All posts by Nicole Lampert

Made in Israel

For 20 years, Israeli series have demanded attention from global audiences – both in their original form and in the remakes they have inspired. DQ speaks to those behind shows such as Fauda, Prisoners of War and Tehran about their recipes for success.

Israel has become one of the television success stories of the streaming age – and its accomplishments are even more surprising when you consider that until the early 1990s, the country had just a single, government-run TV channel.

Today, the compelling stories to come out of Israel are told not only as remakes – such as Homeland and The A Word – but also, to the surprise of many of the country’s producers, in their original Hebrew language.

It was the massive success of Homeland – an American version of Keshet’s 2010 series Prisoners of War (Hatufim) – that Israeli TV executives pinpoint as one of the key turning points for the success of the industry in the past decade.

That had followed the huge popularity of Dori Media’s 2005 BeTipul, which was remade stateside as the award-winning In Treatment. The drama, about a psychologist who requires psychological help, has been adapted in 17 countries ranging from Argentina to France, Brazil to Italy and Japan to Canada.

Together, the success of the two shows alerted executives in the US and other countries that Israel was a place that could come up with fantastic stories that could travel.

Prisoners of War (Hatufim) was adapted as Homeland

“It has been a decade that has seen huge growth,” says Karni Ziv, head of drama and comedy at Keshet, Israel’s biggest TV company, which operates a TV channel as well as local and international production arms.

As the producer of Prisoners of War (which can now be seen on Prime Video), Keshet has always been at the heart of that growth. More recently, it has been behind successful coproductions of Rough Diamonds – which was a big hit for Netflix – and National Geographic and Disney+’s similarly successful A Small Light, about Miep Gies, the woman who helped hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis in 1940s Amsterdam.

“What we have seen change is the way it has gone from people adapting Israeli formats,” says Ziv, “to Israeli shows appearing on television and to our companies coproducing for the big streamers.”

Israel is a small country, with a population of nine million people. Many of its inhabitants don’t even speak Hebrew as a first language, with Arabic spoken by 20% of the population and Russian by around 15%. That is one reason why Dori Media, another of the country’s big hitters, chose to make many of its shows in Spanish – the language spoken by half a billion people around the globe – when it first launched 30 years ago.

The company may have its headquarters in Tel Aviv, but it also has offices in Argentina, Mexico and Indonesia. Notably, of the 7,000 hours of TV in its catalogue, 4,000 are in Spanish. It is presently remaking its biggest ever hit – the 2007 Argentinian comedy drama Lalola, in which a womanising magazine editor wakes up as a woman. The show has been adapted in 12 other countries.

BeTipul became In Treatment

Dori is also creating ever more Israeli content, with an eye on the international market. Its hit thriller Losing Alice, which was shown on Apple TV+, is filming a second season, while spooky army thriller Hammam is likely to be the next to air.

It was the streaming revolution and, in particular, Netflix’s openness to foreign-language shows, that helped move Hebrew-language series into the mainstream. “The call went out from Netflix that it wanted shows in a foreign language, and it put Israeli series on the map – and not just Israeli but Asian too,” says Keren Shahar, CEO of Keshet International. “In the last five years, we’ve seen that people around the world are willing to hear different languages and are curious about different places in the world.”

Two shows in particular changed everything. Dori Media’s Shtisel, which was originally shown in Israel in 2013, and Fauda, which first aired in 2015, both took on new lives when they were added to Netflix. Shtisel, a love story set in Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox community, and Fauda, about a commando unit that goes undercover to pursue a terrorist, could not be more different, other than the fact both are firmly rooted in Israel-specific experiences – and yet they became huge hits all over the world.

Shtisel became so popular that a third and final season was made in response to the international community of fans on Netflix. A Turkish version, with the religious Jews transposed into religious Muslims, recently aired to acclaim.

Meanwhile, Fauda, which was created by its lead actor Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, became a genuine phenomenon when it landed on Netflix in 2016, a year after it had aired in Israel. Interestingly, it has been a top 10 hit in many countries traditionally hostile to Israel, including Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.

Lior Raz and Rona-Lee Shimon in hit action drama Fauda

“Neither of us can really explain it,” says Issacharoff, who set up Faraway Road Productions alongside Raz. The company has more shows in the works with Showtime, Netflix and Apple, as well as a fifth season of Fauda being planned. “We think some of the reason Arabs like it is that half the show is in Arabic, so people feel pretty comfortable watching it. And I think they like that both sides are shown as very human. And we like to think the script is pretty good too.”

New local versions of Fauda are also being made, after an Indian adaptation launched earlier this year.

Donna & Shula Productions, the firm behind another big spy hit, Apple TV+ series Tehran, about a Mossad agent undercover in Iran, has had a similar experience, with the show’s stars and producers receiving many positive messages about Israel from fans in Iran. The company first found funding for the series after meeting investors at C21Media’s Content London, and when they put out their first two episodes there was a bidding war.

The third season of the show has just been filming in Athens, which fills in for Tehran, and is a coproduction with Apple. It has become such a huge hit that it has attracted an international cast, with Glenn Close featuring last season and Hugh Laurie starring as a nuclear scientist in S3, which is due out later this year or early next year.

“Tehran is like a Hollywood Cinderella story,” says producer Dana Eden. “We’ve moved things on by being an Israeli company that is producing for an American streamer. And we are now producing to Hollywood standards, attracting huge international stars.”

Apple TV+ spy series Tehran is set for a third season

All the producers cite different reasons for the success of Israeli television. The first is, prosaically, cost: an average Israeli episode for even a drama with guns and tanks can be made for around US$300,000 – a fraction even of many European budgets. Those tight margins mean scripts are often worked on for years to ensure there is no wastage.

“We can’t use money to cover stories that aren’t quite good enough so the writing has to be really good,” says Ziv. “We devote a lot of time to the writing process. For one of our recent shows, A Body That Works [which is in talks to be adapted for another market], the scripts were being worked on for more than three years. And it shows, because when the series, which is about surrogacy, came out in Israel, it was a huge success and also a huge talking point.”

Perhaps the final element is that many of these shows have authenticity. The two Fauda writers were in the military unit the show depicts, and many of the adventures seen on screen are ones they – or members of their unit – lived through. For Rough Diamonds, which was coproduced with Belgian production company DeMensen and is a top 10 show in 70 Netflix territories, the Israeli writers spent years getting to know the religious Jewish community in Antwerp they were writing about.

“When I’m speaking with writers, I tell them not to think about the international market, but just the market they know,” says Ziv. “The most successful stories find their ways to different cultures and different territories. The important thing is the drama; we have learned that if Israelis love a show, it is likely the rest of the world will too.”

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Back for more

As Fauda returns for a fourth season, co-creators Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff reflect on the show’s global impact and why authenticity has been the key to its success.

A few months ago, Lior Raz, writer and star of Israeli show Fauda, was shown a large image of himself on the front of an Egyptian newspaper. He worried at first. Was he in trouble? Was he in danger?

Lior Raz

It was quite the opposite. The photograph of him was accompanied by an article written by a journalist who admitted she had a bit of a crush on Raz’s brooding tough guy character Doron. What is more, the article was about how Fauda was helping Egyptians see Israelis in a different way.

“They used to portray us being evil, like Nazis, but because of Fauda they see who we are,” says Raz. “We have humanised both sides in this conflict.”

Art often has grandiose intentions of changing the world. Fauda, the fourth season of which dropped on Netflix last Friday, is getting closer to making a difference than most.

It has been a top 10 show in many countries normally hostile to Israel: Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar. “I can’t go down the street in some of those countries because people try and grab me or chase after me shouting, ‘Doron, Doron, Doron,’” laughs Raz, who is surprised to find himself an international pin-up. “A few weeks ago, the Bahraini ambassador to the US was interviewed and was asked about the peace process. He started his answer by saying, ‘I was watching Fauda on Netflix…’”

And because the Palestinians are equally humanised in this complex but incredibly watchable series, it has made a difference in Israel too. “The right wing in our country said to us, ‘For the first time we feel compassionate about the other side.’”

For Raz’s co-writer, Avi Issacharoff, whose work as a journalist had taken him across the bitter divide in the Israel/Palestine conflict, it is just as surprising to find out how much even the Palestinians have become fans – even if (or perhaps because) it is officially frowned upon.

Avi Issacharoff

“It is even more complicated with them because while we portray the Palestinians in a complex way – we give them names, we give them families – our sympathy is still with the Israelis, so they are kind of the bad guys,” says Issacharoff. “But one day someone very close to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, called me and said, ‘I have been watching Fauda with my son. You have to say hi to Doron and Captain Ayub!’ It was kind of crazy.

“There are some people in Hamas who don’t like it too much. They claimed Fauda was an Israeli attempt to beat Hamas in the field of cinema because we couldn’t beat them on the battlefield. They called it Zionist propaganda, but at the end of one of their articles about us they posted a link for the first episode, and this was just when it was on a few channels.

“The next day I got a phone call from a Hamas official who lives in Qatar. He’s chit chatting about the situation in Israel and I feel he wants to ask me something, and then he does. He says, ‘Can you send me a link for the second episode?’”

It is hard to know what makes a show one of the most popular in the world. But for Raz and Issacharoff, the key to Fauda’s success is its authenticity. The layered and tense storyline focuses on an Arab-speaking Israeli commando unit who infiltrate Arab society to find terrorists. Across all four seasons, we see how violence begets violence. It is there in the very first episode when the unit’s attempt to grab a terrorist goes wrong and they end up shooting someone at a wedding. Revenge is swift; the Palestinians retaliate with a bomb in a bar.

Raz and Issacharoff, Jerusalemites whose families both originally came from Arab countries, have been friends since they were 16 and were both in the elite unite, called the Duvdevan, which is featured in the series.

They had joined the reserves of the unit, working in the West Bank, when they came up with the idea of Fauda. By then Issacharoff was already a top journalist and Raz a jobbing actor. “Avi asked me if I had a dream and I told him I wanted to write something about the people we were then with, about the mental price they were all paying, the price everybody surrounding them was paying,” says Raz. “We both wanted to talk about the Palestinian side too because knowing who they are is just as important.”

Fauda was originally turned down for being too gritty for the Israeli market

Finding someone willing to make the show was a struggle. Israelis live with the conflict; when they watch the television they prefer light entertainment. Raz and Issacharoff got a lot of no’s.

“We managed to find someone to help us pitch to the production company Yes,” recalls Issacharoff. “There was one guy and three women in the room. He was enthusiastic, the women seemed less so. They said, ‘This show won’t be watched by women.’ But they still took it on, it became the success it became, and when they did research into the viewers, they found more women were watching the show than men.

“We don’t know the exact reasons for the success but I think a big part of it is the authenticity. We took stories from real life, from our lives, and we put them in the story. Every episode of Fauda, every character, you will find something that is real. And sometimes we almost predict things; in our third season we wrote about our team being exposed while they were working in the Gaza Strip. As we were writing it, there was a real team of undercover soldiers that were exposed – so we were having this strange dialogue with reality.

“And we are showing some of the reality of a conflict many people will have seen on the news. But now they see it from the perspective of people who are there, whether they are undercover Israelis or Palestinians. As a journalist, I got to talk to Palestinians – some of them the terrorists my unit would once hunt. I’d have a coffee or even lunch with them. Fauda shows the complexity and the contradictions of the conflict.”

Ala Dakka and Lior Raz as Bashar and Doron

Over the series, the story has taken the unit from the West Bank to Gaza to, in this season, Brussels and Lebanon, testing the team as they have never been tested before. It is fair to say the incredible tension Fauda is famous for is there from the off.

Because the show has become such an international success – with India making the first local version – Raz and Issacharoff have a very international outlook. Their company, Faraway Road Productions, is planning to team up with creatives from across Arab nations to create more work that crosses borders.

“We are thinking creatively all the time. We just wrapped something in Morocco which we have made for Showtime and we are living the dream,” says Raz. “It is a dream we didn’t even dare to dream.

“We are creating a hub for content from the Middle East, specifically between Israel and the UAE. We are bringing writers and creators together to bring stories from the Middle East to the world.”

There are also plans for a show set in London and, of course, more Fauda. “We are talking very seriously about making a Fauda movie and we are very open to more seasons,” says Raz. “This has all been a brilliant adventure and we are not sure when it will end.”

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Baby on board

Maternal writer Jacqui Honess-Martin and star Lisa McGrillis reveal how reality met fiction when making this six-part drama about three working mothers returning to their hospital jobs after having children.

It was once the home of Pilkington, where the world’s strongest and most innovative glass products were made. But last summer, the enormous complex at Alexandra Park, in the Merseyside town of St Helens, housed the set of a drama called Maternal that may well shatter perceptions of whether women can have it all.

The combination of work and motherhood is an issue can dominate public discourse and produce hilarious comedy such as Motherland, but drama has been slow to catch up – until now.

The brainchild of playwright Jacqui Honess-Martin in her first television project, Maternal was born from the idea of her wanting to see her own experience as a mother returning to the workplace reflected in drama.

“When I went back to work when my son was six months old, I was tired, grumpy and really struggling – and I work in the theatre, which is a warm and relatively caring space,” says Honess-Martin, who now has two children, speaking on the show’s set. “It made me think about some of my mates who were going back into front-line medicine.

“I was interested in how we juxtapose the challenges of working in the NHS with the difficulties and sometimes hilarious trials of having small children. I hadn’t seen my own experience of being a working mum reflected on television; women are usually portrayed as either professional or in the domestic sphere, but the majority of us are doing both, and it is funny and awful and wonderful all at the same time.”

The six-part drama, which is produced by ITV Studios and begins today on ITV1 and streamer ITVX, stars Lara Pulver, Parminder Nagra and Lisa McGrillis as three doctors, all working in different specialisms, who are returning to work at the same hospital at the same time after having time off to have children.

All three have different circumstances: Pulver (The Split) is ambitious surgeon Catherine MacDiarmid, the single mum of a nine-month-old with childcare issues, who is determined not to let motherhood get in the way of becoming a consultant; Nagra – who first found fame in ER and also starred in last year’s DI Ray – is paediatric consultant Dr Maryam Afridi, who has been off for two years and whose teacher husband isn’t sure she will cope with being back; and McGrillis (Mum) is Dr Helen Cavendish, a registrar in acute medicine who is returning after three children. She is married to a fellow doctor who is now her senior and who had an affair with a junior in the department in which they both work.

The Pilkington building smacks of 1970s hospitals, and an entire ward has been built on one of its floors. Even the (real) canteen in the building is used for a set, with rubbish artfully strewn across the tables.

Honess-Martin says she obsessively watched ER as she was writing the series, but while Maternal will feature many medical scenes, its focus is on the lives of the three women.

Lara Pulver as Catherine MacDiarmid, one of three mothers working as doctors in Maternal

“We are trying to do something different in terms of the balance of emotional tones,” she says. “There is a lot of darkness but also a lot of comedy. We are really getting under the skin of these women and their domestic lives. While ER had 30 seconds at the beginning and 30 seconds at the end of them at home, in some of my episodes it’s 50-50.

“What that means, hopefully, is that when you see those doctors in those big crash situations – in those big ‘ER moments’ – it feels extra terrifying because you know how tired they are, or how sad they are, or what else they are carrying into that room.”

All three actors are mothers themselves, and the set is a deliberately inclusive environment where cast and crew are allowed to bring in their children as long as they are accompanied by a childminder. McGrillis went one step further, asking if her real-life 18-month-old daughter could play her screen daughter.

“When I read this script I thought, ‘This is me, basically’,” she says. “I’m just playing a version of myself, which is really kind of exposing in a lot of ways. I can relate to it so much.

