Chris McCausland and Lee Mack have joined forces for Sky Original Christmas Movie, Bad Tidings – and as you can expect, capers and chaos come in spades.

Playing warring neighbours Scott and Neil, the pair are seen battling out for the respect and love of those around them… which ends in catastrophe when their head-to-head results in half the street losing their electricity just before Christmas day.

Now in charge of keeping an eye on the street, and with a dastardly family of thieves looking for a Christmas Day cash-in, they need to figure out how to work together to save the holidays.

Speaking ahead of the film, Chris and Lee talk about why they think their comedic styles work as a dynamic duo, the creation of the film itself, and the how their real-life friendship became part of the script.

Chris M: I love Christmas.

Lee M: Me too. It feels like the last bastion of the family coming together. You know, we live in a world now where people coming together is getting rarer. I mean, people say to me how they love The 1% Club and how they watch it as a family, but then they always go “Well, I say we watch it as a family… my son’s in Edinburgh, the other son’s upstairs in his bedroom. But at least we all play on the app.” That's as close as you're going to get nowadays to being together. But on Christmas the world stops still for a day, doesn’t it?

CM: I love Christmas films, which is why it's great to make this one and kind of throw something into that pile. My family has our little traditions too; we always go ice skating, or rather the wife and daughter go ice skating in Hampton Court and I stand at the side and take random photographs of when I think they're passing. And then my wife has to quickly delete all the photos of the ones that aren't our kid.

LM: We also go to that same ice rink. I used to have an office that I rented off Hampton Court Palace above the ticket office. I used to look and watch that ice rink and count the number of times an ambulance would turn up…

CM: I love Scrooged with Bill Murray, and I love the Tim Allen Santa Clause films. Proper, proper Christmas films. Home Alone we watch every year.

LM: For me, Wizard of Oz and Elf are the two that always get put on.

CM: Is the Wizard of Oz a Christmas film?

LM: Maybe I just always associate it with Christmas. A bit like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory... There are certain films where it's less to do with being about Christmas or set at Christmas and more to do with watching it while everyone’s all together. Maybe it falls into the same category as Die Hard?

CM: You know what annoys me about Die Hard? Is it a Christmas film, isn't it a Christmas film? I don't really care if it is or isn’t, but you don't get this about Lethal Weapon! That’s far more of a Christmas film than Die Hard. Lethal Weapon ends with the same Dean Martin song; they’ve got the suit; they crash through the window into the Christmas tree; they fight in the garden where there’s a Christmas tree… the whole thing is set at Christmas but no one is like “is Lethal Weapon a Christmas film?”

CM: We've taken the a little bit, but to get to make one is just fantastic. On set, I said to Lee, “I can't believe we're actually here doing this”. Just to give you a peek behind the curtain when it comes to making shows like this, so many times you pitch something and it gets greenlit and you get smoke blown up your arse, then you get so far along into pre-production only to find the budgets not there or there’s no longer capacity to make it… so to actually get to that point where we were on set – I was just gobsmacked.

LM: And also I have to say fair play to Sky to have the two leads from a stand up background. Notoriously, filmmaking is very difficult. It takes such a long time. I'm sure meetings were had to ask if we needed more of a bona fide actor in the lead… and let's be honest, we're surrounded by that. There are a lot of guys working on this who’ve got a lot more acting chops than us.

CM: And to have confidence in the two of us to pull it off. Although they did get me an acting coach. They had slightly less faith in me than they did in you. [laughs]

LM: I've had little experience. Chris has had even less.

CM: But it was all good. I was glad to be learning, you know, and I've learned a lot through the whole process from the beginning. I'm just looking forward to it being out.

CM: It’s a film, it’s a comedy buddy film caper. We are two feuding neighbours who can't stand each other. We end up being the architects of our own downfall and, as is the often the case with these sorts of films, we have to work together to save the day.

