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Cast and Crew

• Writer: Malcolm Campbell
• Director: Kira Zurawska
• Producer: Jake Lushington and Chris Clough
• Cast Includes:
  • Paul Nicholls (Ol)
  • Daniela Nardini (Eve)
• First UK Transmission date: BBC1, 12 July 2001

Table 12 is a series of ten short, 10 minute, films set around the same table in a fashionable North London restaurant. Each film features a different story with a new cast, in the first story, Settling Up, Paul stars as rock star OI being interviewed by journalist Daniela Nardini.

Reviews

Preview from Ananova, www.ananova.co.uk - 22 March 2001

Paul Nicholls and Daniella Nardini are among the stars set to feature in a £3 million BBC comedy drama.

The ten-part series Table 12 is set in a fashionable restaurant in North London.

Each week will see a different story unfolding with a new cast returning to the same table at the restaurant.

Producers say the themes of the series, to be shown in the autumn, will be "love, lust, betrayal and food".

Producer Jake Lushington told Ananova: "The series is about private dramas played out in a public place. People go to restaurants to have intimate conversations. Let's face it, eavesdropping on a chat at the table next to yours can be more interesting than your own."

"We have four new writers. We decided the best way to find the characters and stories was to go to lunch. It worked - we got ten scripts together from that meeting."

Review by Alison Graham, Radio Times - 7-13 July, 2001

Anyone who delighted in last year's short, self-contained films under the title Black Cab will love this new series from the same stable. The format is roughly identical - all the stories have the same setting, though instead of a black London cab, the dramas are played out at the same table in a busy London restaurant.

The great thing about Table 12, as with Black Cab, is that there are just ten minutes to establish a cohesive, believable story. In this episode, Settling Up, writer Malcolm Campbell has come up with a model of economy which says more about men and women than most 60-minute dramas.

Daniela Nardini and Paul Nicholls (you may remember him as doe-eyed Joe, the EastEnders heart-throb) are the couple in question. She is a journalist interviewing a much younger rock star. They flirt with one another (naturally) and make lots of eye contact, so what started out as a business lunch becomes something else entirely.

Both actors use the time effectively to the point where every second and every nuance counts. Thus, as we follow the relationship through three stages, they work very hard, and very successfully, to make it believable. And we are left wanting more, which is perhaps the ultimate tribute to such an idea.

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