One is the mistress of her soap opera domain, marching to a delightfully syncopated “toy band” score. The other is the epitome of the two faces of good and evil, raging to a marvelously diabolical, full-blooded horror-comedy score. Both soundtracks are united by one dynamically fresh scoring voice from across the pond steadily making his Hollywood way. It’s a multi-visaged voices that belongs to one Blair Mowat. Hailing from Edinburgh and stamped a diehard Doctor Who fan, Mowat moved from Whoverse audiocasts into scoring the real deal with the spin-off show “Class” all while throwing the notorious author into her own plot with “Agatha and the Midnight Murders” and creating the enchanted sound for an older time lord named “The Amazing Mr. Blunden.” Receiving a BAFTA nomination among his work for the English National Ballet and The Royal Shakespeare Company, it would take a Brit box to transport Mowat’s impressive work for American ears to behold – no more impressively for our English TV enthusiasts than with “Nolly.” Helena Bonham-Carter delightfully embodies the iron lady of British soaps, giving her all for the incredulous storylines for decades until she’s given the sexist sack. But leave it to Mowat’s never-say-die music to create tremendous energy and empathy for a woman who’s a character herself. It’s wonderfully thematic scoring that effortlessly struts with perkily percussive eccentricity before going for the tearful box of Kleenex like there’s no tomorrow.
Yet even the seriocomic chops of Nolly would have to reckon with the force of personality that Mowat gives to Eddie Izzard for another modern transformation of Hammer Pictures, here having another go with the nice-bad doc of their previous “Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll” and “Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.” This latest spin that would make the latter twist give a diabolical chuckle – especially given Eddie Izzard in the drolly diabolical roles. Of course a nice guy ex-con just trying to keep his job while taking care of The Doc is no match for the derangement ahead, which Mowat plows into like a black horror comedy scoring freight train of choruses, dainty bells and an operatic orchestra. Recalling the likes of Danny Elfman, Alan Silvestri and David Arnold in conveying a sense of joy for evil run amuck, not to mention the full blooded stormy melodic ghosts of way more serious Hammer composers of yore. Mowat’s wacky “Jekyll” is a delight that shows the composer’s ability to capture extreme characters with strikingly fun, richly thematic scoring that bodes well for notoriety on our shores.
Blair Mowat Attends BAFTA TV Craft Awards 2024. where he’s nominated for his score to “Nolly”
Tell us about your composing start. And what do you think your upbringing in Edinburgh brought to it?
I started playing the Celtic harp when I was 6 years old so that definitely reflected being brought up in Scotland. My repertoire was a mixture of classical and folk music, and my first teacher, Wendy Stewart, taught me by ear which I suspect helped develop my sense of melody and composing. I studied piano shortly after, but it wasn’t until I was a teenager and started to play in bands that I really found my love of composing through songwriting. My first score was for the school play, which that year was “The Tree Estates”, a satirical play in Old Scots language from many centuries ago. The emotion in the music made one of my teachers, Mr. Chalmers, cry and that’s when I realized the power that music can have to support a piece of narrative. He wasn’t known for showing his emotions so I knew I must have done something right!
In 2016, you scored the Doctor Who spin-off “Class”. Did your scores for Big Finish, who make the audio dramas for Doctor Who, help you develop your craft and break into the TV world of the show? What else led you to landing that job?
In 2014 I worked for Murray Gold for a while, including working on Doctor Who, and that process really helped teach me about the logistics of writing for a live orchestra on a tight deadline. It also introduced me to the post-production process of Doctor Who, and any other challenges of delivering something cinematic on a TV schedule. My work in the audio world, composing music for the Torchwood audios, only started shortly before my work on “Class” and I’m not sure how much it helped to be honest as it’s a very different budget and schedule. However, it did help me practice writing music incredibly quickly! I’d also written the theme tune for the official BBC Doctor Who Fan Show, and I suspect that there were enough people around who knew each other who could confirm I was easy to work with and delivered good results on time. I think reliability and being enjoyable to work with is just as important as writing great music! However, it was probably my independent feature work and short films that landed me the gig with “Class,” as I had a large back catalogue of high-quality work to share with them when I was being interviewed, as well as creating a bespoke pitch for what I thought that musical world might sound like. That, and just genuinely being a huge fan of the show and the universe – I know that show inside out and that’s really helpful when there’s 60 years of history you have to take into account. Even if you’re not referencing the musical past, you know what has come before so you can be subversive and push it into sonic territory that it hasn’t explored before.
Tell us about your first feature length works and how do they compare to some of your more recent feature jobs like “The Amazing Mr. Blunden?”
