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Deadly games

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A crime drama set in 1936, Polish series Breslau (The Breslau Murders) marks the first Disney+ original production from Central and Eastern Europe. Star Agata Kulesza and director Leszek Dawid talk playing unlikeable characters and creating the show’s tense atmosphere.

A star of stage and screen, Agata Kulesza is one of the most acclaimed actors in Poland and a four-time winner of the best actress prize at the country’s Orły film awards.

But while she’s used to taking the lead, Kulesza’s latest role is a supporting part in Breslau (The Breslau Murders), a Polish series that has the landmark honour of being the first Disney+ original production from Central and Eastern Europe.

The eight-part crime drama is set in 1936, at a time when the 11th Olympic Games are fast approaching and the eyes of the entire world are turned towards Berlin, the capital of the Third Reich. But in the city of Breslau (the historic German name for the Polish city of Wrocław), a brutal murder may ruin the entire propaganda campaign and disrupt the sporting spectacle.

The only one who can close the investigation is uncompromising Polish police commissioner Franz Podolsky (Tomasz Schuchardt), who despises the Third Reich but feels duty-bound to bring the killer to justice. Known for his controversial but effective methods, Podolsky finds himself face to face with the emerging evil while also battling his own demons, putting both his career and personal life under threat.

The cast also includes Adam Bobik as Podolsky’s longtime colleague Erwin Benk, Przemysław Bluszcz as Podolsky’s superior Leopold Barens, Karolina Gruszka as psychoanalyst Dr Inga Eissmann, Sandra Drzymalska as Podolsky’s wife Lena, who also becomes entangled in the criminal hunt, and Irenzeusz Czop as Johan Holtz, an SS officer who wields absolute power in Breslau.

Kulesza, meanwhile, portrays Holtz’s wife, Gerda. “I’m used to playing sad women. In Poland, there’s a vast belief that I’m a specialist at portraying women in the struggle, in the pain of life,” the actor tells DQ. “Gerda is yet another woman experiencing the pain of life. However, it was important for me as an actress that those conditions Gerda was put in were interesting, because we actors, we play a little bit how children in kindergarten play policemen and thieves.

“Here, we also play, but it is a more complex game. Other than the criminal story, the detective story, which is quite complex, I also liked being part of the storytelling and being part of a world that is no longer in existence. Emotionally, it was also interesting for me, because I like playing emotional things.”

Produced by ATM Grupa, Breslau is directed by Leszek Dawid (Jesteś Bogiem). The cinematography is by Paweł Flis (Interior) and the script was written by Magdalena Żakowska (Krew z krwi 3) and Bartosz Janiszewski (Wataha). The show debuted on Disney+ on September 12.

Here, Kulesza joins director Dawid to reveal more about the plot at the centre of the story, producing the Disney+ series and creating its tense atmosphere.

Agata Kulesza as Gerda in Breslau (The Breslau Murders)

Agata, what are your reflections on making Breslau?
Kulesza: I feel very good, because we have something of really good quality for our audience and because, simply, it is a very good series. Covid taught us that we basically tend to watch whatever there is on many different platforms, and Disney+ actually made sure we have a good-quality product. I believe the audience will appreciate the good quality. It also has a respect for the audience.

How do you approach the different roles you play in film and television?
Kulesza: I take a bit of a different approach when I play the lead, and in Poland, I’m lucky enough to usually have the lead role, both in films and in TV series. However, here I was in a supporting role, and I knew it was a role that serves a certain purpose. I needed to have a full understanding [of the story] so I could prepare the background and the landscape for the main leads. How I create the so-called ‘ladder’ of the character when I am the lead is a bit different from the ladder when I am in a supporting role. However, the tools and ways of my expression are the same.

Why do you often play ‘sad’ women?
Kulesza: First of all, I like to observe and to tell stories using my perception of and sensitivity to the complexity of humanity and the world. Also, the choice of my profession was a good one, because privately, I have this overdose of emotion in me, and [acting] provides me room to express this. I am in symbiosis with my profession; it gives me a floor to let it all out.
I have a reflective nature. I observe the world and I think very often about its condition. I like to touch the audience and maybe make them reflect on the world as well.

Gerda is the wife of Johan Holtz, a powerful SS officer

What are your feelings towards your character, Gerda, and her role in Breslau?
Kulesza: I believe it is an attempt to humanise a sinister period in world history, because we are observing bad people – people who we believe are bad, who we have valued as bad – but we also show them as human beings. Those monsters, they all have their own tears and their own pains in life. So we humanise those monsters, we don’t just put them in as this cartoon model but we show them as human beings. I can’t say too much about the history of this family, but I believe it’s an important thread to story of the series.

How do you approach playing a character who audiences might not like?
Kulesza: I believe the most important thing is not to defend this character. Some actors tend to say they’re defending the character, but I try to understand the motivation behind the bad actions. Even if a character does evil and is evil, I still try to search for the motivation behind that evil. But sometimes it is just the construct of that character; sometimes people are just evil.
I have to understand that. With Gerda, I understand her very well. She is put in a very difficult situation, in terms of both her private life and the façade she has because of her husband. So she has to meet the requirements and the expectations of a wife and a mother. I cannot tell you more, but she’s trapped and she is oppressed.

How did you immerse yourself in the world of the show?
Kulesza: It was absolutely wonderful because of those beautiful costumes, beautiful things, equipment, beautiful decorations. And it was not only one wall [of the set], it was a 360-degree approach. You just let your imagination go and have fun and tell the story.

The series stars Tomasz Schuchardt as Polish police commissioner Franz Podolsky

Leszek, what was your interest in directing Breslau?
Dawid: When I read the script, the most interesting and thrilling aspect for me was how this story is up to date, how the story is repeated through history somehow. It was thrilling to think about it this way. And I like the main character, who is very powerful. When we thought about that, Tomasz Schuchardt was the only one who could be our Podolsky. As a director, I had a great journey with great talent, creating strong characters.

How did you work with Tomasz to create Podolsky?
Dawid: His character brings you into the screen, and you don’t have to do much in the mise en scène to catch him as the main character. He already possessed the power to be the lead. When we were working in the rehearsals, we talked a lot about the relationship between the characters and, of course, the main relationship with Sandra, so that connection was the strongest. We spent a lot of time at the table, hearing the dialogue and talking about them. So later on, when we were shooting, we focused on catching the tense atmosphere of the time. We spent a lot of time talking about the set design and how to create unique tension between the character, the set and the time in which he exists.

Sandra Drzymalska portrays Lena, Podolsky’s wife, in the Disney+ series

We also see Podolsky’s home life and his relationship with Lena. What was your interest in going home with some of the characters?
Dawid: It’s always nice to use that opportunity to look behind the door and see what they do when nobody looks at them, and what happens between the main couple is so powerful for us. They laugh together and hate each other at the same time. Podolsky and Lena are the strongest engine in the story. It’s a privilege to see what you do when you are not an official person serving the public, but Podolsky is unique because he doesn’t care. He’s the same in public and he’s the same behind closed doors, and that gives him power. He doesn’t pretend at any time, and that causes trouble for him.

What challenges did you face?
Dawid: What was most important was to catch things that are between the lines. On the surface, we have the criminal story and personal relationship between Podolsky and Lena. But in between the lines, there is this crawling tension of a danger that is approaching. We had to capture that, but not show it directly. I liked the cooperation with our composer, Radzimir Debski, giving us a modern but old-fashioned sound design and providing [that sense of danger] that was needed.

Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ

1983: In an alternate-history Poland, a homicide detective uncovers a decades-old conspiracy that changed the course of history, risking everything in a surveillance-heavy Eastern Bloc.

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Series to Watch: Toronto 2025

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Ahead of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival, which begins on September 4, DQ picks out the scripted series that will have red-carpet premieres in the Canadian city.

Black Rabbit
From: US
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Directors: Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Ben Semanoff and Justin Kurzel
Producers: Aggregate Films, Riff Raff Entertainment, Youngblood Pictures and Range
Starring: Jude Law, Jason Bateman, Cleopatra Coleman, Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Amaka Okafor and Troy Kotsur
World premiere date: September 7
Launch date: September 18
Law and Bateman play brothers and co-founders of a trendy New York restaurant, each hustling in their own way to keep their business – and each other – afloat amid a rising tide of chaos.
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Gandhi
From: India
Director: Hansal Mehta
Producer: Applause Entertainment
Distributor: Lenore Entertainment Group
Starring: Pratik Gandi, Bhamini Oza Gandhi, Tom Felton, Kabir Bedi, Aseem Hattangady, Ninad Kamat, Jonno Davies, James Murray and Aditya Rawal
World premiere date: September 6
A “sweeping, cinematic” series depicting the formative years and legal career of civil rights icon and Indian independence champion Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Ghandi (Gandi).

Heajastallan – Bryllupsfesten (A Sámi Wedding)
From: Norway
Original broadcaster: NRK
Directors: Åse Kathrin Vuolab and Pål Jackman
Producers: Tordenfilm, Mer Film and Forest People
Distributor: Reinvent International Sales
Starring: Sara Margrethe Oskal, Ánte Siri, Inga Marja Utsi, Ivan Aleksander Sara Buljo and Craig Stein
World premiere date: September 6
Launch date: 2026
What happens when you mix reindeer herders, family secrets and a 3,000-person wedding planned in a month?

Portobello
From: Italy, France
Original broadcasters: HBO Max, Arte
Director: Marco Bellocchio
Producers: Our Films, Kavac Film and The Apartment Pictures
Distributor: HBO Max
International premiere date: September 8
Launch date: 2026
The stranger-than-fiction true story of beloved Italian TV hist Enzo Tortora, who was falsely accused of involvement with a Neopolitan crime syndicate in the 1980s.

Reunion
From: UK
Original broadcaster: BBC
Director: Luke Snellin
Producer: Warp Films
Distributor: BBC Studios
Starring: Matthew Gurney, Lara Peake, Anne-Marie Duff, Eddie Marsan and Rose Ayling-Ellis
North American premiere date: September 5
A deaf man, recently released from prison, struggles to reconnect with his family and community, while at the same time pursuing justice.
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Rise of the Raven
From: Hungary, Austria, Germany
Original broadcasters: TV2 (Hungary), ORF (Austria)
Director: Robert Dornhelm
Producers: Serendipity Point Films, Twin Media, HG Media, MR Film and Beta Film
Distributor: Beta Film
Starring: Gellért Kádár, Vivien Rujder, Franciska Töröcsik, Mariann Hermányi, Ernõ Fekete, Murathan Muslu, Giancarlo Giannini, Rade Serbedzija, Laurence Rupp, Balázs Medveczky, Elena Rusconi, László Mátray, Balázs Csémy, Francesco Acquaroli, Thomas Trabacchi, Cornelius Obonya and Ulaşcan Kutlu\
North American premiere date: September 7
Based on a true story, Rise of the Raven centres on fearless commander János Hunyadi as he leads a small army to an unlikely victory against the dominant Ottoman Empire in 15th century Europe.
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The Lowdown
From: US
Original broadcasters: FX (US), Disney+
Director: Sterlin Harjo
Producer: FX
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Keith David, Kaniehtiio Horn, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Kyle MacLachlan, Scott Shepherd, Siena East, Michael Hitchcock, Michael ‘Killer Mike’ Render, Cody Lightning, Tim Blake Nelson and Tracy Letts
World premiere date: September 5
Launch date: September 23 (FX)
A modern noir set in Tulsa, this series follows the gritty exploits of citizen journalist Lee Raybon (Hawke), a self-proclaimed ‘truthstorian’ whose obsession with the truth is always getting him into trouble.
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The Savage
From: Iran
Original broadcaster: Filmnet
Director: Houman Seyyedi
Producer: FilmNet
Distributor: Netfilma
Starring: Negar Javaherian and Javad Ezati
International premiere date: September 6
A devastating tragedy puts a labourer on a collision course with the authorities.
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Wayward
From: Canada
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Directors: Euros Lyn, Renuka Jeyapalan and John Fawcett
Producers: Sphere Media and Objective Fiction
Starring: Mae Martin, Toni Collette, Sarah Gadon, Sydney Topliffe, Alyvia Alyn Lind and Brandon Jay McLaren
World premiere date: September 9
Launch date: September 25
After an escape attempt from an academy for ‘troubled teens,’ two students join forces with a newly local police officer, unearthing the town’s dark and deeply rooted secrets.
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Series to Watch: September 2025

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DQ checks out the upcoming schedules to pick 10 new series to watch this September, from two British thrillers and a Marian Keyes adaptation to the latest series from the creator of Mare of Easttown and a new mockumentary from the makers of The Office US.

