ABOUT

Concept

How do you teach health and safety to people who don’t want to be taught?

You sing it to them.

Our client — a leading safety training organisation for the TV and film industry (who shall remain anonymous, as this project was never released) — asked us to reinvent their Risk Assessment Workshop. The brief was bold:

“Challenge us. Get totally out of the box.”

Our idea was simple: people love singing their favourite tunes. Whether belting them out in the car or quietly humming them on the train, lyrics stick — often without trying. So why not use that to our advantage?

We created Risky Business! — a five-part musical comedy series set in a 1960s-style US chat show. Hosted by a Johnny Carson-esque presenter, each episode introduced a new safety module via interviews with health and safety experts, and original songs performed by our in-house studio band. The goal? To turn dry regulations into catchy earworms that would subconsciously teach everything a production professional needs to know about risk assessments.

The creative style sat somewhere between Top of the Pops and Flight of the Conchords — a tongue-in-cheek tone with sharp, accurate training at its core.

Execution

This is where the graft really kicked in.

We dissected the full training course line by line, pulling out every must-know, can’t-miss learning point. We sat the safety training at least seven times over. Each song had to summarise a key module — from legal duties to human behaviour and emergency planning — embedding regulation into rhythm, with lyrics that were not only accurate but singable, memorable and fun.

The tone was playful. The content was watertight. And we trimmed the original multi-hour online course down to just 45 minutes — the average length of a commute. Every line was reviewed and approved by the training team.

The entire series was filmed in just two days at Camberwell Studios:
• Day 1: We shot all the presenter links, scripted scenes and interviews.
• Day 2: We staged and filmed five fully choreographed musical numbers — each in a distinct genre (Disco, Folk, Hip-Hop, Rock Ballad, and Showbiz Swing).

We cast four exceptional performers to front the songs, who also appeared throughout the series as the house band — creating consistency, energy, and camaraderie across all five episodes.

Our presenter? A scene-stealing talent who had just come off stage playing Basil Fawlty in the Fawlty Towers theatre production at the Edinburgh Fringe — a nice twist of fate, considering John Cleese famously fronted a hugely successful series of corporate training videos. There was something brilliant (and slightly surreal) about following in those footsteps — only this time, with a live studio band in tow!

Every department gave it their all. From the art department to the sound recordist (who also recorded and mixed the music), it was a true team effort. By the end of Day 2, our DOP couldn’t believe it:

“We've basically shot five music videos in 12 hours.”

Results

Risky Business was a training course like no other — bold, funny, unexpected, and effective… or at least it would have been.

It transformed a dry, complex subject into something entertaining and genuinely memorable. It respected the intelligence of its audience — TV and film professionals — and delivered a course they would actually want to watch.

The learning objectives were fully met. The course was approved by the training body. A global rollout was planned, supported by detailed learning resources, real-world case studies — and yes, lyric sheets and a Spotify playlist.

But then, the world changed. We wrapped post-production in late February 2020 — just weeks before the first lockdown. Once the chaos had ended, the client company was restructured, its leadership evolved, and the series was quietly shelved. Risky Business has been sitting in our archive ever since, gathering digital dust.

But to us, it’s more than a shelved project. It’s proof that even compliance can have character — and that with the right hook, even a risk assessment can become a chorus you’ll never forget.

It was the most creatively challenging, daringly executed, and personally rewarding project we’ve ever worked on. And who knows — maybe this is the next great chapter in the world of training content. If John Cleese could turn workplace behaviour into a global VHS phenomenon, why not a risk assessment musical?

Five songs. One band. One visionary client. Zero views.

Let’s finally give Risky Business the spotlight it deserves!