It was week of intensive hustle and bustle at the Village Hall last week as Strike Productions moved onto site to begin preparations for the filming of the 10 part, pre-school sit-com “Football Fantastics” on behalf of BBC CBeebies. Unfortunately not all of it went as smoothly as had been planned, nor was all as had been expected, by the Village Hall Committee. The far from quiet arrival of mobile units at 2.30 a.m. on Friday morning was completely outside schedule and understandably caused some disquiet and concern, not to mention disturbed sleep.

The Strike team had spoken to the residents of Harvest View about the potential disturbance, but the Village Hall Committee, who are constantly liasing with the Strike team, had not been informed. Phil Goodier, Chairman of the Village Hall and Playing Fields Committee, expressed his frustration over the issue and was clear that, had he been consulted, he would not have allowed the noisy arrival of the units in the middle of the night.

Phil said “I would like to apologise to everyone who was disturbed by the vehicles in the middle of the night – in my view this was unnecessary, unacceptable and should not have happened. We have strict protocols in place with the Strike Team and in this case they were not followed. I do appreciate that Strike communicated with some residents in advance, but not everyone was told and in any case good communication doesn’t mean that people will have been O.K. with this. I certainly would not have been”.

Phil went onto to stress “However, Strike has learned from this and it won’t happen again. In general, our working relationship with the Strike team is excellent and they are an incredibly positive and helpful group of people”.

The production team has indeed been delighted with the warm welcome they received together with the Spring sunshine that greeted them last week.

A white wooden palisade fence has been erected in front of the cricket pavilion looking very smart and eye-catching. The two man crew painting the fence even “caught the sun” on Tuesday as they worked outside with not a cloud in the sky.

All appears to be going well, everything is taking shape and the crew has been very busy. Props are nearing completion, the hall has new lights and probably the best way to describe the transformation of the walls is to say that they are now extremely vivid, colourful and very cheerful. The hall will be redecorated and restored to normality at the end of filming.

The crew has also been enjoying the catering offered at the Masons Arms where they have been known to adjourn for lunch.

All actors will be on site from this Monday, a small amount of rehearsal will take place and songs will be recorded. A total of 11 actors are involved, six children and five adults. Next Monday, the team will move to Bramhope, another location for the programme, to film there for a couple of weeks. They will then return to Bishop Monkton.

The car park is now full of trailers of various, shapes and sizes. Behind the bowling club is the double decker unit production offices, next to the children's classroom. Just because they are starring in a television programme, doesn't mean lessons stop for the school aged actors as the classroom comes supplied with its own teacher.

The three units adjacent to the village hall are an actors' restroom, a changing room and make-up van. There is also a costume van.

The generators to power these units will only run during the day. However, for the catering van, which is yet to arrive, there will be a silent generator, currently on site and clearly marked clearly as “Silent”. It is not possible for this to be switched off as a 24 hour supply is required to run the fridges and freezers.

There is also a caravan housing a 24 hour security guard and German Shepherd dog companion.