Behind the Mic at Chapter 81: Bringing the New Season of Yorkshire Talks to Life

There’s a moment that happens sometimes in the studio, the mics are on, the lights are warm, and everyone forgets they’re being recorded. It’s rare, a kind of magic you can’t fake. And it happened over and over again while making the new season of Yorkshire Talks.

As a production team, you hope for that feeling. You build the environment for it, you set the tone, you prepare the tech… but in the end, the best conversations happen when people trust you enough to let go a little. This season, Christine Talbot and Matt Jameson brought in guests who were ready to do exactly that, and we had the privilege of catching those moments as honestly as possible.

From the very first session with Lisa Riley, we knew this season was going to land differently. She walked into the studio full of energy, full of stories, and then, in the space of a heartbeat, she opened up about her mum with a vulnerability that made the whole room still. As producers, you suddenly become acutely aware of how important it is not to break the spell. The mics need to hold steady. The cameras need to stay out of the way. The edit later needs to honour what’s happening in front of you.

That became the guiding principle for the whole series.

At Chapter 81, we spent a lot of time thinking about the sound of conversation, not just the clarity, but the closeness. We wanted listeners to feel as though they had pulled up a chair in the room with us. That meant careful mic work, long calibration sessions, and edits that feel invisible. We try to shape the conversation without ever interrupting its natural rhythm. If we’ve done our job right, you don’t notice the production at all, you just feel the story.

The visuals mattered just as much. Yorkshire Talks has its own personality now, and we wanted the look of the show to reflect the heart of the county: warm, grounded, expressive. Every camera angle, every colour grade, every frame of b-roll and every thumbnail was crafted to match that identity. It’s the kind of aesthetic work that most people will never consciously notice, but they’ll feel it. That’s the sweet spot.

Some episodes were simply joyful — like filming with Dr Amir Khan, who is exactly as charismatic off-camera as he is on TV. Others were much heavier. Lindsey Burrow’s conversation with Christine and Matt is one we’ll remember for a long time. There were points in that interview where the room felt completely suspended in emotion. You can’t rush those moments. You just hold the space and hope the technology holds with you.

And then there were guests like Danny Malin and Jono Lancaster, whose stories moved between humour and honesty so fluidly that capturing the tone became an artistic challenge, the best kind. We found ourselves editing not to tidy, but to reveal.

If this season feels cohesive, it’s because we thought about every detail: the branding, the audio stings, the story arcs, the social cuts, the way it all sits together on YouTube and across platforms. Building a series identity is a bit like building a world. You don’t want it to look manicured. you want it to feel lived in.

This is what we love: taking stories that matter, voices that deserve space, and making sure everything around them. From the tech, the design, the polish, it lifts them up rather than distracts from them.

Producing Yorkshire Talks is a truly collaborative process. Christine and Matt bring the warmth, the humour, the big Yorkshire energy. The guests bring the honesty. And we bring the craft with the quiet detaild, the long nights in the edit, the frames you’ll never notice, and the sound you’ll only feel.

Season two is the strongest yet. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s human.

And that’s exactly how we wanted it to be.