Lisa McGrillis is Dr Helen Cavendish, a registrar in acute medicine

“I volunteered Cleo once I read that Helen has a one-and-a-half-year-old. It is interesting because they are at an age where they can be really clingy, and the downside of having her working with me was I’d be thinking, ‘She’s missed her nap’ or ‘She needs a snack’ when normally, if you were working with a baby, you’d pass them back to their mother.

“But she was great, so confident. She’s walking around going ‘Hiya!’ to everyone and her reactions were good. She puts her arms out and says ‘Mummy’ and that is going to look real.”

But it wasn’t all plain sailing. “There is a scene where I am rocking her to sleep, giving her milk and singing a lullaby,” recalls McGrillis. “It was the end of a long day and she was really tired and started to play up. She was crying and didn’t want me to hold her, and then you’ve got the whole crew watching you parenting as you are thinking, ‘Just drink the milk!’ If it had been another baby, I couldn’t have settled her, but because it was Cleo, I knew what to do and she calmed down.

“Then my son Joshie ended up on set too. My parents were looking after him but my dad hurt his Achilles tendon. My childminder was with me in Liverpool, so I rang our producer who said, ‘We are making a show about women returning to work after having kids, and if we can’t support that then we’re not doing our job.’ So Joshie came up; he had one of the best days. He sat by one of the monitors, he was helping with the checks. He was convinced he was an extra because he walked past the camera; he was buzzing.”

ER star Parminder Nagra is back on the ward as paediatric consultant Dr Maryam Afridi

Authenticity was also a keyword for the shoot, which was overseen by director James Griffiths. Real local nurses were used in the hospital scenes, and each of the key actors was paired with a specialist doctor who was with them on set and whose stories were often used in the script.

“I was dependent on a medical textbook and calling a friend who was rather busy working on a Covid ward,” recalls Honess-Martin. “But once we knew it was going ahead, we joined with our three amazing consultants. Not only were they incredibly generous with their real-life stories but, also, it turns out you can’t just sit with a medical textbook. I think there was a scene in the first episode where one of the doctors said, ‘That bit needs to change because, if you did that, you would kill them.’”

All the doctors are under strain at work, echoing the frightening reality of the current NHS crisis. The idea behind Maternal, which is distributed by ITV Studios, was always to set it in the semi-post-pandemic world we are in now, although even Honess-Martin may not have predicted just how bad things would be.

“I think it is impossible to write about the NHS without having a political standpoint,” she says. “We are looking at the NHS at a point in history where it is in trouble because Covid found the hairline fractures and turned them into canyons. It is not a heavily political show, but the personal is political.”

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Special delivery

Now in its 12th season, Call the Midwife is assured of its status as one of the BBC’s best-loved series. The cast reveal how its focus on social change and relatable issues means it’s more than just a medical drama.

When the BBC first commissioned Call the Midwife, it didn’t really know what to do with it. Nostalgia and nuns mixed with the grind of poverty, death merging with birth – Sunday night at 20.00 didn’t seem the most obvious place for this kind of show. But almost from the word go, it took on a life of its own.

The series, created and written by Heidi Thomas and originally based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, recently started its 12th season, following on from a Christmas special that was, as usual, one of the most viewed dramas on British television during the holiday season.

Featuring disability and alcoholism, poverty and sickness, lightened only by the engagement of favourite character Nurse Trixie Franklin (Helen George), this was Call the Midwife in all its glory – because ups and downs are part of life.

It is no wonder that articles have been written about how Call the Midwife sneaks in politics. It has a Christian outlook – the story centres on an order of medical nuns – and kindness and community are at its heart. But it has always been unsparing about dealing with issues that could be deemed political, such as the danger of illegal abortions and the stigma of single parenthood.

It chronicles social change – one of the real joys of the series – and it is unashamedly feminist too, even if the word was barely used in 1957, the year in which its story begins. Every year, at the launch of the Christmas episode, Thomas enjoys mentioning the word vagina, so long verboten on television, even if half the world has one. It is strange how revolutionary this still feels.

Helen George as Nurse Trixie Franklin in the 12th season of Call the Midwife

That feminist feel is there both in front of and behind the camera. With an almost entirely female-led cast and female-centred storylines, it is produced and almost always directed by women.

“I just love the frankness of talking about women’s health and women’s issues,” says Laura Main, who plays cast regular Shelagh Turner, who started the show as a nun before falling in love with the resident doctor Patrick Turner. “I’ll never ever forget the scene where a woman didn’t have the language to talk about her prolapsed uterus and how she was dealing with that. It just absolutely shocked me to the core.

“I think we still need to be reminded or encouraged, because it can be a scary thing just going for your smear test. To have these things aired on a Sunday night at 20.00 is important. We cover men’s health issues too. I don’t think one person could watch Call the Midwife and not relate to it or be educated, and that’s brilliant.”

From the start of the 12th season, once again produced by Neal Street Productions, Call the Midwife has continued with that ethos. The Christmas episode featured the return of Susan, a baby affected by the use of thalidomide, who viewers first met in season five, and again in season six. We saw her parents rowing about compensation money – incredibly an issue that is still ongoing to this day – and her father turn to drink because he felt unable to provide for his little girl.

“It was a reminder that the issue of thalidomide wasn’t just a one-off story; it wasn’t just about babies being born,” says Stephen McGann, who plays Dr Patrick Turner. “People who were affected by this scandal are still with us today, as are the problems and challenges for them and their families.

The first season of the show took viewers back to 1957, but the series has now caught up to 1968

“The Susan we meet is growing up and she wants what the other kids have. She is a lively, vibrant child but has challenges socially because she isn’t treated the way she should be. We also see the strain it is has put on the whole family.”

Meanwhile, the first episode of season 12 proper – which launched on New Year’s Day – dramatised and personalised one of the most controversial moments in British history, when Conservative MP Enoch Powell made a racist speech about immigration in which he said: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

Even many British viewers will be unaware of the fact that, after the speech led to Powell’s dismissal from the shadow cabinet, London dockers went on strike in support of him, bearing placards saying, ‘Don’t knock Enoch.’

For older cast members, creating the scene was a reminder of a dark time and a warning. “When you hear the speech again, it’s shocking,” says Jenny Agutter, who plays Sister Julienne. “It was a terrible time and, when there is a terrible economic climate, this happens. That’s why Hitler came to power. People get frightened and they have to find the whipping boy.”

It was a shock too for younger cast members such as Zephryn Taitte. His character is Cyril Robinson, a black engineer who is married to midwife Lucille and gets caught up in the demonstrations.

Zephryn Taitte plays engineer Cyril Robinson

“I am so glad they put this storyline in, as it’s something that needs to be spoken about,” says Taitte. “For Cyril, it is a shock; he has never encountered this level of animosity towards immigrants or migrants. It’s a shock because you suddenly realise there is a ton of people who actually think like that. It’s a slap in the face of reality and it’s one that’s still going on. It’s an issue that people still need to address, to be open and honest about.

“Toleration has come to the forefront again in our time. You see how it affects Lucille and Cyril, and that is important.”

Over this season, set in 1968, we see how the pair are also struggling after Lucille’s miscarriage, another example of Call the Midwife’s unstinting look at life as a woman. Other issues tackled include domestic violence, vaccines, infection and, of course, many more pregnancies.

“I think one of the interesting things is seeing how people were treated then and now,” says McGann. “There is quite a tragic mental health story because Dr Turner knows someone needs to be saved, but the things to help – which are now available – weren’t there then. Just like so much of Call the Midwife, this is a big dose of social reality.”

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Treacherous waters

The cast and crew of The North Water reveal their perilous experience filming scenes in the Arctic for this story of an 1850s whaling expedition, written and directed by Andrew Haigh.

Colin Farrell holds his head in his hands as he slumps on the table and admits: “You’ll have to bear with me, I’ve not had much sleep.” He pauses. “I’m on my knees.” He looks it.

He’s in a Budapest studio, almost at the end of one of the most challenging shoots of his career. Not only did it involve a physical transformation that makes him almost unrecognisable, but it also took him to the far north of the planet for one of the most ambitious five hours of television ever made.

The North Water, based on the novel by Ian McGuire and launching on BBC2 tonight, was, the producers believe, filmed further north than any drama before it at 81 degrees north, just 500 miles south of the pole. To create the stunning series, written and directed by Andrew Haigh (45 Years) about a disastrous whaling trip in 1859, the producers took a crew and cast of 100 people to live on three ships over a four-week period for a unique experience.

“Putting the whole thing together was like wrestling an octopus,” says producer Kate Ogborn. “But from the start, Andrew kind of planted his flag, saying it had to be a real ship and we had to film in the ice. That was a kind of amazing challenge that made it very exciting.”

Colin Farrell plays Henry Drax in The North Water

First a ship had to be found. The Activ, a three-masted wooden schooner built in the 1950s in Denmark and, crucially, fitted to work in the ice, was the only boat that would do as The Volunteer, where most of the action takes place. The ship, which has already appeared in TV show Finding Home and a Moby Dick film, had to sail to Canada for initial filming and be fitted out to look like it was two centuries old. Then it sailed to Svalbard in Norway, where it was joined by the cast and crew, an icebreaker and a third ship to take this incredible production to sea.

“Because we were filming on ice, we had to be entirely marine-based,” says Ogborn. “It was not a small thing for a crew and this calibre of cast to agree to come and live on a boat for more than four weeks in which they cannot get off, but people believed in the project, they believed in Andrew and they knew they were in for an extraordinary experience.” They certainly had an experience none of them will forget.

Produced by See-Saw Films and distributed by BBC Studios, the five-part series is told through the eyes of doctor Patrick Sumner, played by Jack O’Connell. Sumner has fallen on hard times; we learn he was thrown out of the army and that he is addicted to laudanum, a type of opiate. He might have a murky past, but he’s an educated man with a strong sense of right and wrong, unlike the men he meets when he signs up as ship’s doctor on a whaling expedition to the Arctic – in particular Farrell’s character, the bloodthirsty whaler Henry Drax, who is genuinely amoral.

“It’s important to Sumner to maintain order,” says O’Connell. “When there’s a victim, he takes it on board as his responsibility to see that the perpetrator is punished. That lands him in Drax’s crosshairs – he’s the target of a lethal killer.”

Jack O’Connell stars as ship doctor Patrick Sumner

Both actors are playing against type. This Is England star O’Connell’s Sumner is middle class, refined and appalled by the violence. Farrell (In Bruge, The Lobster), so often the charming heartthrob, put on three stone to play the physically and emotionally brutish Drax.

“I ate, I lifted weights and I ate some more and that’s all,” says Farrell. “Anyone could do it really, although I wouldn’t advise it. And that was it; you couldn’t take the costume off. He was always with me; I couldn’t step away from him.”

It was a dark costume to inhabit. “When I first read the script, I wasn’t sure about doing it – there is such a fundamental and essential darkness to this man,” he continues. “But the interesting thing about him is that he doesn’t live in that darkness; he’s the most burden-free character in the piece.

“He’s painted as a man of nature – and in some ways he is quintessentially Darwinian in that he’s fully engaged with the notion of the survival of the fittest. He’s an abusive creature of self-preservation.”

Added into the mix is Captain Brownlee, played by Stephen Graham, who is in command of the ship. He has one job, which isn’t what the others think he is doing. Alternative forms of fuel, other than whale oil, have by this time been discovered, while catching whales is more difficult than it once was – they have almost been hunted to extinction. The ship’s owner Baxter (Tom Courtney) realises he will make more money from insurance than whale oil and he’s come up with a plan for Brownlee to sink the ship. Sinking a boat in the middle of the icy Arctic – what could possibly go awry?

Stephen Graham, who plays Captain Brownlee, on location with writer and director Andrew Haigh

The obvious danger was all around for the actors and crew, despite help being just a helicopter ride away (at one point a member of the crew had a dental emergency and had to be picked up).

“The biggest logistical challenge was finding the right sort of ice that was big enough for us to work on but not so densely packed that once we’d entered it that we couldn’t get out,” says Ogborn. “One ship was an icebreaker but the other two would have struggled to get through and could have got seriously trapped.”

The producer would be up at 4am every morning looking at satellite images to find the perfect ice on which to work. “It was like going hunting each morning, and then finding the ice and mooring the ships on it, and then getting the equipment and monitors out and set up. Sometimes you’d forget you were in the middle of the ocean on a big piece of ice, but other times you would be reminded.

“At one point, a floe we were filming on split down the middle. We had part of the crew on one side and the other half on the other – equipment on both sides. We had to use the Activ, which was moored to one of them, to evacuate everyone.”

Actors are normally protected from the nightmares of producers, but not in this instance. “I know it sounds dramatic but the feeling of death was ever present,” says Farrell. “If any of us had slipped off an ice floe, it would have been seriously dangerous. Sometimes they would crack. We had spotters to look for polar bears; they were spotted about 10 times and we would have to get back on the boat until they’d gone. They’re beautiful, majestic creatures – but keep them away from me! They’re really stunning but also formidable apex predators.”

The cast and crew spent four weeks at sea

But Farrell didn’t shy away from some of the more challenging aspects of the job, including spending a day sailing the Activ as it made its way into the frozen waters north of the Svalbard archipelago.

“On the first day, Colin asked to become a crew member, so he got used to working the ropes, sailing the ship and doing the night watch,” says the Activ’s captain Jonas Bergsoe. “I had him as a crew member for the first 22-hour transport where we had the luck of beautiful winds and went up the coast at speeds of 10 knots. He wasn’t afraid to get dirty; he just grabbed the ropes, and he got quite good at them.”

The Activ’s crew also doubled as extras during the shoot. “It was important that you can have people who work naturally aboard a ship, so it made sense to have my crew – who 150 years ago would have been working on a whaling boat – doing the work,” adds Bergsoe. “The deal we made with the production was that nobody on board was allowed to shave or cut their hair for three months prior to the production, so they looked quite scruffy and authentic, of course.”

Of course, not everything was totally authentic – no animals were harmed despite the brutal depiction of death. For a bloody seal-clubbing scene, a mixture of CGI and prosthetics were used, while the production also involved a 30-foot-long prosthetic whale. “The whales they were hunting were bowheads, which are very, very long,” says Ogborn. “It needed a crane to get it on top of a container on the deck of our big icebreaker and it was then craned into the water and attached with ropes to The Volunteer for the scenes involving the whale.”

For all of the cast and crew, who were in Budapest filming shots of a mission cabin and scenes recreating the taverns and docks of Victorian Hull, the four weeks they spent in the sea will be something they will never forget.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be somewhere that vast and beautiful,” says Graham. “Seeing polar bears in the wild was mind-blowing. The undertaking and the logistics also blew my mind. There was so much attention to detail, which allowed us to really appreciate what we were doing.

“For me, it was quite spiritual. The thing that got me was there was no birdsong. The silence was piercing. It was a strange place to be filming such a dark story; a story of greed and manipulation in one of the most breathtaking places on the planet.”

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Buddying up

Line of Duty and The Durrells star Keeley Hawes discusses stepping into production with her company Buddy Club for ITV’s blackly comic drama Finding Alice.

Keeley Hawes not only stars in almost every scene of her latest drama, Finding Alice, but worked behind the camera as a producer as well. Helming the new ITV primetime show in every sense might seem like a daunting prospect, but the actor says it’s actually less nerve-wracking than popping in and out of a series.

“I actually think it’s more difficult if you come and in and out of a show, going away for a couple of weeks and then coming back,” she says. “You have to overcome the usual nerves every time – at least that’s my experience.

“So it is actually a luxury to be in every scene. It happened when I was in The Durrells too, and it is sort of something you get used to; and when they are brilliant scenes, it is hardly an issue.”

