ABOUT CATS OF TOTTENHAM
Cats of Tottenham is a comedic, lo-fi web series made by Ellie Bradford and writer Will Stuart. It follows the story of four women who get turned into cats by a life-coach man online. However, he turns them into these grotesque creatures that don’t actually look like cats. This mirrors the creator Ellie Bradford’s feelings about herself and her life at the time of creating the show—feelings of underachieving, coming across as childlike, not really knowing who I am or what I want, depression, and having quite delusional and psychotic thought patterns.
I created these feelings as separate characters, and these were the four women/cats mentioned above. Coming across as childlike is Karen; not knowing who I am or what I want is Jane; depression is Emily; and delusion and psychosis is Susan. Making them into separate characters allowed me to process these overwhelming feelings. The mysterious life-coach man who turns them into grotesque cats represents my gullible nature when forming relationships, as I often trusted everyone and everything, which ultimately led to my own downfall.
I wanted to create a sitcom-style format like “Friends,” with six episodes in a season. In each episode, you would get to know the characters and watch them navigate life on minimum wage while house-sharing in Tottenham, North London. The four women work in the local supermarket, “Asda.” The show then follows them as they try to defeat and undermine the billionaires and CEOs that run the planet, but they attempt to do this in silly and ridiculous ways.
