You can’t run or hide: Jessica Hynes on her suffragette comedy

I wanted Up The Women to feel like a classic sit-com, almost as if it had always been here

In being so uncompromisingly retro filming with a live studio audience, we actually stand out I think. In dealing with the suffrage movement – a subject matter that most people don't associate with comedy I was aware that I had to make it as user friendly and funny as possible.

You can't run and you can't hide when you’re filming with a live audience

For five out of the six episodes we were in the hall, the kitchen or the entrance filming with no time jumps in the story. It’s tough on the cast and a real challenge to write and film but I wanted the audience to love these characters and feel they knew them - this is a great way to achieve that.

It would be too easy to hate Helen

By having her mother in the show we begin to understand that Helen (Rebecca Front) is reacting against the permissiveness of Myrtel (Judy Parfitt) who lived through the enlightenment. It mirrors the relationship many daughters have now with their mothers from the 1960s and I thought people would relate to it.

Helen and Margaret come from my day dreams of imagining women in 1910

I wanted to create characters with personal history who complement each other but whose personalities don't overlap. Margaret is a woman who might have been so many things if she had just had the chance. Cristabel Pankhurst got a first in law but couldn't practice because she was a woman. Margaret has read and absorbed every book she can get her hands on but she has not really 'lived' a day. She was a very clever 'every woman' in a way - battling society’s expectations and controls - constantly managing her own expectations. Her belief that in the future women might not suffer as she had drove her to become a suffragette.. And me to write and play her to vindicate her silence in 1910 by giving her a voice in 2015.

People failing and trying seems to sum life up

Writing about that and making it funny, anything that makes us feel happier, more connected and less lonely, is worth doing.

Creating Spaced was completely different

I wanted Spaced to feel like nothing that had even been on TV before - to fill the screen with a recognisable world and truthful idiosyncratic characters that behave in a relatable way. By heightening the colours, being bold with lighting editing and film styles, we were able to make something both entertaining and perversely realistic. Up The Women was polished and jokes improved, as studio sit-coms need to be, until we filmed. Spaced was locked down and scheduled like a film in order to achieve it with the time and money we had, very little was changed when we filmed.

The Edwardians got some things right…

A vibrating chair once prescribed by doctors to women with stress in order to bring about 'hysterical paroxsysms' was written in at one point but we didn’t use it in the end.

Jessica Hynes created, wrote and stars in Up The Women.

Series two of Up The Women is on Wednesday, 21 January at 10pm on BBC Two and BBC Two HD. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.