It was while filming The Durrells in Corfu that Hawes, writer Simon Nye and director Roger Goldby came up with the idea of six-part Finding Alice. Like Hawes’ character Louisa in the hit period drama, Alice has been recently widowed – but this series could not be more contemporary. The show opens on the day Alice’s builder husband Harry has died after falling down the stairs of the uber-contemporary new dream home the pair and their daughter moved into earlier that day. The series then follows what unfolds as Harry’s death leaves a storm of secrets and mess Alice is forced to confront.

Finding Alice is produced by star Keeley Hawes, who appears in almost every scene

Built at West London Studios, the set is an extraordinary scene of the interior of a modern house, based in part on one found in Farnham, Surrey, which was used for the exteriors. Part of the humour derives from the fact that nothing is easy in the house, which is meant to be ‘smart’ – the curtains won’t open and Alice can’t find the fridge. The concrete stairs without a banister are at the heart of the story and the mystery of how Harry came to fall down them. They were deemed so dangerous in real life that every script contains a health and safety warning about them.

“Death is something that touches everybody’s lives and it felt like there was an abundance of feelings and emotions that we could touch on,” says Hawes of the unusual feel of the series. “Alice is a unique creation and I really hope people will relate to her and find something within her reaction to the grief that they recognise and that may help them.”

The series is a unique blend of serious and humorous, much like real life. “I think as humans we often seek the light, in any set of circumstances,” says Nye, who co-wrote the series with Goldby and also acts a producer through his company Genial Productions. “It can feel inappropriate to laugh when someone has died, but Alice does that because it is something that we all do. There are, of course, other versions of how people react when someone’s husband dies suddenly but we are hoping to show the normal version, which is people trying to find a way of coping.

Nigel Havers plays Roger, father to Hawes’ character Alice

“When the three of us did The Durrells together, we found we shared the same sense of humour. This is a story about a woman losing her husband before his time and it just felt like ripe territory for telling a story with bags of emotion.”

Hawes’ move into producing started when she was asked to become an executive producer on The Durrells. Following in the footsteps of actors including Reece Witherspoon, Natalie Portman and Margot Robbie, who have produced vehicles for themselves and other women, she started her own production company Buddy Club in 2019 with the determination “to put diversity and gender equality at the heart of what we do.”

Critically acclaimed true crime drama Honour, which aired last year, was the first Buddy Club production; this is the second. Buddy Club produces Finding Alice with Red Production Company, Bright Pictures TV and Genial Productions, with StudioCanal handling international sales.

“In the US it has become very normal, but less so over here,” Hawes says of actors stepping into production. “But I’ve been in this business since I was nine when I started at the Sylvia Young Theatre School and so I’ve been in it for 30-odd years. By the end of The Durrells, I felt very much part of the process and it was a massive learning curve that I really enjoyed and wanted to do more of.”

Hawes is one of TV’s biggest female stars and can also be seen this month on Channel 4’s It’s A Sin, about the HIV epidemic. She appreciates being one of the busiest women in the industry and doesn’t take it for granted, adding that for her it was a particular honour to make both Finding Alice and It’s A Sin alongside Red Productions’ Nicola Shindler, who is renowned for creating successful series led by women including Last Tango in Halifax, Happy Valley, Traces and Trust Me.

“I’m now getting lots of opportunities and I am also making opportunities for other women,” Hawes says. “It was about time for us to see more female-centred roles. Over the last 10 years, there has been more and more of an appetite for it. People have reached out to me and I have made things happen.

“We have tried to make this show as diverse and as gender-balanced as possible both in front of and behind the camera. We changed characters that were male to female. Things are changing – slowly – but you need to be proactive and that’s what I am trying to do. I have thoroughly enjoyed being part of the development process and am looking forward to doing more.”

Joanna Lumley was first choice for Alice’s mother

Being a producer also allowed Hawes to name her dream cast – which meant Joanna Lumley playing her bossy and snobbish mother Sarah. “They said, ‘Give us five names,’ and Joanna was top of the list,” she says. “It was a dream, really, never thinking that we would actually ever get to work together. People have always said we are kind of similar, which is very flattering. She’s a brilliant actress and nobody does comedy like her.”

The cast is rounded out by Nigel Havers playing her father, Roger, while Gemma Jones and Kenneth Cranham play Harry’s mum and dad, Gerry and Minnie, Sharon Rooney his sister Nicola and newcomer Isabella Pappas playing Alice and Harry’s daughter Charlotte.

This was a particularly challenging shoot on which to be both producer and actor, as halfway through – two weeks into the second block in March last year – the entire UK closed down because of Covid-19. Filming started up again in July, with the series now launching on ITV this Sunday.

“The Covid experience sort of united everyone,” Hawes says after filming has finished. “When we came back to try to finish the show, there was a real sense of everyone being in it together and wanting to protect each other, for it to be as safe as possible.

“Being a producer meant that, like so many other producers across the board, we were dealing with a situation that no one had been in before. But I have to say it was a wholly positive experience and one that I have truly loved.”

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Building Bridgerton

Bridgerton, the first Netflix series from Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland, upends costume drama traditions in a romantic, scandalous take on Regency England.

A former paint factory in Uxbridge, on the outskirts of West London, is home to the most audaciously ambitious, visually stunning and deliberately historically inaccurate costume drama for several decades.

Bridgerton, which will launch on Netflix on Christmas Day, is costume drama sexed up and jazzed up. But then who would expect anything else from the first series in the genre to be made by Shonda Rhimes’ production company Shondaland?

Based on a series of bestselling Jane Austen-inspired books by American romance writer Julia Quinn, this is Regency romance as it has never been seen before. Everything is louder, brasher, brighter and sharper than normal. This is a heightened world of heaving bosoms and brooding bucks in breeches, and could be just the shake-up that the normally staid and conventional world of period drama needed. It will certainly be the show everyone is talking about this festive season.

“Period pieces are usually just a little traditional and conservative, and that wasn’t what I ever wanted Bridgerton to be,” says the series writer and showrunner Chris Van Dusen (Scandal). “So I set out to make a period show that I wanted to see; one that turns this traditional genre on its head and made it something new, fresh, relatable and topical.

Showrunner Chris van Dussen (left) and director Alrick Riley on the Bridgerton set

“The Regency period was a crazy time of decadence, excess and glamour, and we sought to reimagine that time period in a way that hasn’t really been seen before. It is sexy and dangerous; a really wild ride.”

Evidence of the sheer ambition – and budget – of the series is there in the paint factory. Almost the entire thing – all 100,000 square metres of it – had to be sound-proofed before any work could even start. Walls were built to create several stages that could be used at the same time. Even the canteen feels like an airplane hangar. It took 80 people four months of work around the clock to create the sumptuous sets just within the paint-factory-turned-studio.

One of the stages is still wet when DQ visits. It is the scene for a key moment towards the end of the series and is the last of a series of balls our romantic leads have attended. There’s a chequered black and white floor, surrounded by flower beds – all the flowers are real – and then the façade of a huge balconied house.

Most production companies would have used one of the UK’s grand estates and a rain machine. But because this rainy scene was going to take three days, the decision was to build this incredible stage. It is raised eight inches off the ground, with a special drainage system to allow all the water to seep away. Above us is a huge kettle the size of a petrol tanker that allows the water to be warmed up so the rain that will fall on the actors is warm rather than cold.

Phoebe Dynevor plays Daphne Bridgerton in the Netflix period drama

“It takes two days to heat up the water but it allows us to have people standing around for a long time without getting too cold,” says production designer Will Hughes Jones. “The scene has been a major task, but then a lot of it has. People’s jaws just dropped when they came onto these sets.”

Most of the furniture and rugs were made specifically for the series – costume houses didn’t have any big enough – although a Georgian pianoforte, played in the Bridgerton house, was bought and restored to give an authentic sound.

This is a production where every costume – more than 9,500 in total – was hand-made by a team of 232 people. On top of that, a further 200 wigs, many of them customised for the key characters, were also created. Bonnets were declared out, while costumes retain a Regency look but very much have their own ‘high fashion’ modern aesthetic.

As for filming venues, more than 30 outside locations, mainly stately homes, were used.
The series focuses on the aristocratic Bridgerton family, comprising a widowed mother and her eight children, as they all search for love.

This first season concentrates on the ‘coming out’ season of Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor), the eldest girl of the eight siblings, who have been named in alphabetical order (Anthony, a Viscount, is followed by Benedict, then Colin and Daphne).

The series also stars Jonathan Bailey (left) and Regé-Jean Page

A beauty, she is immediately declared one of the diamonds of the 1813 season by Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) and her success seems secured in the ‘marriage mark’ in which she needs to find a suitor. But her big brother Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), who is the head of the family, is so picky about her suitors that he frightens them all away.

Her reputation nosedives when her failure to attract a suitor is pointed out by Lady Whistledown (voiced by Julie Andrews), the mysterious 18th century version of Gossip Girl, who writes a scandal sheet revealing the weekly gossip of the aristocratic set.

In despair, Daphne agrees to a deal with her brother’s friend, Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page). As a handsome and wealthy duke, he is one of the most eligible bachelors around but he is determined not to wed. Pretending there is an affection between them will make Daphne more alluring to other possible suitors while keeping the jostling debutantes and their terrifying mothers away from him.

But then their plan quickly begins to go awry, and they go on a journey of learning about feelings together.

“Daphne starts off very much conforming to the rules of society in order to make her family proud, but this series is really about her finding out about herself,” says Dynevor. “At the start of the series, she doesn’t even know what sex is; it’s never talked about.”

The production features more than 9,500 costumes

Meanwhile, the Duke learns about himself through Daphne’s friendship and, like all romantic heroes, that involves fighting his own demons. “He has the full package – literally everything people would want, including a stormy, troubled, untameable soul,” says Page of his character. “One of the things we’ve enjoyed talking about is why our dark romantic heroes – Darcy, Heathcliff, Poldark – are all so emotionally stunted. It is interesting to explore in the series.”

The series also focuses on the Featherington family who live across the road from the Bridgertons. Ben Miller and Polly Walker play the ridiculously ostentatious Lord and Lady Featherington, who live way beyond their means. Sadly, their three daughters, Penelope (Nicola Coughlin), Prudence (Bessie Carter) and Philippa (Harriet Cains), aren’t having very much luck on the marriage mark either, even as family friend Marina Thompson (Ruby Barker) is surrounded by suitors.

Much is made, in both the production and costume departments, of the differences between the more classical Bridgertons and Featheringtons. While the Bridgerton house is based on a Wedgewood palette of pale blues, the Featherington house is given a “Versace look.” Thankfully, there was a Georgian furniture maker called Thomas Hope who featured lots of golds and blacks and was able to provide some inspiration.

Not only are the costumes and buildings much more than viewers are used to seeing in romantic costume dramas, but so are the sex scenes. The show worked with intimacy expert Lizzy Talbot to ensure all the actors felt comfortable about what they were being asked to do.

Golda Rosheuvel as Queen Charlotte

“At least 24 hours before we do a sex scene, we spend time with the other person and Lizzy to talk about how we are going to do it,” says Bailey, who appears naked in his first scene. “You start fully clothed and then, as you take them off, Lizzy brings out her bag of things which help; there are yoga balls, small mats and cushions, which mean you aren’t on top of each other.

“There is always a three-layer barrier between the actors. Everything is choreographed and then checked by the director to make sure everyone is happy with it. And then a contract is signed explaining exactly what the actor is happy to do and what parts of their body they are happy to be filmed.”

Shondaland productions including Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder have become well known for their ‘colour blind’ casting, and Bridgerton is no different. Queen Charlotte is black in the series, played by Guyana-born Golda Rosheuvel. This plays on the real history of the wife of ‘mad’ King George III – she is believed, by some historians, to have been of African descent.

This is about the Shondaland brand creating “a new pop culture,” according to half-Zimbabwean Page. “The modern sensibility of the series is very much a Shonda brand,” he notes. “They never shy away from making sure they leave the world a better place.”

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Three’s no crowd

Pushing the boundaries of traditional relationship dramas, BBC series Trigonometry explores the polyamorous dynamics between a couple and their lodger. As the producers and cast explain, it’s sure to be a conversation starter.

It’s possibly the sexiest thing to happen inside a grimy-looking laundrette since Nick Kamen took off his Levi jeans back in the 1980s. Three people, all in love with each other, are flirting underneath the newly washed bed linen. There are giggles. There is stroking. Lips are licked, glances are cast.

Outside the West London laundrette, it’s pouring with rain; inside, it’s steamy as hell, despite the director, cameraman, lights and sound crew all being there too. This is Trigonometry, set to be one of the most controversial dramas the BBC has ever screened. As the name suggests, it focuses on a threesome – three 30-somethings who fall in love with each other and decide to live together.

“It is a big love story told in a completely different way,” says producer Imogen Cooper of the series, which has been made by House Productions for BBC2. “It is all the things you get in a traditional love story but everything is presented differently.

“It is hopeful, romantic and funny but also messy in the way that life is messy. We don’t shy away from showing what happens when three people fall in love, and in lust, with each other. There is a huge amount of chemistry between our cast and the heat of it all is shown on screen.”

Filming started soon after the same channel hosted a documentary by Louis Theroux about polyamory, the idea that people can have a three-headed or even four-headed relationship. But while Theroux’s doc focused on the sadness of some of those who seemed to have been forced into sharing their partner, this drama, written by real-life couple and playwrights Duncan Macmillan and Effie Woods, looks at how it can work – even if it is not without teething problems.

L-R: The three characters in Trigonometry’s unconventional central relationship are played by Thalissa Teixeira, Ariane Labed and Gary Carr

“It has been written in a way that our characters are as equal as we can make them; we didn’t want this to be about one person making a huge compromise, as we feel these three have got something special,” says Cooper. “It is a controversial subject matter but we are portraying it in the least shockable way – it is relatable. We don’t shy away from examining how these things aren’t easy. People have been talking about living this kind of life for many decades – about open relationships and that sort of thing – and it’s still something that hasn’t really caught on.

“There are no role models for this kind of relationship, so they are working out the rules as they go along. We examine how there is some jealousy but also how being in this kind of structure means the relationship is less intense – when someone is at odds with someone else, there is help in smoothing the situation. We show the beauty of this relationship but also the trickiness. Lots of people around them don’t understand it and immediately disapprove.”

The show centres on paramedic Kieran, an ex-soldier played by Gary Carr (The Deuce), and restaurateur Gemma, played by Thalissa Teixeira (The Musketeers), who have been dating for seven years after meeting on holiday. With work commitments meaning they barely see each other, they have long been aware that something needs to change in their relationship and are contemplating marriage. However, the change ends up coming from an unexpected source after the introduction of another person into their lives.

When Gemma’s first restaurant puts a strain on the couple’s finances, they take on a lodger, Ray, played by French actor Ariane Labed (The Lobster). The three quickly become close friends, and the couple gradually find that they are both falling in love with her.

“Ray is an ex-Olympian, a synchronised swimmer, whose life has changed after an accident that forced her to give up her career,” says Labed, who went through several weeks of synchronised swimming training before she started rehearsals. “She is almost starting from zero when she moves in with Kieran and Gemma, as she has only ever lived at home. But she is open to new adventures.

Lead director Athina Tsangari (left) on set with the leading trio

“The first evening she moves in, she kind of invites herself out with them. And from the start, there is this amazing chemistry and something special happens between the three of them. The way she enters their life feels very genuine – she never feels like an interloper. For quite a while, none of them can put into words quite how they are feeling.”

Carr adds: “There is an instant admiration but everything else is quite a slow-burn thing. They both just love being with her; they like her newness and the way she has thrown everything aside to start afresh. Kieran and Gemma are at a point where they need to kickstart their relationship, and they see something amazingly courageous in Ray. In some ways, through her admiration for them, they see their relationship through new eyes and it’s quite beautiful. Gemma and Kieran start to see all the things Ray adores about their partner as a new thing again.”

