My Hero

My Hero's hero

For almost 20 years Paul Mendelson wrote TV commercials for the big ad agencies, but in his forties he realised that it was time to pursue another dream he'd always had – writing sitcoms.

In his spare moments (on the Tube, on the loo at work) he scribbled down his first script – a sitcom about a middle-aged man's relationship with a much younger woman. This became the hit BBC show May to December, and his new career had begun.

Birth of a hero

Funnily enough, it was a friend of Paul's who inspired the creation of Thermoman. That's not to say that Paul tends to hang out with slightly thick alien superheroes. In fact, the friend in question was a high-powered lawyer who was always juggling hundreds of things at once.

Paul was amazed at how efficient his lawyer friend was, and one day made the observation that "When a client snaps his fingers, he's got to be there immediately, just like a superhero."

And that was it – Paul got thinking about an everyday superhero, saving the Earth while trying to deal with domestic suburban life. My Hero was born.

The original Thermoman

Ardal O'Hanlon was not actually the first choice to play Thermoman. Believe it or not, it was Craig McLaughlan – yes, the strapping former Neighbours star – who starred in the My Hero pilot episode.

It was Craig's work on the British series Bugs that led to him being suggested for the Thermoman part, and he depicted the superhero as a clueless American hunk. While Paul Mendelson approved of Craig, BBC bosses had second thoughts, thinking the public wouldn't warm to an Australian playing an American in a cosy British sitcom.

Craig was duly axed from the role, and the Head of Comedy at the BBC suggested Father Ted's Ardal O'Hanlon.

Cunning concepts

Due to the amazing cult success of Father Ted, Ardal O'Hanlon had been inundated with offers of starring roles in new sitcoms (with four offers coming each week).

He'd resisted them all, looking for something really original to work on and agreed to My Hero immediately. According to Paul Mendelson, this was because Ardal "could immediately 'see' the series in his head".

Paul puts this down to the fact that My Hero is a "high concept" sitcom. This basically means that it's based on one very strong and neat idea – "superhero as average bloke". Most sitcoms aren't high concept, relying more on character interaction than a striking, unique situation.

Paul believes his advertising background means he's naturally geared towards snappy high concept ideas - indeed, another of his sitcoms was So Haunt Me, about an elderly Jewish ghost.

In the studio

My Hero is filmed in front of a studio audience – apart from any scenes set outdoors or featuring special effects (such as the bits where George and Janet have full-fledged conversations with their super-powered babies).

Such scenes are shot beforehand and showed to the audience on monitor screens in between the live action. The constant switching obviously disrupts the flow of the episode for the audience, but it was all much worse during the first series, when Ardal still hadn't quite got the knack of changing into his Thermoman outfit (which involves putting on fake muscle padding).

In fact, there would be half-hour delays as he fitted himself inside the uniform. Luckily, by the third series he'd mastered the art of superhero transformation, and got it down to a few minutes.