Quotations and notes about the Granada series

A quotation from David Stuart Davies's "Bending the Willow"

"I spent a day at Granada studios watching filming on 'Carfax', and it was a fascinating and illuminating visit. I saw at first-hand the orgainsed chaos of television. The morning was spent on just one brief scene which occurs at the beginning of the film. Brett had to knock a small model figure from the mantelpiece in the sitting room and it had to fall on a pile of scattered newspapers in a certain position so as to alert Holmes to a particular news item. There was no dialogue.

For all sorts of reasons - faulty sound, wrongly placed shadows, the figure not falling correctly - Jeremy had to do this scene time after time after time. He did the takes with humour, good grace, and smiling patience. It took over two hours to obtain this twenty-second clip."
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What remarkable patience and professionalism...
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Please share your favourite remarks and statements made by others (authors, TV critics, etc) regarding the Granada series in this thread.

I think it must indeed take a lot of patience to work in television, whether it be in the cast or in the crew. I mean, when we watch something, we kind of take it for granted that everything fits together, and we think it is all done in one take. But as DSD says here, 2 hours for one tiny little thing! I don't know if I would have had the patience and cool compsure JB obviously showed in this situation. Still, if it had to be done...

Yes, that is what I couldn't help thinking too, when I first read the passage--that I wasn't sure I could manage to spend two hours repeating that little scene without losing my patience, even a little...