The Guest
From: UK
Original broadcaster: BBC
Producer: Quay Street Productions
Distributor: ITV Studios
Starring: Gabrielle Creevy, Eve Myles, Sion Daniel Young and Emun Elliott
Launch date: September 1
A fast-paced story that centres on the toxic and beguiling relationship between a successful business owner, Fran (Myles), and her employee, Ria (Creevy). When Ria starts cleaning for Fran, she’s intoxicated by this confident and self-assured woman who encourages her to take control of her life. And when Ria flourishes, an intense friendship is forged. However, when Fran’s advice leads to a shocking event, the lives of these two very different women become intertwined by shared secrets and dangerous plots.
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The Paper
From: US
Original broadcaster: Peacock
Producers: Banijay Americas, Deedle-Dee Productions, Universal Television
Distributor: NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Sabrina Impacciatore, Chelsea Frei, Melvin Gregg, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Alex Edelma, Ramona Young, Tim Key and Oscar Nuñez
Launch date: September 4
The documentary crew that immortalised Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch in The Office find a new subject when they discover a historic Midwestern newspaper and the publisher trying to revive it.
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NCIS: Tony & Ziva
From: US
Original broadcaster: Paramount+ (US, Canada, UK, Australia, Latin America, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Japan)
Producer: CBS Studios
Distributor: Paramount Global Content Distribution
Starring: Cote de Pablo, Michael Weatherly, Amita Suman, Maximilian Osinski, Lara Rossi, Isla Gie, Nassima Benchicou, Terence Maynard, Julian Ovenden and James D’Arcy
Launch date: September 4
NCIS: Tony & Ziva picks up following Ziva’s supposed death, after which Tony left the NCIS team to raise their daughter, Tali. Years later, Ziva was discovered alive, leading her to complete one final mission with NCIS before she was reunited with Tony and their daughter in Paris. Since then – and where this series finds them – Tony and Ziva have been raising Tali together. When Tony’s security company is attacked, they must go on the run across Europe, try to figure out who is after them and maybe even learn to trust each other again so they can finally have their unconventional happily ever after.
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Task
From: US
Original broadcaster: HBO
Producers: Wiip, Public Record
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey, Emilia Jones, Jamie McShane, Sam Keeley, Thuso Mbedu, Fabien Frankel, Alison Oliver, Raúl Castillo, Silvia Dionicio, Phoebe Fox and Martha Plimpton
Launch date: September 7
From the creator of Mare of Easttown comes this drama set in the working-class suburbs of Philadelphia, where an FBI agent (Ruffalo) heads a task force charged with putting an end to a string of violent robberies led by an unsuspecting family man (Pelphrey).
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The Girlfriend
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Prime Video
Producers: Imaginarium Productions and Amazon MGM Studios
Starring: Robin Wright, Olivia Cooke, Laurie Davidson, Waleed Zuaiter, Tanya Moodie, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Karen Henthorn, Anna Chancellor, Leo Suter and Francesca Corney
Launch date: September 10
Based on Michelle Frances’ novel of the same name, The Girlfriend follows Laura (Wright), a woman who seemingly has it all: a glittering career, a loving husband and her precious son, Daniel. However, her life begins to unravel when Daniel brings home Cherry (Cooke), a girlfriend who changes everything. After a tense introduction, Laura becomes convinced Cherry is hiding something. Is she a manipulative social climber, or is Laura just paranoid?
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Coldwater
From: UK
Original broadcaster: ITV
Producer: Sister
Distributor: ITV Studios
Starring: Andrew Lincoln, Ewen Bremner, Indira Varma and Eve Myles
Launch date: September 14
This series stars The Walking Dead’s Lincoln as John, a repressed man who is shocked to find himself in middle age, secretly raging at his life as a stay-at-home dad. When his failure to intervene in a violent confrontation in a playground brings his identity crisis to a head, John ups and moves his family from London to the rural idyll of Coldwater, a fictional Scottish village as far away from the UK capital as possible. There, he is quickly befriended by next-door neighbour Tommy (Bremner), a charming, confident man and devoted husband to the local vicar Rebecca (Myles). But it’s only after a series of unsettling incidents start to occur that John begins to wonder who the real Tommy actually is.
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Wayward
From: Canada
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producers: Objective Media and Sphere Media
Starring: Mae Martin, Toni Collette, Sarah Gadon, Sydney Topliffe, Alyvia Alyn Lind and Brandon Jay McLaren
Launch date: September 25
In the picture-perfect town of Tall Pines, sinister secrets lurk behind every closed door. Not long after police officer Alex Dempsey (Martin) and his pregnant wife Laura (Gadon) move into their new home, he connects with two students Abbie (Topliffe) and Leila (Lind) from the local school for “troubled teens” who are desperate to escape and could be the key to unearthing everything rotten in the town. As Alex begins investigating a series of unusual incidents, he suspects that Evelyn (Collette), the school’s mysterious leader, might be at the centre of all the problems.
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House of Guinness
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producer: Kudos
Starring: Anthony Boyle, Louis Partridge, Emily Fairn, Fionn O’Shea, James Norton, Niamh McCormack, Seamus O’Hara, Michael McElhatton, Dervla Kirwan, Michael Colgan, Danielle Galligan, David Wilmot, Jessica Reynolds, Hilda Fay, Ann Skelly, Elizabeth Dulau and Jack Gleeson
Launch date: September 25
From Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, House of Guinness explores an epic story inspired by one of Europe’s most famous and enduring dynasties – the Guinness family. Set in 19th century Dublin and New York, the story begins immediately after the death of Sir Benjamin Guinness, the man responsible for the extraordinary success of the Guinness brewery. It centres on the far-reaching impact of his will on the fate of his four adult children – Arthur, Edward, Anne and Ben – as well as on a group of Dublin characters who work and interact with the phenomenon that is Guinness.
Read more here

The Walsh Sisters
From: Ireland
Original broadcasters: RTÉ (Ireland), BBC (UK)
Producers: Cuba Pictures and Metropolitan Pictures
Distributor: Cineflix Rights
Starring: Louisa Harland, Caroline Menton, Danielle Galligan, Máiréad Tyers and Stefanie Preissner
Launch date: September TBC (RTÉ)
Based on the novels by Marian Keyes, The Walsh Sisters is a darkly funny, emotionally raw drama about five Irish sisters bound by love, history and a tendency to self-destruct. Each of them must navigate life’s messiness – stumbling through secrets, family feuds and moments of grace – as they confront who they truly are and the roles they’ve always played.

Murder Before Evensong
From: UK
Original broadcasters: Acorn TV (US & Canada), 5 (UK)
Producer: The Lighthouse Film & Television
Distributor: Acorn Media Enterprises
Starring: Matthew Lewis, Amanda Redman, Amit Shah, Adam James, Meghan Treadway, Alexander Delamain, Marion Bailey, Amanda Hadingue, Tamzin Outhwaite, Francis Magee and Nina Toussaint-White
Launch date: September 29 (Acorn TV)
Based on the first novel in the Canon Clement Mysteries by the Reverend Richard Coles and set in 1980s England, this series stars Lewis as Canon Daniel Clement, the Rector of Champton, who finds himself unexpectedly entangled in a murder case when a dead body turns up in the church. Daniel shares Champton rectory with his widowed mother, Audrey (Redman), and his two dachshunds, Cosmo and Hilda. When he announces a plan to modernise the church, the parish is suddenly divided. And then a body is found at the back of the church. As the police move in and the bodies start piling up, Daniel is the only one who can try to keep his fractured community together – and catch a killer.
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Justice for Julie

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Sheridan Smith delivers a powerful and emotive performance as Ann Ming, a mother fighting to put her daughter’s murderer behind bars, in ITV four-parter I Fought The Law. She joins the real Ming and the show’s creative team to discuss bringing this true story to the screen.

Sheridan Smith has become known for playing real-life figures on screen, having starred in biopics such as Cilla and The C Word and true crime dramas including Four Lives, The Moorside and Mrs Biggs.

But she describes her leading role in I Fought the Law, a new true crime drama on ITV in the UK, as her toughest yet.

Smith stars as Ann Ming, a mother who finds strength to challenge the centuries-old double-jeopardy law as she seeks the conviction of her daughter’s murderer after a 15-year battle.

With the opening episode charting Julie Hogg’s disappearance and the initial police investigation, and concluding with Ann’s discovery of Julie’s body three months later, the series then follows the campaign led by Ann and her family as they take on the justice system – challenging the Crown Prosecution Service, the Law Commission, prominent defence barristers in television debates, the government, the chancellor, the attorney general and two home secretaries – to finally get Julie’s killer jailed.

Sheridan Smith as Ann Ming in ITV drama I Fought the Law

“When I got the script, I didn’t know Ann’s story, so I got online and Googled – I’ve watched all the documentaries, read her book For the Love of Julie – and just thought, ‘How has this story not been told yet?’” Smith says. “Then I was really honoured that Ann OK’d me to play her. I jumped at the chance.

“What Ann came up against, it was one thing after another. It was relentless. I did nine weeks shooting it, and I was a mess by the end, so to have lived through that and to be here and to achieve what she did, I’m absolutely in awe of her. We’re friends for life now.”

Produced by Hera Pictures (What It Feels Like For A Girl), the show also stars Daniel York Loh as Ann’s husband Charlie and Enzo Cilenti as DS Mark Braithwaite, plus Marlowe Chan-Reeves, Olivia Ng, Jake Davies, Kent Riley, Jack James Ryan, Andrew Lancel and Rufus Jones. Victoria Wyant plays Julie.

The four-part series is written by Jamie Crichton (All Creatures Great & Small) and directed by Erik Richter Strand (The Crown). It launches on ITV and ITVX, and STV and STV Player, this Sunday.

Broadcasters including Polar+ (France), NPO (Netherlands), SVT (Sweden), Virgin Media (Ireland), VRT (Flemish Belgium) and TVNZ in New Zealand are among those to have picked up the show from distributor All3Media International.

Here, Smith joins Ming, Crichton, Strand and executive producers Liza Marshall and Charlotte Webber to reveal how the series was conceived and produced, how Smith got into character to play Ming and why the story is ultimately a hopeful and uplifting one.

Ming’s determination to overturn the double-jeopardy law is at the heart of the series

Ming viewed the series ahead of its launch after executive producer Charlotte Webber travelled to her County Durham home to screen it for her. And while she describes I Fought the Law as “a difficult watch,” she is full of praise for Smith’s performance.
Ming: I cried all the way through it, but I said to Hera Pictures when they approached me about doing the drama and suggested Sheridan Smith, nobody could have played it better.

Ming remembers being “convinced” something had happened to Julie when she didn’t return home one evening, despite suggestions she’d left for London.
Ming: I knew that wasn’t right. When I found Julie after 80 days, it gave me the strength, because I’d been proven right. And the murder squad who took over, I can’t fault the way they treated us. I’ve got no animosity towards Cleveland Police whatsoever. I was annoyed with the people who didn’t find her [during a five-day search at Julie’s home], but at the end of the day, I suppose if they’d found Julie and we got a conviction straightaway, the killer might have been out of prison and killed somebody else, whereas, because of the other offences he’s done, he’s still in prison. So I’m glad I’ve got the opportunity to let everybody know the full story.

Smith tried to “embody” Ming and “feel the trauma for real.”
Smith: Obviously, I can only imagine and think if it was my child, but it was emotionally taxing. It was just nine weeks [filming] and, by the end of it, I was a shaking mess. So for Ann to have gone through all that is just remarkable. I wish I had her strength in real life. And the fact she changed this 800-year-old law and paved the way for all those other families [in similar positions], I just think she’s incredible.

Smith was on set every day and is in almost every scene, and director Strand describes her as “incredible.”
Strand: It took a lot of courage and a lot of stamina and a lot of trust, and I really appreciate Sheridan trusting me with that. Working with Sheridan was a lovely challenge. It was challenging for her. It was challenging for all of us. The emotions in this first episode are just a glimpse of what’s about to come, as Ann goes through the long struggle of overturning the law.
[Smith’s] process is also very much that she embodies these scenes. Her process is different from many other actors I have worked with. She goes into a scene completely immersed – naked, in a way – and just lives the emotion every time. I’m very impressed with that. I have not worked with anyone who’s done that sort of work before.

Debuting on Sunday, the drama also stars Daniel York Loh as Ann’s husband Charlie 

Likening Ming’s efforts to a superhero story, writer Crichton had the task of condensing her 15-year battle into four hours of commercial television.
Crichton: I am drawn to superhero stories, but not the superhero stories you see on the big screen. For me, a true crime story, which is just about the true crime, is not really the sort of story I like to tell. What appealed was the fact that this is a story about an incredible woman whose courage and tenacity and spirit… it’s an inspiring story.
It doesn’t really feel like it when you just watch one episode [ending in the discovery of Julie’s body], but that’s the element that really appealed to me, and that’s the story I really wanted to tell. The vast majority of the story is Ann’s courage and her strength. If you watch the other episodes, you will come out of it uplifted. That sounds incredible, but that’s what appealed to me most about it. It’s a story of triumph over adversity. I hope we’ve stayed true to the emotional truth of it, and to have Ann’s blessing is everything to me.

During filming, Ming came to the set several times. She was also involved in the development of the scripts.
Strand: Ann was involved in the whole process, and gave feedback, mostly making sure everything was correct. Then we had a very open conversation about how making a fiction drama needs to take some shortcuts, or invent dialogue that maybe wasn’t exactly how the dialogue was, just in order for Jamie to dramatise it, and for Sheridan to be able to play it. She was just a huge support and very crucial to the production the whole way through.

For executive producer Marshall, adapting Ming’s story was a “huge responsibility.” She ensured it was handled with care and attention at every stage.
Marshall: Ann was absolutely at the heart of the process all the way through, and we just wanted to tell the story faithfully and accurately. When Jamie first brought it to me, it was the most inspiring story that I’d never heard before – this absolutely incredible woman going up against ultimately man after man after man and all the doors slamming in her face. She just kept going. It was an extraordinary story that we’re so honoured to have been a part of.

Webber: We wanted Ann to be as happy as can be. Making the drama was a huge emotional undertaking. Sheridan’s commitment to the role, and Ann’s commitment to us to help us get it right, was everything to us.

Victoria Wyant plays Julie Hogg, Ann Ming’s daughter

Smith was supported by the costume and hair & make-up teams to transform her appearance. But for the actor, it’s more about channeling the right emotions than recreating someone’s exact appearance.
Smith: I get mad at myself if I don’t feel the actual pain or the trauma. I just constantly had Ann in my ears, and wanted to make her proud and give her story the justice it deserves. I kept thinking about Ann, and kept watching her and thinking how she must have felt. It was important to me.
This is the first role I’ve taken on as a mum that’s a true story as well. But it was an experience, and the team have been incredible. Daniel, who plays my husband, is incredible. It was an amazing experience. Now I’m on the other side, I’m like, ‘Oh, we did it.’ I just wanted Ann to be happy.

Ming hopes the series will inspire other people to try to right any wrongs.
Ming: When I look back, it didn’t look like a massive thing to me, because to me it was the difference between getting justice for our daughter and not getting justice. Any victim’s family will tell you, when you get an acquittal, the family are left in the state of limbo because you’ve got no conviction, so no closure. When I watched the drama, when I watched all the episodes and watched the emotion Sheridan was showing, she’s really got inside me because she lived nine weeks like that. I’ve lived 35 years like that. It is a horrible story, but the outcome at the end is we’ve got the justice and the law’s changed.

Crichton: Anger is actually a good emotion to have when you’re writing something like this. If you’re not furious about it, I don’t think you get good results. I genuinely think you come out of it feeling stronger, feeling like there’s hope. Reading Ann’s book, the overriding emotion, as well as the anger, was, ‘Holy shit, if this woman can do this, anyone can do anything,’ because the obstacles she had to face were unbelievable. That’s what I want people to feel, a sense of empowerment, of courage; that if Ann can do that, we can do anything.

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Series to Watch: Venice 2025

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Ahead of the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, which begins on August 27, DQ picks out the new series that will have their world premieres in the iconic floating city.

Un Prophète (A Prophet)
From: France
Original broadcaster: Canal+
Director: Enrico Maria Artale
Producers: CPB Films, Media Musketeers, Bottega Films, Indigo Films, coproduced by UGC Images, Entourage Series, Savon Noir, Staging and MMBV
Distributor: StudioCanal
Starring: Sami Bouajila, Mamadou Sidibé, Ouassini Embarek, Salim Kechiouche, Matthieu Lucci, Naïla Harzoune, Faued Nabba, Hugo Dillon, Rachid Guellaz, Guilaine Londez and Moussa Maaskri
Premiere date: August 30
A new take on Jacques Audiard’s award-winning film, this eight-part series portrays the visceral, raw and high-stakes way of life in a brutal French prison where Malik (Sidibé, in his first role), a young African immigrant, must try to survive after being locked up for drug smuggling. Alone and vulnerable, he meets Massoud, a powerful and shady businessman who offers him protection in exchange for Malik’s obedience. But Malik soon realises he is just a pawn in Massoud’s game, and that the only way to survive will be to take power himself.

