Sally Wainwright, the writer/creator, based this series upon her own experiences when she was sharing a house with four other people and working as a bus driver herself. Richard and Robert are based on real life characters, and Robert is based on the man she ended up falling in love with and marrying in real life.
This was originally scheduled to be shown, under the title "Jane Hall's Big Red Bus Ride", beginning in July 2005. However it was postponed for a year and given a more innocuous title, after the 7 July 2005 terrorist bombings in London, one of which killed many people on a red London bus.