All three actors hope the story will open up conversations about love, and how we live as humans, among the audience. “Gemma, Kieran and Ray are making up the rules as they go along,” says Teixeira. “But the idea of a relationship like this is really ancient. I am surrounded by friends who have tried all sorts of ways of being with each other, and one key point is honesty.

“The interesting thing is how it rubs up against conventionality. There is an episode where they introduce the idea to their families, who are shocked. That perspective might be echoed in what the audience thinks, but the story is written with so much care that I think it will help people open up about their own feelings. Quite often, we hide things – but maybe it is best to be honest. Sometimes it can take courage to speak up about who you love.”

The three points in Trigonometry’s triangle are fairly unknown actors – a risk Cooper admits she was surprised BBC2 took with this new drama. “They have been incredibly supportive of all our cast, who all have loads of experience but aren’t that well known yet,” she says. “The casting process was quite tricky because we had to ensure there was chemistry between the three of them and they all lived in different places.

Trigonometry was written by real-life couple Duncan Macmillan and Effie Woods

“If the dynamic was wrong, the whole thing would feel wrong. But we feel so much confidence in the three of them together. There was a spark from the start and that has grown into something special, as they have to really trust each other on a show like this. They have a chemistry you want to watch.”

Taking the lead director role is Greek filmmaker Athina Tsangari – whose 2015 film Chevalier was named best film at the BFI London Film Festival – in her first British television job. “She’s never worked in this country before, but she’s helped make the whole thing just magical,” says Cooper. “Our first day’s filming, which is normally quite a difficult day, was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in this job. On the night they go to the pub, there is a drag night and we had 30-odd drag queens in this pub, which was just fantastic. We are showing a very authentic London in all its glory.”

Tsangari has given the series a cinematic look and has also encouraged the actors to improvise. “We don’t know what it’s going to look like when its finished, but Athina has encouraged loads of ad-libbing,” says Teixeira. “Because we are all comfortable with our characters, she will often leave the cameras rolling after we’ve done a scene to see what else she can get from us. There is so much going on in every line – jealousy, confusion, frustration, lust – and it’s fun to play around with it.”

However, some scenes were planned in great detail, including the first three-way sex scene. “I knew there was going to be a sex scene but I had seen Athina’s work and felt comfortable she would do it well,” adds Teixeira. “It was choreographed like a dance or a moving sculpture.On the day we did it, we ate cheese and drank wine. We all felt fine about it because it is very beautiful but also very funny; there are moments where one of us can’t get our trousers off. It is agonising and awkward, just like it is for everyone.”

The eight-part series, distributed by BBC Studios, will follow the threesome as they navigate everything from getting a mortgage together and finding a big enough bed to being married in a world built only for couples. There are hopes that, if Trigonometry performs well enough, a second season could follow.

“These characters go through an enormous story arc and it does have an ending that doesn’t leave things dangling,” says Cooper. “But this is also a story that could run and run; how they navigate things and this relationship going forward is always going to be interesting.”

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Stranger danger

The team behind Netflix thriller Safe reunite for The Stranger, based on Harlan Coben’s mystery novel. DQ visits the set to find out how they reworked the story for the screen.

A pretty, red-brick side road off Bolton town centre has, perhaps, never seen anything quite like it. Cameras, lights and lots of action for a fast-paced story of murder, intrigue and secrets that – most intriguingly – includes the first lady of comedy, Jennifer Saunders, in her first serious role.

This is the set of The Stranger, the latest Harlan Coben project with Red Production Company for Netflix, and once again the casting gives a hint at its ambition. While the team’s last project, Safe, had Dexter’s Michael C Hall as a suburban British dad whose life unravelled when his daughter went missing, The Stranger has a starry cast including Richard Armitage, Siobhan Finneran (pictured above with co-star Kadiff Kirwan), Stephen Rea, Anthony Head and Hannah John-Kamen.

Harlan Coben

Like Safe, it is set in a heightened world of suburbia where everyone lives in nice houses, and almost all of them have dark a secret. It’s a fascination of New Jersey-born writer Coben, who has sold 70 million copies of his page-turning mysteries set in a fictionalised version of his home state.

Secrets are once again at the centre of The Stranger, which debuts tomorrow and is the first of his Red coproductions (as well as Safe, they also made The Five with him for Sky) to be adapted from one of his books.

The character of the Stranger, a male in the book, is now played by young female Ant-Man & the Wasp star John-Kamen, who for the opening few episodes drops the truth on unwitting strangers. The first of them is solicitor Adam Price, played by The Hobbit actor Armitage, who is told his wife (played by Dervla Kirwan) faked a pregnancy.

The idea, says Coben, came from the discovery of places on the internet that sell fake pregnancy kits. “I read about this going on in the Dark Web and thought it was just incredible and it planted this seed in my head about what happened if you faked a pregnancy and people found out?” he says. “People think they are anonymous when they do things like this, but they are not.

“The Stranger comes into each of their lives and plants a seed that germinates into something really ugly and unexpected. Adam is an ordinary guy who is told this secret about his wife and by the end of episode one she has disappeared and he goes on this journey to discover what has happened to her.”

Richard Armitage and Hannah John-Kamen in The Stranger

It is a real action adventure for former Spooks star Armitage, who claims The Stranger is one of the few shows he’s made that he would actually want to watch. “I’ve been in lots of things where I’ve loved acting in it but it’s not the kind of thing I would watch at home, but this is exactly what I would watch,” he says. “It had a brilliant script, a brilliant cast and I get to do lots of action scenes. The whole thing was a no-brainer for me.”

Saunders plays Heidi, the second of the characters to be told a secret; this time about her daughter.

“It was strange at first, not to be playing a role for laughs,” says the actor and comedian, famed for starring in Absolutely Fabulous and her comedy partnership with Dawn French. “But once we started filming and I’d done the first take, I realised it was just like normal filming, only I didn’t have to try to make people laugh. In comedy, you are normally heading for a joke – and when the director says cut, you hope the crew will laugh. Hopefully they won’t in this.”

While fans of the book will have an idea of what happens, Coben, along with scriptwriter Danny Brocklehurst (Brassic, Clocking Off, Shameless) have made so many changes that they have created something almost completely different.

“I know a lot of writers don’t like their books to be changed, but I kind of love it,” says Coben. “It works if you trust the people you are working with. The book is still there but it’s a separate entity. The fun for me is seeing how things change.

The show features comic actor Jennifer Saunders’ first serious dramatic performance

“So for the character of the cop, Johanna, played by Siobhan Finneran, I created her and then Danny changed her a little bit and then Siobhan changed her a little bit too, so she’s taken off into whole areas I never could have expected.”

Coben is intimately involved with the process from beginning to end. It starts with him and Brocklehurst, alongside producers Nicola Schindler and Richard Fee, having an intense few days of storyboarding ideas. For this production, a whole new storyline involving teenagers – Adam’s kids, who just have small roles in the book – was created, while other characters are brought in that are completely new.

“Safe did really well among younger viewers and Netflix likes shows with a teenage story and I love a teenage story, so it was cool to bring them into it,” says Coben. “We’ve also brought in Adam’s dad, played by Anthony Head.”

In addition, the mysterious character of the Stranger not only changes sex from male to female but is also given her own complicated back story, while Rea’s retired cop, Martin Killane, a client of Adam’s, is also given a much more complete history.

Brocklehurst then goes away and writes the script, staying in regular contact with Coben. “I’d say it was a strange combination of a book adaptation and an original story,” says Brocklehurst. “The start and the end of the book are very similar [to the series] but a lot of the middle section is completely new.”

Dervla Kirwin is also among the Netflix series’ cast

The action has been transported from New Jersey to England – which means the lacrosse team is now a football one and there are fewer guns – but the story is universal. “As with Safe, you start with quite an ordinary domestic setup and an identifiable ordinary guy,” says Brocklehurst. “But things begin to unravel and you go to completely unexpected places.”

As with all Netflix shows, none of the production team have any idea how successful Safe was – only that they have been recommissioned and, as Netflix has optioned several of Coben’s books, they are hoping for more of the same.

All the writers can do is attempt to coax viewers into watching the next episode. “Of course, whoever you are doing any show for, you want to keep viewers watching. But when you do a show for Netflix, there is a real demand that viewers shouldn’t stop wanting to watch,” says Brocklehurst.

“It focuses you to have momentum building up throughout the episode and then these hooks at the end so that viewers feel like they have to watch the next one.”

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Higher ground

British actor Freddie Highmore made his name in feature films and as a young Norman Bates in Psycho prequel series Bates Motel. He explains why his starring role in ABC medical drama The Good Doctor is his biggest challenge yet.

At the age of just 27, Freddie Highmore is already an industry veteran with a slew of box-office hits and two decades of work under his belt. But it’s his latest role, as genius surgeon Shaun Murphy in The Good Doctor, which is winning him some of the biggest plaudits of his career thus far.

The British actor plays the shy autistic savant – who can’t look people in the eye but is able to come up with ingenious ways around complex medical problems – with an authentic delicacy and passion that has helped make the show a huge hit around the world.

Freddie Highmore in The Good Doctor

“Shaun is probably the most challenging character I have ever played,” says Highmore, who first found fame in feature films Finding Neverland and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. “There was an awareness from the start that this was a story we wanted to do correctly and not mess up, because it feels like it has a wider importance rather than just being a television show in its own right.

“We have a full-time consultant on board to help us with the autism side of Shaun’s character, but autism is just one aspect of what defines Shaun. We have taken care to portray autism authentically while also being aware that he can never represent everyone who is on the spectrum.

“We are telling this one unique, individual story but, at the same time, the letters I get from people with autism saying how the show has inspired them are the most meaningful things about the job.”

The Good Doctor is based on the Korean medical drama of the same name, the international potential of which was first identified by Korean-American actor Daniel Dae Kim (Lost), who also stars in the show as Dr Jackson Han. Kim struggled to find a home for the format until Sony Pictures Television expressed an interest and brought David Shore, creator of House, on board. It was subsequently ordered to series by US network ABC in 2017.

Highmore, who demonstrated his full range in thriller Bates Motel, a five-season prequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal horror Pyscho, was an obvious choice to play the lead in The Good Doctor, and the actor admits he relishes taking on challenging roles. “I am always drawn to interesting characters, and Shaun is unlike anything we have seen before on television,” he says. “I like that he offers up a different version of masculinity. He’s not an alpha male.”

The actor, who in the flesh is an interesting mix of shyness and confidence, has always wanted to be more than just the leading man – and having directed and written episodes for Bates Motel, he does the same again for The Good Doctor, in addition to serving as a producer.

Highmore’s Shaun Murphy is a genius autistic surgeon

“When you spend eight months of a year on a project and devote so much of your time trying to make the show as good as you possibly can, it feels natural to want to contribute in other ways,” Highmore says. “I’ve enjoyed being involved on different levels and getting to write and direct as well as produce. It’s exciting to be able to have the chance to influence something of the wider process and also getting to learn from David Shore.”

Highmore wrote the opener of season two and directed the 15th episode. He says that, for his colleagues, there is an easy way to tell where Freddie the actor ends and Freddie the director starts – he changes accents.

“Apparently I direct in a British accent,” laughs the Londoner, who interrupted his Hollywood career to do a degree at Cambridge University. “Normally when I’m on set, I try and stay in an American accent as much as possible. But the British one comes to me naturally when I’m directing.”

Highmore has spent much of the past eight years in Vancouver – the filming location for both Bates Motel and The Good Doctor – and is already preparing for more time in a city he regards as his second home after a third season of the latter drama was commissioned before the second had even finished airing. Season three is due to launch next week.

“A lot of the crew on The Good Doctor also worked with me on Bates Motel, so I have shorthand with them,” he says. “And because the cast is supportive and we have got to know each other so well after an intense few months, I know they all want me to succeed, and that really helps me. I feel very grounded in Vancouver because I know it so well.”

The actor previously starred in Psycho prequel series Bates Motel

Highmore admits he can’t reveal much about what will happen in the third season, not least because he and the fellow writers are yet to sit down and discuss it. As well as working with a team of researchers to come up with interesting medical stories for Shaun and his colleagues to solve, the production can also look to David Renault, one of the team’s writers and a former doctor, to ensure the medical and the personal merge just as they would in real life.

“As with all good dramas that have a story of the week, the balance is about finding an interesting and dramatic plot that will reflect more widely on the characters people like,” says Highmore. “This means you can investigate your characters on a deeper, higher-stakes level, but it’s important that doesn’t feel gratuitous or forced. Because it’s in a medical setting, where so much of it is about life and death, you are pushing people – the patients and the surgeons – to the extremes of what humans are pushed to. Because it’s happening on a daily basis, that makes for an interesting exploration of character.”

While it will be more of the same in season three – Shaun and his fellow surgeons battling difficult medical problems while navigating their often-problematic personal lives – viewers are gradually learning more about Shaun. For Highmore, the character’s quiet and gradual evolution is one of the highlights of making the show, partly because it’s in contrast to the madness happening around him.

“What I love about the show is that while Shaun necessarily evolves and changes as an individual, that is not done in a melodramatic way,” the actor adds. “We end season two on an emotional high; Shaun is happy because he has asked someone out and she has said yes. It reminds us that the interesting, happy, fun, joyful moments in life aren’t necessarily the extreme ones you can get in the life-and-death situations of surgery but, ultimately, in the small wins we all experience.”

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Puppet masters

As Netflix series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance returns to the fantasy world first brought to life by Jim Henson’s 1982 feature film, DQ lifts the lid on the secrets behind making and working with the puppets that populate the land of Thra.

This is a cleaning job unlike any other. Deep in the crevices of a former kettle factory in the Berkshire countryside, the foam and latex features of an extraordinary turkey-faced monster is being wiped of snot.

It is the messier side of creating a mythical world of dictatorial evil puppets. The puss –made from a mixture of slime and breakfast cereal Weetabix – cakes the features of an evil Skeksis called The Collector who not only favours murder and intrigue but also has a tendency to leave snot all over himself, his food and his friends. He is one of the terrifying baddies in an ambitious new Netflix series based on Jim Henson’s seminal 1982 film The Dark Crystal.

“The snot can get disgusting and start to smell,” admits Toby Froud, design supervisor for The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, when he meets DQ at the Henson Studios creature workshop at the company’s enormous Langley Studios in London. “We have to clean all of the puppets as much as we can. We check their heads daily and strip them down and put them back together again.”

Froud, alongside executive producer Lisa Henson, is Dark Crystal family and has garnered cult status as the baby from the 1986 film Labyrinth, which featured David Bowie. While Henson is carrying forward the work of her father Jim – the legend behind The Muppets, Fraggle Rock and Labyrinth – by producing this epic series for The Jim Henson Company, Froud is working with his parents, who helped create the original Dark Crystal world.

L-R: Lisa Henson Brian Froud and Wendy Froud

His concept artist father Brian envisaged Dark Crystal’s mythological land of Thra with Jim; its landscape is based on his own home in Dartmoor. A book Brian wrote to accompany the film, delving deep into the myths only touched on in the original story, has served as the bible for the new series.

Froud’s mother Wendy is also on board. She helped create the original puppets (and met Brian on the set of the original film) and the pair are working behind the scenes with their son for the series, which will go deeper into this mythical world of kind-hearted Gelflings who can share dreams with each other, evil Skeksis who drain the life force out of other beings and cheeky little Podlings who hate being washed.

While the film was set at the end of the Gelfling civilisation, with the small, friendly creatures almost all murdered by the Skeksis, the 10-part series is set generations earlier, before the epic battle to come. It focuses on three main Gelflings – Rian, Deet and Bria – who all learn that something has gone wrong in the world they know. The Dark Crystal, the source of all life on Thra, which is controlled by the power-hungry Skeksis, is malfunctioning. Separately, they hear about the desperate measures the Skeksis have taken to retain their hold on Thra.