Portobello
From: Italy, France
Original broadcasters: HBO Max, Arte France
Director: Marco Bellocchio
Producers: Our Films and Kavac Film, with The Apartment Pictures
Starring: Fabrizio Gifuni, Lino Musella, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Barbora Bobulova, Alessandro Preziosi and Fausto Russo Alesi
Premiere date: September 1
Launch date: 2026
This six-episode series tells the story of Enzo Tortora, the famous host of real-life television show Portobello, which aired for seven seasons from 1977. After he was accused by justice collaborators of being part of a criminal organisation involved in drug trafficking, Tortora was imprisoned and tried for years before being definitively acquitted of all charges.
Watch trailer

Etty
From: France, Germany, the Netherlands
Original broadcasters: Arte (France), SWR (Germany)
Director: Hagai Levi
Producers: Les Films du Poisson, Komplizen Serien, Topkapi Series and Quiddity
Distributor: Studio TF1
Starring: Julia Windischbauer and Sebastian Koch
Premiere date: September 1
A seven-part series about Dutch actress Etty Hillesum, who kept diaries of her experience living in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. In them, she described a turbulent love affair with the psycho-chirologist Julius Spier that became a trigger for a radical inner transformation – one accelerated by the growing threat she faced as a Jew and ultimately leading her to an enormous act of solidarity.

Il Mostro (The Monster of Florence)
From: Italy
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Director: Stefano Sollima
Producers: The Apartment, Alter Ego
Starring: Marco Bullitta, Valentino Mannias, Francesca Olia, Liliana Bottone, Giacomo Fadda, Antonio Tintis and Giordano Mannu
Premiere date: September 4
Launch date: October 22
Eight double murders. Seventeen years of terror. Always the same weapon: a .22 Beretta. In Italy, a faceless serial killer known as the Monster of Florence sows panic, sparking one of the longest and most complex investigations ever. The series (also pictured top) is based on true events, first-hand accounts and court documents.
Watch trailer 

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Taking the Narrow Road

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The Narrow Road to the Deep North star Jacob Elordi, director Justin Kurzel and writer Shaun Grant discuss their route to making this five-part drama, which tells a love story set against the shadows of the Second World War.

Following its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, The Narrow Road to the Deep North has forged a path around the world.

Debuting on Prime Video in Australia, New Zealand and Canada in April, it has also been picked up by broadcasters including Sky for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, RTÉ in Ireland, Movistar Plus+ in Spain, LG in South Korea and NBCUniversal in Latin America. Its final episode aired on BBC One in the UK last night.

Set against the shadows of the Second World War, it follows Lieutenant-Colonel Dorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi) and his all-too-brief love affair with Amy Mulvaney (Odessa Young), his time held captive in a prisoner-of-war camp and his later years spent as a revered surgeon and reluctant war hero. Told over multiple time periods, it blends a love story with an intimate character study and an investigation into a marriage and an unforgettable love affair.

Based on the novel by Richard Flanagan, the Australian drama is written by Shaun Grant (Nitram, Mindhunter) and directed by Justin Kurzel (The Order, Nitram). Elordi stars alongside Ciarán Hinds as the older Dorrigo, Olivia DeJonge as Ella Evans, Heather Mitchell as older Ella and Simon Baker as Keith Mulvaney.

It is produced by Curio Pictures and distributed by Sony Pictures Television, with filming taking place in Australia.

Here, Elordi, Kurzel and Grant offer an insight into how the show was made and the challenges of bringing Flanagan’s voluminous book to the screen.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North stars Jacob Elordi as Lieutenant-Colonel Dorrigo Evans

Euphoria star Elordi plays Dorrigo Evans, a lieutenant colonel and a medical officer in the Australian Army.
Elordi: He takes us on this dreamlike journey from the camps on the Burma Railway back to Melbourne, moving through time from the past to the present. He’s quiet and stoic and somebody who is entirely driven by love – especially the purity of absolute love, which he has a strained version of with his wife Ella and feels deeply in his affair with Amy.

Dorrigo’s relationship with Amy appears to be a “storybook idea of love at first sight.”
Elordi: Richard said something to me that just clicked – that the moment they look at each other, stars explode. When you work with Odessa Young, that’s not a hard thing to convey. In Australia, the class system is really evident, and I think there’s an alien element to being in love outside of your class. So when he meets Amy, who is somebody from the same world as him, they have an automatic language. That’s something he has to force when he’s with Ella.

The actor received a message from director Justin Kurzel and immediately wanted to join the project, even though there weren’t any scripts at that stage.
Elordi: I had to play Dorrigo, because he has a kind of inner dialogue that Richard writes so well, and every time I read something about the inner workings of his life, I thought, ‘That’s how I feel. That’s that thing I can never say, that’s that thing I can never touch on.’ I remember taking it around to my family, saying, ‘If you want to understand me, read this book’ – which was a profound experience to have.

He says Kurzel gave him a lot of freedom with his performance.
Elordi: When you get to the set, the cameras are basically just rolling – so you have to know all your scenes, you have to know what you’re doing and you have to be willing to throw it away, because he doesn’t yell ‘cut.’ It was like a physical and mental transformation to the point where there wasn’t a clear line between myself and Dorrigo.

While the show is a love story at its core, it features scenes in a prisoner-of-war camp

Elordi was also supported by a group of supporting artists called Bravo Team, who went through the same weight-loss programme and were on set every day.
Elordi: It felt like 100 young men who were placed in the middle of the jungle and forced to survive under extreme circumstances. It was nowhere close to the real thing, but it was as real as we could possibly make it. The main thing I learned from people’s accounts of that time was that the Australians never stopped smiling and laughing. They were always together and nothing was ever serious, which speaks a lot to the way I grew up.

Filming the show’s prisoner-of-war scenes was “the greatest part” of making the series for Elordi, who compares it to being in a huge theatre production.
Elordi: There was no CGI or adding of bodies or anything like that. We had a limited crew, with very little hair and make-up touches. We carried a real tree up the side of a cliff for I don’t know how many hours.
All the labour was intense. I know it was nowhere even remotely close to the real thing, but when I see it, I still get chills. I can’t even fathom, from the research I’ve done, the things those boys went through in the camps. Some of them were 15, 16 or 17 years old and I can’t imagine what they endured.

Kurzel describes Richard Flanagan as a family friend, and picked up the “amazing” novel after the rest of his family had read it.
Kurzel: My grandfather was a Rat of Tobruk [Allied soldiers during the 1941 Siege of Torbruk], so I had a deep connection with Australian veterans, and I found the book to be so poetic. The idea of framing the war experience around a love story was unique.

The production featured dozens of supporting actors as fellow POWs

Flanagan then asked the director if it had the potential to be adapted into a series.
Kurzel: I hadn’t done any television at that point, but I took another look at the book and I found the story – spanning Dorrigo’s lifetime, with this idea of him still being in love with a ghost or a memory – to be really powerful. It was a very personal thing because Richard and I are good mates, so it was about trying to work out whether I could see it as a TV show.
I was intimidated at first, but Richard said we should approach it from Dorrigo’s point of view, and that freed us up. He also kept saying, ‘It’s a love story, it’s not a war story,’ and that became our mantra. Shaun and I always approach things through the minutiae, and here it was through the nuance of Dorrigo’s love story – not only with Amy but also with these other men, how they bond and form relationships to survive in this pretty horrible place.

Kurzel partnered with cinematographer Sam Chiplin and costume and production designer Alice Babidge to bring the numerous time periods of the novel to life.
Kurzel: You’ve got Dorrigo in his early 20s meeting Amy on the beaches of Adelaide and there’s a certain taste, smell, look and light to that.
With the prisoner-of-war camp, even though it was horrific, there was an energy to those scenes too. We approached these opposing time periods in a similar way, using a lot of handheld shots. Then we had this other world, which is of Dorrigo later in life, sitting in very large open spaces that sort of feel like mausoleums, where the camera is very still. That part is quite classic, controlled and mannered, with a dignity to it, whereas those other time periods feel much more unruly, wild, spontaneous and visceral.

Working with the cast members who would play the prisoners of war gave Kurzel the chance to partner with a group of actors “at that point in their lives where they’re wanting to do something challenging and are really engaged.”
Kurzel: I knew that a huge part of the enjoyment of doing this would be getting to work with a bunch of young men who were going to be up for enduring a pretty hard time to get themselves into the right condition, yet who were also going to create genuine relationships with each other that you could feel on screen. They did a lot of prep and spent a lot of time together, building that camaraderie.
It’s an amazing book and you’ve got a man like Richard Flanagan, who all the boys got to meet and who is engaging, charismatic and fiercely intelligent, with the biggest heart that I know. When you get someone like that, who is engaging with you as an actor, it’s pretty powerful and I think they realised it too – that they were doing something that was a marking of a point in time, where they recognised that this was a unique experience they might never have again.

The show is adapted from Richard Flanagan’s celebrated novel

Shaun Grant considers The Narrow Road to the Deep North to be “one of the greatest Australian novels of all time” and had read it countless times before agreeing to adapt it.
Grant: It’s about the two most dramatic things that you can ever write about, namely love and loss. The book also taught me about my grandfather, who I never really knew. He worked on the Thai Burma railway and was a prisoner of war for two years. Richard’s father also served at the same time, worked on the line and inspired him to write the novel, but while Richard’s father spoke about it a lot, my grandfather was very insular and closed-off. Through reading the book, I felt like I got to know him for the first time in my life, long after he passed. I was daunted about adapting it, but I had to do it.

Due to the size of the novel, a faithful, direct adaptation was out of the question. But Flanagan trusted Grant and Kurzel to create the “best” interpretation of his story.
Grant: Funnily enough, one of our producers, Jo Porter, had approached me years before to adapt it but I turned her down, not because I didn’t think the book was extraordinary but I because I was overwhelmed by the scope of it. Two years passed before Jo asked Justin if he would do it. He is a friend of Richard’s, and he said yes. Then when Jo asked Justin who he would want to write it, his answer was me. It was a different conversation, because a lot of change had happened in the TV industry – where you were seeing things of scope and size and where you thought it was possible that you could make something cinematic for the small screen.

The show is Grant’s fourth project with Kurzel, and the pair’s partnership is based on “mutual trust.”
Grant: We both come from working-class backgrounds but we’re different in lots of ways, which I think is a good thing creatively because it means there’s a push and pull of thoughts and ideas. He’s involved in everything during the development process, and he directs everything too, but I’m there through casting, I’m on set every day and I spend days with him in the editing room.

Grant also felt pressure from the weight of the novel and those who inspired it.
Grant: The challenge here was that we were dealing with the heaviest of situations, scenes and subject matter, but that’s also what made it so great. There were days on set when terrible things were happening within the scene, but you’re also watching the most extraordinary performances happening in front of your eyes. You hug it out afterwards and tears are shed. It was stressful but it was worth it because what those young boys, led by Jacob Elordi, brought to the screen was extraordinary.

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Six of the Best: Philip Webb

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The COO of LGBTQ+ streaming service OUTtv selects a pair of shows from his own platform alongside two British comedies and two iconic dramas from both sides of the Atlantic.

Absolutely Fabulous
Season one, episode three: France (specifically). There’s this iconic moment – it’s shot through the windows from the other side of a car – when Patsy drunkenly approaches the door, only to pass out and topple out of shot at the very last second. It’s burned into my brain. It’s hands down my favourite scene of all time, and no matter how many times I’ve seen it, it still makes me laugh.
More broadly, the show is a masterclass in writing for the actors. Jennifer Saunders knew exactly who she wanted in each role, and shaped the characters so perfectly that they fit the cast like a glove. I don’t know how it still feels so current, but it does, and to this day I’ll laugh at every single episode no matter how many times I’ve watched it.

Sugar Highs
This show was written by Thom Fitzgerald – an amazingly talented writer who we’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with on a number of series, including this one. His earlier work on Sex & Violence (also for OUTtv) cemented him as a firm favourite for me, and as we’ve continued to work together, I’ve come to really admire his voice as a writer.
Sugar Highs is undoubtedly a standout from our years of collaboration. It’s LGBTQ-focused and has this dark sense of humour (the story follows three men in their 20s as they vie to find sugar daddies to get out of working for a living), so on the surface, it’s right up our street. But what sets it apart for me is how it weaves in current and relatable issues. Struggling to survive and make ends meet is an experience that a lot of people can relate to, and I think it makes the comedy even more accessible. I also really loved that one of the main characters is straight; it brings a fresh perspective to the story and allows for a funny exploration of what it’s like for someone stepping into queer spaces for the first time.

Queer As Folk
The UK version, of course. This is the show I wish I’d had the chance to be part of. It was hugely influential – not just for me, but also for other LGBTQ+ creators. It was the first time I’d seen a series completely centred on the LGBTQ+ experience that was totally honest, authentic, and still maintained the quality threshold. Watching it felt like holding a mirror up to my own life in a way I hadn’t ever experienced before. I saw myself reflected on screen, and that gave me a kind of permission to live as I wanted to.
It was the 90s, the AIDS crisis was still casting a very dark shadow, and there was so much fear and doubt in the gay community. Coming out felt like a real risk, like you could lose everything. Your friends, your family – they might never speak to you again. This show recognised that reality, but also offered another possibility. For me, and I think for a lot of people, it showed both parents and children what acceptance could look like. It reminds me of my youth, and it definitely continues to inspire me.

Womb Envy
Womb Envy is an OUTtv original that was a co-commission in partnership with Accessibility Media. We’d been keen to work with them for a while, so when they approached us about this series, we said, ‘Hell yeah!’ It was created as accessible media, using innovative techniques to ensure blind and partially sighted audiences can fully experience the show. It features integrated described video, where audio description is built into the footage via the dialogue of the series rather than added separately. With optional closed-caption subtitles also available, the result is a version that’s accessible to blind and partially sighted audiences, as well as deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.
In Canada, described video is required on a certain number of projects each year, but as it’s still a relatively new format, there’s a lot of room to explore how it can be used more creatively. It’s such an important tool for accessibility, and we really relished the opportunity to experiment with it, to find a way of using it that keeps you engaged with what’s happening on screen. In Womb Envy, the described video is often a narrator who becomes part of the experience, stepping in with humour and personality, so it feels more woven into the story rather than an add-on. I’m proud that OUTtv was part of this.

