All posts by Ryan Watson

Mercurio magic

Line of Duty showrunner Jed Mercurio and actor Adrian Dunbar discuss making the hit BBC crime drama, which is set to return to screens for a fifth season in 2019.

Just like an ambitious cop has to work their way up the ranks of police hierarchy, British crime drama Line of Duty has earned its stripes in the world of television across four seasons.

Jed Mercurio

The show, produced by ITV-backed World Productions and distributed by Kew Media, began on BBC2 in 2012 but moved to flagship channel BBC1 after proving popular among viewers. It was renewed for seasons five and six earlier this year and will return in 2019, with filming set to resume in Northern Ireland next month.

With its focus on corruption, Line of Duty stands apart from most police series, and writer Jed Mercurio says he has learnt a lot since initially sitting down to pen the first episode. Noting that he and World had been discussing a police series for some time before the idea of incorporating corruption came up, Mercurio says: “I would describe it as being a process; there wasn’t a point where it was something that just arrived. There was a big idea of it being serialised, an idea of having a guest lead, having the investigators return – all those things and more were part of the process.”

The show has come a long way since its inception and fans are eagerly awaiting the return of AC-12 – the anti-corruption unit at the drama’s centre – next year. With characters including Superintendent Ted Hastings, played by Adrian Dunbar, DS Kate Fleming (Vicky McLure) and DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston), the drama has engrossed viewers while often throwing up complex moral dilemmas.

Broadly speaking, each season sees AC-12 investigating a police officer, usually played by a guest star, across six episodes. The series is also notable for Mercurio’s skill at building incredible tension through police interview scenes.

“The idea that the first so-called antagonist would be the first allegedly corrupt officer, DCI Tony Gates [Lennie James], meant that he was someone who had good and bad about him,” explains the writer. “He was in a moral grey area and then the same applied to the investigators, they weren’t holier-than-thou either.”

Line of Duty’s returning actors include (L-R) Martin Compston, Adrian Dunbar and Vicky McClure

In addition to the presence of advisors on set, Mercurio’s research into the way police work has helped make the show as authentic as possible – and the writer admits he has made some eye-opening discoveries in the process:  “What tends to surprise is the slackness. In season four we had a sequence where a police officer tampered with evidence. I had assumed the evidence room had security cameras so coppers can’t fiddle with anything but, seriously, there are none because they are entitled to privacy.”

Dunbar’s Hastings, a fiery Northern Irishman with something of a cult following among the Line of Duty faithful, is one man who doesn’t get much privacy in the show, with endless heated scenes shot unfolding in the superintendent’s office. The actor clearly relishes playing his part: “It’s been a great trip because he is that character in the middle of it all, that person a lot of people are bouncing their understanding of what’s happening off of and it’s great to play that, it’s exciting.”

But after four seasons of wearing Hastings’ uniform, does Dunbar think his character has changed? “I think he’s become more of what he is,” he responds. “You get to a point where you realise that what audiences are interested in essentially is performance and also to see someone going through something because they’re going through something.”

The most recent season of the show starred Thandie Newton

And while many characters have met their end since the show’s launch, Dunbar isn’t worried about his own position in the next two seasons – suggesting there’s plenty more of Hastings for fans to enjoy for now.

Outside of the UK, Line of Duty has been sold to streamer Hulu but hasn’t quite taken off in the US as yet. The American way of making television has certainly helped its success in the UK, however, with Mercurio’s hands-on role keeping his interest high.

“I only direct a little bit, I’m more of a showrunner,” he says of his presence on set. “I’m an executive producer who is in creative charge of the production during the production, so I’m working with the directors, the cast and with the edit department and we’re having ongoing dialogue, which sometimes then feeds back to the production company and the broadcaster. That’s my customary role.”

Lennie James was under investigation in season one

With the show returning next year to the BBC, AC-12 will soon be hit with a host of new trials and tribulations. So as he goes back to a fresh page in hope of bringing more quality drama to the screen, has being involved with the show changed Mercurio’s view of the police in real life?

“No. Fundamentally, the evidence is exactly what we all know, which is that the vast majority of police officers are dedicated public servants who are in it for the right reasons,” he replies. “They want to protect the public and see justice but there is a very small proportion who are corrupt in different ways.”

As for whether Line of Duty will return beyond seasons five and six, Mercurio says he is grateful for the success thus far and that concentrating on the work will mean AC-12 can continue its investigations for many seasons to come.

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Becoming Anne

Amybeth McNulty has delighted viewers with her star turn in Anne with an E, the latest adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel Anne of Green Gables. Ahead of season two, she tells DQ about getting her big television break.

Not only did season one of Netflix series Anne with an E travel across Canada’s picturesque landscapes, the drama also covered a lot of ground in introducing its poetic, outspoken leading lady.

