The Cup – a six-part comedy series for ±«Óãtv Two
Production notes
Jennifer Hennessy and Steve Edge star in The Cup, a comedy series for ±«Óãtv Two shot in a documentary style about Bolton-based Ashburn United Football Club and their quest to win the North and Midlands Under 11s Cup in Birmingham.
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Producer Sue Vertue of Hartswood Films sets the scene: "It sets out to be the story about the team and whether they win The Cup, but it soon becomes obvious that it's the parents who are behaving badly and the kids are just having fun!"
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The series is based on Canadian series The Tournament, about an under-11 ice-hockey team and their pushy parents.
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Sue explains: "I was at a party talking to a Canadian producer friend who I'd worked with many years ago. He told me about the series he was producing and it really caught my imagination.
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"It seemed to us a natural progression to turn it into a series about football for a British audience. They're as passionate about ice hockey in Canada as we are about football here which is why it seems to translate so well."
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Bolton seemed the ideal place to shoot the series, thanks to the city's deep-rooted love of the beautiful game: "We wanted to base it somewhere that has a real passion for football, and I think we're spot on!
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"Whilst we were filming I would drive home every night and see people playing football everywhere I looked, regardless of the weather, on any tiny bit of green space available.
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"Another factor that made it tempting in addition to this was the availability of terrific crews coming out of Manchester and the surrounding area."
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One of the writers, Moray Hunter, who adapted the original scripts alongside his long-term writing partner Jack Docherty, agrees: "The Cup had to be set in a football heartland, so the North West was always going to form a backdrop.
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"We thought about Newcastle for a while and then Bolton and for various reasons we ended up here. It's worked out very well and gave us quite a wide pool of actors."
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He admits that a lot of his inspiration in adapting the original scripts came from his own passion for sport: "I absolutely love it – football, cricket, rugby, anything really, I'm a good couch potato supporter as well!
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"I've always wanted to write something about sport. Jack and I have mainly written surreal comedy, silly sketch material really, so when Sue spoke to us about this project it seemed the perfect opportunity.
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"It's so realistic and based absolutely on recognisable situations, all around the country and in fact around the world – slightly exaggerated perhaps, but that combined with the sport element was just fantastic and a very exciting opportunity."
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Sue agrees: "What just grabbed me when I was talking about the series was how real it is.
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"Even at the casting there were endless funny stories from people which have echoes in the series; one women came in and told us about her fiancé who had recently been in court for hitting a referee – it seems to happen all over the place."
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Moray says: "It rapidly becomes apparent that the real story is the appalling behaviour of the kids' parents as they try to live their own dreams through their children.
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"Worst behaved of all is Terry McConnell who has incredibly high hopes for his son Malky, the Ashes' joint leading scorer.
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"Terry's obsession with his son's football career begins to spiral slightly out of control and leads to a long list of pretty terrible behaviour: a stress-related stroke for the team's coach, an attempt to poison Ranjit (the club's joint leading scorer and his son's direct competitor), and the near breakdown of his marriage to his long-suffering yet strangely reasonable wife Janice, played by Jennifer Hennessy."
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Janice in turn is wondering whether she made a mistake in choosing Terry over her ex, former Bolton player Steve Robson, Terry's boss at a local car dealership, whose tackle on Terry cut short his not-very-promising career when he was just 19.
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But while Terry dreams of his son Malky running out at the Reebok Stadium in the white of his heroes Bolton Wanderers, Malky secretly dreams of wearing the black and white checks of a chef's outfit, his real hero being Gordon Ramsay.
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Sue explains: "Terry will stop at nothing to get his son Malky to be the absolute best. But despite all this pressure, Malky is something of a keen chef and would probably like to spend more of his time cooking than playing football.
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"This leads to some lovely moments in the series such as when Malky is cooking something up when Terry gets back home unexpectedly. So he and his mum quickly swap places; he goes out and starts kicking a ball around whilst Mum takes over in the kitchen."
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And describing what she's apparently cooking can be a bit of a problem for Janice when she's put on the spot: "She's not nearly as good as Malky in the kitchen and never knows what adventurous recipe he's been conjuring up!"
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Still, football is everybody's main, uniting (or dividing) passion.
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The young team have a rather unusual financial backer, as Sue explains: "They're sponsored by a struggling local firm of funeral directors, owned by Sandra and Vincent Farrell, whose daughter Ali is also the only girl on the team and an ill-disciplined midfielder!
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"They did have a funeral sponsor in the Canadian version and at first we wondered whether it might be a bit of a strange idea. But then someone up here in Bolton said they had played a team recently who were in fact sponsored by a funeral home so it's obviously common practice!"
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Sue continues: "Everyone we cast can play football pretty well but they obviously hadn't actually played together as a team before, so that took a bit of getting used to.
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"A couple of the children came from an acting school, whilst some had never acted before."
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Haylie, who plays Ali, the only girl in the team, is actually quite an accomplished footballer and has played the game for more than two years: "In real life she actually plays for the Bolton Ladies Junior team and is a pretty good defence – you'd be hard pushed to get round her in midfield!"
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When filming got under way, getting children from opposing sides to concede goals was one of the trickiest aspects, as Sue explains: "We played quite a lot of games against local teams and it was pretty tough for all involved.
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"We needed different results and to see certain goals being scored by specific kids, so when we told them they had to concede three goals it was the last thing they wanted to do and we had to use our highest powers of persuasion."
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So the production team let the young and incredibly competitive footballers have a bit of a knock-about for ten minutes or so afterwards so they could get their own back by knocking a few balls into the back of the net!
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Sue adds: "Because we were filming with children, we had to strictly adhere to the special working hours and breaks that the kids needed.
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"In reality though we would be filming the kids playing football on the pitch, the first assistant would call a halt to the filming so the children could get their designated breaks and all that happened was that they would carry on playing football, because that's what ten-year-old boys (and girl) want to do when they're on a break!
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"The only difference was that we couldn't film them – and they didn't have to pretend to win or lose!"
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