‘Still Up’ Is an Adorable Watch About Finding Companionship

Still Up captured my heart on Apple TV+ and is such an easy and cute watch. It’s one of those shows that will wrap you up in its story of Lisa (Antonia Thomas) and her inability to sleep and how she tells Danny (Craig Roberts) everything in her life. The two are insomniacs and stay up on FaceTime together. It does leave much of the show to be a two-hander, with Lisa and Danny at the center of the drama.

While there are other characters in the show, it really does fall onto their shoulders. Speaking to Executive Producer Phil Clarke, Executive Producer Paul Schelesinger, and Producer Arabella McGuigan for the show’s release, it’s clear they just fell in love with Lisa and Danny as characters and the story as a whole. So I asked about the contained element of the set up and whether or not that brought them any concerns as producers.

For Paul Schlesinger, he was fascinated by my observation over it being essentially a two-hander. “That’s a really good observation,” he said. “Sometimes after a while of filming this, it’s just so in plain sight you forget actually. It is so much carried by two handers. It started as it was written by Natalie Walter and Steve Burge, who had worked together in radio. And they came up with this idea based on their own experience of being insomniacs and having regular nighttime chats and a sort of friendship evolved in that mold really, because they were always talking remotely and it wasn’t a romance. But it was a friendship and that was the starting point. And I think it is interesting looking at that because it allows you to be quite forensic about portraying the nature of the dynamic, their dynamic and their friendship. It’s got all the detail there. The backstory is hinted at. We don’t actually reveal that but I think it’s something giving them the space that nighttime gives you without the formality of the daytime as well. That was quite interesting to explore.”

You can see our full conversation here:

Still Up is airing on Apple TV+.

(featured image: Apple TV+)