The latest adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, the series is set in the 1890s and tells the story of orphan Anne Shirley.

Played by Irish actor Amybeth McNulty, Anne is a delightfully energetic and upbeat 13-year-old with an impressive vocabulary. So how did McNulty, 16, deal with the tongue-twisting nature of the script considering it was her big TV break?

“Initially, I loved what she was saying. It was a scene about being a bride and she was such a chatty Cathy,” explains the actor, recalling her first reading. “I loved her spirit and enthusiasm about everything around her. As I read the script, I guess I enjoyed getting into character and appreciated how brave she was to have gone through what she had. It was very inspiring.”

Anne with an E marked a breakthrough TV role for young star Amybeth McNulty

The first season sees Anne find an unlikely home with a spinster played by Geraldine James and her soft-spoken bachelor brother (RH Thomson). Having spent most of her young life being passed around from home to home, the chance of becoming part of a family is a breakthrough moment for Anne and forms the basis of the series.

McNulty reveals she read the original novel when she was nine, so was already familiar with the story prior to bagging the part. But having to memorise a four-page monologue for her audition was a baptism of fire and stood her in good stead for the rest the first season.

Despite each of the seven episodes being penned by a different writer, McNulty’s delivery is consistent and infectious. In the first episode alone, she gets through more lines than some characters do in entire seasons of other shows.

“The language kind of changes and shifts around a little bit and [so does] the way sentences are formed, for instance, so that’s what I found kind of tricky with the different writers,” McNulty says. “But the language itself, from the 1800s, is pretty easy, I learned new words every day so it increased my vocabulary, which was awesome.”

The story of Anne’s troubled past is told through the use of flashbacks, some of which are distressing bullying scenes. Despite the story being a century old, many of the issues thrown up are relevant today, such as those of identity, prejudice, feminism, bullying, gender parity and empowerment. Anne’s relentless imagination also helps her to escape certain situations, offering another interesting storytelling technique.

The show is based on classic novel Anne of Green Gables

While the clever writing is one of the main assets of the Netflix adaptation – showrun by Moira Walley-Beckett (Breaking Bad) – the costumes are also key to doing Montgomery’s story justice on screen. Anne’s straw hat and travel bag, for instance, are particularly poignant symbols of her previously unsettled existence.

Reflecting on her costume and fake face freckles, McNulty says the whole package helped her to make the character her own. “It gave you a whole vibe itself. The carpet bag, the stockings were dirty, the bloomers and the vest – they were all filthy,” explains the actor.

In one scene, when Thomson’s character offers to hold Shirley’s bag, she politely refuses due to it being broken and having a “knack” to it. “Anne’s bag is a symbol of comfort, the way only she knows how to hold it,” McNulty notes.

Seeing the young actor out of character is intriguing considering she embodies her role as a 19th century teenager so well. And with McNulty a newcomer to the world of TV, the part could have been considered a daunting first job on screen.

“I don’t think it’s been challenging, it’s been more exciting,” she says. “I have a project hopefully coming up in September where I’ll be playing a new character, which will be very strange as I’ve played Anne for a couple of years now.

“It’s going to be interesting to play someone closer to my age in a different country with my own accent, and I’m very excited to explore it.”

Anne with an E’s second season lands on Netflix this week

She adds that James and Thomson were influential role models on set and taught her a lot as mentors throughout the process.

Anne with an E was reportedly the fourth most binged series on Netflix last year, so it’s no surprise the show returns for a second season this Friday. Produced by Northwood Entertainment, it will also air on Canadian pubcaster the CBC in September.

Asked whether having the whole season available at once is a good thing as season two’s debut approaches, McNulty says she’s just looking forward to seeing what people think of it.

“I guess we’ll see what people think of season two and keep our fingers crossed. I hope it comes across well, I’m very excited,” says the actor. “It’s exploded much more than I thought it would. When I originally auditioned, I didn’t even know it was for Netflix, so that was a shock.”

McNulty reveals she’d love to continue in Anne’s shoes, adding: “I think Moira’s hoping to expand it; her dream is five seasons to get the story out there in a way that isn’t rushed. I’m just insanely humbled at the opportunity I’ve had and the things I got to do.”

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Seeing double

JK Simmons goes head to head with himself in spy drama Counterpart, launching on Starz this month. The actor, co-star Olivia Williams and creator Justin Marks talk about making the series, which blends sci-fi and espionage to create a high-octane thriller.

Few would dare cross some of the characters Hollywood actor JK Simmons has played in the past. There was the unforgiving restaurant boss in last year’s La La Land, cigar-smoking newspaper editor J Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and ruthless music teacher Terence Fletcher in Whiplash, for which he won an Oscar in 2014.

