'Pulling' director Jemma Rodgers on her love affair with Edinburgh

IT'S a love affair straight from the scenes of hit comedy Pulling but TV producer Jemma Rodgers' infatuation with Edinburgh – and the man who brought her here – isn't likely to end as messily as the relationships she's set to bring back to the screen for one final fling.

Pulling, the cult relationship comedy that ran for two darkly humorous series between 2006 and 2008, is set to post its final "Dear John" letter on BBC3 tomorrow night at 9pm.

The sitcom centres on three single women; self-obsessed Donna, played by the co-writer Sharon Horgan, promiscuous Karen (Tanya Franks) and naive Louise, played by Rebekah Staton. The brutally honest writing helped scoop awards and win legions of fans – there's even a campaign to convince the Beeb to change its mind – but the show was deemed as not having enough appeal for the channel's younger audience.

Tomorrow night is its swansong, an hour-long catch-up with the women six months after the last series finished.

"The girls have all found men, and we're all hoping it will all work out for them but as usual things don't quite work out as planned.

No-one knows what producers do. I'm like a human Eden Project'

It's a lovely hour of television with some really funny stuff, and some bittersweet moments as well," explains Jemma.

The course of true love has run a little smoother for London- born Jemma – brought in as producer for the one-off show when the original producer was unavailable.

She met her husband, Edinburgh College of Art architectural lecturer Chris Lowry, also 41, nearly three years ago on the set of another dark rom-com Wedding Belles, the Leith-based black comedy by Irvine Welsh.

"Chris was the best mate of the art director on Wedding Belles," explains Jemma, who was working as producer on the show.

"We fell for each other and had to make a decision to get serious quickly."

Very quickly, as it turned out.

"While his job is based squarely in Edinburgh my job can take me anywhere so it made sense for me to move here, so we got married within a year and moved to Portobello."

But Jemma admits it wasn't that much of a hardship moving to the Capital.

"It's such a beautiful city," she says. "It's like an eye drink – your eyes just gulp it all down and leave you intoxicated.

"When I moved here I took a look around and thought: 'Hey, there's a lot worse places I could have fallen in love'.

"Edinburgh is just stunning. It's one of the most visually beautiful cities in Europe and I'm surprised it's not used in more films and television shows."

However, that may all be set to change with Jemma's next batch of projects.

"They're all in the early stages so I can't say too much, but I can tell you that one of the projects is a sitcom set in Bruntsfield that involves dogs," she reveals. "Hopefully, we'll get to capture the bohemian feel of the area with the Meadows, the castle and Arthur's Seat in the background.

"I'm a doggy person and I've found that Edinburgh is a very doggy place.

"The second project is a comedy drama set between Glasgow and Edinburgh, in which we'll hopefully get to contrast the medieval look of the Old Town with the urban New York-style setting of Glasgow city centre.

"It's very dark and if it does get commissioned I'm confident that it will become a landmark series."

She cheerfully admits that while it's easy to work out what a make-up artist, cameraman or director do, the role of a producer is something of a mystery to most TV and film viewers.

"No-one knows what a producer does," admits Jemma. "I kind of see myself as a human Eden Project.

"I'm like a big dome that sits on top of everyone and allows the creative people to grow, and you really just leave them to it, save for a bit of troubleshooting from time to time.

"The producer's job is really done before the shooting begins. You have to hunt down the ideas, find the writers, take the idea to a broadcaster or, in the case of a movie, a financier.

"Then you have to get the money and work up the budget, hire everyone and get the thing made.

"It's not an easy job in the current climate with budgets becoming tighter and tighter, and there comes a point where creative thinking gives way to absolute madness.

"We're definitely at the stage of absolute madness right now and you're having to come up with innovative solutions constantly – but that's all part of the excitement."

Originally from Enfield in London, Jemma is cagey about her early life and family, saying only that much of the dark humour that attracted her to the black comedies she has worked on sprang from her formative years.

She started out as a runner at LWT in 1991, going on to join the BBC a year later as a floor assistant to work on such seminal UK hits as Absolutely Fabulous and French and Saunders.

From there she climbed the ladder until she became a second-in-command associate producer. Her big break came when the producer on the offbeat comedy League of Gentlemen stepped aside due to ill health and Jemma stepped in.

Since moving to Scotland in 2007 and setting up her production company Junction Films (Scotland), Jemma has come to care passionately about the local film industry and is keen to see good, homegrown talent emerging from and staying in Scotland.

"It's a very good time to be a film student right now because when these people come through they'll be walking into a totally new way of working," says Jemma.

"The budgets are so tight they'll be in a position to bring new ideas to the table, whereas the guys who have been at it for years with vastly higher budgets won't know where to begin.

"There is a lot of acting, writing and directing talent that has been driven away from Scotland in search of jobs, but there is now a real drive to start producing programmes regionally.

"While I can't see it happening for a few years, I really believe there are some exciting things on the horizon."

And she is a keen advocate of Irvine Welsh's dream of building a film and production studio in his old stomping ground of Leith.

While the original reason for the studio disappeared when Wedding Belles failed to be commissioned for a series, Jemma believes that Scotland needs to start investing in the future.

"Irvine Welsh is one of the most wonderful, charming and sensitive men I have ever met and he cares very deeply about his hometown.

"If we're really going to have a Scottish film industry we need to start building up the infrastructure now to make it happen."