LM: Chris had some photographs of me that he said he was gonna leak to the press if I didn't agree to do it. So, I thought I'd better play it safe. Now I've done my contractual element I'm allowed to destroy the negatives. No, I've worked with Chris over the years on panel shows and stuff like that. But we first worked together properly at the BAFTAs… We did a speech, seemed to go down well, then that led me to get Chris on Not Going Out. Then Chris had this idea…

CM: And I thought let’s get that idiot in again. He's the best in his price range. So, I brought this idea to Sky. I just pitched it and together we've kind of been fleshing it out and developing it for about 18 months.

CM: Yeah, I know Martha from working on other stuff, and their work on Ghosts is exactly that kind of…

LM: It’s got that same flavour…

CM: Yeah that slightly heightened, exaggerated, laugh out loud comedy I wanted this to have.

LM: Yes, definitely. I like Ghosts because shows that are predominantly about getting laughs have slightly gone out of fashion. A lot of comedies these days tend to be comedy dramas, but with emphasis more on the drama than on the comedy.

So, when you go out to say the purpose of this scene or this moment is mainly to have a laugh… they're sort of few and far between now because people are very focused in on things that make you smile or things that make you feel uncomfortable. And these are very worthwhile aspirations, but they shouldn't be at the cost of shows that only try and make you laugh.

CM: Well, funny enough, Lee won't remember this, but Lee was actually headlining the third ever gig I did...

LM: Really? Oh, you mean third gig. Full stop. Not third paid gig?

CM: Yeah. I mean it just shows you where we were 21 years ago, but it was a Wednesday night, and it was free to get in and you were closing … It's weird. I remember my first three gigs really, really well. And then after that, my whole career just blurs into one.

Before I actually did my first gig, because I like to know what I'm getting into, I went around and watched loads of up-and-coming comedy to see what the bottom level was like. So, I went to watch a So You Think You're Funny heat, which was on the boat floating on the Thames in Embankment and coincidentally you were comparing the heat.

There was an act on, and you've gone behind the curtains at the back of the boat - and I’ll always remember this, it’s always stuck in my head - you came back out, you poured a pint of water over your head, and said “I don't want to panic anybody, but…” [laughs]

LM: I have a vague recollection of that. That’s in the days where I’d have done anything for a laugh.

CM: Only about 23 years ago. But yeah, Would I Lie to You was the first time we really met properly.

LM: No, that was the BAFTAs speech, I think... I realised Chris had the same work ethic as me. I think that with a lot of those sort of things, what they do is they put you together and say “Would you like to present an award with X?” You turn up and ten minutes before, you go “What should we say? Oh, there's something on the autocue... what if I did this for a laugh?” and they're usually a bit eggy. So basically, if you’re going to do it, you need to do it properly. We just put a bit of effort into it.

LM: I've only really been in two films. This is my second one, and I'm in this a lot more than I was in The Horrible Histories Movie. So yeah, it's a lot bigger than what I’m used to. But I wouldn't say it's so different because we’re still going for laughs, and obviously that's what I do on Not Going Out.

I trust Chris anyway. When he asked me if I wanted to get on board, I basically agreed without reading the script.

LM: Well, almost. I'm at that age when I have to scan through scripts just in case there's any nudity. You don’t want these things to end up being too funny. But coming from Chris, Martha and Larry I knew it would have a heightened level of reality. It's got what I would call, and for me this is a positive, a cartoon element to it.

CM: There's a lot of slapstick. I'm with Lee - my favourite kind of comedy is the comedy that just goes out to make people laugh, above all else. And as Lee said, I think there is room for other types of comedy. But that's my favourite. I just wanna be made to laugh. But I think with the film we've really been able to ramp up a lot of tension. It's a family film and I think we'll have a lot of kids watching it almost on the edge of their seats, rooting for us. After a certain point it's pretty much wall to wall legging it about and action scenes.

LM: It's definitely got a sort of Home Alone style level of goodies and baddies. The baddies are very likeable. They're clearly the baddies, but they're not horrible. They’re more like Tom in Tom and Jerry. No one hated Tom and he didn’t deserve what happened to him. And I think that's important – we have fun with them even when we're not rooting for them.

