Stop Making Sense - From Walford to Emmerdale
East Leeds Magazine interview with Mat Cooper , March 2010
Matthew Cooper is a resident of Leeds 15, but he’s spent a lot of time in Emmerdale, Walford and Hollyoaks as a television soap writer. Mat grew up in Barwick in Elmet where he spent his teenage years making short films with a group of like-minded friends. Mat won the first ever Lloyds Bank Film Challenge at age 18. The competition prize was to have his short script Family Style made and broadcast by Channel Four. The film was shot in Tadcaster in 1993, and starred a then-unknown Ewan McGregor who was only 22 at the time...
“Ewan hung around Barwick In Elmet for a day perfecting his Yorkshire accent while swilling bitter in the New Inn,” remembers Mat, “He was a good laugh.”
Family Style was broadcast on Channel Four to critical acclaim: “It didn’t really lead to anything, but it did give me the confidence to start writing seriously and I made some excellent contacts.”
At 22, Mat was working as a waiter in a cocktail bar. Sorry, Mat was a warehouse operative at Burton's on Torre Road when his screenplay ‘Sober’ won the prestigious Oscar Moore Screenplay award. The script was picked up by Andrew MacDonald the producer of Trainspotting along with Duncan Kentworthy the producer of Notting Hill. With a director on board the film looked set to be made with money from the American film studio Universal. It was very exciting for a while, but the film eventually proved too risky for the producers, the script however did do the rounds of TV companies and Mat found himself writing local soap Emmerdale.
“I wrote Emmerdale for a year and found it was a great learning experience, I was very proud of some of the episodes I did but I got itchy feet and jumped ship to EastEnders where I stayed for a year - chiefly writing episodes involving the Shane Ritchie character Alfie Moon. I wrote the episode where Alfie told Kat he loved her – it got some of the biggest viewers in EastEnders history.” After EastEnders Mat took some time out to recoup: “Soap writing is fun, but people don’t realise what hard work it is”.
In 2006 Mat was contacted by Bryan Kirkwood the new producer of ailing teen soap Hollyoaks: "I went over to join the team as a storyliner, an important job that involves working out the longer running stories. Within six months Hollyoaks had tripled its viewing figures and began to win awards. We just started to push the envelope as far as we could, to see how much we could get away with. We had gangsters, we had a serious gay love story, we had a really twisted stalker story, and we tried to create the ultimate soap bitch, and all the time we kept as much humour in it as possible”.
While working at Hollyoaks Mat began to experiment with youtube: “I realised then that the internet was starting to open up. Mersey TV was investing heavily in online content, I thought it was the future. And I still do, I love making my own stuff and just putting it out there.”
After leaving Hollyoaks Mat banded together with Ian Bevitt - a Bafta winning TV director, and Martyn Smith - the producer of Dragon’s Den: “We wanted to make an online show for kids, we didn’t really know how we were going to do it. Dylan Ogden was storylined by me, Ian and Martyn and I wrote the actual episodes. All that part went very easily, the real battle was getting it seen.”
Dylan Ogden as the show would be called follows the lives & loves of a group of teenagers, the first series had ten three minute episodes, all set at the school bus stop: “We shot it in 2007, great- one week shoot, great cast that we had found locally in Leeds. It was edited and fine-tuned later in the year. By Christmas 2008 we had the first series ready to show people.It went to the myspace website who made a massive offer, but they wanted all the rights so Mat walked away. It was even with an American studio at one point who wanted it set in the USA but nothing materialised and it became a struggle to finish the first series. What little funding we had dried up with the onset of the much publicized credit crunch. So we had to do the rest on a shoestring.”
After begging and borrowing www.dylanogden.com was launched in late 2009: “It’s steadily getting hits and feedback, and we’ve just recently put the series on youtube as well. It’s funny with the internet, things either don’t take off, or suddenly go massive. I’ve got high hopes for the series. If we can get enough hits to generate advertising interest we can make the next series – it’s already written and waiting.”
Get Mc.Gregor is another of Mat's creations. He actually made this ten years ago and has just got round to uploading it on You Tube, you can also find it on our website www.eastleedsmag.net (in the ELM TV bit.) Filmed in Crossgates, Barwick, Scholes, Aberford and Gipton, it's East Leeds very own gangster comedy containing drugs, gambling, street fights, David O'Leary and a daft television writer who can't pay his mortgage. Check out the local locations in a rip roaring ride of sex, drugs & rock n roll with dodgy acting by dodgy geezers. It's filmed in 3 parts and Mat being a typical awkward literary type won't upload another episode until he's had 300 hits on the first one. So get clicking to get Get Mc.Gregor!
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