My first features were independent features from way back in 2010/2011. I composed the score for four films – “Electric Man”, “7 Welcome to London”, “Frequencies” and “Magpie”. They were all microbudget films that had come out of a new phase of filmmaking where cameras like the Canon 5D Mk II and the Red Camera allowed filmmakers to shoot digitally on a low budget but still produce a very filmic result. The result was a burst of ambitious filmmakers with good looking films but very little money for music. That was actually perfect for me as I’d recently graduated and was willing to work under those budget constraints to see what I could pull off with lots of hard work and enthusiasm. Almost everything was using samples inside the computer as I had no budget for live instrumentalists and didn’t even have a decent microphone at that point. I also had no budget for a mixer, so I had to learn to mix everything myself which really helped me develop those skills. Over a decade later, I would be conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestr) for Mark Gatiss’s directorial debut “The Amazing Mr. Blunden”, working with Anthony Weeden (a wonderful orchestrator), and John Prestage from the legendary Air Studios, who mixes most of my projects these days. That was a very special project as Elmer Bernstein had composed the original version of that film in 1972, so I had some big boots to fill! The great thing about having come into the industry very young is I did a tremendous number of short films and independent features that allowed me to learn on the job and develop my craft. So, when something like “The Amazing Mr. Blunden” came along, I was ready to seize and enjoy the moment of having a bigger budget and getting to work with a world-class orchestra. There’s quite a bit of intricate orchestration in that score which I’m really proud of, and we got permission from the Bernstein estate to quote Elmer directly at the end of the film. I saw Elmer conduct the RSNO on a school trip to Glasgow when I was a teenager, so that moment really felt like I was coming full circle when we recorded my arrangement of his main theme in the same city, with some of the same musicians, all those years later.
What led you to “Nolly,” which gave you one degree of “Doctor Who” separation given its wonderful script by Russell Davies?
I first met Russell in 2009 at the BBC Television Centre press screening of “The End of Time” – Russell’s last story show running Doctor Who, when David Tennant was playing The Doctor. We’re both huge Doctor Who geeks so just hit it off talking about old episodes and I mentioned I was a composer and would love to work in the Whoniverse one day. Russell would then hear my music many times over the years on other shows, including my work on Whoniverse properties such as “Class” and “Torchwood” and we kept in contact via the odd email during that time. “Nolly” actually came about when I was asking Russell about what his musical plans were for this new era of Doctor Who. Murray Gold was one of the first people he phoned when he got that job as showrunner again, but they were looking for a composer for his other show “Nolly”. So off I went to meet the director Peter Hoar, and we clicked instantly. I know they listened to several composer reels but in the end, they were drawn most to what I’d sent in, and I was offered the job. I’d watched Russell’s show over the years and like many people in the UK he’s one of the writer’s I admire most, so to get the chance to work with him 13 years later after we first met at the BBC was a true honor. There’s no doubt that my love of Doctor Who led me to working on that show – it’s all linked to that little blue Police box!
“Nolly’s” “toy band”
Tell us about coming up with the particularly eccentric syncopated sound of Nolly. How did you see and hear her indomitable, larger-than-life “character.
It’s funny, my composer friend Paul Leornard Morgan said when he watched the show, that score almost felt like a musical at times and I think that’s very apt. She’s the star of the show, and of course she dabbles in musical theatre after her departure, so having the music constantly on the brink of becoming a showtune felt right to me. She’s quirky and winds people up sometimes, so having that syncopated unsettling rhythm combined with such playful instrumentation was a way of representing that odd mixture. There’s an element of jazz in there too with both the swing rhythms and the harmonies at times. Having a ‘hint’ of jazz, without ever being explicit, helped reflect the time period too because I think it inherently evokes a sense of nostalgia. I think percussion is also incredibly useful in comedy because it allows you to stop and start the music easily which is useful for highlighting moments or letting certain lines land by giving them space. Very early on I decided that a ‘toy band’ approach would really suit the show – it also saves some budget too because it’s really hard to use live ensembles on this kind of show due to both budget and time constraints. Anywhere I can use a smaller sound to great narrative effect frees me up to tackle those lush grand moments with more resources.
Do you think the rhythmic nature of “Nolly” plays into the idea of being the unquestioned “commander” of her set?
Oh absolutely, there’s a slightly military feel to her life at work with the snare drum really helping to bring that out. She’s designated herself as the boss and we really feel that in the music at times. Even when it’s not so much military in vibe the percussion really helps to show how brash she is and that she’s a bit of steamroller taking control of the set.