Recreating the world of The Dark Crystal has been a long-held dream for Henson. “I’ve been wanting to do something with this for around 15 years,” she says. “It has been a great passion of mine. The original movie was such a complete fantasy world; it felt like there was a reality to it, a history.’

Design supervisor Toby Froud working on a puppet head

While filmmaking has moved on so much since the original movie was made, the ethos of the series has been to stick to what is essentially a very sophisticated version of the ancient art form of puppetry. “This is pure puppetry,” insists Henson. “I want people to get excited about puppetry again. The characters are animated from within and that gives a real unity and authenticity to their performances, which makes it different from computer animation.”

To create such a physical world is some undertaking. These puppets eat, they get messy, they fight. All their tools and weapons have been created to be particularly light, while their chairs, houses, tables, food and plates are all puppet-sized.

More than 150 puppets, which have fibreglass structures surrounded by foam and latex, have been created for the show. “Live action from real puppets is something that pushes the whole production,” says Froud. “Creating them all has been a lot of work and it is a constant process. If the puppets get knocked about, they have to be re-skinned and we also re-skin the different heads onto the skull structure to give us more characters. Trying to keep track of all the puppets is one of the hardest things to do.”

In addition, 72 sets have been created, from ornate dining rooms to dank caves, all four feet off of the ground to allow the puppeteers to stand below the set floor with their hands, covered by the puppets, in the air.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance focuses on various types of creature, including the large and power-hungry Skeksis

“It can get pretty crowded on set,” says Neil Sterenberg, puppeteer for the show’s hero Rian as well as a Skeksis called The Scroll Keeper. “It takes three people to operate each puppet. The lead puppeteer operates the mouth and main body movements. Another puppeteer operates the eyes and ears via a monitor while a third puppeteer works the other hand of the puppet.

“It takes a lot of manpower to make these puppets work; the whole thing is like an iceberg. When you might have four or five puppets on the set together in a scene, you’ve got at least 10 people working underneath them. But we do have a monitor close to us so we can see what we are doing.

“It is like working in a painting because the sets are so stunning. Rian has a wind machine that follows him everywhere. He’s sat around a real fire – there were fire extinguishers everywhere – and seeing the natural light frame his face is just magical.”

Being a Skeksis, which is large enough to have two puppeteers crouched inside it, is an entirely different challenge. It can take 20 minutes just to get in place. “It is like performing in a duvet,” says Sterenberg. “It can get extremely hot in there and you can only do it for an hour at a time. It is particularly challenging because you have no vision at all of what is going on; you have to depend on a monitor to show you where you are going and what you look like.”

Gelflings, meanwhile, are small and kind-hearted

For scenes featuring both Gelflings and Skeksis, the staging is even more complicated. The flooring for the Skeksis is two feet lower – which is why you won’t see many full-length scenes with them all together. That is where CGI has been brought in – for full-length action scenes, action that shows the puppets running and also, on occasion, for hiding puppeteers.

The Dark Crystal film was a hit from the start and, for many fans, the return to this world — the series drops this Friday – is a landmark event. The top-notch cast, all fans of the original, includes Sigourney Weaver, Helena Bonham Carter, Nathalie Emmanuel, Mark Hamill, Lena Headey, Taron Egerton, Eddie Izzard, Simon Pegg, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Alicia Vikander and Natalie Dormer.

For puppeteers like Sterenberg, who has previously worked on Star Wars, the return to the world of Jim Henson is nothing less than a dream come true. “The Dark Crystal is a film I would watch over and over again,” he says. “I was inspired by the beauty and artistry of the puppetry to enter the business. Even now, when I am in a room full of Skeksis, I think, ‘How did this happen to me?’ To be in something that inspired me is incredible.”

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Mrs Wilson’s war

The Affair star Ruth Wilson opens up about starring in three-part drama Mrs Wilson, which is based on the true story of her own grandmother who discovered her late husband lived a life full of secrets.

Every time she spotted the clapperboard on her latest drama, Ruth Wilson admits she got a little shiver. Part excitement, part terror. The award-winning star of The Affair and Luther has never appeared in a drama quite like this.

The board said ‘Mrs Wilson.’ The story is that of Wilson’s own family; in particular her grandmother Alison and her enigmatic and fascinating grandfather Alexander Wilson, who married four times without ever divorcing and led several lives all at once. A successful novelist, an MI6 spy and Indian colonel, he was also in prison several times, permanently broke and clearly something of a womaniser. Even today MI6 won’t release some of his files because they are too sensitive.

Wilson plays Alison who, while she was suspicious about her husband’s activities, could never have imagined quite how many secrets he was hiding from her. Many of them only emerged after her death. The actor also coproduced the three-part drama, made by Snowed-In Productions for the BBC and Masterpiece for PBS. All3Media International is distributing.

Wilson admits that when she first took the project on, she underestimated just how hard it would be to work so closely on a drama about her own family.

“It has been the toughest thing I have done and I am very glad it is almost over,” the actor admits when she talks to DQ on a set at Blythe House in South Kensington, London, for a scene where a suspicious Alison follows Alexander. “It is personally very close so there is this pressure. Also, it is a very demanding part. She is being snapped this way and that, constantly overloaded with more bad information. I’ve found it exhausting and deeply emotional. Sometimes I wish someone else was playing it to give me some distance. But, at the same time, I had to play it.”

Mrs Wilson stars Ruth Wilson as her own grandmother in a remarkable true story

Wilson’s connection to the story starts when she was 15 and her grandmother, who she remembers as an emotionally closed-off but kind woman, revealed to her two sons and grandchildren a memoir she had written. In it, she explained that her husband Alexander, who died before Ruth was born, had another wife and three other children. She described how she had only learned the awful truth about his bigamy after he died and how it meant there were even two funerals – one for her and one for his other wife.

It was the first time either of her sons had heard anything about their father’s past and their mother’s torment. But when she died seven years later, more, much more, was to emerge. Unknown to Wilson’s father Nigel and his big brother Gordon, there were two more wives and two more sons. Both these other children had been interested in finding out more about their father – Michael, the son of his second wife Dorothy, had been told he’d died in the Battle of El Alamein – and were shocked to find out about his other wives and children.

Alison was actually Alexander’s third wife. He married Gladys in 1916, had three children and they ran a theatre troupe together. Then in 1925, in what appears to have been his first job for the secret service, he was appointed a professor of English literature at the University of Punjab. It was while in India that he married second wife Dorothy, an actress (played by Keeley Hawes in the drama), and they had a son, Michael.

He returned to England with Dorothy in 1933 and for a short time lived with Gladys. Eighteen months later he returned to Dorothy and they lived together from 1935 to 1940.

By then he was in love with Alison, a secretary at MI6. Dorothy told her son his father was dead, but Alexander continued to see his first family, who presumed he lived in London for work. Alison knew he had been married before but he showed her fake divorce papers.

Alexander is played by Iain Glen, aka Game of Thrones’ Jorah

In 1955 he married for the last time after meeting nurse Elizabeth, who was just 26. Alexander was 62 but told her he was 10 years younger. They had a son, Douglas, but she obviously felt something wasn’t right. He was still living in Alison’s family home, and Elizabeth moved to Scotland when their son was just two.

In 2007 all of the family met for the first time – a now regular occurrence that is highlighted in the drama. “It has actually become an amazing unification,” says Wilson. “They all had different experiences of him. A lot of them felt they didn’t really have a family so in a way they are connecting the dots. For me it has been incredible meeting them. Michael was an actor and two of the family have set up acting troupes. My creative streak comes from that side of the family; Alexander was the biggest actor out of all of us.”

Wilson would often tell people the strange tale of her mysterious grandfather who was, according to his children, a fantastic father. A practising Catholic, he instilled in them all faith in the church and a fierce patriotism – but he was also a serial bigamist and a liar.

“My family all told me I should turn it into a drama but it was only when I met Neil Blair [JK Rowling’s agent and founder of The Blair Partnership] that it happened,” she recalls. “Seeing the clapperboard saying ‘Mrs Wilson’ is a bit scary. I get a little shiver and I think ‘Oh God, we are actually making it.’ It is such an extraordinary story. It is better than fiction because it is real life.”

Scriptwriter Anna Symon spoke to all of Alexander’s remaining children to get their memories of both him and their mothers, with the series set in 1963, the year of Alexander’s death. All the family were shown the scripts and offered comments on everything from what medals Alexander, played by Iain Glen (Game of Thrones) before his death and then in flashbacks, would wear to what scenes should be put in.

Making the drama was a highly emotional experience for The Affair star Wilson

From the start, the idea was to tell the story from Alison’s point of view, even though they had to use dramatic licence to ensure the stories of all four wives were told. In real life Alison probably only ever found out about one other wife.

“My grandmother burned all of his papers,” adds Wilson. “This was her side of the narrative and the one she wanted to leave behind. I think in some way she probably did want this story to be told. She probably could never have imagined it being dramatised but I felt her with me as I was making it.”

When DQ catches up with Wilson five months later, after an emotional screening of the first episode of the drama that left both her father and uncle close to tears, the actor admits she is still struggling with the whole idea of it.

“It really was quite an odd experience and one I am still in,” she says of making the drama, which begins on BBC1 tomorrow. “It has made me understand my grandmother in a much deeper and emotional way because that is the thing about drama – it digs much deeper than a documentary or a memoir would because you are acting out scenes that happened. She had the rug pulled away from her and felt she had to construct this fake reality.

“There was some weirdness, like giving birth to my father, but my connection was more than that. The whole time I was playing her, I felt this string of anxiety pulling me – almost as if she was passing through me. Sometimes I felt overcome by powerful feelings. The crew and cast were so amazing, and everyone dealt with it so sympathetically that I felt someone, somewhere was really looking after it. Maybe it was her. I’d like to think she would be proud of what I’ve done.”

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Going viral

A mysterious and deadly virus has broken out in an isolated community on top of the world. DQ heads to Lapland to visit the frozen set of German-Finnish coproduction Arctic Circle.

The thermometer says it is -18°C, but with the wind-chill factor it’s closer to -35°C. The gale is so fierce the cameras have to be weighed down, while the actors are having to shout to be heard.

Crew members are covered from head to toe, with just their eyes peeping out, and wrapped up in so many layers of clothes that it’s hard to work out who’s who. No one can hear what their directions are.

It’s a wintry day two, out of 100, of filming in Finland’s frozen Lapland region for crime drama Arctic Circle, and everyone is just beginning to realise how big a challenge they have ahead of them.

“The wind was blowing so hard it was hard to even speak,” says lead actor Maximilian Bruckner, who plays virologist Thomas Lorenz, as he peels off layers and comes into the relative warmth of the ski resort restaurant in Kaunispää, northern Finland, one of the show’s bases. “It doesn’t even feel like you can work hard on the acting anymore; it is all about survival.”

His Finnish co-star Iina Kuustonen (pictured top) already has tiny little cuts, the start of chilblains, on her hands after they were exposed to the cold for just a few minutes. “I’ve put lots of cream on them and they feel a lot better,” says the star of top-rated Finnish drama Syke (Nurses). “The clothes I have to wear for my scenes are not the warmest but as soon as the cameras are off I layer up and put electric feet warmers in my shoes and mittens.

Arctic Circle stars Maximilian Bruckner as virologist Thomas Lorenz

“The hardest thing I have found so far is that when it’s so cold, it’s hard to move your mouth. You slur your words; you sound almost like you are drunk. But the key is moving a lot and I think we will manage. It’s hard but it’s also brilliant.”

It should be worth the pain – Arctic Circle is ambitious in every sense of the word. A Finnish-German coproduction, it has a multi-national cast, a thrilling story that takes off in all directions and, most importantly, it is set in this fantastic, difficult and heart-stoppingly beautiful snowy wilderness.

Filmmakers often talk of the setting being a character in their dramas, but Lapland forces itself front and centre of this 10-part drama. The colours, particularly during the stunning sunrises and sunsets, create a mystical, otherworldly backdrop. And the characters behave the way they do, are who they are, because of the forbidding nature of this vast, hostile place.

“The people here are tough and have to be self-sufficient,” says Kuustonen, one of Finland’s biggest stars, who is from Helsinki but has holidayed in Lapland every year of her life. “You can’t just go to a store and buy stuff if you live in a small village here. You might be two or three hours from the nearest hospital. My character chops her own wood, she takes care of everything. People have to do that here.”

Kuustonen stars as Nina Kautsalo, a Lapland police inspector who lives in the small town of Ivalo. A former soldier in an elite branch of the Finnish military, she is also a single mother to a six-year-old girl. Most of her work is taken up dealing with drunks and minor crimes by the Lappish equivalent of hillbillies.

Finland’s Iina Kuustonen plays police inspector Nina Kautsalo

The actor admits it was hard work getting into shape to play this tough woman. “I had a personal trainer four or five times a week, learning the kind of stuff you do in the military,” she says. “I learned how to kick-box and also how to fire a gun. The important thing was I had to look like I knew what I was doing, I have to look as strong as her.”

One evening Nina discovers a sickening sight. A clearly ill prostitute has been chained up in a disused cabin alongside two corpses. So far, so Scandi noir – but there is a twist. Doctors treating the sick woman are mystified by her symptoms. A blood sample sent to Helsinki attracts the attention of German virologist Lorenz (Bruckner), who lives in the city. He recognises it as a dangerous and rare virus he saw in Yemen several years earlier and insists on travelling to Ivalo to see what he can learn.

He pairs up with Nina and the two find themselves fighting danger on two fronts, tackling both a mysterious killer who has been murdering prostitutes and a virus that threatens the entire world.

“I always like to try something new but this was a huge challenge for me in lots of ways,” says Bruckner. There is the role, the cold and then there is the fact that while most of his lines are in English – he speaks German only to his daughter in the show – he could barely speak the language before he got the role.

“I am mainly acting in English, but before I started all I could say was ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” he admits. “Learning English was reason why I wanted to do it and now I speak so much in English that when I had to do some German lines the other day, it felt strange. The story is a brilliant thriller. I don’t like the word ‘journey,’ but Thomas goes on one. He behaves in a way you would not expect a professor to behave. He is quite manly and heroic.”

Shooting in the freezing surroundings of Lapland has presented the crew with an array of challenges

With a gorgeous single-mum cop and a handsome, nearly divorced male professor, romance is almost inevitable, and sure enough the arc of their relationship is one of the lynchpins of the fast-moving series.

“They come from different cultures – he is much more emotional than her – and they have the weight of the world on their shoulders,” says Bruckner. “And then their relationship complicates things.”

As the case progresses, mysterious millionaire Marcus Eiben, played by German Clemens Schick (Casino Royale), heads up to Lapland too. He pretends he wants to use his charity foundation to help understand the virus but he may have more nefarious ambitions.

“He is a mysterious guy and over the 10 episodes people will know whether he is good, bad or bad with a good reason,” says Schick. Like his compatriot Bruckner, he speaks most of his lines in English, working from a script that is colour-coded for English, Finnish and German, each of the three languages used in it. “It is a challenge acting in another language but a gift too,” Schick continues. “I think I do act differently [in English]. Language is the entrance to your emotion, so speaking in another language has another entrance to your emotion. You talk differently, you emote differently. But I think these multilingual, international productions are the future of television.”

The story was developed by Yellow Film, Finland’s largest production company, which immediately envisaged Arctic Circle as its biggest project to date. Although there is Finnish in the show, the presence of foreigners means most of the conversations take place in English, a language in which most Finns become almost fluent while still at school. “The concept was always to have a virus and then to have another group of people who find out about the virus for a completely different reason,” says Yellow’s Jarkko Hentula. “It was almost three years in development but from early on we knew we wanted a foreigner, someone who has to travel and finds himself in Lapland.

