How to lose an argument... and win the war April 2026

Pretty sure Libby hated me from the jump.

I mean, who would blame her? I was brought onto the show as a hatchet man. The producers had committed to letting the fourth season run itself while they developed other projects but then, presented with material she didn’t like, my old producing partner and bete noir called me in to offer an ‘edit’ and ultimately head up the re-writing of the season.

Libby was a key part of the team who had written the season now being dismantled by an ape with a keyboard and an attitude. Even as we ripped up the tracks behind her, she was busy writing the next season, based on the things I was now actively changing.

I trust that even this small sliver of the situation is enough to suggest just how dysfunctional it all was, and fraught, and disputatious. I mean, it did not HELP that I made Libby cry in the very first story meeting I attended. I swear on my honour I didn’t intend to. Indeed, I wasn’t even more than usually full-of-shit or especially passionate about the thing we were discussing. As far as I was concerned I was just on the other side of the argument and figured we’d let the best idea win. But I was also the barbarian at the gate, the hired gun, brought in by the cattle baron to inflame and antagonise the sheep farmers then shoot the poor bastards down when they reached for their guns.

At best I can be a lot, at worst I’m a rampaging ape - even when, probably especially when, I’m not aware I’m the black-hat in the story as I crash through people’s lives ‘like a man in a tram’…*

Not long after that first disastrous meeting things got both better and worse. The brief to edit the 4th season became a brief to re-write the 4th and to assume control of the writing of the 5th season. Libby had been on the show from the jump, she knew its characters and its world and its history far better than I did and so, when we built a small team to do a vast amount of work in a vanishingly short time, she remained/became an essential component - key to the process. And, as expected, Libby did the job, she put in the work and the hours - but I’m not sure she ever forgave me for the manner in which I arrived, or trusted me with the series that had been her baby for so long.

 As you can imagine, it was a frantic and fraught writing room – and not just because we had to do many months worth of work in weeks, all while the ongoing multi-unit mega production train raced inexorably down the track behind us.

The story debate that left Libby in tears and me confused and regretful would keep rumbling throughout the whole process and only really be decided towards the very end of the last season – and that aided by my then 18 year old daughter and her feelings about ‘cock-teasing’. But that, as they say, is another story.

This argument was about religion. (When has that ever caused any serious dispute?)

More specifically, this argument was about what a character might do when faced with a traumatic life experienced and if they might ‘find religion’. I very much felt he could and should. Not because of any great conviction or ideology of my own, but because it felt like a totally plausible response, seemed to offer the opportunity for future drama and – frankly – we didn’t have any other option that seemed to work.

Libby was very much against this idea. And when I say very much, I mean furiously, incandescently, enraged by the idea. Obviously, because she is a very sweet, very calm and almost entirely as evolved as I am not, this was expressed in tightly controlled reason and rationality, not the mad poo flinging for which I am rightly renowned.

(We would later agree that Libby is kinda WASP to my APE. The relevance of sharing that will become clear with additional indulgence and a little more scrolling.)

This argument had been raging for a while and, unlike the longer running debate, needed an answer soon, we had pages to fill and episodes to deliver. Eventually, unable to achieve consensus, I took the debate to the Executive Producer. I’m a dick, but I’m not an asshole. I laid out both sides of the argument and made it very clear that Libby very much did not like this idea. Our thoughtful and intelligent Executive Producer considers the Damascene option and agreed with me, finding God did indeed seem like a valid choice and fecund ground for this particular character in this particular situation. Armed with his opinion, I marched back into the writing room and decaled the idea approved.

Obviously, Libby was unimpressed and the ape, irritated by her obvious distress, announced he would go make warm beverages – his go to move when he needed to escape the bloody room for five peaceful minutes in which his brain might actually have chance to engage.

And I’m here to tell you, spent those 5 minutes well. While the kettle boiled, while I laid out the tray of tea and coffee, while I went through that familiar and soothing ritual, I muttered to myself, I chuntered and scowled and I told myself this was a battle I had won and justly so! Bloody Libby!

Oddly, while the warm beverage intermission did nothing to convince me otherwise, the fifty steps back to the writing room made all the difference. By the time I put the tray down on that long white table I had decided. I told Libby and the room that we should take some time and come up with a new, fresh, hopefully even better way for this character to process his trauma, and that’s just what we did.

I don’t honestly remember what we actually decide and, in the grander scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is this: from that moment onwards, Libby and I found ourselves in a different place. I think (maybe) she realised this wasn’t just about winning arguments for me, I didn’t need to just win whatever the cost, I actually really did want to find the best idea and let that win, but also – whenever possible – I genuinely wanted to bring everyone along on that journey with me, not just throw poo and impose myself on the room as only a true ape can.

For my part, I leant an invaluable lesson that I still carry with me some 15 years later – sometimes, if you want to win the war, you need to lose the battle; if only to prove that, even when the blood is up and the stakes seem like life and death, you do still care about the people fighting at your side.

At the end of that production, still one of my proudest, Libby gifted me a card that retains a key spot on one of my multiple ego walls, just as she retains a very dear spot in my heart.

*Marillion, The Space

On top of a girl like a dream in a hotel
Falling towards something out of control
Unable to miss like the man in the tram
Crashing your car in Amsterdam

He did it without knowing, didn't feel a thing
He just wrecked it and kept going