±«Óãtv

It's new, incredibly funny and there's nothing else like it on TV. Executive producers Japhet Asher and Jack Cheshire describe the tears and tantrums of the 18-month gestation period before Big Babies was brought kicking and screaming to C±«Óãtv.

Big Babies started as a twinkle in the eye of music video director Jon Riche, who'd always wanted to make a music video with a band's heads transposed on babies' bodies. Unable to convince a band to do it, he hooked up with writer and performer Spencer Jones and, after borrowing a couple of babies for an hour and filming on a sofa, the idea for Big Babies was born.

But it was when they joined forces with ±«Óãtv comedy producer Jack Cheshire that the project really started to grow: "I was making a taster tape for a sketch show with Jon and Spencer after Sharon Horgan introduced us and there was a sketch that the boys had just finished that featured the baby characters and showed the concept," recalls Jack.

"I played the clip at a ±«Óãtv event and C±«Óãtv executive producer Japhet Asher and I got talking, took the clip to the C±«Óãtv Controller Anne Gilchrist, who loved it and commissioned a script. The next thing we knew there was a pilot, then a series, and we've been working together on it ever since!"

Armed with a fantastic concept, the team then had to go about creating it – taking into consideration a process which included puppets, babies, visual effects and actors!

"It's an insanely complicated process," admits Jack. "Everything has to be written twice, shot twice and edited twice before the VFX team can go to work on the finished cut. It's quite an achievement to have made the show at all, let alone to have made something this good!"

Japhet explains the process in more depth: "We shoot the script with the babies and the puppets on location and then we do an edit and a complete rewrite because the babies don't do anything that was in the original script but do a load of completely brilliant other stuff instead. Babies take direction very badly you see! Then we shoot the boys' heads against greenscreen performing the dialogue. Then we edit it all again. And then a tiny and brilliant VFX team goes to work tracking and compositing the babies' heads.�

So how did they go about filming the babies?

"With difficulty," laughs Jack. "You can only have babies on camera for half an hour at a time so we had to have about ten babies on set a day. We took over an empty house in South London, built our sets in the reception rooms and used the rest of the house as a kind of creche-come-studio-come-production office. It was madness, with babies swapping costumes and chaperones and puppeteers leaping in and out of shot and a nursery upstairs and sets being built in the garden. Every time we called upstairs for a new pair of babies we'd get a message back saying they were having a nap, or doing a poo, or having their fourth lunch of the afternoon. They were very much like actors actually!"

Japhet recalls: "We made one episode in a pet shop. You look around and realise you've brought together the unholy trinity of TV no-nos; working with babies, animals and puppets – all at the same time in the same location. Pure media madness!"

But, despite the challenges, the new parents are immensely proud of their new comedy baby. Says Jack: "There's something about the mix of completely natural baby movements with Spencer and Martin's comedy performances that just works. It feels very fresh and funny and genuinely childlike. It's not like anything else you've ever seen and it appeals to everyone from the ages of two to 102.

"I've worked on some tough shows in the past but never one where literally everyone involved has had to work so hard, and for so long," he adds. "The whole team have been fantastic. Jon and Spencer have been unbelievable. I'm so proud of them. I've got two young kids – you can imagine how exciting it is for me to be able to show them a children's show – on C±«Óãtv – that I've been involved with and that I'm really proud of. That's about as rewarding as it gets!"

Japhet agrees, he says: "Occasionally, you are blessed to work on a show where everyone involved feels they are caught up in something special. Every department goes the extra half-mile to make it great and Big Babies is one of those rare projects and it shows in the results. But this brings with it a level of responsibility to make sure we deliver a series that lives up to all those expectations. I think we've done that, and the reward is in the laughter we're already hearing from kids."