Imagine Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver in the same kitchen; King Lear meets the Young Pretender in a steaming cauldron of adrenaline, testosterone and meat cleavers. In short, Trainspottingin the kitchen.
Our pitch was simple: a gripping two-part miniseries set in the extraordinary world of a top Glasgow restaurant, featuring 20 actors whose only experience of cooking was boiling an egg. Add sex, drugs and guns and we had a lethal recipe far removed from Monarch of the Glenand Mrs Brown.
EastEndersand Funlandwriter Simon Ashdown wrote a brilliant script inspired by two years of research and several weeks of 'work experience' in the kitchens of the country's leading restaurants. So far, so good.
Our mission impossible was to make a three-Michelin-star series in just six weeks of filming with the budget to fund an omelette. To add some spice, we seduced Eddie Izzard into playing our chef and Scottish newcomer James Young to play his young rival at the other end of the food chain. To help us achieve the impossible we recruited producer Jeremy Gwilt and production designer Dave Arrowsmith.
Our first challenge was to attract the finance to match our production aspirations. Where better to shoot a series set in Glasgow than Dublin? The Irish government and Irish Film Board gave us about 20% of the budget and many of our crew stepped straight off the set of movie Becoming Janeinto the frying pan of Kitchen.
We recced about 20 Dublin restaurants for locations but because it is such a booming city we couldn't persuade any of them to close down for the tiny fees we were offering. In any case, their kitchens were too small for an army of film workers.
The only alternative was to design, create and build our own version of The Ivy from scratch. The real cost of creating a fully operational kitchen and a stunning restaurant is about £3m; our budget was £200,000.
Fortunately we discovered a disused warehouse in the centre of Dublin on a waste paper recycling plant. We dubbed it Hanne Studios and overnight some wag painted Hannewood outside the unprepossessing barn.
Designer Dave Arrowsmith begged, borrowed and stole from skips to create a glamorous and stylish restaurant worthy of The Good Food Guideitself. Brick walls were sand-blasted, steel pillars were encrusted in gold paint and swathes of heavy brocade were shipped in to create Cosimo, Glasgow's answer to The Wolseley.
We bought the kitchen from bankrupt stock and Dave built it on a scale three times the size of a normal kitchen to allow for the Steadicam and tracks. His master-stroke was to build a lane outside the kitchen back door - the -traditional area for restaurant workers to grab some sex and drugs between shifts - and a huge green screen to allow us to 'key' in Glasgow in the background.
Everything and everyone had to look like the real thing. To this end, Eddie Izzard, who was working in the US, went into serious training in Hollywood kitchens to learn how to cook with even more attitude than he delivers in stand-up.
In Dublin, a brigade of chefs moved into the studio to train everyone how to chop with lethal knives and to handle red-hot pans. Filming 'chef' director Keiron Walsh also underwent the crash course in cooking so he could share the pain and understand the choreography of kitchen life, giving a new meaning to method directing.
What followed was the wildest, craziest and most exhilarating film shoot any of us had ever experienced. As actors cooked, real chefs cooked behind them for the endless takes. The studio dogs got fatter and fatter while the crew lost weight under the appalling heat.
One scene demanded a priceless black truffle. It was sourced in London, and flown to Dublin were it was confiscated by customs, suspecting either a drugs haul or a weapon of mass destruction - this was shooting from the hip on a grand scale.
Kitchens, we decided, are like operating theatres but more dangerous and life-threatening. Miraculously, no actors or crew were harmed during the making of Kitchen; the damage was limited to a few bruised egos, some collapsed soufflés and several bouts of heat exhaustion.
Since we were filming in July, night shooting was out of the question, so we 'borrowed' the warehouse next door and turned it into a sort of Blade Runnerset. The only condition was we had to be out by dawn so that the waste recycling plant could start again.
Finally, we flew to Glasgow to shoot the green-screen scenes for the kitchen alley and a montage of contemporary Scottish life to add some authenticity to the location. The footage was all shot guerrilla-style from the back of Dave's battered old car.
The end result is a heady mixture of drama and emotion that would reduce even Gordon Ramsay to tears - it's all there in its raw, ungarnished state waiting to be devoured. Bon appetit!
Kitchen is made by Ecosse Films for Five. Part one airs on Wednesday 28 February at 9pm and part two on 1 March at 9pm
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