I created a YouTube series based on my brand.

So I thought I best talk about the creation of the series. Basically, I wanted to create a simple series with all my characters in the ‘world’ I have created, the first thing I did was ‘The Harvo Comedy Special’ with all my main characters at the time in a more ‘sketch show’ format, the original concept was a collection of TV shows that the characters came up with, however as that developed it became difficult to write for if you do watch the special you may notice this format, it was also going to contain cameos from my ‘Oddlestop’ characters, however, I decided to keep those worlds separated.

The special received a lot of nice reviews (thank you for that) so I decided to develop it into a series however I wanted to simplify it by a long way, simple to make and simple to understand, in fact, the first series was shot over 2 days.

The first thing I shot was all the scenes in ‘the studio’ (I was actually doing an online party that day so I killed two birds with one stone).

The next day I shot all 3 ‘puppet segments’ 2 with Flopper and 1 with Gizmo, the first Flopper scene was a gag I came up with years ago and never found a way to execute it, the next was the painting gag I thought it was about time I did the ‘When I nod my head’ gag this probably won’t be the only time I do it.

After that, I shot the scene with Gizmo doing one of my favourite panto routines called ‘whose on first’ by Abbot & Costello this version I wrote for a Cinderella panto, I was in, however, it was cut, so with a minor rewrite I decided to include it.

I released the series, and I thought that would be it, however looking back I really enjoyed making the series and thought “Let’s do it again” so I did, I said we will do another series and a Christmas special.

So I best speak about the ‘Halloween Special’ Now Halloween is my favourite time of the year. However I admit it is definitely the weakest episode, the idea spawned from a sketch idea for Gizmo, and I kind of ran with it, however, it lacked an ending so I decided to include in a collection of sketches and thought I better include it with The Harvo Show franchise. I don’t think it is as bad as I think as I am my own worst critic but I do feel like it was rushed (because it was)

After that work on the second series started (however the Halloween Special was released first). The first things I shot were all the Flopper sketches I shot 3 however one was cut as I wanted to have an episode with ‘no puppets’ as it is called ‘The Harvo Show’ not The Harvo Puppet Show. After that I shot the magic segments, yes the whole second series was shot over an evening.

Now I haven’t spoken about the magic segments, I came up with the idea of teaching a magic trick in the show because it is a fun hobby to learn.

In the first series, I did a magic trick then later in the show taught you a different magic trick, however, I changed this in the second series where I show a Magic trick at the start and then later on in the show I would teach the trick, this was done basically to make my life easier. Now the teaching segment received negative reviews so I decided to cancel it in future instalments and bring it back to only me doing a magic trick.

My next project was ‘The Harvo Christmas Show’ probably my proudest work in the entirety of the series. This one was done differently as it contained a basic story throughout as I introduced each segment. The Flopper sketch was developed from a puppet show script that I started putting together but cancelled so I reworked it into a Flopper sketch. When coming up with a way to promote the special, I got the man himself ‘Santa’ to promote it, which I was very proud of and one of the producers called it “the best promotional thing ever”

Now I am not going to tell you much about the next series of The Harvo Show, all I will say is the show is very different and follows a sitcom format and will be released later this year.

Until then, well you will have to wait!

All the Best

HARVO!!!

P.S. There may even be a stage version in development