The Series
What is it like making a programme like Strange? A little like Three Years Hard Labour, followed by a Public Flogging - except slightly less light-hearted.

First, you have to get up fantastically early every day (with one day off some weekends) and drive yourself somewhere a very long way away using directions on a piece of paper handed to you the night before, and after many, many hours of filming with just a short respite in a caravan spent taking off three fleeces, two jumpers and rubber leggings, in order to start putting them on again moments later, drive home in a daze, throw your clothes in a corner and slump into bed. When the pile of clothes gets bigger than the bed, it's simpler to move house.

Then there are the difficult decisions. Now, you may have all kinds of ideas about how the programme could be better when you see it (as of course, do I), but it actually starts with Nothing At All. Just nothing. And from that, every tiny detail has to be defined. And the defining is endless. Questions cropped up daily, hourly, by the minute - and here's the difficult thing - there is no model or predecessor to fall back upon.

The show, as I mentioned before, is a murder mystery, just like Agatha Christie, but also with a developing back-story of the characters, and weekly fantastic elements. Eventually, it was clear that it operated (as an astute poster observed) by a series of bendable, but unbreakable rules.

These rules are somewhat buried beneath the surface, and might be mistaken for repetition; however they are essential for the integrity of the piece. Often, though, it's difficult to work out exactly how they should be applied.

Sometimes the answers to pieces of interpretation involve multiple possibilities in order to maintain interesting future developments; a particularly difficult problem for an actor or director. The balance between mystery, clarity, shock and humour has to be calculated at every moment. Sometimes we had to trust in an apparently unfathomable series of events to finally produce the visual effect we needed.

And then there's the food. You may start the shoot pledging to stay on the Atkins Plan, but after a couple of days standing in the rain for eleven hours your whole being starts to scream for a bacon roll - and you begin to convince yourself that because of the intense cold your body really needs a slice of Battenberg just to survive... and then finally, like a suspect breaking under interrogation, you suddenly find yourself cramming small props and chairs in your mouth and chewing.

I couldn't have survived without the talents of Richard, Sam, Ian, Andrew, Will and Timmy. Or without the professionalism of Marcus Mortimer, Joe Ahearne and Simon Massey. And the artistry of Paul Bond, Tom Brown, Neill Gorton, Alan Marques, Jan Sewell, Hazel Pethig and Dan Jones. And of course all the others.

This is a fantastic website, with which I'm constantly delighted. Thanks to all of those who posted positive responses to the show. And thanks also to those who posted interesting criticisms. And to those who were just plain nasty... I forgive you�

My name is Andrew Marshall and thanks for watching my story.