How did you want to capture the broken heart of Nolly when she’s sacked, despite the stiff, funny upper lip she puts on?
For me that was all about how we see her when she’s on her own. It’s such a personal show because we follow her in almost every scene of the show. When we see her at work with her colleagues, she’s putting on a performance and then when we’re in the privacy of her own home that mask drops – that’s when I was able to bring out the string orchestra to evoke the genuine emotion she’d been feeling. I think you can also argue that episode 2 onwards has a lot more inherent anxiety in the music for the “at work” sections. Episode 1 is a bit more fun but by episode two you can really feel that tension in the music like it’s about to burst – she’s on a mission by that point, to find out how and why this terrible thing has happened to her. That’s conveyed in everything from the tempo to how hard the percussion is being played – it’s subtle but those elements make such a difference for an audience in subliminally creating an emotional arc for the viewer to go on. It’s all there in Russell’s script, of course, but it’s important to support and highlight that so the show can be the best version of itself.
I particularly loved your themes and their variations in “Nolly,” which play a big part through all three episodes with an emotional boldness that seems increasingly rare these days.
I’m so glad you enjoyed the themes – I worked hard to find melodies that felt distinctive and emotional for each aspect of the show. Modern scoring can often feel quite sanitized, but I’ve always been drawn to those bogger bolder emotions that carried so many great films and TV shows from the past. Russell is a very emotionally bold writer, and he wants that in the music too – he wants people to feel something when they watch his shows. That’s a real gift as a composer and so I didn’t want to waste it. For the last 6 minutes or so of the show my goal when scoring that was basically to make myself cry when composing it – to try and give myself goosebumps. I managed to do that to myself and from what I’ve heard from other people, that ending tends to often shed several tears! So, I’m glad that I was able to land that moment as it really is the emotional climax of her story.
Had you ever watched a soap opera before this? And how do you think you captured this kind of fairy tale reality that drew in so many viewers at the time?
Soaps are a staple of British culture. When I was growing up most families I knew watched at least one. I watched “Neighbours” with my mum when I got back from school and then my parents would watch a show called “Emmerdale” in the evenings which I often ended up seeing a lot of. I get the impression soaps are a little different in America – they’re more of a daytime show maybe? In the UK shows like “Coronation Street” and “Eastenders” have taken the place of “Crossroads” and they get some of the highest viewership of any program on TV each week. Many families will sit down with their dinner and watch together. “Crossroads” has a bit of a reputation for having wobbly sets and our director Peter Hoar was insistent that we would never be making fun of the show – if anything we’d be making it look better than it did back then – glossy and classy. So, for me it was really important to work with live musicians and that the score sounded lush and expensive. In that sense I think we captured some of the magic of the show through rose tinted spectacles, by just making sure our production values were as high as possible across the board, despite being on a TV budget.
Did you want to blend the soap sound with Nolly’s own life?
I’d say the opposite actually – her private life and her work life felt very different to me so that emotional honestly and emotive string music only really tends to appear in her private life or if we’re inside her head. The frenetic energy of her work life has a very different musical sound with the aforementioned “toy band approach.
How did you want to capture the time span of “Nolly?”
A lot of it is set in the 80s but I rarely tried to evoke that particular time period – I wanted to try and channel a less specific sense of nostalgia and the past which came through referencing the musical language of old-school Hollywood and musical theatre. Tracks like ‘Visiting Larry’ take their inspiration from the orchestration of things like Gene Wilder’s “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory”. It also helped emphasize that Nolly was a huge star in her time – she was showbiz royalty and adored by many of the public! The exception is the track ‘Vintage 70s TV tune’ which is a diegetic track we hear coming from Nolly’s TV – for that I wanted to capture something that sounded period appropriate and the inspiration for that were things like the “Carry On” films to make sure it felt appropriately British.
Could you identify with any of the experiences that Nolly goes through when it comes to being thrown off her tracks by the capricious decisions from “upstairs?”
That’s an interesting question! I was speaking to a group of composers the other day about people “stepping on our toes” and we remarked that all of our toes would be broken and bloody given the notes we sometimes get from the people who hire us. The more voices there are and the more notes there are, the more generic and unremarkable the music tends to become. If you look at the greatest examples of film music, it’s usually when a composer was hired for what they do and trusted to the point where they felt able to be daring and creative. I think it’s no coincidence that I was very much trusted on “Nolly” to do my own thing and be bold, and that it then led to my first BAFTA nomination for a TV score. When the “grown ups” upstairs embolden you with that trust and creative freedom, the end product is almost always better as a result. So, yes, I have been in rare situations where I’ve become genuinely quite depressed that whenever I tried to do something that felt ‘special’ it was picked up on and moved into a safe and more generic direction. I try and learn from those situations to spot the red flags, so that I choose collaborators I know will respect me, and who themselves are interested in making something interesting together.