Succession
This show is just genius. Every single character is so well drawn and somehow still incredibly shallow, and yet that’s the joy of it. Not one character with more depth than a paddling pool – sublime. The cast inhabit their roles so effortlessly and with such conviction, I’m not sure I’ll ever believe Sarah Snook isn’t actually Shiv. For me, it’s also a masterclass in ensemble drama. Every storyline is so well balanced, and no one character ever fully takes centre stage; it’s a constant push and pull between them all.
I also love the real-world relevance, and how it echoes current affairs without being too heavy handed. I’m keen to see how this show endures when the real-world backdrop it was created against fades from memory.

Friday Night Dinner
Speaking of family dysfunction… It’s quite hard to make me laugh out loud, but this show does just that. I love that these completely absurd plotlines are tethered by an experience I think most people can relate to – sitting around a dinner table with your family. The parents, the kids, the weird neighbour; to me, these characters are humanity at its finest. The parents are my favourite. They’re so familiar and completely ridiculous in the best way possible.
What this show captures so brilliantly is really intense awkwardness – and for me, that’s pure joy. Nothing is quite as entertaining to me as watching a group of people navigate uncomfortable silences or social tensions. I think this is something that a lot of people are more inclined to cringe away from, but I’ve never shied from projects that sit in those moments. That’s something I also loved about Womb Envy; there are certain beats of awkwardness that I find fascinating and funny, and I like that.

Honourable Mention: Abigail’s Party
I know it’s supposed to be six… but I have to give shout out to Abigail’s Party. Another painfully funny comedy of manners about a neighbours’ get-together in suburbia. I reference it constantly. If you don’t know it, you really should.

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Putting together Broken Spies

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A squad of women spies is at the centre of the Portuguese war effort in As Espias (Broken Spies). Creator Pandora da Cunha Telles and director João Maia reveal the secrets behind this period drama that explores Portugal’s unique role between two global enemies.

In 1942, the world is at war. But as the conflict rages around it, neutral Portugal sits like a quiet oasis on the edge of the Atlantic as its network of casinos, hotels and secret hideouts provide a safe haven for thousands of refugees – and spies.

It’s here that a group of daring women spies, recruited by Britain’s MI6, exchange vital information that could turn the tide of the conflict, identifying the position of German submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic and deceiving the Nazis about the Allies’ plans.

This is the setup for As Espias (Broken Spies), an upcoming seven-part period drama for Portuguese broadcaster RTP, in which spies Bárbara (Madalena Almeida) and Rose (Maria João Bastos) walk a dangerous tightrope between British intelligence, Nazi operatives and the Portuguese secret police.

Produced by Ukbar Filmes and Krakow Film Klaster, with distribution by True Colours, the series comes from creator and showrunner Pandora da Cunha Telles. Due to air this autumn, it is directed by João Maia and Laura Seixas.

Following its world premiere screening among the Berlinale Series Market Selects at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, Telles and Maia tell DQ about the origins of the project, building the world of the show and their partnership behind the scenes.

Broken Spies unfolds in 1940s Portugal, where neutrality masked covert activity

Broken Spies follows in the footsteps of another spy series created by Telles, 2020’s A Espia, which is set in the same “universe” but tells a new story.
Telles: We both love spies so we started to work together on that show, A Espia. It was the same universe, but we wanted to create something different. Portugal during the Second World War had so many stories. It was full of 007s. Everybody was coming to Portugal so you could indefinitely do series about spies. The idea of this series, Broken Spies, was to take a lot of true stories from real spies who passed through Portugal and to transform them in women spies. Our spies are completely invented, but inspired by real spies that passed through Portugal.

Barbara and Rose are the two central figures in the story.
Telles: Barbara and Rose are the main characters. Barbara is in the middle of the Germans and the English, and then you understand that there are other spies from each side who try to take her out of that position. She is the backbone of the story.
It’s about a young girl who is very resourceful in Figueira da Foz during the Second World War. She’s getting played by the two sides of the war and it’s about how she manages to get by while being played by both sides and by the people she falls in love with.

Though the series is set in the 1940s, director Maia wanted a contemporary look.
Telles: Their actions, the way they dress, their hair – they’re not women frozen in the 40s, so they are much more expanded as characters. They don’t have high heels, they wear a lot of trousers, they don’t have that much lipstick, so it’s not over-stylised. We wanted to approach the actual concept of women today.

Maia: I love it. In this show, we decided to do something a little bit different in terms of storytelling, but also in terms of filmmaking. It’s always a challenge to do something set in the 40s.

Director João Maia worked with a predominantly female cast to bring the story to life

The series is set between Lisbon and Figueira da Foz, where production took place. An area north of Lisbon was also used to replicate scenes set in England, while VFX were used to help turn back the clock on some locations and also create submarines and planes.
Maia: This city, Figueira da Foiz, is one of the cities of Portugal that was famous for tourism. Back then, it already had a casino, so it fit in our story. We were always on location, dressing old palaces and old houses. We didn’t shoot in a studio.

Telles: The work of the VFX supervisors was also very important, because even in prep we could say, ‘We want this battle. We want the submarine arriving,’ and they would tell us exactly what we could do and what we could not do, so we didn’t write something we couldn’t do. That was nice.

Working alongside six additional writers, Telles first created a “world room” where the setting of the show was developed, before opening a “story room” to build the characters.
Telles: We went to see the locations in Figueira da Foz and in Lisbon before we wrote the show, so we decided on the universe. Then we decided that Barbara was a girl from Figueira da Foz, that she works in the salt fields, she has a bicycle. So we defined her universe and it’s a universe that you normally don’t connect to Portugal, the salt fields.
We decided the world is in Figueira da Foz, and that it has a lot of colour, even with the clothes, and then we did the cars. Then when we go to Lisbon, we decided to have a darker Lisbon. You have everything that is connected with the [authoritarian government] regime, so the cars are all black, you have a lot of statues of the 30s like you have in Italy and in Germany. We shot in places that have a lot of the old regime. So it’s very stylised, the exterior in Lisbon.

Maia: Then the countryside feels more like freedom.

Telles: It has the beach, the salt, it has more green. We needed to make them two completely different worlds. That was very important. So when we wrote the scripts, we already knew we wanted this system.

The series was shot on location in Lisbon and Figueira da Foz

Prep on the series involved lots of research into spies. Telles even consulted with the actors to ask what their characters might be eating in a scene.
Telles: It’s a system I try to create with every department – the art, what Bárbara has on the bed, what she has on the walls, her clothes.
Barbara has long hair at the beginning and she wears something to transport salt in her hair, so she starts as a very typical character from Figueira da Foz. Then when she meets Rose, she cuts her hair to give her a modernist tone. But she continues to have the little pocket from Figueira da Foz. Then at the end of the series, she doesn’t have it anymore, so the character is changing in little ways.

Working with the cast, directors Maia and Seixas didn’t have time for a lot of rehearsals. The shoot took place across eight weeks, with the decision to have two units working side by side for five weeks, which created challenges on set.
Maia: We did have some rehearsals, especially with Madalena, who plays Barbara. She’s one of our best actors. We had one week of rehearsals at the most. It was challenging, especially for the assistant director, because the actors cannot be in two places at once. We were very busy, but it was fine. It is good for production to have two crews shooting simultaneously. For five weeks, we worked at the same time.

The trickiest scenes featured explosions. Maia worked closely with the show’s DOP and effects team to work out the best way to shoot these complex moments.
Maia: It’s fun to have these scenes, but to have it too much, sometimes it’s a little boring because I like to work more with the actors and follow the story.

Broken Spies had its world premiere in Berlin earlier this year

Telles and Maia shared a close working relationship through the series, with Telles also working as the producer during shooting.
Telles: Sometimes I didn’t know if he wanted me to be off the set, but he was really nice and he has an energy with actors that is amazing, so all these women spies were thrilled to work with him. My characters just became my characters because he was directing them.
This is just my second show. He grounds me, and I’m forever grateful for that because I think it’s a better show because he’s directing it. The flaws the show has, he covers them up very nicely and puts his touch on it.

Telles and Maia hope Broken Spies stands out in a country that doesn’t produce a lot of period dramas, telling a story that shines a light on a country at a specific point in time.
Telles: Every time there are stories about the Second World War, there’s this thing that Portugal was a country that was neutral. But it was not really neutral, because a lot of people like [ruling dictator António de Oliveira] Salazar were playing with both sides. I was talking to my actors and they were saying, ‘If we weren’t neutral, most likely we would not be talking here now because if we went for the Allies or we went to the Nazis, we would have been bombed.’ Our location was really good for both sides, so if Portugal was in the war, most likely we would not be talking here.

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Glória: A Cold War drama set in 1960s Portugal that follows a young engineer from a small town who is recruited by the KGB.

The Americans: During the Cold War, two Russian spies, who are married to each other and have children, pose as Americans while residing in Washington DC.

A Spy Among Friends: A British series in which an MI6 intelligence officer learns his close friend is a double agent for the Soviet Union.

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Fact File

Fact File: Cold Haven

Andri Ómarsson from Icelandic production company Glassriver and Pedro Lopes from Portugal’s SPI discuss six key locations from this crime thriller, which unfolds across both countries.

 

Five Minutes with

Five Minutes With… Bruno Gascon

The writer-director behind Irreversível (Irreversible) gives DQ the inside story on this Portuguese crime series, explaining how he was inspired by Nordic noir and why the show pairs a detective with a psychiatrist.

In production

Leading the pack

Matilha (Dogpack) creator Edgar Medina and executive producer Sigurjon Sighvatsson discuss the nature of spin-offs through this seven-part series, which follows the events of Portuguese drama Sul (South) but takes the story – and characters – in a new direction.

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Doing the dirty work

SCENE STEALERS, , , , , , , ,

Mudtown series producer Hannah Thomas outlines how a key scene in the opening episode sets up the show’s central clash between a magistrate and a local crime boss, and reveals how its impactful courthouse bathroom setting was recreated in an old Newport factory.

Hannah Thomas

Mudtown follows Claire Lewis Jones, a respected local magistrate whose troubled past is about to resurface with devastating consequences. Produced by Severn Screen and co-commissioned by UKTV for U&alibi – where it debuts on Wednesday, August 20 – S4C and All3Media International, the series is set and was filmed in and around Newport, Wales.

In the show, from writing duo Hannah Daniel and Georgia Lee, the city is not just a backdrop; it is woven into the fabric of the story, as vital and vivid as the characters who inhabit it.

The drama unfolds as the different facets of Claire’s existence – her court, family and past life – collide, forcing her to choose between upholding the law and protecting her family.

At the heart of Claire’s troubles is local gangster Saint Pete. Smart, intelligent and atypical as the local mobster, he is very much the product of his environment. Will he prove to be Claire’s saviour or her downfall?

A key scene takes place about halfway into episode one. It’s the first time we truly see Pete and Claire together; these two characters who are the spine of our story. Paving the way for this moment is an earlier scene when Pete walks into Claire’s courtroom and we sense that there’s a connection between them.

It begins with Claire being accosted by Saint Pete in the most unexpected way – in the ladies’ toilets at the magistrates’ court, during a break from court being in session. It’s the moment when we understand that they have a shared past and a deep connection that goes way back.

The tense conversation sets up the relationship between them, including a ‘kiss or kill’ dynamic that carries through the rest of the series. Saint Pete is someone who knows an awful lot about Claire – in some respects more than even her husband. He sees her and knows exactly who she is.

Tom Cullen and Erin Richards in the bathroom scene in question

This interaction between them also says a lot about Saint Pete, a man who will go anywhere to get what he wants. Accosting Claire in the toilet is designed to unnerve her, but this fails because she is a strong woman who is also used to Saint Pete’s ways.

The toilet location makes the scene feel secretive, small and compact. There’s nowhere for either of them to run; they have to have this conversation.

The practicalities of achieving this atmosphere meant we couldn’t use the actual magistrates’ court in Newport – which we did use extensively as a location for many other scenes – because it was just too small. While we wanted that slightly oppressive feel, we did need space to shoot.

There’s an old factory complex just outside of Newport that we used for other scenes, and it happened to have a toilet block that fitted the bill. Even better, it had everything we needed creatively for the scene, so we could walk in and shoot. It just worked.

Richards plays Claire Lewis Jones, a magistrate in Newport

We particularly liked it because of the mirrors mounted to the walls, as you would expect to see in any public loo. With these, there was a lot of great stuff the actors could play with in terms of eyelines. The director, Rhys Carter, and DOP, Sam Thomas, used the reflections very cleverly, tinkering with how the two characters could both hide from and see one another. It served the scene well, and our two leads, Erin Richards and Tom Cullen, were fantastic at making the most of this moment.

Most importantly, the mirrors and their reflections gave us multiple Petes. You can see him in front of you and you can see him reflected, giving this impression of omnipresence. He’s everywhere. This reflects the reality of Pete as we come to realise that his tentacles reach far and wide in Newport.

It’s a great setup for the character, and Pete looks unnervingly handsome in this most unglamorous location, which in many ways is a microcosm of the beauty and the grit of our broader setting of Newport.

Newport is a beautiful part of the world, and some of the architecture is stunning. It’s the last Welsh town before you get to England. So, you’re looking across the Severn Estuary towards Portishead and Avonmouth and behind you, you’ve got the rolling hills. It’s got beauty and it’s got some starkness and neglect because, when an industry moves away, often the buildings are just left. This is the same for most post-industrial cities in Wales.

Cullen is Saint Pete, a local gangster

Newport is a place that hasn’t always been front and centre in drama in its own right. Much more often, bits of it have been used to double as elsewhere. This was a great opportunity to show the different facets of this city, particularly because Mudtown was filmed entirely on location. We had a lot of fun with our location manager, Paul ‘Bach’ Davies, discovering unseen corners that give something extra to the story.

Our episode one toilet scene powerfully sets the tone for the series, capturing the inevitable and explosive collision between Claire and Saint Pete’s lives. It’s a visceral, beautifully constructed moment that blends grit and grace – anchored by nuanced performances, sharp direction and striking visual storytelling. More than just a meeting point, it signals the beginning of Claire’s emotional and moral reckoning, and we hope it immediately draws the audience into the depth and complexity of these characters’ worlds.

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Keeping Faith: Welsh lawyer Faith faces personal and professional chaos when her husband suddenly disappears.

Broadchurch: The death of a young boy sets a coastal community on edge as two police officers set about finding the killer.

Top of the Lake: A detective investigates the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl from a small town, becoming obsessed with the case.

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All write now

Writers Victoria Asare-Archer, Daf James, Georgia Lee, Sydney Sybilia and Danielle Ward reflect on making their breakout series – including shows like Daddy Issues and Missing You – and reveal how they balance their own ideas with audience tastes.

 

ON LOCATION

In the thick of it

The South Wales town of Newport is the setting for Ar y Ffin (Mudtown), a crime drama that sees a local magistrate and a criminal kingpin brought together in a story about what people will do for their families. DQ gets stuck in with stars Erin Richards, Tom Cullen, producer Hannah Thomas and writers Hannah Daniel and Georgia Lee to find out more.

