Scott & Bailey was commissioned after the concept was introduced to executive producer
Nicola Shindler, who brought it to writer
Sally Wainwright. The series is produced by
Manchester-based
Red Production Company and is largely filmed in the
Greater Manchester area.
Concept Scott & Bailey is based on an original idea by
Suranne Jones and
Sally Lindsay, with Jones commenting that there needed to be more roles for women "that weren't wife-of, sidekick-to, mother-of, mistress-to, etc." Jones remarked, "We were just chatting away over a bottle of wine in a pub" when the idea came to fruition. Lindsay, a fan of television programmes such as
Cagney & Lacey, was interested in the concept of a programme detailing the lives of two professional women. though she acknowledged that
Scott & Bailey as a drama was more "gritty" and "real". Despite the positive reaction, the project "kind of got a bit lost" until
ITV discovered it and requested that Wainwright rewrite the script. She said, of her time as a police officer in comparison to portrayals on television, that "reality is much more interesting. I could pull a thousand cases out of my head people would say would never happen. People need drama because they would not believe the reality".
Nicola Shindler, who founded the company in 1998, is the programme's
executive producer alongside writer
Sally Wainwright and Tom Sherry. When speaking of Shindler, Wainwright said: "Nicola is just a genius. She makes you raise your game. So if you're good, she'll make you better". The role of producer was undertaken by Yvonne Francas for Series 1, and from Series 2 to Series 3, Tom Sherry. Sherry, who has worked for Red Productions for over 15 years, described his job as "the opportunity to meddle in all departments – it's about being able to have a passable stab at everyone's job and to be able to empathise with what they're trying to achieve". For the production of Series 4, Sherry undertook the role of executive producer alongside Wainwright and Shindler, while the position of producer is staffed by Juliet Charlesworth. For the fifth series, filmed in 2015, Suranne Jones became an executive producer alongside Shindler. The involvement of Diane Taylor as a consultant producer is credited with maintaining
Scott & Baileys "rigorous authenticity". After meeting, the production was given the green light by ITV and the script was largely re-written, with Wainwright commenting: "I wasn't writing a single line of dialogue that Diane hadn't influenced". Due to Wainwright's increased workload on her other drama series
Last Tango in Halifax and
Happy Valley, Bullmore was chosen to be the head writer for
Scott and Baileys fourth series in 2014. She was joined on the writing team by
Lee Warburton, who wrote two episodes of the fourth series. and returned to write Scott & Bailey's fifth series in 2015. The
directing of
Scott & Bailey is undertaken in a method whereby "each director directs a 'block' of two or three episodes, dictated by the schedule – when each episode has finished shooting, the director goes into the edit and a new director takes over for the next block", according to Calkin. It was originally intended that Lindsay would star with Jones in
Scott & Bailey, but she became pregnant with twins, so the role of Janet was given to
Lesley Sharp instead; Both Rachel and Janet are Detective Constables in the Major Incident Team of the fictional Manchester Metropolitan Police Service, with the team headed by DCI Gill Murray (
Amelia Bullmore), who is loosely based on Diane Taylor. Producers were undecided on what age DCI Murray would be, but had originally pictured an actress older than Bullmore. and
Tracie Bennett also appeared in the third series as DC Bailey's estranged mother, Sharon. In a continuing
story arc for the third series,
Nicola Walker was cast in the role of Helen Bartlett, a character driven to emotional instability by past events unearthed by the Manchester Metropolitan Police. In preparation for the role Walker visited a psychologist in order to build upon her characterisation.
Filming branch in Bury served as the police station exterior in the first three series
Principal photography for the first series took place in a twelve-week window from November 2010 onwards, it was reported by
Female First. The series was filmed on location in and around
Greater Manchester. before adding that on the last day of filming she had to shoot a gruelling scene involving her chasing a suspect from a crime scene, while Sharp and Bullmore "were having massages and facials ready for the wrap party". In November it was reported that while filming on Hamilton Road,
Whitefield—the set of DC Scott's home—that an
emergency call was made after a member of the
television crew, a lighting technician, became stranded on top of a "
cherry-picker style platform" 12 metres (39 ft) above the ground. Fearing the mechanism could fail and cause the crew member to fall to the ground, they sought assistance from firefighters, who safely brought the technician to the ground. A longer break in production between series 3 and 4 was the reason that the fourth series was instead filmed in summer. ==Home media==