Category: IN FOCUS
Head scratcher
Director Jorge Dorado, executive producer Ran Tellem and the cast of The Head open up about filming the Spanish-made thriller, which is set at a remote scientific laboratory in Antarctica.
Make or break-up
Writer Clara Mendes and director Amalie Næsby Fick tell DQ how Danish shortform drama Sex charts a young woman’s journey through a complicated web of sexuality, gender and relationships.
Political ambitions
In Icelandic drama The Minister, an unconventional politician with a hidden health condition rises to become prime minister. Star Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, writer Jónas Margeir Ingólfsson and director Nanna Kristin Magnúsdóttir tell DQ about making the series.
The new Normal
Normal People executive producer Emma Norton and producer Catherine Magee tell DQ why the adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel strikes a chord with viewers and reveal the challenges of casting the drama and creating its intimate moments.
Word to the wise
Peter Bowker, creator and writer of The A Word, and director Fergus O’Brien discuss making the third season of the BBC family drama and their joy at pushing sidelined characters and stories of disability into the limelight.
Summer lovin’
Easy A writer Bert V Royal and The Sinner producer Michelle Purple tell DQ about teaming up on US cablenet Freeform’s high school drama Last Summer, from producer Entertainment One.
Blowing the whistle
By highlighting the personal story of a whistleblower, Norwegian drama Heksejakt (Witch Hunt) looks at how those fighting for justice often become targets themselves. DQ speaks to co-showrunners Siv Rajendram and Anna Bache-Wiig and star Ingrid Bolsø Berdal about the series.
The real Westworld
Having worked on all three seasons of HBO’s Westworld, location manager Mandi Dillin talks to DQ about finding the real-world settings used in the science-fiction epic.
All that jazz
Pitch-perfect music meets Parisian drama in a Netflix series about an American jazz club in the French capital. Writer Jack Thorne and star Joanna Kulig invite DQ to The Eddy.
Together alone
Pushing the boundaries of filming under lockdown, writer and star Julie Graham and director Robin Sheppard tell DQ about creating and producing comedy-drama Dun Breedin’.
Gangland shooting
The creative team behind Sky and Cinemax’s explosive original drama Gangs of London discuss how they brought The Raid director Gareth Evan’s action-packed storytelling to television.
Secret police
Star Laura Smet and Mother Production duo Aurélien Larger and Harold Valentin tell DQ about upcoming French series La Garçonne, a gender-switch crime drama set in 1920s Paris.
Fresh territory
Co-creator Maria Feldman and stars Mélanie Thierry and James Purefoy speak to DQ about how No Man’s Land, an eight-part thriller set against the backdrop of the Syrian War, offers a new perspective of the conflict.
On Decker
The latest German detective to hit TV screens – Dunkelstadt’s Doro Decker – plays by her own rules, as star Alina Levshin and director Asli Özge reveal.
Fever pitch
Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes turns his hand to the origins of football in his latest period drama, Netflix series The English Game. DQ discovers why it will appeal to fanatics and non-fans alike.
Let the wrong one in
Julie Graham leads the cast of Penance, a three-part psychological miniseries about one woman’s grief and what happens when she befriends a potentially deadly stranger.
Abbey days
With two new shows in the works, Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes and executive producer Gareth Neame look back on the period drama’s success and discuss their partnership.
Illuminating drama
A starry cast lights up the screen in The Luminaries, a BBC and TVNZ coproduction based on Eleanor Catton’s award-winning novel. The author, who has adapted her own work, and director Claire McCarthy tell DQ about transforming the book for television.
United Stateless
Hollywood star Cate Blanchett discusses the six-year journey to bring Australian drama Stateless to the screen and explains why more broadcasters need to open up to this type of ‘elephant in the room’ storytelling.
Once upon a time in Vienna
Delve into the mind of Sigmund Freud as Austria’s ORF and Netflix partner for an eight-part series that sees the young doctor test out his unconventional theories while solving a murder conspiracy in 1890s Vienna.