 

DQ100

DQ100 2024/25 – Part two

In the second part of the DQ100 2024/25, DQ picks out a range of shows to tune in for and the actors, directors and writers making them, as well as some of the trends and trailblazers worth catching up with.

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Series to Watch: August 2025

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DQ checks out the upcoming schedules to pick 10 new series to watch this August, from a John Grisham legal thriller and an Outlander prequel to a political thriller starring Suranne Jones and the first TV series based on the Alien film franchise.

Chief of War
From: US
Original broadcaster: Apple TV+
Producers: Fifth Season, Chernin Entertainment
Starring: Jason Momoa, Luciane Buchanan, Temuera Morrison, Te Ao o Hinepehinga, Cliff Curtis, Kaina Makua, Moses Goods, Siua Ikale‘o, Brandon Finn, James Udom, Mainei Kinimaka, Te Kohe Tuhaka and Benjamin Hoetjes
Launch date: August 1
Starring, written and executive produced by Jason Momoa, this nine-part series is based on true events and features a predominantly Polynesian cast. It follows warrior Ka‘iana (Momoa) as he tries to unify the islands before Western colonisation in the late 18th century.
Watch trailer

Wednesday S2
From: US
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producers: MGM Television, Tim Burton Productions, Millar Gough Ink, Toluca Pictures
Starring: Jenna Ortega, Steve Buscemi, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Emma Myers, Joy Sunday, Luis Guzmán, Hunter Doohan, Billie Piper, Isaac Ordonez, Victor Dorobantu, Georgie Farmer, Moosa Mostafa, Evie Templeton, Owen Painter, Noah Taylor and Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo
Launch date: August 6 (Part 1, with Part 2 arriving on September 3)
The eagerly anticipated return of this Addams Family series sees Ortega reprise the title role of Wednesday Addams, who must navigate family, friends and old adversaries within the halls of Nevermore Academy, propelling her into another year of delightfully dark and kooky mayhem and a new bone-chilling supernatural mystery to solve.
Watch trailer

Outlander: Blood of my Blood
From: US
Original broadcasters: Starz (US), MGM+ (worldwide)
Producer: Sony Pictures Television
Starring: Hermione Corfield, Jeremy Irvine, Harriet Slater, Jamie Roy, Tony Curran, Séamus McLean Ross, Sam Retford, Rory Alexander and Conor MacNeill
Launch date: August 9
A prequel to the original Outlander series, this is a romantic saga that unfolds across time, from the battlefields of the First World War to the rugged Highlands of 18th century Scotland. It centres on two fated couples – the parents of Outlander’s Claire Randall, Julia Moriston (Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Irvine), and those of Outlander’s Jamie Fraser, Ellen MacKenzie (Slater) and Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) – who must defy the forces that seek to tear them apart, unfolding in unforeseen ways.
Watch trailer

Alien Earth
From: US
Original broadcasters: FX/Hulu (US), Disney+ (worldwide)
Producer: FX Productions
Starring: Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Alex Lawther, Samuel Blenkin, Babou Ceesay, Adrian Edmondson, David Rysdahl, Essie Davis, Lily Newmark, Erana James, Adarsh Gourav, Jonathan Ajayi, Kit Young, Diêm Camille, Moe Bar-El and Sandra Yi Sencindiver
Launch date: August 12 (US), August 13 (worldwide)
In the year 2120, Earth is governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. In this corporate era, cyborgs (humans with both biological and artificial parts) and synthetics (humanoid robots with artificial intelligence) exist alongside humans. But the game is changed when the wunderkind founder and CEO of Prodigy Corporation unlocks a new technological advancement: hybrids – humanoid robots infused with human consciousness. The first hybrid prototype, named Wendy (Chandler), marks a new dawn in the race for immortality. When Weyland-Yutani’s mysterious deep-space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands in Prodigy City, Wendy and the other hybrids encounter mysterious lifeforms more terrifying than anyone could have ever imagined.
Watch trailer

In Flight
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Channel 4
Producer: Buccaneer Media
Distributor: Fremantle
Additional broadcasters: ProSieben (Germany), SBS (Australia), TVNZ (New Zealand)
Starring: Katherine Kelly, Stuart Martin, Ashley Thomas, Bronagh Waugh, Harry Dadby, Corinna Brown and Ambreen Razia
Launch date: August 12
This crime thriller stars Kelly as a flight attendant whose life is turned upside down when she is blackmailed into drug smuggling after her son is imprisoned in Bulgaria for a murder he swears he did not commit.
Watch trailer
Read more here

The Rainmaker
From: US
Original broadcaster: USA Network
Producers: Lionsgate, Blumhouse
Starring: Milo Callaghan, John Slattery, Lana Parrilla, Madison Iseman, PJ Byrne, Dan Fogler, Wade Briggs and Robyn Cara
Launch date: August 15
Based on the novel by John Grisham, this 10-parter introduces Rudy Baylor (Callaghan) who, fresh out of law school, joins a legal firm led by his boss Bruiser and her dishevelled paralegal, Deck. When they uncover two connected conspiracies surrounding the mysterious death of their client’s son, he faces going head-to-head with courtroom lion Leo Drummond – as well as his law school girlfriend, Sarah.
Watch trailer

The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox
From: US
Original broadcasters: Hulu (US), Disney+ (worldwide)
Producers: 20th Television in association with The Littlefield
Starring: Grace Van Patten, Sharon Horgan, John Hoogenakker, Francesco Acquaroli, Giuseppe De Domenico and Roberta Mattei
Launch date: August 20
A limited series inspired by the story of how Amanda Knox (Van Patten) was wrongfully convicted for the tragic murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, and her journey to set herself free.
Watch trailer

Hostage
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producers: Netflix with Binocular
Starring: Suranne Jones, Julie Delpy, Corey Mylchreest, Lucian Msamati, Ashley Thomas, James Cosmo, Martin McCann and Jehnny Beth
Launch date: August 21
When the husband of the British prime minister (Jones) is is kidnapped and the visiting French president (Delpy) is blackmailed, the two political leaders face unimaginable choices. Forced into a fierce rivalry where their political futures – and lives – might hang in the balance, can they work together to uncover the plot that threatens them both?
Watch trailer

The Terminal List: Dark Wolf
From: US
Original broadcaster: Prime Video
Producers: Amazon MGM Studios and MRC/Civic Center Media
Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Tom Hooper, Luke Hemsworth, Dar Salim, Rona-Lee Shimon, Shiraz Tzarfati, Robert Wisdom, Jared Shaw and Chris Pratt
Launch date: August 27
Co-created by the author of The Terminal List, Jack Carr, and showrunner David DiGilio, The Terminal List: Dark Wolf is a prequel series to The Terminal List with an origin story that follows Ben Edwards (Kitsch) throughout his journey from the Navy SEALs to the clandestine side of CIA Special Operations.
Watch trailer

King & Conqueror
From: US/UK/Iceland
Original broadcaster: BBC (UK)
Producers: The Development Partnership, Rabbit Track Pictures, Shepherd Content, RVK Studios and CBS Studios, in association with the BBC
Distributor: Paramount Global Content Distribution
Starring: James Norton, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Emily Beecham, Clémence Poésy, Eddie Marsan, Juliet Stevenson, Elander Moore, Clare Holman, Luther Ford, Bo Bragasanand Geoff Bell
Launch date: August
It’s described as the story of a clash that defined the future of a country – and a continent – for 1,000 years. Harold of Wessex (Norton) and William of Normandy (Coster-Waldau) were two men destined to meet at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 – two allies with no design on the English throne, who found themselves forced by circumstance and personal obsession into a war for possession of its crown.
Watch trailer
Read more here

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Iranian nights

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The cast and creative team behind Iranian drama At the End of the Night open up about this intimate, authentic story about the breakdown of a couple’s relationship, its roots in real life and how it has pushed boundaries for storytelling in Iran.

Created and produced by real-life married duo Ida Panahandeh and Amiri Arsalan, Iranian drama At the End of the Night is a delicate, sensitive portrait of a shattered marriage enriched by the performances of its two leading actors.

After a decade of economic austerity, a middle-class couple have managed to buy an apartment on the outskirts of Tehran, escaping the hustle and bustle of the city. But financial issues and the traps of married life catch up with Behnam and Mahrokh. Deciding to separate, they must now face the consequences of their decision: divorce, and everything that goes with it.

Starring Hoda Zeinolabedi (Set Me Free) as Mahrokh and Parsa Pirouzfar (The Rebel) as Behnam, the deeply authentic series explores the sacrifices both characters made for each other and their marriage.

“They don’t show these kinds of series on TV in Iran,” Panahandeh tells DQ about the groundbreaking programme. “This is not the story of separation, it’s the story of after separation; what happens to a couple after separation in Iran.”

Panahandeh and Arsalan are the creators and writers of the nine-part series, with Panahandeh also directing. It is produced by streaming platform Filmnet, with international sales handled by Netfilma.

Following the show’s debut locally in 2024, the drama made its international premiere earlier this year when it screened in competition at French television festival Series Mania, where Panahandeh was named best director in the international panorama category.

Here, Panahandeh and Arsalan join stars Zeinolabedi and Pirouzfar to tell DQ more about making the series, the relationship between its central characters and why they hope the drama breaks boundaries not just in Iran but around the world.

Ida Panahandeh

What are the origins of the story?
Panahandeh: Many of our friends – filmmakers, artists, painters – belong to the middle class in Iran. In the past few years, many have had to leave Tehran and go to the suburbs because it’s so expensive there, they can’t pay their rent. Their salaries are not enough, so they have to go to the suburbs. These kinds of issues are political, economic and social. They give families so many challenges – when a husband and wife can’t tolerate each other and have to separate, for example, after 10 years of marriage because they cannot live under so much pressure anymore. That was the first step.

How did you come together to build the story and characters?
Panahandeh: We’ve been working together for 10 years. We are also husband and wife. There are so many details when you’re married, and when you want to write this kind of story, you’re inspired by stories from your life.

Arsalan: Parts of the characters come from us. A side of the female character’s psychology is the same as Ida, and then [parts of Mahrokh are] the same as me. Some of our close friends [influence the characters] in the show.

Episode one ends with Behnam and Mahrokh’s decision to separate. Did you have a conclusion for the series in mind from the start, or did you find it through the story?
Panahandeh: We didn’t know how to end the story but we had some ideas. We were writing the last episode during the shoot. We were witnessing this couple [in the show during filming] and they inspired the ending.

Arsalan: We wanted to have an organic ending, but when we saw the mood between these two characters and the story, when we watched the edit every day, we decided, ‘OK, the best ending for this couple is different from the text.’ Now they have life and soul, and we decided to change the ending based on the mood. It’s an organic ending.

Pirouzfar: It was a bit stressful. I trust Ida and Amiri – I had worked with them on another project, a movie, before Covid  – but it was a bit stressful because we didn’t know what would happen to this couple. But the ending they decided to put in the script is the best idea and the most realistic thing that could happen. The audience will be satisfied but it’s not a cliché. I was happy with the ending.

Panahandeh: They become mature, and they understand that they cannot go on anymore. They cannot go back to that life. Things have changed. If they want to start again, they have to start in another way, not in that kind of marriage. They have to find another way.

Parsa Pirouzfar and Hoda Zeinolabedi star in the show

What were your first thoughts when you read the scripts?
Pirouzfar: The most interesting thing for me was the realistic details of an ordinary couple. By ordinary, I mean there are a lot of middle-class couples we see around us. In many scripts, you have a story with a lot of events. Maybe the number of events in this script is not that numerous, but the details and characteristics of the two sides of the couple are very detailed and, for me as an actor, it gave me a good space to work on these details.

Zeinolabedin: I really appreciated the first scripts because the character is very different from me. I’m not married, I don’t have any children, so it was quite a challenge to be this character. I was happy to be a part of this story.

Had you worked together before?
Pirouzfar: Our first meeting was in the office of the project. We’d never met each other but Ida said we should hang out more, we should practice and rehearse a lot. We did a lot of improvisations around the scenes that didn’t exist in the script, the scenes between the scenes you watch on screen, about their past, how they met, how they fell in love. So we had enough time to get to know each other and find ups and downs with our characters.

Panahandeh: The producer was worried about the chemistry between them and was asking me, ‘Can they be husband and wife? Will the audience believe them?’ But after just one day of shooting, he was surprised at how well they worked.

Pirouzfar: The pressure Ida put on us to do this was very good, because the relationship between us as strangers was so respectful that we had to break the ice to be more intimate so the audience could believe the characters had been married for 12 years.

Panahandeh: In the third episode, there’s a scene where they talk about their sex life, and it was maybe the first time the audience in Iran had seen something like this. It was so challenging. It was a huge success in Iran. It was a big challenge because in Iran we have red lines and barriers. It was not just acting, it was turning into those characters.

How did you approach those intimate scenes?
Zeinolabedi: In Iran, this subject is taboo. We want to break this. It’s complicated to break this taboo, even if there are only 15 people [watching] backstage. It was difficult with the crew.

Panahandeh: We’re old friends but even then it was difficult for [Pirouzfar]. Becoming the wife, becoming the mother, for a woman who hasn’t had these experiences, it was difficult. [Pirouzfar and Zeinolabedi] were very good partners.

Did you have reservations about how far to push the themes and content of the series?
Panahandeh: Yes. [The broadcaster] told us they would never let this happen and would never put this series on the platform. I told them I would fight for them – ‘Let us do it, one time.’ Iranians have to listen, they have to want this kind of story. There are many of these kinds of problems in Iran, and no filmmaker wants to talk about these kinds of stories – when a woman is not satisfied with her sex life, when a man is not satisfied with his sex life. People have to hear and discuss these kinds of issues, and we did – and strangely they put it on air. They were shocked themselves, but a few hours after the third episode, the feedback that came… it was really, ‘wow.’ The producer was so worried. I was worried too, because there is some sort of control over the platforms, the idea that [the government] are monitoring us very carefully. But when people enjoyed it, it was viral.

What are your ambitions for the series?
Panahandeh: I want to bring this to international audiences. We want European audiences to watch these kinds of stories and see how similar we are, how similar our challenges are. This is my wish.

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Shahrzad: This historical drama weaves together romance, social upheaval and family destiny, focusing on characters whose love is thwarted by societal pressures and powerful forces.

The Frog: A crime and mystery series featuring a tense, suspenseful journey through betrayal and ambition among childhood friends.

The Lion Skin: This series tackles family relationships, secrets and social challenges,as a man is released after 15 years in prison and finds his daughter has been kidnapped.