In Starz’s upcoming spy-drama Counterpart, however, he goes up against himself as two worlds collide in Cold War Berlin. The actor leads a cast including Olivia Williams (The Sixth Sense) and Harry Lloyd (Game of Thrones, The Theory of Everything) as Howard Silk, a long-serving cog in the bureaucratic machinery of a Berlin-based United Nations spy agency.

When Howard discovers his organisation safeguards the secret of a crossing into a parallel dimension, he is thrust into a shadow world of intrigue, danger and double-crosses, where the only man he can trust is his near-identical counterpart from the parallel world.

“It’s a show with two universes; so much of our cast play two roles and some more surprisingly than others,” explains creator and writer Justin Marks (The Jungle Book). “We take from the tropes of the espionage genre, that classic British world, and apply it to this high-concept science fiction, almost metaphysical or existential, premise.”

Counterpart stars Oscar winner JK Simmons as Howard Silk

Marks came up with the idea for the show while pondering his own background and what might have been had he not pursued a career in screenwriting. Starz has taken the unusual step of committing to two 10-episode seasons of the show, which was ordered straight-to-series and is being distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Season one debuts in the US on January 21.

Simmons, who also executive produces the project, tells DQ that playing two versions of his character was a welcome challenge. “Like a lot of high-end television now, it’s kind of a hybrid between traditional TV- and movie-making,” he says. “It’s great to have new challenges, especially having been around for a while. It’s an ideal combination of knowing you have a complicated and layered character in a complicated and layered story, but not really knowing where it’s all going to end.”

Produced by Los Angeles-based Anonymous Content and Gilbert Films, with Fireglory Pictures in Berlin, Marks reveals that the fact Starz ordered two seasons up front allowed him and his team more freedom in terms of planning out the overall story arc. He’s hopeful the show will continue beyond the first 20 episodes, of course, for more of the same. “We’ve been able to really slow-burn our story and make it much bigger, so much so that some of the characters aren’t even revealed in the first episode,” he explains.

One of those who isn’t immediately introduced is Howard’s wife Emily Silk, played by English actor Williams. Despite not having any lines in the first script, what she read of it was enough to win her over for the duration. “I had absolutely nothing to do in the first episode,” she says, “but I thought the writing for all the other actors was incredible and hoped whoever was writing for them would be writing for me. It held the promise of infinite interest.”

Simmons shares a laugh with creator and writer Justin Marks

Having appeared in countless US TV procedurals in addition to his Hollywood blockbuster roles, Simmons believes Counterpart’s storyline offers endless possibilities. Speaking while dressed from head to toe in black, Simmons’ outfit is perfect for a man lodged between two existences in search of his true identity. “The big difference is obviously, with a feature film, you know where you’re going with a beginning, middle and end. With Counterpart, all possibilities are open, and in this case times two,” the actor muses.

“Justin and I talked about the overall arc of where the first 10 episodes were going and I had a slight sense of a beginning, middle and end, but you’re really only getting one episode at a time, as opposed to a lot of US shows I’ve done where only the names of the bad guy might change each week. The infinite possibilities of it branching out keep it interesting.”

While Simmons is something of a TV veteran, Marks takes to the medium for the first time with Counterpart. So why the transition? “The choice to move into television comes down to the opportunity to tell a story and the chance to work with great actors who want to do longform,” he explains. “It’s been really different to the feature-writing experience where you’re a little more of a mercenary – you’re coming in and out of films and committing what you can. In this case, the show really is a piece of me and an exploration of a lot of ideas that have been in my head for a long time.”

Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) helmed the first episode of Counterpart’s upcoming first season before a rotating stable of three other directors took on three episodes each. Filming took place in LA and Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, and Marks reveals that shooting in Germany felt so authentic that he’ll be doubling the amount of time spent in the city for season two.

The series debuts on January 21

“There are plenty of cliffhangers; every episode expands our world a little further,” he says. “We’re talking about two universes that were once identical and are now peeling off and becoming more competitive with one another.”

Williams adds: “On each side of the universe, the characters have exponentially made billions of slightly different choices” – and now it’s up to them to deal with the outcomes.

Despite Counterpart being a sci-fi series, the creative team were keen to ensure the tech and special effects side of things didn’t get in the way of characters and story. The portal bridging both worlds appears simply as a doorway for that reason.

“You could apply a lot of theories to what may or may not be happening in the show,” Marks says. “In the end, what we’re really competing against as a culture is other versions of ourselves who share the same ambitions, hopes and regrets, and there’s a tragedy to that.”

It’s a story of both hope and regret, concludes Simmons – and seeing him scale the depths of his two characters this winter is sure to make for unmissable viewing.

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