Let’s talk about “Doctor Jekyll”. Were you a fan of the Hammer films and their scores before taking on that project?
I’d heard some of James Bernard’s work and really enjoyed it, and I very much liked the films I had seen, but I wasn’t anywhere as deep into it as I was “Doctor Who”. It wasn’t until I did “The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula”, a Radio4 radio play of the unmade Hammer Horror film, that I really got under the skin of the music in those Hammer films. Mark Gatiss was directing that project, and he lent me all of his Hammer DVDs so I could really research the music. It meant when I came to score “Doctor Jekyll”, I was well versed in what had come before. I have a lot of respect for James Bernard in particular, whose music for things like “The Quatermass” Experiment” broke new ground in string writing, before Bernard Hermann’s work with Hitchcock which would popularize some of those approaches on a much wider scale.
How did you choose to take a black horror comedy approach straight off the bat with “Dr. Jekyll,” as the score necessarily didn’t have to be played that way?
A lot of that came from our director Joe Stephenson. At first, they were experimenting with a much more serious and grounded tone in the edit. It wasn’t until just before I started work on it that Joe decided it should be as big as possible, playful and lean into an overt gothic aesthetic. It was a great call from him which allowed the music to serve the film far better as a result and encouraged me to have fun with it all.
What are some of your favorite horror-comedy scores, and did they inspire you here?
I always very much enjoyed Marco Beltrami’s first score for “Scream” – I just thought it was very iconic and identifiable, when it could so easily have been bland and unmemorable like some other satirical horrors of the time. However, that didn’t really influence me on this film. I was more drawn to some of the old Hammer Horror films on this, as well as elements of more intricate film score writing from the 80s and 90s. You can hear shades of Elfman and Williams in there I think, but also with a more modern sensibility when it comes to the textural side of things and the production of the music itself. I didn’t really think about any comedy scores when I was composing, as I tend to play the comedy quite straight – though there’s no doubt that the score is more playful at the start of the film. That came from Eddie Izzard’s performance and wanting to support it appropriately– a central performance like that can completely transform the tone of a film.
Given that your approach can get particularly crafty, how important was it for you to ride the score’s tone between irony, malevolence and finally ghastly absurdity?
It was incredibly important. There’s only so far you can stretch either direction before you potentially lose credibility with your audience – I was careful to treat the material seriously whenever the film did the same with the script. The tone of the film shifts throughout and so it was important that the music went on the same journey. Joe wasn’t worried about subtly when we got to the end of the film, so I was given permission to be operatic and full throated with the orchestra. When Hyde comes into her own, that’s some of the most fun I’ve been able to have with a live orchestra in my career so far. I wish we got more opportunities like that as composers to really go for it – as it’s much rarer these days in filmmaking!
Eddie Izzard certainly has a lot of fun in this, particularly in the climax. How did you want to play her character, especially as this isn’t told in the traditional format of a “Hyde” picture where the doctor isn’t obviously transforming back and forth throughout?
If you watch it back the music is actually very helpful in telling you when it’s Jekyll and when its Hyde on screen. I think once you understand how that Jekyll/Hyde aspect is working narratively, a rewatch of the film is very rewarding as Joe directed Eddie in a way that has all these subtleties in regard to the plot. You realize each one doesn’t always remember conversations given they aren’t always around to know what was said to our protagonist Rob. I’d say the clearest moment is the cue “Nina and Rob” when they’re looking over his daughter’s files together on his bed. The music there is very sweet and heartfelt which really endears us to Nina and uses her theme – that same theme then comes back at the end of the film to help land one of the final emotional moments. One of the most direct “Hyde” moments (apart from the end) is when she tells Rob off for giving her cold eggs, and then lights up a cigarette; that’s where I think the audience first start to understand that the Hyde transformation is phycological and not physical. The music is telling us that something is “off” there and Hyde’s sliding microtonal theme is introduced during that scene.
Tell us about contrastingly playing Jekyll’s helper Rob, who’s a soft-spoken, seemingly none-too smart ex con.
Rob has two themes – there’s a sort of sleuthing theme which pokes its head up in various places, but it doesn’t dominate because Rob, as a character, is very bashful and unsure of himself so his “action theme” lacks confidence and is often subsumed by other musical material. The best example of that is the track “Searching for Sandra” where he’s sneaking around by himself. He does also have a tender emotional theme too, which finds its way into all sorts of places from when he first turns up to Jekyll’s house to cues like “The Plan” when he’s on the phone to his brother. It also turns up in the end credits where it launches into a much more fantastic version of that melody which you can hear in the track “Jekyll and Hyde” on the soundtrack.
