Monday 30 July 2018

Sutton Park - Prison In The Sun


Sutton Park - Prison In The Sun

Lisa remembers...

Yesterday (Sunday 29th July 2018) marked 25 years since the start of the filming for 'Sutton Park - Prison In The Sun' written by Nick Goodman and Paul Chandler,

It was on this that I first met Andrew when we acted together.


I had been asked by Nick to take on the part of Bernie Aulde alongside Paul as Bill, my husband.
I read the script with enjoyment, only being a little put off by the description of my character as middle-aged. I was 20 at this point and could never imagine being middle-aged!


But I learnt my script carefully, apart from one scene I that managed to completely miss, somehow. When it came to the recording, I tried unsucessfully to hide my script inside a magazine that was far too small to contain it.

I also remember the invisible lobster in one scene early on in the story, Bill and Bernie are having a picnic and are meant to have a lobster in their picnic box. But we were unable to afford or even locate a lobster so had to pretend it was in there.


We didn't have much time to film. managing to record the whole 90 minute story in around two and a half days. It was a very enjoyable experience and led onto many more fun filming experiences.

Andrew remembers...

I was cast as Denny who was described as a tall, Cockney chauffeur. Tall I can do without too much acting, I suppose, though we have a running joke on 'Round The Archives' that accents are not my strong point.


And this being 1993, I had my old orange Ford Fiesta which allowed me to fulfil the chauffeur part of the plot. Though given that not everyone in the cast were able to drive, we had to fudge some shots involving Bill and Bernie behind the wheel.


I do recall filming in a layby, with lots of traffic zooming along a few feet away and getting slightly itchy when the odd police car came past. Evidently, we didn't look too suspicious, as none of them ever stopped to make enquiries.

I also had to get shot at the end and perform my own slow-motion death. Not exactly HAVOC, but I was prepared to have a go.


Looking back at the pictures, I remember bringing a multi-coloured blanket along for the picnic scenes, and Nick supplied a bottle of whisky that had already had a couple of nips taken out of it, though not by me, I hasten to add!

We'd done a couple of video things up to this point, but this was certainly much more ambitious than previous projects. The fast turnaround was quite fun, and we just got on with it.


Without 'Sutton Park - Prison In The Sun', I might never have met Lisa. So this film will always hold a special place in my heart!

Thanks to Nick and Paul and everyone else who were involved!


(By Lisa Parker and Andrew Trowbridge)

(With thanks to Nick Goodman for the photos)

2 comments:

  1. We did try and negotiate with their agent, but sadly the jelly monsters were not available for the filming of this project. On a more serious note, I remember when our friend Linda watched the finished film she presumed that we had filmed in the real Sutton Park in Birmingham because that's where we were saying we were and where the film was meant to be set. Of course, we weren't there at all - but filming near Salisbury. From then onwards when making the TV version of SUTTON PARK - taking on board what Linda had said - I became more confident that I could just say episodes were set where ever I wanted them to be set because I now realised that most viewers don't think that deeply into things like that; that's just a job for us geeky folk. (...And, also, it probably didn't matter too much anyway as no more than about 3 people were watching back then!)

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  2. Reading this, it is a source of some regret to me now that I didn't have a similarly minded group of chums like yours back in the day. You seemed to be having such fun, you lucky, lucky people :-)

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