German actor Clemens Schick plays mysterious millionaire Marcus Eiben

“We start off with quite familiar terrain: dead bodies, the things you have seen before in police dramas. But then this virus thing comes in, and that is followed by this foreign guy who has to make friends among the local community. Episode by episode, the story gets bigger.”

Showing off the beauty of this desolate space, which has more reindeer than humans, was also top of the agenda from the off. “We always wanted to do it here in Lapland but, of course, it’s easy to write down, ‘It’s winter and -30°C and there are snowmobiles,’ but it’s quite a different thing when you start filming that,” smiles Hentula. “The biggest challenge is to capture on screen the vastness of this place, which is something unique and intriguing, and something people haven’t seen before.”

While there have been other dramas filmed in Lapland, including Sweden’s Rebecka Martinsson and the Swedish-French copro Midnight Sun, this is the first to have been filmed in Finland and the first to have been made during the height of winter. The filmmakers were encouraged by a new 25% tax incentive for productions made in the country as well as aid from House of Lapland, which helped find locations and crew to make the production as seamless as possible.

“Finnish Lapland is quite different to other places in Lapland in that there are much more open plains,” says Hentula. “It has the feeling of an American small town and we deliberately play on that. Many of the Lappish towns, including Ivalo, have just one road that all the shops and houses are along.”

Kuustonen says audiences will recognise the character of the small-town cop from US shows. “It’s like being a sheriff in the Midwest,” she says. “Everyone knows each other; in the hospital, in the bar, in the gas station.”

The show is set to launch this December

After developing the story, Yellow immediately got in touch with Finnish director Hannu Salonen (Shades of Guilt) who lives and works in Germany. “I immediately wanted to do it,” he recalls. “The story was brilliant but being able to set it in this postcard-style but also life-threatening landscape was exciting.”

The director was similarly excited by the idea of going “into the unknown” with the long shooting schedule in Lapland, which started after three months of filming in Helsinki. “It is a real adventure for all of us,” he says. “We don’t yet know what will happen if it gets really cold. Will our cables break? Will our cameras work? I can’t hear who is speaking to me and the actors can’t hear me. It means we can only film one or two pages a day, as opposed to eight pages.

“But then you look at the landscape. There is this beautiful blue light that stays with you for about three hours when the sun starts to set and you are reminded why we came here.”

It was Salonen who put Yellow in touch with German prodco Bavaria Fiction, which had been looking for more international projects. “Within two weeks of hearing the project, we met Yellow at Content London and from the start we felt like kindred spirits,” says Bavaria producer Moritz Polter. “From the moment we got involved, we had input in the writing process but we also had to know when to hold back. Keeping the sensibility of the local flavour was also key for us.

“One interesting thing for us was the way people talk to each other in Lapland. Everything is more straightforward because it has to be. When you go on a date, you might have travelled for two hours. That means you often don’t go back to your house after the date. There is a different way of interacting and that was fascinating for us.”

While the show has a hint of Scandi noir, the setting gives it a very different feel. “The snowy look means it is different,” Polter says. “You can see for miles and miles – it’s very different to the darkness you usually get in Scandi noir.”

The idea of a new spin on the typical Scandi crime drama – and an international show shot mainly in English – also attracted French distributor Lagardère, which immediately spotted its potential for markets around the world. “A key trend at the moment is emotional drama, and we liked that there was a real family and personal element to this show as well as the investigations into the murders and the virus,” says Frederik Range, Lagardère’s director of acquisitions. “There are lots of different layers to the story and we see it much more than a Scandi noir, which often only appeals to a narrow market and where the characters are sometimes quite cold. We believe this could do well either on mainstream or paid-for television.”

Arctic Circle is due to premiere on Finnish streaming channel Elisa Viihde this December and will then appear on linear net YLE in the same country. If it proves popular enough, there is plenty of material for a second season further exploring the backstory of the virus.

On the set, despite the difficult conditions, there is a palpable sense of excitement about the drama, which will plunge audiences into a story that’s both familiar but also unusual and strange.

“People will be surprised by and interested in this world,” adds Schick. “It is a story that has huge potential. There is a killer and, on top of that, there is this uncontrollable, scary element that is inside people and could easily get out of control. The location is beautiful and it was a brilliant move from the writers to put this darkness in the last place in the world you would expect it to be.”

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Split opinions

Award-winning writer Abi Morgan explores the highly charged world of divorce lawyers for her latest BBC drama, The Split. DQ visits the set to hear how the female-led series was influenced by US legal dramas – and Sex & the City.

Abi Morgan was chatting to another mum while watching her daughter playing hockey when she was hit by inspiration for her newest television series. The woman, dressed in jeans and a jumper, was frantically responding to calls and texts on her phone while trying to also concentrate on the fiercely contested school match. Intrigued, Morgan asked her what she did. She was a divorce lawyer.

“I loved the contradiction of this woman, who was very dressed down to watch the game, dealing with all these acrimonious exchanges all while she was trying to keep an eye on the match,” recalls Morgan, the Bafta- and Emmy-winning writer of Suffragette, The Iron Lady and The Hour. “We got talking about her job and one of the key things she said to me was that it’s an area of the law that, unusually, is predominantly populated by women. It is regarded as the unsexy end of law but its about so much more than being in a courtroom. And immediately this incredible landscape unfolded.”

A year later, with Sister Pictures producer Jane Featherstone (who the writer worked with on River and The Hour) on board, Morgan is chatting with DQ in what used to be the Holborn office for one of London’s top law firms. This is the wonderfully apt set of The Split, a sexy, glamorous, romantic and entertaining six-part drama set in the world of female divorce lawyers for the rich and famous.

Abi Morgan

“I had just come from writing Suffragette, which featured this incredible, diverse group of female soldiers,” Morgan says. “I wanted to do another very strong group of women but also women who could look incredibly sexy and powerful and hold their own in what would have traditionally been a male domain.

“And I loved the idea that it meant we could really look at modern marriage. I am always fascinated by the truths we tell each other, particularly when you are just a few women alone at a book club or mums’ night out.”

Morgan doesn’t mind admitting The Split was influenced by hit US legal dramas The Good Wife, Suits and Law & Order. It’s a British show but it’s unusually, and surprisingly, glossy. The series is set in a monied world of billionaire businessmen divorcing their first wives for a younger model and young footballers organising their pre-nups before they marry. Each episode will feature a case of the week, while stories about the lawyers and one particular divorcing couple will arc the series.

The star of the show is Unforgiven, Spooks and River actor Nicola Walker, who is almost unrecognisable in her glossy lawyer uniform. “The interesting thing about this show is that everyone is incredibly well dressed,” continues Morgan. “When we were researching, I was chatting to one lawyer and I asked whether her handbag was from Marks & Spencer – I got that a bit wrong: it was a £25,000 tote from Bottega Veneta.

“There is a bit of a Sex & the City vibe with the clothes. That is not something we normally do on British television but it is totally authentic to this world. They all wear heels, even if they kick them off the moment they sit at their desks. They are groomed and glammed up because they have to be. Their female clients are rich women who should be able to recognise their handbags, while they are also dealing with successful men. They need the men to find them attractive but also to know that they can do their job.”

Walker plays top divorce lawyer Hannah as her life is about to turn upside down. After 20 years of working for family law firm Defoe, she quits when her formidable mother Ruth (Deborah Findlay), who runs the company, refuses her a promotion. So she moves to Noble and Hale, a very different, more corporate company, working alongside former lover Christie, played by Barry Atsma. Their flirty friendship leads to her questioning her long marriage with Nathan, portrayed by Episodes star Stephen Mangan.

Annabel Scholey (left) and Nicola Walker play divorce lawyers in The Split

Meanwhile, 30 years after leaving the family for the nanny, her father (Anthony Head) returns to their lives wanting his slice of the firm Ruth has spent so long building up. It shakes the world of Hannah and her sisters Nina (Annabel Scholey), who is also a divorce lawyer, and millennial Rose (Fiona Button), who has eschewed the high-pressure world to be a nanny.

“I loved the idea of this intergenerational piece,” says producer Featherstone. “It is definitely about modern marriage but it is also about relationships between mothers, daughters, siblings, husbands, brothers and all of those things. It is not just about sexual relationships but also the responsibilities you have within a family. Ruth, the matriarch, has trained her girls to be as independent, strong and fiery as her, but that creates its own problems.”

Morgan, a child of divorce herself who has never married her long-term partner, actor Jacob Krichefski, says the impact of such a significant life event as divorce is examined in terms of both the lawyers and their clients.

“I’ve had divorces within my own family and seen it happen to friends, and I know how complex and difficult and painful it is,” she says. “This also came out of a desire to look at the legacy we give our children when we bring them up and also the ideas about marriage that we inherit.”

Walker shares a laugh with director Jessica Hobbs during a break

Fittingly for such a female-centric drama, it has an all-female creative team. As well as Featherstone and Morgan, Lucy Richer and Lucy Dyke are coproducers, while Jessica Hobbs (Broadchurch, Apple Tree Yard, The Slap) directs the show, which launches on BBC1 tonight. It is distributed by BBC Studios.

The incredible office that doubles for the glossy and modern Noble and Hale was until recently the London headquarters for Olswang, which happened to represent Featherstone when it came to signing her work agreements. The Split’s research team came to talk to solicitors in the office and, when they heard the company was moving out (after a merger), they asked to lease it, having already spent a year trying and failing to find the right spot for their fictional company. The details of the law firm have been copied down to the smallest item, from the trainers under the desks and different-coloured files (to intimidate the opposition) to Olswang-branded sweets. A bowlful of Nobel and Hale sweets sits in the impressive reception that overlooks Holborn.

London is officially the divorce capital of the world and Morgan and the producers have drawn on rich research with real-life lawyers; there were also two legal advisors to ensure all the events in the show could really happen.

“The whole thing is fascinating and we’ve looked at some real cases of when a private fight goes public,” says Morgan. “You see how emotional everyone gets and think, ‘Oh so that’s why Fiona Shackleton came out of court with her hair soaking wet’ [when Heather Mills doused the lawyer in water during her divorce hearing with former Beatle Paul McCartney].”

Featherstone adds: “And it is astonishing hearing what some of the judges say in front of them. They are incredibly opinionated and basically tell them they are damaging their children, damaging themselves and are stupid people who shouldn’t be wasting their time. That’s not to say we are going to mock people who are going through this. The tone of the piece has a light touch but the emotions are all there.”

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Family matters

Emmy-winning actor Archie Panjabi stars alongside Jack Davenport in espionage thriller Next of Kin. She tells DQ about taking the lead in her first British drama and explains why she thinks the series will provoke a timely discussion among viewers.

Growing up in the humdrum north London suburb of Edgware, Archie Panjabi knew she wanted to be an actress but saw very few Asian role models on television. There was a family in EastEnders and there was Amita Dhiri in This Life, and that was it.

“There really weren’t very many roles for British Asian actresses,” says the star. “Even in the cinema there was nobody from my background apart from in Bollywood films.”

However, things are changing, slowly, and Panjabi is leading the way. Having first found fame in films such as Bend it Like Beckham and The Constant Gardener, she is best known for her Emmy-winning role as the enigmatic Kalinda Sharma in The Good Wife.

But it is only now that the 45-year-old is taking to the screen in her first lead role in a British drama, Next of Kin, an exciting contemporary series set in the world of terrorism and espionage. It is made by Mammoth Screen for ITV and distributed by ITV Studios Global Entertainment.

“From the moment I read the script, I wanted to read the next one but it was the character of Mona that really excited me,” Panjabi says. “I’ve worked my entire career to get an opportunity like this and I think for the whole shoot I was just smiling away. It was amazing to get an opportunity like this. When I was younger all I dreamed of was having a small part on television; I never thought my career could take me to America or a job like this.”

Next of Kin stars Archie Panjabi as Mona

She’s still smiling when DQ visits ITV’s London headquarters shortly after the show has wrapped. Written by Vera and Indian Summers creator Paul Rutman and his novelist wife Natasha Narayan, Next of Kin was conceived as they watched the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris.

Since then, sadly, there have been many other atrocities for the writers to draw inspiration from. But while sympathy always, obviously, lies with the victims of the attacks and their families, Next of Kin looks at the story from the other side.

Punjabi’s Mona is a GP whose family emigrated to Britain from Pakistan when she was two. Her older brother, Kareem (Navin Chowdry), who is also a doctor, still has ties to Pakistan but she is married to an Englishman, played by Jack Davenport, and feels British, as do her two younger siblings Ani (Kiran Sonia Sawar) and Omar (Mawaan Rizwan).

The story unfolds in both Pakistan (filmed on the Indian border) and the UK. The story begins in the former as Kareem is kidnapped just before flying home to Britain. Meanwhile, in London, as they wait for news of Kareem, the family witnesses the smoke from yet another terror attack on the capital.

Debuting in the UK on January 8, Next of Kin was filmed last summer in London as the country reeled from a series of terrorist attacks. They were filming not far from London Bridge when eight people were murdered by Jihadists in July.

Alongside Panjabi is Pirates of the Caribbean star Jack Davenport

“There was a weird energy on set the next day,” recalls Panjabi. “It felt a bit surreal. On one hand, we are using art to talk about a subject that is happening right before us, a subject we don’t fully understand. But on the other, people have just died because of this subject. It was odd and sad and I think it made us all reflective. It was a strange, sad time.”

In the show, it rapidly emerges that there may be a link between the kidnapping and the terrorist attack; what is unclear is how much Kareem’s son Danny, Mona’s nephew, had to do with each. What follows is a Homeland-style thriller but one very much with a family at its heart.

“It’s a timely piece; it really shines a light on the area of the families of terror suspects and I think it will provoke a discussion,” says Panjabi of the six-part series. “One of the things the show doesn’t do is seek to explain it or understand it, because it’s such a complex thing to understand. The focus is very much on what happens to a family when a younger member is suspected of being radicalised. How does that affect each member of the family?

“I do spend a lot of time crying on the show,” she adds. “It was emotionally draining and also emotionally challenging. Her brother has been kidnapped and her teenage nephew is suspected of something by the police. She believes 100% – at the beginning, at least – that he is innocent. She is fighting tooth and nail for him but, at the same, time she’s struggling to keep this big family unit intact. So it is traumatic for her, and playing her is quite traumatic because you don’t just want to cry all the time – you have to build up a whole different repertoire of crying. I don’t think I’ve ever had that opportunity to do something like this before.

“Every time I felt stressed I could hear my mother saying, ‘Well, you wanted to be a lead!’”

For Panjabi, the icing on the cake of getting the role was working with Pirates of the Caribbean actor Davenport, who starred in This Life – the show that inspired her so much.

Panjabi is best known for playing Kalinda Sharma in The Good Wife

“I didn’t tell him this, he has no clue,” she giggles. “But it was one of my favourite shows. It was such groundbreaking drama at a time when I was just starting out acting, and I remember thinking how wonderful it was that the characters were so messed up, so flawed and yet so immensely likeable. They were always the kind of characters I want to play, even now. So working with Jack was kind of like a dream come true.

“He has this quality where he’s very strong and confident but he’s also very charming and not afraid to be affectionate.”

Panjabi is currently living in New York, where she keeps her Emmy hidden in a box, but wouldn’t rule out a return to the UK should more work arise.

“We are making so much good-quality stuff now in the UK that every American actor wants to come here, so it’s a very exciting time because we’ve really caught up,” she says. “I feel lucky to be part of both worlds.

