to work with writers at that level, you’re reading it and it’s this absolute churn of emotions in your head and stomach, thinking, "This is so funny and so moving." The challenge is that you have to simply not mess it up. But at the same time you can't be in awe of the material; otherwise, it will feel stilted.

One of the biggest things we did on Catastrophe was making sure it had real energy and pace. The initial episodes were structured with the meet-cute and getting pregnant taking up two episodes. Channel 4 gave the best - and most aggressive - note: "Can all of that happen before the opening titles?" So we condensed Episodes 1 and 2 into the pilot, and that gave the show its breathless, fast-paced feel.

[Sharon Horgan] knew [Catastrophe] was funny, acerbic and painfully real, but I don’t think she imagined it would be considered romantic.

The handheld style, the fast delivery, and the in-late-out-early approach to scenes all fed into that energy. It had to feel real and relatable. One thing that makes Sharon such an incredible writer is that she doesn’t mind her characters being unlikable, which meant they could say and do mean things. I felt my job was to make sure the audience still fell in love with them.

I tend to find the romance in things, and I think that played a role in Catastrophe. After the first season, someone in a Q&A asked, "How does it feel to have made such a romantic show?" and Sharon looked surprised. She knew it was funny, acerbic and painfully real, but I don’t think she imagined it would be considered romantic.