![Max Detweiler [Alexander Armstrong], Baroness Schrader [Katherine Kelly], Maria Rainer [Kara Tointon] and Captain Georg von Trapp [Julian Ovenden].](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e39ecb603cc692ec049da53e5b7fb90788a4cd66/24_138_8321_4992/master/8321.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none)
On Sunday night, in a studio close to one of east London’s most car-clogged arteries, a fake Alpine hill will be alive with the sound of music in a £2m production that marks the first time a musical has been broadcast live on national television in the UK.
ITV’s two-and-a-half-hour transmission of The Sound of Music Live faces not just the logistical challenge of a live recording with a cast and crew of more than 400 and 177 costumes; there’s also the challenge of remaking one of the best-loved and most commercially successful films of all time.
Scheduled for the financially important Sunday night before Christmas, the show is part of a much bigger trend for commercial television to show live events in a bid to attract mass audiences and avoid the increasing trend towards catch-up television.
Elaine Bedell, ITV’s director of entertainment and comedy, said: “Live shows are increasingly important to channels like us. Providing unmissable big events which don’t feel the same if you don’t watch it live.”
Sean McGuire, managing director of media consultants Oliver and Ohlbaum, said that broadcasters were experimenting more and more with live television, “because you can’t ad skip live television”.
The desire to outfox technology that allows viewers to fast-forward through adverts has meant a return to the origins of drama serials, which were all aired live until the 1970s.
The 40th anniversary live recording of Coronation Street was so successful in 2000 that the experiment was repeated in 2010 and again this year for ITV’s 60th anniversary. The desire for event television to attract large audiences prompted the BBC to broadcast a live week of EastEnders for the show’s 30th anniversary.
There are obvious risks, of course; the worst was a 1958 transmission of the Armchair Theatre play Underground on ITV in which actor Gareth Jones died off-camera, forcing the cast to improvise for the remainder of the broadcast.
US broadcaster NBC The Sound of Music Live! for the first time in 2013 in a show that was critically panned but judged a “stratospheric success” after attracting nearly 19 million viewers. Live musical theatre is now a yearly tradition, according to the chairman of NBC Entertainment, Bob Greenblatt, after the network aired The Wiz last Thursday.
With The X Factor losing viewers – the final on Sunday pulled in its second lowest audience in its 11-year history – ITV is hoping that families will sit down and watch a show together in the Sunday before Christmas – and that advertisers will pay for them.
Director Coky Giedroyc, who was Bafta-nominated for The Virgin Queen, describes her version of The Sound of Music as a “whole different animal” to the NBC show, with a focus on the fact that the love story is set against the rise of the third reich. “The big thing is aiming for authenticity,” she said. “I wanted to keep it true to the original story.”
Bedell insists that the ITV show is “intended as a one-off” with a decision taken on possible follow-ups only taken after Sunday night.
ITV spent an estimated £750,000 on the set alone, with handblocked wallpaper in Maria’s attic room and a replica Abbey and Von Trapp villa. Having to work around the all-important ad breaks means that some costume changes will be a challenge – there’s a wig change that can only take 34 seconds, for example.
Yet Giedroyc said: “Weirdly, it’s not the logistics I’m worried about, it’s the delicacy.”
The actors, including former Strictly Come Dancing winner Kara Tointon as Maria, Downton Abbey actor Julian Ovendon as Captain Von Trapp and Alexander Armstrong as Max Detweiler, have been instructed not to belt the songs out to camera. Instead, the 17 cameras will film them as they would a stage play.
Tointon says: “This is Coky’s version. It’s not a fairytale but turbulent and traumatic.”
Olivier award-winning actress Maria Friedman, who plays Mother Abbess, suggested those who believed the story was old-fashioned were wrong, especially given the horrors of the refugee crisis. “People fleeing to find safety and struggling … It’s one of those forever stories isn’t it?”
The Sound of Music Live airs Sunday 20 December from 7.30pm.
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