“There isn’t very much difference apart from the budget. In America, when you’re offered a coffee, you’re offered coconut milk, almond milk… whereas in England it’s just milk! You also get a chair with your name on it over there. But other than that, I think the etiquette is pretty much the same; you have a group of individuals who want to make something magical and memorable.”

In the meantime, Panjabi is pleased that at an age when actresses were traditionally put onto the scrapheap, she’s going from strength to strength.

“People from my background say it’s tough for us but I think it’s tough for any actor, especially when you get older. Someone once said when you turn 30 that’s it, so I think I am lucky. From growing up at a time when there weren’t that many roles for British Asian actresses, I’ve found that I have been working pretty solidly so I feel very grateful and so very lucky.”

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Crowning glory

Ahead of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s impending nuptials, royal marriages will be pushed further into the spotlight in season two of Netflix’s The Crown. DQ visits the set to hear how the Queen’s union with Prince Philip is pushed to the limit in the second run.

In what looks like a car park at Elstree Film Studios, situated next to a large branch of Tesco, sits Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street.

The doors and gates of Buckingham Palace are surrounded by green screens that allow The Crown’s crew to work their magic so that it really looks like a palace rather than a particularly ornate bit of plywood. Meanwhile, the door of the somewhat grubby-looking prime ministerial home is taller than normal; it was raised by nine inches to make John Lithgow look more like the rather smaller Winston Churchill in the first season and now it is stuck at that size.

These two buildings, weighted with history, are at the heart of British life and the interweaving stories of what goes on behind their doors are the spine of the award-winning show, one of the most ambitious pieces of television ever made.

The first two seasons cost a rumoured £100m (US$133m) but almost every penny can be seen on screen. This season also spans Antarctica, the South Seas, the Suez Canal, Scotland, Lisbon, Washington, Nazi Germany, Paris and Ghana, while much of the action of the first three episodes takes place on the Royal Yacht Britannia. No effort has been spared to make this sumptuous world believable.

The second season of The Crown sharpens the focus on the relationship between the Queen and Prince Philip, played by Claire Foy and Matt Smith respectively

The characters, too, are larger than life, encompassing everyone from the Kennedys and preacher Billy Graham to cuckolded prime minister Harold Macmillan and Christine Keeler, the showgirl who helped bring down a government. But, at the heart of it, is a special but often dysfunctional family.

The Crown showed the world a very different side of the royals in its 10-part first season. Starring Claire Foy as a naïve but eager-to-please princess who found the crown thrust upon her two decades before she expected it and Matt Smith as her alpha male husband who was forced to give up his own aspirations to stand behind his wife, the show humanised them and made them more understandable.

“I am not a Queen nutter or anything,” insists Peter Morgan, the show’s creator and writer. He first wrote about Elizabeth II in The Queen, the Oscar-winning film about how the Palace and prime minister Tony Blair reacted to the death of Princess Diana. That led to The Audience, the award-winning play where he looked at the secret weekly meetings between the monarch and prime ministers over the decades. The Crown, the entire second season of which landed on Netflix today, was the obvious next step.

As a younger man, Morgan was a republican, but he admits he has since changed his mind. “Most sensible people in the early 1990s probably thought this lot should be kicked out,” he says. “But if we had a referendum on the royal family tomorrow, I think 80% of the country would vote to keep them. I certainly would. I really would. Look at the heads of state everywhere else – there has been a catastrophic failure of the political class in the last couple of years, but [the Queen] represents stability.”

Dexter star Michael C Hall as JFK alongside Jodi Balfour as Jackie Kennedy

The second season of the Netflix show, which is made by Left Bank Pictures and distributor Sony Pictures Television, starts in 1956 with prime minister Anthony Eden’s disastrous Suez Crisis and ends in 1964 with his successor, Harold Macmillan, resigning amid the Profumo scandal. In every crisis, the Queen is left to pick up the broken pieces, as she has so many times since.

In this season we also see how, despite her home life being turbulent, the Queen always puts duty first. Her marriage to Philip is particularly under the spotlight at the start of the 10-episode run.

“Doesn’t everybody in Britain know Philip’s had an affair?” teases Morgan. The answer is no; no one knows for sure whether he had an affair or two, but there have been plenty of rumours. The season plays on them, and how they and Philip’s playboy behaviour impact the Queen. The rumours arc across the season, starting with Philip’s five-month tour on the HMS Britannia that took him away from his family to open the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and visit some of the Commonwealth’s far-flung islands. It ends with his name being mixed up in the Profumo affair.

History has proved the Queen and the Duke of Cambridge’s marriage to be spectacularly successful and last month they celebrated 70 years together. It meant the programme-makers had to think hard about how to treat these rumours, and they tread the line carefully.

The Crown creator Peter Morgan sandwiched between stars Smith and Foy

“There has never been any confirmation of an affair and it would be prurient, really horrible and irresponsible to make hefty suggestions,” says Left Bank’s Suzanne Mackie. “We know for a fact that this has been a very long and successful marriage. So many people we have talked to, historians and people who have worked in the palace, say they have witnessed a lot of love and affection in this marriage. We have nothing but respect for that. It would be ghastly of us to say anything else.

“And yet, like any marriage, it has to go through periods of change and periods of uncertainty and instability. It is something most of us have experienced; this is a real marriage and we would be whitewashing it to say it was happy all the way through. So we go on a complicated twisting, winding road and we hope that we come out with something truthful.”

While the programme-makers have always been keen to stress they are making drama, not a documentary, they try not to steer too far from facts. A group of historians dubbed The Brains Trust both suggest storylines to Morgan and also ensure the spirit, if not the letter, of the drama is correct.

One story sees the Queen fall out with Jackie Kennedy (Jodi Balfour) over nasty comments the First Lady made about the monarch. This plot element was based on rumours in Cecil Beaton’s diaries but is heavily fictionalised. A separate story about the Duke of Windsor (Alex Jennings), the Queen’s uncle who abdicated the throne, and his Nazi past is more based on fact. It hinges around the discovery of the Marburg Files, which indicated just how sympathetic the Duke was to Germany’s ambitions.

Matthew Goode and Vanessa Kirby, who play Tony Armstrong-Jones and Princess Margaret

“You can access the files at the British library and they are amazing,” says Philippa Lowthorpe, the Bafta-winning director who helmed the episode. “When we were filming, I carried them around in my bag so when the crew asked – and they frequently did – how much of it really was true, I could fish them out and show them.

“They are telegrams and letters from people who were around the Duke. Everybody was talking about him. They were manipulating him but he didn’t seem to mind. He had sympathies with Hitler and his philosophy.

“We used copies of the real files throughout the show and there’s a scene where the Queen is given them. It was the first time Claire got to read them – there are about 60 documents in the file – and when she finished the scene she just said, ‘Oh my God.’” Just to emphasis how true this story is, real pictures of the Duke are used at the end of this particular episode.

Meanwhile, the turbulence we see in the love life of Princess Margaret, played by Vanessa Kirby, who in this season meets and marries the philanderer Tony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode), is also based on fact.

“Tony represents the shock of the new, which is a real theme of the series,” says director Ben Caron, who directed three episodes of season two. “This is the end of the age of deference and the royals are being thrust into the modern era. Tony is from an artistic world and he challenges all the conventions people have got used to.”

The plan is to have six seasons altogether and filming for the third starts in July but with an entirely new cast who will take the royals into the 70s and 80s, the era of Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana. Olivia Colman, the Bafta- and Golden Globe-winning star of Broadchurch and The Night Manager, will replace Claire Foy as an older version of the Queen, while the producers are close to choosing the rest of their royal family.

Caron, who directed the final scene to feature Foy, Kirby and Goode (ironically one that has not made the final cut), says wrapping the shoot was a bittersweet moment. “The gaffers put on an amazing light display and turned the whole room into a big disco,” he says. “Everyone had slowly started appearing on set from all the departments you don’t always see and you suddenly realise the magnitude of the thing.

“There were a few speeches and some champagne. We’ve all been on this amazing two-year journey together – we’ve seen more of each other than we’ve seen of our own families and it was tough having to say goodbye to the cast. But, for the rest of us, the work continues.”

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The future is now

Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker has become rather adept at predicting future technologies and scientific advancements. With season four coming to Netflix, he and coproducer Annabel Jones reveal the writing and development process behind the anthology series.

The future can often look like a bleak and rather scary place in Netflix’s Black Mirror. That’s why when those in the scientific know tell the show’s creator, Charlie Brooker, that he’s unconsciously stumbled upon something they were working on, it terrifies him.

“We don’t really talk to scientists, even though we keep thinking that we should go on some fact-finding mission to Silicon Valley,” says Brooker, who writes and coproduces the hit anthology series.

Charlie Brooker

“So when people whose job is to worry about the future say to me, ‘Yes, you were right about that,’ my only thought is, ‘Oh shit!’”

Yet Brooker has an uncanny knack of getting things right. “I am often surprised when something I’ve written about turns out to be true,” he adds. “Last season, I had one story called Hated in the Nation, which had little bee drones in it. They were terrifying, and it turns out they are real – I didn’t realise until after the show went out.”

The Waldo Moment, which debuted in 2013, foreshadowed both the rise of Donald Trump and Apple’s iPhone X, which allows people to become avatars on their phones.

“Sometimes when we’re doing a story, it resonates with something that’s going on in the real world, but that’s often a coincidence, or it’s accidental, or it’s just because that stuff was in the ether. The Waldo Moment is a good example, where actually it was about Boris Johnson on panel shows but then down the line it became more of a global thing than we probably realised at the time.”

But Brooker is clearly doing something right, and it’s not just his predictions. After starting as a cult hit on Channel 4 in 2011 before moving to Netflix for season three last year, Black Mirror won two Emmys in September and has rapidly become event television. Its range of often dystopian, sometimes beautiful and always challenging stories means the fourth season, due to land on Netflix this month, is eagerly awaited around the world.

So where does Brooker, a former television reviewer for The Guardian who started his working life writing about games for PC Zone magazine, get his twisted ideas? Instead of reading science periodicals and going fact-finding in Silicon Valley or even Silicon Roundabout, Brooker and his long-time coproducer Annabel Jones (their House of Tomorrow production company is part of the Endemol Shine Group) talk about their everyday fears and then think of ways adding technology to them to make things even scarier.

Arkangel arose from a discussion of fears around parenting

“Often it starts with just a general discussion about something like parenting and then one of us will come up with a ‘what if’ idea and we’ll ping-pong it back and forth,” Brooker explains. “I’ll be trying to think of the worst possible outcome and Annabel will challenge me by saying, ‘Well, that wouldn’t happen because…’ and I will say, ‘No, but it would.’ It is at the point where I realise I can’t shut up and Annabel is saying, ‘That sounds horrible,’ that we really think, ‘OK, we’ve got something here.’”

And then comes the hard work. “Writing can take two or three days, or sometimes a month, and then I hand it over to Annabel, she makes a load of critical marks and find myself getting defensive on every level,” he admits. “Sometimes I end up ripping it up and starting again – that has happened several times – or I just park an idea and start on another.”

If a script does pass the Jones test, there is almost inevitably some kind of rewrite when the director or even the cast come aboard.

The scary parenting idea turned into season four’s Arkangel, which explores what might happen if you could watch your child 24/7 with a sophisticated surveillance tool. The episode was directed by Jodie Foster, who immediately loved the story.

Crocodile stars Andrea Riseborough in a story set in Iceland

“Jodie had lots of thoughts and suggestions so I went back to redraft it,” says Brooker. “We were so flattered to have her on board and, of course, she is someone who understands privacy, who understands being in the spotlight and how you can control your profile in the world.

“Because she was, of course, a child actor she knows how to work with them and it was a pleasure to see her on set working and getting these great performances from the young actors.”

Meanwhile, when movie actor Andrea Riseborough was sent the script for Crocodile, a story set in Iceland in a near future when memories are no longer private, she immediately asked to play a different role, which meant Brooker had to rewrite the script with the lead character as a woman, not a man.

“Basically, the more people there are who get involved, the more flesh is added to the bones,” says Brooker. “Luckily, I find now that when I get to the end I can’t remember what it looked like originally. The finished product has always got so many things I would not have thought of.”

Metalhead stars Maxine Peake and is shot entirely in black and white

When it moved to Netflix, Black Mirror shifted from a three-episode season to six episodes, giving Brooker and Jones the space to push the boundaries ever more, with the duo determined that each story should have a very different feel.

This season sees everything from a satirical Star Trek-style space story in the ambitious feature-length USS Callister (pictured top), starring Jesse Plemons and Cristin Miloti, to a short domestic black-and-white tale called Metalhead, starring Maxine Peake, which is just 38 minutes long.

“We feel that we can really explore and push the perception of what the story is without breaking it up,” says Jones, who has worked with her Black Mirror collaborator for nearly two decades. “On Netflix, not only can we experiment with the size and tone of a story but even with the duration. Working like this gives us so much more freedom to tell different stories.”

Since the success of Black Mirror, anthologies have become fashionable once again, as seen recently in another transatlantic collaboration, Electric Dreams, comprising adaptations of short stories by science fiction writer Philip K Dick for Channel 4 and Amazon.

Hang the DJ  focuses on dating in the digital age

However, Brooker says he deliberately avoids watching any competitors. “I think I would probably suffer crippling professional jealousy,” he reveals. “I tend to avoid things that I think might be in the same ballpark if I can, just because I don’t want to be shown up.

“People did tell me to watch [HBO drama] Westworld and [Spike Jonze movie] Her because they were similar to Black Mirror, but I’ve deliberately avoided them. I also don’t want to be influenced by them – they might put me off.

“But it’s flattering there are more anthology shows around. It’s not a format I’ve invented by any means; I nicked it from The Twilight Zone. It’s pretty much the oldest format in television history, but I think the advent of streaming platforms has brought it back into fashion. You no longer have to worry about an audience coming back week on week; it’s all just there in the magic streaming cupboard.”

For someone who conjures such chilling stories about the future, Brooker remains remarkably sanguine about the rise of technology and its impact on humans. He believes we just need to learn how to deal with it.

“You can’t put progress back in a box, that’s the problem – it won’t fit,” he says. “If you’ve ever tried putting an iPad back in a box, you can’t even do that! It’s weird, there’s a bewildering number of technological things we’re having to grapple with at the moment and we have to work out what the social rules are, basically. The closest analogy I can think of is the motor car, which obviously revolutionised transport and was a good thing but it took us a while to learn the rules; to have road signs, to work out road markings.

“We must have had a lot of accidents before we worked out a system of keeping everybody safe. It feels like there’s a hundred different motor cars being invented every week at the moment, that’s the difference, so we’ve got our work cut out. But what are we going to do, go back to xylophones and eating mud? No!”

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Beginning of the End

Hayley Atwell stars in Oscar winner Kenneth Lonergan’s adaptation of the beloved EM Forster novel Howards End, a coproduction for BBC1 and Starz. DQ visits the sumptuous set to find a period drama moving with modern times.

There is a stunning stately home overlooking a lake, an ornately decorated marquee and a beautiful bride in a wedding dress. This is the lavish setting for a key scene in a new BBC- and Starz-financed production of the seminal EM Forster novel Howards End. The only problem is the intermittent rain that is stopping filming every half-an-hour. But, as anyone who has ever filmed in England knows, that’s unavoidable.

“Poor Evie, getting married in the rain!” laughs Hayley Atwell, who plays the book’s central character, Margaret Schlegel, as she snuggles up in a warm coat on set (it may be April but it’s cold as well as wet). The scene being filmed at the West Wycombe Estate in the Chiltern Hills – when Evie Wilcox marries Percy Cahill – is key to the story as the worlds of the three families featured in the book come crashing together. No one comes out unscathed.

