“Still Up” follows two insomniac friends as they call each other late at night and have long conversations – while they each get into strange humorous scenarios.
The comedy series, starring Antonia Thomas and Craig Roberts, premieres Sept. 22 on AppleTV+.
“I liked the oddball dialogue. I liked the relationship, because it’s not really a conventional romantic comedy. It’s really a piece about an unusual friendship,” executive producer Paul Schlesinger told The Post.
“The fact that we were making so much of this at night really was a challenge. We were doing these very odd hours for weeks on end. I call it ‘method filming.’ We were filming a series about insomniacs, and becoming insomniacs. Our whole body clock was out of kilter — we were having lunch at midnight.”
“Still Up” follows friends Lisa (Thomas, “The Good Doctor“), and Danny (Roberts), through their FaceTimes and phone calls. Danny is agoraphobic and doesn’t leave his apartment or enjoy socializing, which often leads to amusing circumstances — including a scene where he tells his neighbors that he’s out of town to avoid their party and they have their gathering right outside of Danny’s window, which doesn’t have shades he can close. (So crawls around to avoid being spotted.)
Lisa goes venturing out during their calls, and often gets into weird predicaments. In one, she ends up in a field full of cows; in another, she’s on a bus where a man steals her dress, puts it on, and refuses to give it back.
Throughout their misadventures, Lisa and Danny chat, and often give each other dubious advice.
“Martin Scorsese directed a film called ‘After Hours.’ It’s kind of a surreal journey the character makes across Manhattan over the course of one night,” Schlesinger said. “The story isn’t surreal, but in terms of mood and atmosphere, and those ‘creatures of the night,’ those strange characters that you can meet … That was in the back of my mind, and our director loved that film, too. That was probably the only conscious reference point that we had.”
As “Still Up,” unfolds, there’s a “will they or won’t they” undertone between Lisa and Danny.
“The starting point was a very simple low concept idea of two friends talking in a close and honest way,” said Schlesinger.
“We were keen to avoid the tropes you get in rom-coms: the big meet-cute, the love at first sight and those things. So it’s a piece about how these two people look out for each other. But of course, underpinning that, below the surface, there is this deeper potential. But although you hopefully want these two characters to declare their feelings for each other, that’s not the main story driver. It’s about friendship.
“This is in some ways, a very British piece,” he said. “But I hope it’s universal. I’m very drawn to shows where what’s left unsaid is part of the story. This show is about the repressed emotions, the feelings that aren’t expressed.
“I think that hooks the audience in, and allows them to come towards it.”