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The Director’s Chair

Iran in the spotlight

Inspired by Shakespeare, Iranian filmmaker Nima Javidi explores the roles people play in life in his first series, The Actor. He tells DQ about moving to the small screen, the challenge of working with prosthetics and bringing Iranian series to the global stage.

The Director’s Chair

Meeting The Danish Woman

Writer-director Benedikt Erlingsson discusses making Icelandic series Danska Konan (The Danish Woman), partnering with “extraordinary talent” Trine Dyrholm as the titular character, and why he didn’t want to Save the Cat.

 

IN FOCUS

Raul or nothing

Music drama Raul Seixas: Eu Sou (Let Me Sing) charts the life of the musician and performer known as the ‘Brazilian Elvis.’ Co-creators Paulo Morelli and Pedro Morelli join star Ravel Andrade to talk about the legacy of Seixas and how they brought his life story to the screen.

 

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Nothing to lose

DQ TV, , , ,

In Finnish series Queen of Fucking Everything, Helsinki real-estate agent and high-society fixture Linda’s world comes crashing down when her husband goes missing – and she discovers he was €3m in debt.

Unwilling to give up her lavish lifestyle, Linda turns to a life of crime to keep up appearances. She starts with small-time theft, but is then drawn deeper into the city’s criminal underworld – and eventually murder.

In this DQTV interview, creator, writer and director Tiina Lymi and executive producer – and co-star – Minna Haapkylä reveal how their friendship led them to work together on the serie, which debuted on Finnish public broadcaster YLE earlier this year.

They also discuss the origins of the show, its “pitch black” humour and why Tiina is a one-of-a-kind director in Finland.

Queen of Fucking Everything is produced and distributed by Rabbit Films. As part of the New8 European public broadcaster partnership, it also airs on ZDF (Germany), NPO (Netherlands), VRT (Belgium), NRK (Norway), STV (Sweden), DR (Denmark) and RUV (Iceland).

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Breaking Bad: Like Queen of Fucking Everything, this series focuses on a desperate protagonist turning to crime after losing everything, combining dark humour with tense, morally ambiguous storytelling.

Good Girls: Three suburban mothers dive into the criminal underworld to save their families’ finances in a show that mixes black comedy, crime and female camaraderie.

Weeds: After the death of her husband, a mother finds a lucrative business opportunity to maintain her privileged lifestyle – becoming a marijuana dealer.

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IN FOCUS

Hail to the Queen

Tiina Lymi, creator of Finnish series Queen of F***ing Everything, joins executive producer Minna Haapkylä to break down this tale of an estate agent’s bid to retain her lavish lifestyle by turning to crime, touching on its themes of isolation and loneliness and how they created a supportive atmosphere on set.

 

The Director’s Chair

Joy and Sorrow

Finnish director Jani Volanen tells DQ how an unmade film script formed the basis of coming-of-age mystery drama Munkkivuori (Summer of Sorrow), about one boy’s summer in a town where a young child has gone missing.

ON LOCATION

Upwardly Mobile

DQ travels to Finland to meet the cast and creative team of Mobile 101, an upcoming drama that charts the rise of Nokia amid the mobile phone technology boom of the 1980s and 1990s.

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Ex-plosive endings

SCENE STEALERS, , , , , , ,

The Ex-Wife executive producers Chiara Cardoso and Andy Morgan break down the making of season two’s final showdown – a dramatic stand-off filmed in an abandoned quarry.

An adaptation of Jess Ryder’s novel that debuted on Paramount+ in 2022, The Ex-Wife introduces Tasha (Celine Buckens), who appears to have the perfect life – she lives in a gorgeous house with loving husband Jack (Tom Mison) and a beautiful baby girl. But the constant presence in their lives of Jack’s ex-wife Jen (Janet Montgomery) means she starts to think something is going on between them.

Picking up the story three years later, The Ex-Wife Part 2 now finds Tasha hiding out in Cyprus with her daughter following the dramatic car accident at the end of season one. Meanwhile, Jack, released from prison after surviving the crash he caused, is searching for Tasha and for redemption from his ex-wife, Jen (now played by Katie McGrath).

When Jack learns that his daughter is very much alive, he sets out to track her down. But Tasha vows that she “will be the one to finish it” should Jack discover where she has been hiding, leading to questions over how far a parent will go to protect their child.

A coproduction between Clapperboard Studios, Blackbox Multimedia and Night Train Media, which shares worldwide distribution rights with All3Media International, The Ex-Wife Part 2 launched on Paramount+ earlier this year.

Here, BlackBox Multimedia executive producer Chiara Cardoso and Clapperboard Studios EP Andy Morgan discuss a key scene from the four-part psychological thriller and reveal how they brought to the screen its climactic “face-off” in the harsh, sunbaked surroundings of an abandoned quarry in Cyprus.

Celine Buckens as Tasha in Paramount+ drama The Ex-Wife

Chiara Cardoso, BlackBox Multimedia: The quarry scene in episode four marks the emotional and cinematic climax of The Ex-Wife’s second season. It’s the point where everything the story has been building toward finally collides — visually, emotionally and morally.

Filming this sequence was no small feat. We were in the middle of a heatwave, working in harsh, exposed conditions. The stunt work was intense and physically demanding. But what could have been just a tough shoot ended up becoming one of the most memorable. Director Paul Walker really leaned into the location, using the stark, open space of the quarry not just as a backdrop, but as a character in its own right. The heat, the silence, the dust — it all heightened the tension, creating a setting that felt as raw and unforgiving as the confrontation itself.

At the heart of the scene is the final face-off between Tasha and Jack. And this isn’t just another fight — it’s their last conversation. Jack comes in hard, not with violence, but with accusation. He calls out Tasha’s choices, claiming she’s been hiding behind the idea of doing things “for Emily,” when really, she’s been acting for herself. It’s manipulative. It’s cruel. But it also touches on the core of the show: what do we tell ourselves to justify the choices we make? And who pays the price?

Throughout the series, we’ve watched Tasha go further and further down a dark path, each time convinced she’s doing what’s best for her daughter. But this is the moment where she has to confront whether that’s really true. It’s no longer just about survival. It’s about accountability; about facing the consequences of the story she’s been telling herself.

Tom Mison plays Jack in the series, which debuted in 2022

And just when you think the scene can’t turn again, Jen arrives. Her presence shifts everything. Suddenly, we’re in a different kind of standoff. It’s part western, part emotional reckoning. Jen brings the triangle of the series back together, and she holds all the power. In that moment, the big question isn’t what Tasha or Jack will do – it’s what Jen will choose. Love or justice? Loyalty or truth?

Like Tasha, Jen is forced to decide what kind of person she’s going to be, and what kind of future she wants to protect. It’s a moment about choice, about stepping into responsibility, and about how even the most decisive action can come from a place of deep conflict. For a character whose life was upended as she was dragged further and further into someone else’s nightmare, now she gets to have the final say.

The quarry scene is where everything converges: story, performance and craft. It was one of the toughest scenes to shoot, and one of the most rewarding. Because in the end, it’s not just about what happens. It’s about what it costs.

Katie McGrath replaced Janet Montgomery as the titular ex-wife for S2

Andy Morgan, Clapperboard Studios: I think we all felt a degree of pressure when thinking about the final sequence of season two. With season one having such a spectacular and (literally) explosive car crash sequence, how could we top that, from both a creative perspective but also one that served the story and brought satisfactory closure to the series as a whole?

For a while, we toyed with various ideas as settings for the finale. We had a potential fall from a rooftop in an earlier episode, so needed to avoid anything similar. We’d heard about an abandoned mine complex just outside Nicosia, close to our production base. The team went to recce the mine, which was such an atmospheric location and could’ve worked really well. However we learned there was a particularly grisly local story attached to the place, which made us steer away from it.

We asked the creative team on the ground to show us any cool locations they could find, the plan being that we’d tailor the script around it. Our brilliant location manager, Nastazia Christodoulou, showed the team the amazing quarry and we were blown away. Whereas season one had a very cool, clean and precise aesthetic, season two feels a bit more raw and dynamic with dirtier, grittier locations, which the quarry fitted perfectly and really suited the intensity of the story.

The second season’s climactic showdown was filmed in a quarry in Cyrpus

The quarry sits in a huge dust bowl, with a complex web of towers and conveyor belts all intertwined – an incredible iron structure that wraps around you like a gladiatorial arena. It was immediately cinematic without us having to do very much to it. We brought over Hungarian stunt co-ordinator László Kósa, who did such an amazing job on season one with the car crash. Walking round the location, he had so many ideas, which once shared with director Paul Walker, we knew that was our location for the finale. It became almost like a western, with our three leads in a Mexican stand-off… I recall Tom Mison (Jack) compared it to The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.

Filming at the quarry was incredibly challenging for a number of reasons, but mostly because of the brutal heat. Temperatures were just over 40°C, but with zero breeze and the sand basically acting like a giant reflector, it felt even hotter, and with very little shade for the cast and crew. You can almost feel the heat coming through the screen. And these were big set pieces, with the main cast plus stunt doubles, jumping around the various structures and buildings. It was a huge challenge for all the team, and everyone was very conscious of health and safety. If temperatures get above certain levels, you have to stand the shoot down, a ruling enforced by the Cypriot government. We had to ensure we had the infrastructure and procedures in place to keep people cool at all times.

Despite all of this, on the second day of filming in the quarry, director Paul Walker managed more setups than he’d ever done before. After two days of dust, heat and sweat, the cast and crew took great pleasure getting back to the hotel and jumping straight into the pool.

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Doctor Foster: Suranne Jones heads the cast of this BBC drama about betrayal and the implosion of family life when a local doctor suspects her husband of having an affair.

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Ex marks the spot

Having already transitioned from actor to author, Catherine Steadman has now moved into TV screenwriting by adapting Jess Ryder’s thriller The Ex-Wife for Paramount+. She discusses playing with character expectation and why she wouldn’t dramatise her own novels.

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Killing the mood

BlackBox Multimedia’s Giuliano Papadia and Clapperboard’s Andy Morgan reveal how a key scene in which the protagonist watches on while her husband is arrested for murder sets up the world of Paramount+ thriller The Serial Killer’s Wife.

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Paradise lost

DQ heads to the beach to find the cast and crew of Paramount+ series The Castaways filming this mystery thriller based on Lucy Clarke’s novel, in which two sisters are separated after an apparent plane crash.

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Holmes truths

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As Sherlock & Daughter sells to broadcasters around the world, DQ hears from stars Blu Hunt and Fiona Glascott, creator Brendan Foley, writer Shelly Goldstein and executive producer Karine Martin about reinventing the iconic sleuth with a mystery relating to his own past.

“There’s a reason there’s been 20,000 Sherlocks – Arthur Conan Doyle created one hell of a character,” says Shelly Goldstein, one of the writers behind Sherlock & Daughter, which features the latest incarnation of the literary sleuth.

In the eight-part series, which debuted earlier this year, David Thewlis dons the iconic deerstalker hat to play Holmes, who is chasing a sinister case that appears to have him beaten. Unable to investigate without endangering his closest friends, the legendary detective is at a loss – until he meets Amelia Rojas (Blu Hunt) in the aftermath of her mother’s mysterious murder. Together, they set out to not just solve the case, but also find out whether, as suspected, Amelia really is Sherlock’s daughter.

With the show coming on the heels of recent Sherlock adaptations starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr and others, executive producer Karine Martin admits she was worried about “Sherlock fatigue” when her Starlings Entertainment company took on the project.

“There have been so many and there have been great Sherlocks,” she says. “Are we going to be able to stand the test? But once the scripts started coming in and once we saw our characters developing, we firmly thought this would really fill a space that hadn’t been taken yet.”

“A Sherlock Holmes story can be a colossal turkey or a work of genius, or anything in between,” says creator, writer and executive producer Brendan Foley (The Man Who Died). “It’s effectively a genre in its own right – a ‘Holmesverse.’ You don’t want to do something that’s a total misfire, but equally it’s a balancing act. You have to be true to the original stories and spirit but also you have to give it something new.”

Sherlock & Daughter has certainly proven to be a hit with viewers since its launch, rating as the number-one series on The CW in the US and the number-two show on its streaming platform. Within 48 hours of going live on HBO Max in the US, it was the number-four show on the app and has remained in the top 10 since then, while SBS in Australia experienced an average 150% increase in total audience share for the first four episodes.

Warner Bros Discovery in the UK and Ireland is also on board the series, which will additionally air in YLE in Finland, NRK in Norway, SVT in Sweden, DR in Denmark, RUV in Iceland and Amedia in the CIS region.

Since the show’s launch, distributor Federation International has also sold it to Sky Italia, Bell Media in Canada, RTS in Switzerland, Nova in Greece, Disney in the Balkans, Tiviby in Turkey and TV3 in the Baltics.

Sherlock & Daughter is produced by Starlings TV Distribution through Albion Television, and coproduced by StoryFirst, in association with financiers Krempelwood and MBM3.

Speaking at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival, where Sherlock & Daughter screened in the fiction competition, Foley, Goldstein and Martin joined stars Hunt and Fiona Glascott to reveal more about the inspiration behind the series, casting Thewlis in the lead role and recreating Victorian London in Ireland.

David Thewlis and Blu Hunt star in Sherlock & Daughter

Creating a series about Sherlock Holmes wasn’t something Foley took on lightly, but he quickly decided not to worry about pleasing either the Arthur Conan Doyle “purists” or viewers more familiar with other screen interpretations.
Foley: You can’t always be all things to all people, so we decided that our Sherlock is an absolutely classic Sherlock, but is also a ‘lion in winter.’ He’s an older, grumpier Sherlock than we may have seen, but he is in classic Victorian London and he’s pretty much the classic character. Then we’re able to play with the other side to bring in a younger audience, which is Blu’s character Amelia just landing in London like a spunky meteorite into poor old Holmes’s tidy little world. That seems to have worked very well.

If you’re going to do a Sherlock Holmes project, call David Thewlis.
Martin: We reached out to his agent and he told us, ‘He says no to almost everything, so don’t hold your breath.’ He read the first script and asked for the second – and then he asked for all of them. Very quickly, we got a call back from the agent, who said we were good to go. So we were thrilled.

Goldstein: Before we went into production, David told us that his wife was slightly frustrated because he had taped the pages of the scripts to his walls and all day he just was learning every word. He showed up to the first [script] reading knowing all of his lines for all eight episodes.

Hunt was on board long before Thewlis was cast, having signed on to play Amelia while the show was still being developed.
Hunt: I read for the show, signed on to do it and then it went on pause for like a year, and that was before they had ever even gone to David. A year later, I was just about to do a different show and then they called and were like, ‘We are doing the show. We’re gonna be shooting in three months and now we have David Thewlis attached as Sherlock.’ As soon as I heard ‘David Thewlis,’ I was like, ‘OK, OK, tell the other show no. I’m doing Sherlock now.’

