Deadpan Pictures’ Ailish McElmeel on Producing Video Nasty

The BBC Three drama Video Nasty takes viewers back to the 1980s, when a moral panic about unregulated VHS horror movies swept the U.K. and Ireland. Across six episodes, three Dublin teenagers set out to collect a series of the legally banned films with the ultimate goal of selling them for a premium price. They end up, however, on a twisting journey that sees them get mixed up in a murder investigation.

Co-produced by Deadpan Pictures and Boat Rocker, the series bowed in the U.K. and Ireland earlier this year on BBC Three, BBC Northern Ireland and Virgin Media Television. Ailish McElmeel, executive producer of Video Nasty and co-founder of Deadpan Pictures, sat down with TV Drama Weekly to discuss how the show came about, period accuracy, striking the balance between comedy and drama and more.

TV DRAMA: Where did the idea for Video Nasty originate, and why was now the right time to tell this story?
MCELMEEL: Video Nasty was written by longtime Deadpan Pictures collaborator Hugh Travers. Hugh and I had worked across a number of Deadpan projects. In fact, Video Nasty was born out of Hugh’s personal experience of censorship and outrage around a project we were developing together for Channel 4. The series, Hungry, was a comedy set against the backdrop of the Irish famine [from 1845 to 1852]. When word got out about the series’ development, there was an immediate and visceral response online to the news, with Hugh being vilified on Twitter and opinion pieces popping up in The Guardian and other broadsheets. There was a protest outside Channel 4’s Horseferry offices, plus a counterprotest, and eventually a Liberal MP brought up the controversy in the House of Commons, calling the proposed series “insensitive and potentially highly offensive.” No one in the press or outside of Deadpan and Channel 4 had read the script, and yet the moral hysteria raged on. The series was being developed by an Irish writer for an Irish company, but still, the outrage persisted. Ultimately, Channel 4 put the series in turnaround. However, Hugh sorted the experience away and, at the top of 2020, came to me with the pitch for Video Nasty. He wanted to explore the experience and see what drives people to censorship, and the 1980s “video nasty” panic was a great place to explore this.

The story couldn’t be more pertinent in 2025. We might believe that cancel culture was born with social media, but moral panics have existed long before Facebook and Twitter, and we feel the distance of the 1980s period setting allows us to fully explore the human urge to censor that which we don’t fully understand.

TV DRAMA: What went into making the series feel authentically of the ’80s? Tell us about getting the set design, costume design and even the dialogue correct for 1985 Dublin.
MCELMEEL: It was important to us to truly capture the look and feel of the 1980s, so attention to detail was crucial. We wanted to capture the attention of both younger audiences and older viewers. We pulled inspiration from shows like Stranger Things, playing with that sense of nostalgia in an authentic and funny way.

Collaboration is essential, and working with director Chris Smith and production designer Tara O’Reilly was a treat as they brought this world to life. They created two very distinct worlds in Video Nasty—the sharply designed yet authentic 1980s Dublin setting of Billy and Con’s school and home world, and then the more folksy and muted tones in the repressed fictional English village of Ashdale. Chris has an amazing eye for detail that elevates any story. The production design team researched meticulously, from the video covers and the furniture to posters.

Most impressive from my point of view is the iconic video shop set. Tara and her team transformed it from an old chemist that hadn’t been occupied since the ’80s into a kitsch but authentic 1985 video shop. Getting clearances for the posters, adding the Halloween mask and other props to embed us in the horror genre was very important to Chris. The Ashdale pyre design was another standout, paying homage to The Wicker Man, of course!

Joanne O’Brien’s costumes were also key in building this world. In 1985 Dublin, people didn’t have a lot of money. Joanne captured this authentically and created a wonderful contrast with the conservative dress of the Ashdale villagers. For the villains, the costume team had great fun incorporating the chilling plague-mask motif. Rachel Gordan and Kelly White also captured the essence of the period with their larger-than-life hairstyles and bold makeup.

In terms of scripting and dialogue, there is a contemporary feel to the banter between the three leads, while Hugh was very particular about not straying too far from what would have been said in the ’80s. He researched lots of ’80s interviews and TV clippings, and, of course, Chris was a teen in the ’80s, which helps authenticate some of the slang in particular.

We were also fortunate enough to secure licensing for several video nasties to include their artwork and clips, which grounded the world-building. Ironically, we selected clips that would get through the censors for modern-day broadcast television.

TV DRAMA: It’s a comedy-horror series. How do you go about striking the balance between the comedic aspects and the dramatic, emotional beats?
MCELMEEL: While Video Nasty is a darkly comic coming-of-age horror dealing with censorship and societal fears, we at all times wanted the series to be fun! It has a clear sense of adventure. Hugh and Chris created a unique balance between the humor and the tension-building of the horror sequences. It does get scary at times, but it’s never gratuitous. We wanted it to feel like a tribute to the video nasties of the era, so we were always working to find the right balance in tone. At its heart, the show is more about acceptance and confronting things you don’t understand.

TV DRAMA: Video Nasty was co-commissioned and co-produced internationally. Tell us about how this international team came together and the importance of cross-border collaboration.
MCELMEEL: The series was a co-commission between BBC Northern Ireland, BBC Three and German broadcaster WDR, as part of the ARD Fab Fiction initiative, with Virgin Media Ireland prebuying the series. Deadpan had worked previously with Eddie Doyle, head of content commissioning at BBC Northern Ireland, back when he was at RTÉ, so we had a strong working relationship established. Frank Tonsmann from WDR had boarded the series after we won the [Content London] Drama Pitch Award. Virgin’s acquisition was an important addition to the series, as it’s so important that audiences in both Ireland and the U.K. could watch the series. All broadcasters worked very well together, and there was a synchronicity in terms of notes and indeed shared vision for the marketing artwork.

As an indie in a small country, Deadpan has always looked outside of Ireland for co-production opportunities, with four series we produced last year all co-produced with the U.K., Canada, Germany and Belgium.

TV DRAMA: Are there plans to expand the series beyond six episodes? What are your hopes for a continuation?
MCELMEEL: Yes, indeed. As with all good horrors, Video Nasty was screaming out for a sequel! We held a story room in December in Dublin, and Hugh Travers is currently writing a revised episode one, having already delivered the season overview. We’re working toward production dates later this year.

TV DRAMA: How does Video Nasty align with the types of stories Deadpan Pictures wants to tell? How does it complement the company’s existing slate?
MCELMEEL: As with all Deadpan series, Video Nasty is character-led. It’s exploring and reflecting cancel culture and censorship, but doing so with humor to make even the darkest aspects accessible to audiences. Drama with humor is Deadpan’s USP. Our previous shows have allowed us to look at grief in the aftermath of suicide (Northern Lights) and the world of death photography (Death Still), and even our earliest series, Can’t Cope Won’t Cope, explored a toxic friendship. The upcoming series Recipes for a Nervous Breakdown plunges the audience into the middle of a character’s drug-induced nervous breakdown, but it does so with honesty and humor. We thrive on character-driven narratives that allow us to explore society in new and fresh ways.