CM: No. We wanted real characters. We wanted them to really lay it on thick with the criminal aspect of their baddiness. But also, there's that juxtaposition of them just trying to be a dysfunctional family who want to spend Christmas together…

LM: I think the Brennans could have a spin-off film. Even if they don't have one, the fact that they could shows that we buy into them.

LM: The funny thing is I don't think either of us really wants or doesn’t want the spot. What we want is for the other one to not get it. The main problem which we learn from the outset of this film, is that this guy won't take his lights down after Christmas, right? And right opposite my house. And the question is, am I overreacting or is he trying to goad me?

CM: I'm going for it just to show him what an integral part of this community I am and how much everybody thinks of me over him. And he just can’t let that happen really.

LM: He's the new player on the cul-de-sac and my status has been diminished because of him. Or as my wife, played by the great Sarah Alexander, tries to point out, perhaps my issues aren't about him, really. It's about other issues in my life I need to address.

CM: We’re both really petty.

CM: Yes, the action is all kept very local.

LM: And it was a real street. It's fascinating, really. I filmed another show called Semi Detached set on a cul-de-sac and we had to basically pay people to leave their houses. And it's hard. It's hard because you got some people who aren't leaving the street and some people that are.

This is a weird situation where they found a whole street of empty, unsold houses, apart from one. And luckily that one family were lovely and wanted us to be there. And we had free rein of this brand-new development that had never been lived in.

LM: Always. That's the case with this and I had to make a decision because I get very hot very quickly. So, if I commit to the jumper and the big padded coat, I'm going to regret it when we get in the studio. So I went for a T-shirt, so I was freezing for the first couple of weeks. Whereas Chris went the opposite…

CM: Yeah, I had five layers and struggled in the studio. But it was good. I mean, to find a street that we could just have full control over. We had a moon on a crane… apparently to control the angle and the intensity of the moonlight. You know, they hire in streetlights so they could control the power to them themselves.

LM: Fascinating things happen when you go on set. The streetlights are a good example, where you just assume they're real streetlights and then on the last day you see people just carrying them off.

CM: It's moving a little bit at the minute, but there's not a lot of incidental casting. If you're going to be cast, it's because the character’s blind, and that's a key part of the story. I kind of look at disability in acting terms, as kind of like race was in the 70s where if you were cast it's because that was the purpose of the character. It was gonna be about race.

I think that's the case a lot of times with disability now. There’s not a lot of “let's just get this blind guy in to play this teacher where it's not even mentioned in the script.” And also when people do write parts, it tends not to be the tone that I wanted to be. You know, I've turned down a couple of things in the past because the tone has just been a little bit cliche, little bit cringey.

LM: And to be fair, my sight is absolutely fine and I still had to write myself a sitcom to get any acting work… I don't know. Chris will know better than me, but part of the reason might be not being sighted and getting type casted. That's the only role you can play and that that's an issue. But another issue is that they don’t trust stand ups to act… they go for actors for acting and stand ups for stand up.

Chris is probably like me, the offers come in thick and fast to appear or host a panel game, but the second you play a character, it's hard. And the reason it's hard is because people know you, the person, because they've seen you being yourself. And that's why a lot of actors will avoid being seen in public.

Chris is not afraid to make himself look like a complete git! In a good comedic way. I think people have a false perception of vulnerability, they go “oh, we've got to tread carefully”, but we can make a blind person a bit of a git. It's fine. We played up to it in an episode of Not Going Out which was based off me asking Chris who he found more annoying – people who don’t help out at all or people who help too much. He said “easily, the ones who help too much”, so we built a character around that.

CM: And I am a total git in this towards Lee’s character.

LM: Yeah. Yeah, it's not all me.

LM: That a pair of incompetent, clueless, moronic imbeciles can hopefully get the job done when push comes to shove. And I’m talking about the actors, not the characters.

CM: Nothing. I hope they laugh so hard that they do a bit of wee. I hope they learn pretty much nothing except that they want to tell people to watch it, cause we've gone out to make a film that is, I think, funny and captivating and keeps you on the edge of your seat with a lot of tension and a lot of laughs. And I think we might have done it, you know.