Andy Hamilton on Outnumbered

With his sitcom Outnumbered (co-written with Guy Jenkin) returning to BBC One on Saturday, in The Guardian, Andy Hamilton reveals the secret of writing comedy for child actors.

...our top priority was to keep it all feeling natural, so we opted for some radical measures. Firstly, to avoid the children sounding scripted, we decided not to give them a script. We would write a script - otherwise we would not get paid - but we would only give it to the adult actors. The kids would not be allowed to see it. We would tell them the gist of a scene, then wait to see what came out of their mouths.

The first series of Outnumbered has won Hamilton and Jenkin a nomination for a Writers' Guild Award.