Hunt is Amelia, who meets Sherlock after the mysterious murder of her mother

The Another Life and The Originals actor was drawn to the idea of starring in a period series where her character was thrown into the world of Sherlock Holmes.
Hunt: The opportunity to be in Victorian England was really exciting. It’s not something I ever thought I would do. The character of Amelia is fun. She’s very sweet and determined and heroic. And the fight scenes and the horses and the costumes and the hair, all of it, was just like… Ireland was amazing.

Amelia doesn’t just leave the sleuthing to Sherlock; she has skills of her own to offer the detective.
Hunt: You see throughout the show that she has abilities and skills that Sherlock wouldn’t have that helps in the solving. Also, just her being American, they joke in the first episode that Americans ask too many questions and things like that, so just being a bit more outgoing in England, she can go into conversations or find things out in ways that Sherlock just can’t. They definitely play with that a lot in the show.
I always tried to make it so that instead of playing Amelia as a complete opposite to Sherlock, where she’s extremely emotional, extremely empathetic, the absolute opposite of him, by the end of the show, actually, you could see that a lot of her behaviours and habits were maybe more reserved or slightly colder than she would think. She realises she’s actually a lot more like Sherlock.

Hunt’s favourite Sherlock Holmes is now Thewlis.
Hunt: I’m serious. I’m not even kidding. First of all, David is one of the greatest actors to ever live. He makes the show the show, and without David, the show has no legs, really. Maybe that’s a crazy thing to say, but he’s just such an incredible actor; he carries every single thing that he’s in. He was so great to work with.

Glascott (Julia), who plays Lady Violet Somerset, worked with a dialect coach to help her embody a woman characterised by her sharp tongue, but who might hold the key to the titular mystery.
Glascott: She’s not just a villain. She’s a person who’s so frustrated with the fact that, as a woman, even though she’s come from this amazing wealth and affluence, it can be gone in a second because she didn’t marry. That fuels this anger inside. She is an incredibly intelligent person and very much feels she’s an equal to Sherlock, as I think she is too, and finds that all of this builds up inside her to the point where nothing else makes sense except for what she’s going to do.
I loved playing somebody who experiences that rage and lets it all out within the confines of who she is as a person in that time in England. And also, being strapped into a corset, up on high heels, hair on top of your head – all of those things add to each other.

Hunt describes her co-star as ‘one of the greatest actors to ever live’

Foley and Goldstein wrote the show with Micah Wright and showrunner James Duff (The Closer, Major Crimes), who was brought in to ensure it could be developed as a potentially long-running series.
Foley: I started working with Starlings and we had the first three or four episodes on the go. Then we brought in James, who comes from that American studio background where you think, ‘Well, how will this story be playing out 73 episodes in?’ We come from a European world where eight episodes is Mount Olympus; or if it’s a BBC [series], it’s four. Just having someone who’s used to projecting story over a long arc, his experience is absolutely invaluable.
Shelly was obviously involved in all aspects. You need male, female, younger, older voices in a group of writers when you’re doing this. We had Micah Wright, who comes from a Native American background. That was fantastic to have in the room so that we were being very respectful to that.

The idea to pair Sherlock with a daughter came “because it would be harder for him.”
Goldstein: It’s a bigger challenge. Amelia is very much her own woman. She’s very much got an American sensibility. She comes from an extraordinarily different culture. And it’s absolutely the last thing he would be prepared to deal with. The best way to tell a story is, ‘What would cause me the most difficulty to figure out?’

Foley: Father-daughter relationships are just fascinating, and Amelia is from a different world, even though they come from the same era. The amazing thing about Blu as a person landing [on set] in Dublin is she was experiencing that same culture shock that Amelia is, one century on. So that’s really important.

Foley has international ambitions if the series returns for a second season.
Foley: The first season has a subtext – the internationalisation of crime. At the end of the 19th century, society is just moving from criminals robbing banks to criminals owning banks. That’s a really interesting thing to explore with those characters. Crime is blissfully international, so I’d like to see what’s happening in America, in Europe and Australia. We’re still with the glorious British Empire, but it’s a big world out there.

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DQ100 2024/25 – Part four

In the final part of the DQ100 2024/25, DQ picks out a range of shows to tune in for and the actors, directors and writers making them, as well as some of the trends and trailblazers worth catching up with.

 

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Dying to live

A poisoning victim sets out to find his would-be murderer in Finnish drama The Man Who Died. Producer Markku Flink, writer Brendan Foley and director Samuli Valkama discuss nailing down the series’ specific tone and a key scene in which one character ends up all at sea.

The Writers Room

Breaking good

As filming begins on the series adaptation of Finnish novel The Man Who Died, author Antti Tuomainen and screenwriter Brendan Foley tell DQ how they have created a drama from this darkly comic story about a dying man who falls in love with life.

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Family justice

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Creator John Quaintance, star Luke Cook and executive producer Jeff Wachtel unpack crime comedy-drama Good Cop/Bad Cop, from its sibling-centred story to indie-style financing – and why Quaintance hopes it becomes someone’s favourite show.

A crime comedy-drama with a sibling twist, Good Cop/Bad Cop stars Leighton Meester and Luke Cook as a sibling detective team working in a small Pacific Northwest town’s police force.

Here, Lou (Meester) and Henry (Cook) must contend with colourful residents, a serious lack of resources and their very complicated dynamic with each other – and their police chief, Big Hank (Clancy Brown), who also happens to be their father.

The cast also features Devon Terrell as Detective Shane Carson, Blazey Best as Nadia Drozdova, Scott Lee as Officer Joe Bradley, William McKenna as Officer Sam Szczepkowski, Shamita Siva as Officer Sarika Ray, Philippa Northeast as Dr Marci Laine and Grace Chow as Lily Lim.

Commissioned by Australian streamer Stan and US pair The CW and Roku, the series is written by creator John Quaintance (Will & Grace, Workaholics), with lead director Trent O’Donnell, Jeff Wachtel and Chloe Rickard executive producing for Future Shack Entertainment and Jungle Entertainment. Phil Lloyd is a co-executive producer, while ITV Studios is handling global distribution.

Speaking at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival, where Good Cop/Bad Cop was in competition and won the special jury prize for cast performance, Quaintance and Cook offered insight into the making of the series, the sibling relationship at its heart and financing television in the same way as independent films.

L-R: Good Cop/Bad Cop stars Leighton Meester, Luke Cook and Clancy Brown

Quaintance first wrote a script for Good Cop/Bad Cop 15 years ago, but had to find a personal connection to the story before pitching it to Future Shack CEO Jeff Wachtel.
Quaintance: Jeff was running the network [USA Network] and I developed it with one of his development executives, and I was like, ‘I want to do the show and I want to do it about this family.’ But she said, ‘For Jeff, you really need to say why this is really personal to you, why this is a show you’ve always needed to make. I was like, ‘How am I going to say this show about a family of cops is personal to me?’
The truth is I remembered that, as part of this process of coming up with the character of Henry, I had a cousin who was obsessed with detectives. He was like eight years old and he had a trench coat and the Sherlock Holmes hat. He had a little fake badge that his dad bought him and he would go look for clues.
I lost touch with him, so I always thought, ‘Did he get to be a detective?’ So when I came in to pitch to Jeff [this time around, before the US writers strike in 2023], I had this picture of my little cousin in his trench coat with his giant coke-bottle glasses and his magnifying glass. That’s probably why I sold the show [this time].
It’s a long way of saying that all fiction is autobiographical. The thing that’s been amazing about this experience is to put myself into the show and to write it, to film it and to edit it. Anybody that knows me, even though this is a show about murder and crime, people see it and they go, ‘Oh, it’s so you. You’re Henry.’

Cook: Well, one day I was going to work on the show and Kara, my wife, said, ‘Have fun at work being yourself.’ So I’m a little bit Henry too.

But there’s no formula to creating or pitching a series to ensure it gets a green light.
Wachtel: Anybody who’s trying to create something to a formula is doomed to failure. Even with the times I’ve had the most success at USA Network, people would say, ‘Well what’s your formula?’ My response is that it was not a formula, it was a recipe. It’s like a chef who puts the ingredients in the oven and prays. There are elements of success, but like a great chef or like a great writer, they better have talent. It can’t just be passion. If it doesn’t start with something they truly love, you’re gonna have to make so many compromises along the way. John did make this one so personal and made a show about family.

Cook and Meester play brother-sister detective duo Henry and Lou

As well as financing from The CW, Roku, Stan, ITV Studios, Future Shack Entertainment and Jungle Entertainment, Good Cop/Bad Cop was also made with support from the Queensland Government through Screen Queensland’s Production Attraction Strategy and PDV (Post, Digital and VFX Incentive), and the City of Gold Coast. It’s an example of how television series must now piece financing together from numerous sources, in the same model as independent feature films.
Quaintance: It’s interesting that when you watch all the best movies, the ones that get all the awards have five minutes before the movie where it says, ‘With the participation of the French Film Council,’ and, ‘With the generous donation of the Belgian Film Council.’ That’s kind of what we have and what quality television outside of the behemoths like Netflix, Apple and Amazon is moving towards.
It’s a little bit more like making independent films. You really have to cobble together all these different resources, but you can. There’s people who want to make television, and you might not get one person to say, ‘Here’s $100m,’ but you can get 10 people to give you $1m or $2m. You can go to Australia where they give you tax breaks. But there’s always a hunger for quality television, and I’m really proud that we made it outside of that algorithm-driven system. We made a show that was idiosyncratic and without a lot of creative. You can still do it – you just need to have seven minutes of credits beforehand with all the executive producers.

Quaintance grew up in Minnesota, where the Coen Brothers are from, and he was naturally inspired by their numerous feature films.
Quaintance: I grew up watching Blood Simple, Fargo, Raising Arizona. I love those movies and I enjoyed reading mysteries when I was a kid, but one of the things I really love about Luke’s character is that, when we were filming it and he was discovering the character, this is a person who’s wanted to be a detective his whole life. So some of what he thinks is being a detective is from the things he has seen on TV. And he [Cook] brought a lot to that.

Cook: Later in the season, you’ll see I’ve become David Caruso. He takes off his glasses whenever he has a big moment [in CSI: Miami], and we squeeze that in.

The show won the special jury prize for cast performance at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival

While Cook jokes that Henry runs like a cyborg from The Terminator, he stresses that he was keen not to be overly influenced by other characters.
Cook: The run, 100% I watched the Terminator run before doing that scene. But as for other influences, I didn’t want to watch anything that was anything like Henry because I’m a natural impersonator. I didn’t want to think about anybody as I was doing the role. After it came out, a few people [compared him to] Sheldon [from The Big Bang Theory], a few people said a few different things, and I was like, ‘I’m glad I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

In fact, Quaintance was having a “really hard time” casting the role of Henry until Cook turned up.
Quaintance: Luke just showed up fully formed. I had spoken to other people who couldn’t quite get it and I always said I wanted Henry to be like he stepped out of a 1940s noir, like Sterling Hayden [The Long Goodbye] or Jack Webb [Dragnet]. I was looking for a 6’5”, lantern-jawed, handsome guy who’s really funny and really weird, and everybody said good luck. Also, he has to be Australian and do a perfect American accent. I found that didn’t exist – and then Luke’s audition came in and I was like, ‘See.’

Despite returning home to Australia to shoot the series in Queensland, Cook didn’t have any issues with his American accent.
Cook: Well, I’ve lived in LA for a long time now, so my accent I feel is pretty good. Most American actors when they meet me don’t know I’m Australian. They’ve seen my audition, and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re Australian. I had no idea.’ That’s always a great compliment. But auditioning Australian actors for American roles [in Good Cop/Bad Cop], maybe 70% weren’t able to be cast because they just didn’t have the accent.

Quaintance: For the most part, people who were over 14 and under 60 were very good. But there are definitely people who got the part because they were the only ones who did the accent properly.

Cook: But it’s funny going back to Australia because I naturally get my twang back when I’m around Aussies, and then I’ve got to slip into American. But for me, I’ve been working on it for so long that it’s natural. I feel Aussies are generally pretty good [at American accents].

Meester is best known for starring in Gossip Girl

After working with Leighton Meester on the set of Good Cop/Bad Cop, Cook now feels like the Gossip Girl star really is his sister.
Cook: When you work together like that and you’re together 12 hours a day, you get to know each other. You go through the hard times when everybody’s tired or feeling a bit sick or run down, and then the joys of making great TV. So I feel like she’s my sister now, but that was very immediate. We met and, immediately upon rehearsing, we never had to try. I said to her right when I met her, ‘This whole show I feel hinges on our ability to pull off this relationship,’ and then we never spoke about it again. It was just very natural. Now I feel the same way about Clancy. I feel like he’s very much my father. You become real family in some way.

Wachtel: She’s great on every level. First, she’s a very talented actress, and as number one on the call sheet, one and two [Cook] inform the attitude [on set]. And to have gracious actors at the top is just a great experience. Leighton has been known since Gossip Girl, but she’s having a moment right now.

Quaintance wants Good Cop/Bad Cop to be someone’s favourite show.
Quaintance: If you’re going to make a television show, you should always make it with the goal that it will be somebody’s favourite show, not just a show that you’ll have on. There’s a terrible phrase right now in television development called ‘secondary screens,’ where they want you to develop content that people will half-watch while they’re on their phone.
Sometimes executives will say, ‘If there’s an important piece of plot, make sure you say it several times because we don’t expect our audience to be paying attention.’ To me, you can love a show so much in a way that you can’t in any other form of entertainment. If you’re not making a show that could conceivably be somebody’s favourite show, you’re not making a good show.

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Seeing the Invisible

Writer and director Nicholas Verso opens up about the making of Australian YA drama Invisible Boys and how he wanted to lean on his own experiences to tell the story of four teens coming to terms with their sexuality in a remote coastal town.

 

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Lay of the Scrublands

Scrublands head writer Felicity Packard previews the return of the Australian mystery series with sequel Scrublands: Silver, explaining how she adapted Chris Hammer’s novels and how she avoids cheating the audience.

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River rises

As his journey making outback road trip drama Thou Shalt Not Steal enters its final stages, co-creator and director Dylan River tells DQ about creating a series rooted in his home town, his rules for filmmaking and why storytelling is in his blood.

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Making Dreamers come true

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Dreamers creator, writer and executive producer Lisa Holdsworth explains how she found the balance between drama and authenticity in this Channel 4 drama about a group of dance students.

Dreamers follows an eclectic group of dance students as they navigate the intense highs and lows of coming of age in today’s complex world – captured through stories that are as joyful and funny as they are raw and truthful, brought viscerally to life via irresistible dance choreography.