For its budget, “Jekyll” is particularly well done in its mainly mansion setting, with the production values that distinguished older Hammer films done “on the cheap” at Bray House. Do you think that helped bring a classical luster to the score that recalled the scoring of the good old days?
It did yes! I think as composers we absolutely have to work with what is on our screens, and the gorgeous architecture and location work really allowed me to lean into some classic tropes from film scores of the past. I grew up listening to all those action scores from Tim Burton and Stephen Spielberg’s films, so to get the opportunity to channel some of that energy mixed with my own style and other sensibilities was a real treat.
Conversely, your score definitely sounds like it cost way more than it actually did, particularly in its orchestration, recording and chorus. Do you think it brings up the film on that level?
It’s the classic “Back to The Future” trick isn’t it? Using an orchestral score to make the film seem more expensive! If the music had been a bunch of string synth patches imitating an orchestra, I think it would have felt completely different and could have easily cheapened the film. Joe and the producers knew music would be important, so they did ringfence a certain amount of budget for the music and we talked about that early on. As the composer it was my responsibility to do what I could with that budget, and I certainly stretched the limits as far as I could. Recording different orchestras for different sections of the film helped with that. Having two different orchestras on the score suited the Jekyll/Hyde duality but it also helped me to play to the strengths of each. I’ve worked enough with Budapest Art Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to know what material they both respond fastest to, and where they each excel. It’s because of that experience I was able to get results quickly and within the budget which gives the filmmakers better value. It’s a good argument for why composers should get paid more as they become more experienced, because we can genuinely take that music budget and make it sound much better through all these little tricks we learn along the way.
What place do you think that this film, and your score have in the long annals of “Dr. Jekyll” movies? And where do you see the new variation of Hammer going from here?
I think we’re quite bit post-modern in our approach, in that the film is very much aware of all that has come before it and decides to have a bit of fun with that, right down to the full name of the central protagonist (Robert Louis Stevenson, the original author of “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”). It’s a little knowing, but never so much that it takes you out of the drama. I think audiences are keen for this kind of bold filmmaking – they’re tired of risk adverse blockbusters, and are open to a film more willing to take risks and be bold. You can see it in the box office these days – subversive films like “Barbie” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” are the ones really cutting through. My advice to Hammer would be to look at the Blumhouse model in America, mixed with some of the ingenuity of A24. I’d love to see them make more films on lowers budgets and take more risks. Hire hungry ambitious new talent and become a hub for the next generation of British filmmakers to explore wild ideas. I suspect for every 2-million-pound film that may not fully break through, there will be one that brings in five times its budget because when genre films truly “land” they tend to do extraordinary box-office; that’s why they are some of the most commissioned types of content. I have so many talented UK filmmaker friends trapped in development hell who I know would make amazing directorial debuts so I’m hoping, given their private finance model that separates them from any of the public funding in the UK, that they can make some real waves in the industry. I had great fun on this film and I’d love to do another one with them in future if budget and schedule allowed.
Do you think your ability to play eccentric characters is a thematic link between “Nolly” and “Doctor” Jekyll?”
I think it is actually. I love writing music with a strong flavor and creating something idiosyncratic. I do my best to avoid any kind of project where there’s a danger of being bland, so it would make strength that I’m attracted to content which has strong quirky characters at the heart of the drama.
Tell us what you’ve been up to since “Doctor Jekyll,” and what’s ahead for you?
I worked on a few UK shows recently, season 1 of “After the Flood”, Season 4 of “McDonald & Dodds” and the BBC’s most recent annual Christmas Eve Ghost story which was “LOT 249” by Arthur Conan Doyle; they’re all available on Britbox in the USA. I just wrapped on a very interesting feature documentary which I can’t talk about yet due to it having a very heavy NDA, but the next project is about the early work of Hitchcock – so I’m really looking forward to taking some inspiration from that era of filmmaking. Anything further ahead of that I can’t talk about yet sadly, but there’s some exiting stuff on the horizon!
Watch Masterpiece Theater’s “Nolly” HERE, with Blair Mowat’s score on Silva Screen Records HERE. And watch Hammer’s “Dr. Jekyll” on VOD HERE (and also on blu ray), with Blair’s score available HERE. Visit Blair’s website HERE
Special thanks to Thomas Mikusz and Sarah Roche at White Bear PR