A lesson in suspense
Rachel Gesua, senior executive producer at The Teacher producer Clapperboard, breaks down a key scene from the second season of the Channel 5 thriller, in which the protagonist faces the police after tragedy strikes on a school trip.
After the huge success of The Teacher in 2022, we were thrilled when Seb Cardwell at Channel 5 suggested creating a second season. But rather than a traditional second run that sees the same characters return, it would be an anthology – taking the same DNA and broad premise of the first season and creating something entirely new.
This felt like a really fascinating challenge for Clapperboard. How do you build on the elements that made the original show so popular with the audience, while making it fresh and surprising? We did not want to feel like we were retreading the same ground.
From the outset, we knew we wanted to bring on Dominic Leclerc, who directed the first season. He was so key in establishing the look and the feel of the drama and would be able to bring a thematic and aesthetic consistency to the second season. He is a great visual storyteller who works brilliantly with actors and elevates what’s on the page.
The first season had a very strong, intriguing premise – a teacher is accused of sleeping with one of her students. We knew this season needed the same thought-provoking and shocking starting point. Our writers, Michael Crompton and Rebecca Wojciechowski, came up with an idea that we felt would really speak to our audience: when a boy goes missing on a school trip, questions are asked of the supervising teacher. Where was she when he disappeared and who was she with?
When his body is found, we discover there is more to his death than meets the eye. This is every parent’s nightmare, the niggling worry that exists in the back of their minds when their children are far from them. And if their teachers can’t keep them safe, who can? This felt like a powerful and emotive premise to explore.
Casting our three leads was going to be integral to the show’s success. We were thrilled to land the exciting combination of Kara Tointon, Will Mellor and Emmett J Scanlan. All three are strong, compelling actors who could get their teeth into their complex and layered characters. Excitingly, alongside them we have a group of young, incredibly talented supporting actors whose work on the drama brought a different and fresher perspective to the piece.
Casting the right actress for our lead, Dani, was particularly important. Dani makes an ill-advised split-second decision with devastating and tragic consequences. Kara needed to take the audience with her on Dani’s journey – from a much-loved art teacher to being ostracised by her community.
Our show opens at a Stockport comprehensive where Dani and fellow teacher Jimmy (played by Will Mellor) embark on a school trip to the Lake District with a group of teenage students. As Dani says goodbye to her husband Tim (played by Emmett J Scanlan), we sense that this is a marriage on the rocks and it becomes apparent that she is desperate for some time away. We see her easy and flirtatious relationship with Jimmy and it’s not long before we see their friendship cross the line. When she is given the opportunity to steal away from her students by the lake to meet Jimmy, she takes it and they have passionate sex in a boat house. When she returns, one of her students, Zac, is missing. He is eventually found dead, face down in the lake.
Dani is now faced with a life-changing decision, and we see her grapple with this in her first interview scene with Detective Inspector Calgetti. A boy has died on her watch. A teacher’s greatest fear. Does she come clean and explain what she was doing when he went missing? This will destroy her career, her marriage. Or does she keep quiet? While the scenario is hardly universal, our instinct to protect ourselves and our families at all costs is something to which we can all relate. The lie she tells will not bring Zac back, after all.
This key scene is simply shot and all the more powerful for it. Set in the jarringly cosy surroundings of the adventure centre, rather than a police station, it is more like a fact-gathering exercise for the detective. But the audience is with Dani as she is struggling with this huge dilemma – to confess or to lie. As she fields questions from Calgetti, Dani’s mind is filled with aural memories of her passionate encounter with Jimmy.
Dominic uses extreme close-ups of her eyes to really take the audience into this internal dilemma and to force the audience to ask themselves what they would do in these circumstances. The scene is tense and moody, with two brilliant performances from Kara and Gwynne McElveen. When Calgetti says they will find out what happened, it is meant to be reassuring but for Dani. However, it is anything but, and leaves the audience with an ominous sense of what is to come.
While both seasons of The Teacher have been exciting thrillers, they have also sought to explore important themes – of negligence and accountability, of manipulation and grooming. It is always important that these themes are explored with bravery and truth, and this is where Dominic truly excels as a director. His approach to Michael and Rebecca’s scripts and to the actors is to find the nuance and complexities of the story and characters and allow them to breathe. His work with the younger cast was hugely impactful and brought specificity and credibility to those performances, whose stories needed to feel authentic and emotional.
The Teacher is a compelling and intriguing thriller that we hope will keep viewers guessing until the end. But at its heart, what has really driven the creatives on the show has been the chance to explore some important and sensitive themes, ones that speak to the audience and provoke questions in them.
tagged in: Channel 5, Clapperboard, Rachel Gesua, The Teacher