Howards End was made into a hugely successful Oscar-winning film 25 years ago with Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter and Anthony Hopkins, but the time is ripe to make a new adaptation, says Sir Colin Callender, whose Playground prodco has made the four-part miniseries in association with City Entertainment and KippSter Entertainment. It is distributed internationally by Lionsgate.

Howards End stars Hayley Atwell as Margaret Schlegel

“The story is about two smart, free-thinking women who are trying to make their own way in the world,” he says of the series, which debuts this Sunday in the UK. “If you think about what is going in the world, particularly here in the UK and in America – the way women’s roles and their relationships with men are being discussed – then you see just how of the moment the story remains.”

The drama looks at three families occupying different levels of the Edwardian middle class. There are the Schlegels, Margaret and Helen (played by Philippa Coulthard), orphaned sisters who live in an intellectual world of money, loosely based on the Bloomsbury Set, a real-life group of intellectuals. While on holiday in Germany, they meet Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, played by Matthew Macfadyen and Julia Ormond, who are wealthy capitalists.

At the start of the story, Helen is staying with the Wilcoxes at their house, Howards End, when she falls in love with their younger son Paul (Jonah Hauer-King). But Paul is penniless and meant to be heading to Africa to work for his father; the romance is hurriedly finished before it even really begins, leaving Helen heartbroken.

Matthew MacFadyen also stars

Back in London, the Schlegels meet struggling clerk Leonard Bast, played by Joseph Quinn, at a classical music concert. He is entranced by their intellectual world of chatter and music and wants to be part of it, but the economics of his situation make it impossible. Meanwhile, the Wilcox family come back into their lives when they take a luxury flat opposite the Schlegel home.

The screenplay has been written by Kenneth Lonergan. The American has an Oscar and a Bafta under his belt for last year’s movie Manchester by the Sea, which he both wrote and directed, but this marks his first television adaptation. “I looked at the book and had lots of questions. And every time I asked a question, Colin and the BBC seemed to get more excited,” laughs Lonergan. “It was an interesting challenge for me to adapt something where the characters have such a rich internal life but also where the story is focused on the challenges and the different strata of society.”

He adds that while most of the dialogue in his scripts came directly from the book – around two thirds of it – the rest was made up based on his experience of watching other period dramas “…and Monty Python.”

The producers and director Hettie Macdonald were determined that while Howards End would have all the same production values of other BBC costume dramas, it should have a modern feel.

Atwell alongside screenplay writer Kenneth Lonergan

It certainly looks the part, introducing us to a world that was changing, where horse-drawn carriages were being shunted off the road by motor cars. The series was filmed partly on a stage in Twickenham, south-west London, and partly on location. Finding Wickham Place, the home of the Schlegels, proved particularly difficult. Many of the streets the producers like were unavailable due to building work, so exteriors were shot in Islington, north London, and interiors were built on the stage.

Just as challenging was finding the production’s Howards End, the mystical house that belongs to Mrs Wilcox and starts and ends the story. Forster based the story on his own childhood home, Rooksnest, a country house near Stevenage that once belonged to a farming family called Howard. The house used in the show is a private home in Godalming, Surrey, which has rarely been used for filming before but, like Rooksnest, was constructed around a Tudor building.

While every effort went into making Howards End look right for the era, it also feels surprisingly contemporary. “I think there was a temptation for all of the actors to start acting all period drama,” says Quinn. “Once you are wearing the costumes, you feel you need to act differently, but Hettie was really adamant that we didn’t do that; she even joked on set that she was going to have a ‘period acting bell’ if anyone went ‘too period.’ The story is funny and sad and very relatable. They are people just like us; they just lived in a different time.”

The show launches on BBC1 this Sunday

Atwell says she was immediately attracted to doing the project, particularly once she knew Lonergan was involved. “I had seen Manchester by the Sea just a few days before being offered the job and the idea of him adapting this story was very exciting,” she reveals. “He hasn’t given it a sense of reverence and he has written it in such a clever way. There are so many layers to it, and so much symbolism; themes in it that we try to tap into and hit upon. But it’s also very funny. There are pages and pages of dialogue where five or six actors are overlapping. What is funny is the truth of playing people who are not listening to each other, they are just overlapping. It is very quick-witted.”

The actor started in period drama, with starring roles in Brideshead Revisited and The Duchess, but for the last few years has been best known as Marvel hero Agent Peggy Carter. Atwell first portrayed Carter in 2011 movie Captain America: The First Avenger, before going on to star in spin-off Agent Carter for two seasons on ABC. She admits she revelled in playing a character who was a little deeper than your average superhero.

“I have been doing Captain America [the movies and associated series] seven or eight years now and it is  full of people who I really love, but I am classically trained and I found this source material a lot more interesting, a lot more fulfilling,” Atwell says. “You can have conversations with our director and the other actors about what is in these scenes, what is the most interesting thing to play. You can analyse what is really happening because it is all really subtle. When you have to do a lot of exposition to drive the plot along, it can be tiring and a bit boring, with all due respect. When you have a job like this, there is so much to it. It was exciting creating such a rich inner world rather than just turning up and looking good and pointing a gun.

“Margaret is the heroine of the story. There is a line at the start of the book, ‘only connect,’ which is kind of the message of the story. The thing that drives her is a desire to connect people, which, given the context of the time, was quite unusual for a woman in her position and class. She’s just wonderful.”

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Suspicious minds

Channel 4’s one-off drama Unspeakable follows a mother investigating whether her new boyfriend is in an inappropriate relationship with her 11-year-old daughter. Filmmaker David Nath and stars Indira Varma and Luke Treadaway discuss a story lifted straight from the headlines.

You’re a divorced woman in a new relationship with a handsome younger man when an anonymous text arrives on your phone, saying: “There is something going on between your boyfriend and your daughter.” Then a second text arrives: “It’s not right.” What do you do?

Do you approach your new boyfriend, knowing that if you are wrong he will be appalled that you even suspected him? Do you ask your 11-year-old daughter – and if so, how? These questions are at the heart of Unspeakable, a new one-off drama for Channel 4.

Created, directed and produced by Bafta-winning documentary maker David Nath of Story Films, a production company he set up with fellow journalist Pete Beard a year ago, the story could not be more current. Indeed, the project came out of several news stories in which accusations both real and false have been levelled against people from anonymous sources.

Nath is best known for his documentaries including Bedlam and The Murder Detectives, but he decided this story was best told via a drama.

David Nath (left) and Pete Beard of Story Films

“It’s fictional but this is based on real stories that have happened,” says Nath, who made his first drama, The Watchman (also for C4), just a year ago. “The consequences of a sexual allegation are quite terrifying. Initially I did look at making a documentary about it, but it became clear quite quickly that it wouldn’t be possible. The anonymity would have made it difficult, but even if you had got past that I felt the power in these stories is when the protagonist – in this case a woman – goes through a period of uncertainty, where she questions everything. That is difficult to represent in a retrospective film; I wanted to show it as it was happening.

“It was based on a real story I heard where an allegation had been made from an anonymous source and there was this window where the mother didn’t know what to think. In the real story the window was only two hours, but I thought that period of doubt was so interesting. It shows an accusation can completely change your view and perception of someone you think you know.”

Luther and Game of Thrones star Indira Varma plays Jo, the woman who receives the mysterious text message just minutes after dropping her obviously upset daughter and son off to school. The tense 60-minute film, set over 48 hours, is a masterclass in acting as you see her character go through the gamut of emotions as, at first alone and too terrified to talk to anyone about the information she has just received, she tries to figure out what is going on. Once Luke is home from work, she has to work out what she now thinks of him.

“The first third of the film is like an inner monologue representing a journey of increased suspicion,” says Nath. “Uncertainty creeps into terror as every seemingly innocuous thing becomes loaded as she looks for clues. The nature of that accusation is something you would find very difficult to ignore or compartmentalise because of the nature of what it is.

Unspeakable stars Game of Thrones’ Indira Varma as mother Jo

“Once the poison is in there, it is very, very difficult to remove. It has a hold over you. Your mind starts to play tricks and you selectively recall things. I wanted there to be a strong sense of her rattling around her house looking for clues.”

Varma admits she was worried that the first third of the film, being solely focused on her, would be “boring” but she quickly realised how dramatic the situation was. “The nuances are so clever,” she says. “This is someone who wants to stay in control of the situation and not get ahead of herself. She is on this knife edge because she wants to be a responsible parent but she is also a woman who is in love and wants to hold on to her relationship. You see her wrangling with this dilemma and that makes it a very interesting thing to play.”

Nath says he tried to get into the head of how a woman would react by asking female friends, who all said – as the daughter in the story was staying at her already-paranoid father’s house – they would confront the boyfriend. “But they struggled when I asked them how would you confront them, how would you say the words: ‘Did you do this?’”

“What worked so well is that it is all very subtle,” says Luke Treadaway, who plays Jo’s boyfriend Danny. “There is no dastardly twiddling of a moustache. Danny doesn’t know what is going on. He thinks he is having a normal weekend until Jo tells him about the text.

“The thing about the script was even as you get to the end you don’t know what is going to happen. The writing is so subtle that the ending might well have been different.”

Luke Treadaway stars alongside Varma as a man who may or may not be in an inappropriate relationship with Jo’s 11-year-old daughter

During the making of the film, which debuts on C4 this Sunday and is distributed by All3Media International, the team thought deeply about this particular crime. “I have come to think that men have somehow lost the trust of women,” says Nath. “There is an anxiety about new relationships. People who abuse children are manipulators, which is why [Jo] would be so worried. In society there is a presumption of guilt that has to be disproved, which makes the currency of this particular allegation very, very strong.”

Although this is his second short film, Nath says making a drama is very different to documentary-making and admits he found it nerve-wracking. “It’s more exposing,” he says. “With documentaries, you have a small crew and you direct them by being invisible and putting people at ease, while in drama it’s the opposite. You have to be quite demonstrative and everybody from the props to the lighting and the actors all want you to reassure them and make decisions. You can’t hide in any way when you are directing a drama.”

But, of course, dramas also hold plenty of advantages over documentaries – chiefly in that  you are not confined by what you’ve been able to film. “The thing that is the same is that both are absolutely about telling stories powerfully and the best that you can,” says Nath. “In documentary you might not have all the elements; you only have the elements you have been able to gather. In drama you can construct any story you want, so the responsibility is on you tell it perfectly. That is a different pressure.”

But despite Nath’s fears, Varma says she didn’t even notice he was practically a novice. “It’s hard to believe it was his second drama, as he was brilliant,” she says. “He told me that, as a journalist, he can tell what makes a good story, and he was right. And what was particularly brilliant was he was able to articulate what he wanted, which not all directors can do. It’s an intricate story and I felt David let me do what I wanted, but then he would tweak things very delicately. I felt very led. The drama is so precise, but that is also the joy of the piece.”

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Doctor who?

New Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker plays a medical imposter in Trust Me, a thriller penned by real-life doctor Dan Sefton. DQ hears from the duo about making the show.

Doctorates appear to be arriving like buses for actress Jodie Whittaker, who will become a doctor not once but twice over the next few months.

The actor was recently announced as the 13th incarnation of the BBC’s famous Time Lord in Doctor Who – the first woman to take the prestigious primetime title in the show’s 54-year history. The star, best known for her role in Broadchurch, will replace the outgoing Peter Capaldi when he regenerates during the upcoming Christmas special.

Writer and part-time doctor Dan Sefton advises Jodie Whittaker on set

Before then, however, she’ll be seen on BBC1 as another medic as she takes the lead role in gripping drama Trust Me. She plays Cath Hardacre, who, after being suspended from her job as a nurse for whistleblowing, steals the identity of a doctor friend who has emigrated to New Zealand.

She moves from Sheffield to Edinburgh to work as an A&E doctor, but it’s not easy to shake off her past. Not only is she unqualified but her bitter ex Karl (played by Blake Harrison) and a hungry investigative journalist Sam Kelly (Nathan Walsh) are both on her case.

Written by Dan Sefton, best known for ITV’s The Good Karma Hospital and Sky1’s Delicious, Trust Me plunges viewers into a world the writer knows well, as he also works part time as an A&E doctor. StudioCanal is distributing the series internationally.

“As a doctor, I’ve encountered imposters in real life. There was actually one in the department where I worked,” he says. “Often they are well liked and competent; I’ve also met qualified doctors who are frankly dangerous. For me there’s a delicious irony in the idea that the imposter doctor is better than the real thing, both clinically and with patients.”

Trust Me sees new Doctor Who star Whittaker as a nurse who fakes doctor qualifications

It took him seven years from first reading a book about imposters to getting his drama made. “My first thought was making it about a pair of identical twins. The story changed in various ways until I came up with the idea of a nurse impersonating a doctor,” he recalls. “The problem was a lot of people didn’t believe it was credible, even though I, as a doctor, was telling them it was credible – there have been so many stories of people doing it.

“It was really frustrating because I knew it was a good idea and I was worried that someone else would get there first. It wasn’t until Red Production Company came on board that they really listened to the story and immediately saw the potential in it.”

Whittaker says she was hooked from the moment she read the first script. “It really fascinated me because it went in a completely different direction to how I thought it was going to go,” she says of the series, which launches on BBC1 on August 8. “At the beginning, when she’s suspended for whistleblowing and loses her job, it could have gone in so many ways. The fact she takes on a new identity isn’t the way I thought it would go. I love the fact that her choices are quite morally dubious; they certainly aren’t black and white.”

Sefton says he looked at US shows where the lead is often an anti-hero. No one walking into an NHS hospital would like to think they are being treated by an unqualified doctor, yet at the same time Cath is good at her job. The story is told from her point of view and the viewer is on her side – at least at first.

The Inbetweeners’ Blake Harrison also plays a role

“I enjoyed the push-and-pull feel of playing with the audience’s sympathies,” the writer explains. “She is a good person but she shouldn’t be doing this. She’s an honest woman who has done one dishonest thing; there will be consequences. I read a lot about the different types of imposters; there are far more men than women. Men always do it for egotistical reasons; they want to be something impressive. But the women generally do it for a way of getting on in life.

“In this show Cath is giving herself the opportunities she’d never had. But once she’s made that choice, that changes who she is. She begins to like her new life and that’s where it becomes complicated.”

Whittaker agrees: “It’s really interesting to play flawed characters. I would be terrified by the choice this protagonist has made – I’m a crap secret-keeper. Often we are surrounded by people who do things that we don’t agree with. For the audience not to agree with her but still be emotionally behind her is an interesting thing to play.”

Sefton worked as a medical consultant on the Glasgow and Edinburgh set (the show was co-executive produced by Gaynor Holmes for BBC Scotland), helping the cast find their way around a busy emergency department. He also allowed the actors to experiment on him with minor procedures – up to a point where the producers had to step in because they were worried he could sue them for health and safety breaches.

“I kept volunteering to be a guinea pig,” he admits. “But the producers were worried I would get hurt and sue them. I still encouraged the actors to stick needles in me. The only way you understand the tension of doing something like that – of crossing a line – is when you do something like that to another human.”

Although Sefton has scripted medical dramas including Doctors, Casualty and Holby City, he says he deliberately made the medical stories in Trust Me different. “There is a horror show element to it,” he says. “A lot of things Cath has to tackle are the things that still scare doctors. She sees some very nasty cases; they all do.

“In episode two, you see Sharon Small’s character, Dr Brigitte McAdams, talk about the patients she has killed and how much that has affected her. People know about medical mistakes but don’t see how it can also hurt the doctors.

“Because this drama isn’t about the medical stuff, there is a nihilism which you don’t normally get as you don’t need to resolve the medical stories. In real life there is often no easy answer, there is no meaning to the problems people come in with. They aren’t resolved. I want this to be a tough watch because even though she is doing a bad thing, she is still turning up there every day to help people.”

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