The show, produced by Duck Soup Films for Channel 4 and distributed by All3Media International, tells the story of the Chapeltown Collective dance troupe and their journey to the most important dance showcase of their young lives. But it’s also a drama about the things young people really care about: friendship, family and having the chance to express themselves. Its stories and characters are a product of a unique and immersive development process that I believe gave the show a unique and authentic voice.

Lisa Holdsworth

There is an industry theory about writing teenagers. The maxim is that US TV portrays young characters as they see themselves: wise beyond their years, emotionally intelligent and on the cusp of manifest destiny. Meanwhile, UK TV writes teenagers as adults see them: stroppy and annoying – the suggestion being that American writers treat their teens as young adults while UK writers treat them like kids.

I don’t think that’s strictly true, and UK shows like Skins, Sex Education and Heartstopper have given us rounded characters with rich inner emotional lives. And that sophistication has been reflected in their success. With that in mind, the producers of Dreamers and I were eager not to alienate our target audience. We decided we needed to actually talk to that audience. As it turned out, our timing was impeccable, as we were talking to young people at one of the most disruptive times of their lives.

In 2019, we gave a shout-out to anybody aged between 16 and 20 interested in dancing and getting involved in the creative industries. We made it clear that we didn’t care about body shape, heritage, class, gender or what kind of dancing they enjoyed. All we asked was that they submit a short video telling us about themselves.

The response was glorious. Young people seized the opportunity to show us who they were. We had kids who lived all their lives in small villages, city kids and young people who had arrived in the UK via multiple countries as refugees. We had videos from kids who identified as neurodivergent, non-binary and queer. We saw teenagers who were Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Christian.

Still, they all had one thing in common: they loved to dance, whether that be street, contemporary, afrobeats, ballet, tap, ballroom, pole-dancing or bhangra. And at all different skill levels from prima ballerina to TikTok bedroom dancer. We even had figure skaters and amateur wrestlers. All life was here.

Dreamers follows the Chapeltown Collective dance troupe as they prepare for a showcase

The plan was to get them in a room together and give them the chance to talk. However, a little virus called Covid-19 put paid to that.

So we did what everyone else was doing and went online. For a couple of months, we held our Saturday morning Zooms with young people joining us from their bedrooms, kitchens and gardens. We set small creative tasks like creating their ideal characters for the show, improvising arguments between those characters and coming up with outlandish scenarios those characters might find themselves in.

We also talked a lot about how they felt their generation was being portrayed on TV. And they didn’t hold back in ridiculing some of the tropes and stereotypes they had been saddled with. They were tired of seeing young characters make stupid decisions about drugs, relationships and sex. They hated characters who were nihilistic and hopeless.
Because, even in the face of a global pandemic, our kids were ambitious and aspirational.

But perhaps not in the way we might think. They didn’t necessarily aspire to being rich and famous. Many of them just wanted security, good friends and to express themselves creatively – completely at odds with the prevailing view of young people as shallow, terminally online drones with arrested attention spans. Indeed, they shared their fears about a world consumed by deepfakes and influencers.

I really hope those young people found as much lockdown joy in those Saturday morning sessions as I did. And once they were over, we made a commitment to keep in touch with our cohort with further opportunities for them to come together for quizzes, movie nights and other, regrettably online, activities. We were determined to keep the conversation going.

The Channel 4 show is produced by Duck Soup Films 

With their voices still ringing in our ears, we went away to create the characters for Dreamers, giving them goals and obstacles that felt true to those Saturday sessions.
At the heart of our drama, we placed a young woman struggling with anxiety while dealing with an alcoholic mum. We also gave her a ruthlessly ambitious best friend who feels misunderstood and alienated from his family, and an alpha-male love interest whose cockiness belies his chaotic home life and soft heart. Puppy, Koby and Liam came to us rich and complex thanks to the workshops.

Character development continued once we embarked on our open auditions, during which we saw more than 800 young people eager to be part of the Chapeltown Collective, including several of our workshop attendees. Again, we were eager for the process to be a chance for them to show us who they were. Auditionees were given a chance to improvise, talk and dance in the creative atmosphere generated by casting director Shaheen Baig and her team. It became clear that I needed to reflect the personalities and voices of this unaffected, raw talent in the scripts.

Once we had found our collective, they worked intensively with director Sara Dunlop improvising around the storylines. Notes would come down from the rehearsal room suggesting dialogue which was often incorporated into the scripts. Then once we were on set, our actors were encouraged to learn their lines but still feel empowered to put their own spin on the dialogue, with opportunities for improvisation built into the shoot.

When writing young characters, a writer’s biggest fear is they’ll create risible, out-of-touch dialogue. The more you try to be ‘down with the kids,’ the worse it gets. But through this process, we found a balance between drama and authenticity that makes me very proud of our Dreamers.

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Series to Watch: July 2025

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DQ checks out the upcoming schedules to pick 10 new series to watch this July, from a new Stephen King adaptation and a Lena Dunham comedy to a Mark Gatiss period detective drama and an assassin thriller starring Keeley Hawes.

Such Brave Girls
From: UK
Original broadcasters: BBC Three (UK), Hulu (US)
Producers: VAL, A24
Starring: Kat Sadler, Lizzie Davidson, Louise Brealey, Paul Bazely and Freddie Meredith
Launch date: July 3 (UK), July 7 (US)
The return of the Bafta-winning comedy picks up with Josie (Sadler), her sister Billie (Davidson) and their mother Deb (Brealey), who are still risking everything they’ve got for a single scrap of love and adoration. With the trio desperately trying to escape the reality of their cramped, crumbling, debt-ridden home, it’s a good thing Dev (Bazely) and Seb (Meredith) are coming to the rescue.
Watch trailer

Ballard
From: US
Original broadcaster: Prime Video
Producers: Fabel Entertainment, Hieronymus Pictures
Starring: Maggie Q, Courtney Taylor, John Carroll Lynch, Michael Mosley, Rebecca Field, Victoria Moroles, Amy Hill, Ricardo Chavira, Noah Bean, Alain Uy, Hector Hugo and Titus Welliver
Launch date: July 9
Based on the novels by Michael Connelly, this Bosch spin-off centres on Detective Renée Ballard (Q) as she leads the LAPD’s new and underfunded cold-case division, tackling the city’s most challenging long-forgotten crimes with empathy and relentless determination, aided by a volunteer team and retired detective Harry Bosch (Welliver).
Watch trailer

El clan Olimpia (The Olimpia Clan)
From: Spain
Original broadcaster: Disney+ Spain
Producers Tornasol Media, Par Producciones, Gloriamundi Producciones
Starring: Zaira Romero, Tamara Casellas, Juan Carlos Vellido, Joel Bosqued, Daniel Ibáñez, Mina El Hammani, Juan Pablo Raba and María de Nati
Launch date: July 9
In this series inspired by true events surrounding a Spanish drug trafficker, Olimpia’s life takes a radical turn when her husband is diagnosed with cancer. Determined to keep her family afloat, she begins selling hashish in her neighbourhood and becomes involved in cocaine trafficking. Along with her partner, ‘El Moreno,’ Olimpia quickly rises in the world of drug trafficking, establishing ties with Colombian cartels and the Neapolitan mafia. However, her family, which has a history of drug dealing, would never accept a woman working in that business. Forced to hide her double life, Olimpia builds a web of lies to protect her secret – until her father discovers the truth.
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Too Much
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producers: Universal International Studios, Working Title Television, Good Thing Going Productions
Starring: Meg Stalter, Will Sharpe, Michael Zegen, Janicza Bravo, Richard E Grant, Leo Reich, Rita Wilson, Naomi Watts, Andrew Rannells, Rhea Perlman, Emily Ratajkowski and Adwoa Aboah
Launch date: July 10
From writer/director Lena Dunham (Girls), Too Much stars Stalter as Jessica, a New York workaholic in her mid-30s, reeling from a broken relationship that she thought would last forever. When she takes a job in London, she meets Felix (Sharpe) – a walking series of red flags – and finds that their unusual connection is impossible to ignore, even when it creates more problems than it solves. Now they have to ask themselves: do Americans and Brits actually speak the same language?
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Dexter: Resurrection
From: US
Original broadcasters: Paramount+ (US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Latin America, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria)
Producers: Showtime Studios, Counterpart Studios
Distributor: Paramount Global Content Distribution
Starring: Michael C Hall, Uma Thurman, David Zayas, Jack Alcott, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Kadia Saraf, Dominic Fumusa, Emilia Suárez, James Remar, Peter Dinklage, Neil Patrick Harris, Krysten Ritter, Eric Stonestreet and David Dastmalchian
Launch date: July 11 (US)
Dexter showrunner Clyde Phillips reunites with the show’s original star Hall in this continuation of the story that began in Dexter and was expanded in Dexter: New Blood. Set weeks after Dexter Morgan (Hall) takes a bullet to the chest from his own son, Harrison (Alcott), he awakens from a coma to find Harrison gone without a trace. Realising the weight of what he put his son through, Dexter sets out for New York City determined to find him and make things right. But when Miami Metro’s Angel Batista (Zayas) arrives with questions, Dexter realises his past is catching up to him fast. As father and son navigate their own darkness in the city that never sleeps, they soon find themselves deeper than they ever imagined – and realise the only way out is together.
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Furia (Rage)
From: Spain
Original broadcaster: HBO Max
Producer: Mandarina Productions
Starring: Carmen Machi, Candela Peña, Cecilia Roth, Nathalie Poza and Pilar Castro
Launch date: July 11
A series focused on five women on the edge, whose stories weave together a tale of blackmail, oppression, betrayal and manipulation. Marga (Machi) is a snobbish artist whose husband Roberto (Alberto San Juan), a TV director, is having an affair with his maid Tina (Claudia Salas) – whom he has also gotten pregnant. Vera (Castro), Marga’s friend, is a media-loving chef who is forced to close her business after a disastrous review. Nat (Peña), a clerk in an exclusive fashion store where Marga and Vera shop, is hit hard when her employer replaces older staff members with younger ones. Adela (Poza), Tina’s mother, is unemployed and in danger of being evicted along with her elderly mother by a ruthless landlord. Victoria (Roth), Adela and Nat’s neighbour, is a forgotten cult actress from the 1970s erotic film era who is offered the chance of a comeback, but it proves to be far from what she had hoped for.
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The Institute
From: US
Original broadcaster: MGM+
Producer: MGM+ Studios
Starring: Mary-Louise Parker, Ben Barnes and Joe Freeman
Launch date: July 13
Based on the novel by Stephen King, The Institute follows the story of teen genius Luke Ellis (Freeman), who is kidnapped and awakens at The Institute, a facility full of children who all got there the same way he did and who all possess unusual abilities. In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide.
Watch trailer

Washington Black
From: US
Original broadcaster: Hulu (US), Disney+
Producers: 20th Television, Indian Meadows Productions, The Gotham Group
Starring: Ernest Kingsley Jr, Rupert Graves, Iola Evans, Edward Bluemel, Sharon Duncan Brewster, Eddie Karanja, Tom Ellis and Sterling K Brown
Launch date: July 23
Based on the novel of the same name by Esi Edugyan, Washington Black follows the 19th-century odyssey of George Washington ‘Wash’ Black, an 11-year-old born on a Barbados sugar plantation, whose prodigious scientific mind sets him on a path of unexpected destiny. When a harrowing incident forces Wash to flee, he is thrust into a globe-spanning adventure that challenges and reshapes his understanding of family, freedom and love. As he navigates uncharted lands and impossible odds, Wash finds the courage to imagine a future beyond the confines of the society into which he was born.

Bookish
From: UK
Original broadcaster: U&alibi
Producers: Eagle Eye Drama, Happy Duck Films
Distributors: Beta Film, PBS Distribution (North America)
Starring: Mark Gatiss, Polly Walker
Launch date: July 16
Already renewed for a second season ahead of its debut, Bookish stars creator and lead writer Gatiss as witty, extraordinary and whip-smart bookshop owner Gabriel Book, who helps the police to solve the most uncrackable crimes. But he has a secret himself – as a gay man in the 1940s, he lives in a mutually agreed ‘lavender marriage’ with his childhood friend Trottie (Walker). Having lost the love of his life in the war, Book’s past suddenly seems to catch up with him and poses a riddle that seems unsolvable, even for him.
Watch trailer
Read more here

The Assassin
From: UK
Original broadcasters: Prime Video (UK & Ireland), Stan (Australia), ZDF (Germany)
Producer: Two Brothers Pictures
Distributor: All3Media International
Starring: Keeley Hawes, Freddie Highmore, Gina Gershon, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Jack Davenport, Alan Dale, Gerald Kyd, Devon Terrell, Richard Dormer and David Dencik
Launch date: July (UK & Ireland)
From the makers of The Tourist and Boat Story comes this series set on a remote Greek island, where retired assassin Julie (Hawes) and her estranged son Edward (Highmore) must work together in a fight for survival. Amid questions around Edward’s paternity and Julie’s dangerous past catching up with her, the pair are forced to flee the island and go on the run.
Read more here

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DQ100 2025/26 – Part two

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In the second part of the DQ100 2025/26, we pick out a range of shows to tune in for and the actors, directors and writers making them, as well as some of the trends and trailblazers worth catching up with.

ACTORS

Julie Gayet
French actor Gayet will star in South African crime drama Boy Under Water. She plays Charlotte, an expat single mother who has begun running a floating bar with her teenage son at a luxury resort town in the country’s North West province. However, their search for a fresh start is upended when the bound and battered body of a 16-year-old black boy is found on the manicured shores of the local golf estate. Co-created by Chanél Muller and Nico Scheepers, Boy Under Water is produced by Nagvlug Films and Federation MEAC. MultiChoice has snapped up the African rights to the series, which was selected for the Drama Series Pitch competition at C21’s Content London 2023.

Izuka Hoyle
British actor Hoyle is a familiar face from roles in shows including Big Boys, Ludwig (pictured), The Responder and The Outpost, as well as 2021 feature film Boiling Point and its 2023 BBC series sequel. She will now take the lead alongside Tahar Rahim (The Serpent) in Prisoner, a high-stakes action series commissioned by Sky that follows Amber Todd (Hoyle), a principled young prison officer escorting dangerous, high-value prisoner Tibor Stone (Rahim) to court to testify against his elite crime syndicate. When the transport convoy is ambushed, they are forced to go on the run and must work together if they hope to reach their destination alive and on time. Created by Matt Charman and directed by Otto Bathurst, it is produced by Binocular in association with Sky Studios for Sky in the UK and Ireland. NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution is handling international sales.

Dominic McLaughlin, Alastair Stout and Arabella Stanton
The trio of newcomers are set to be thrust into the spotlight after being cast in HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter series. McLaughlin will play Harry, with Stout as Ron Weasley and Stanton as Hermione Granger, following an exhaustive search involving tens of thousands of children led by casting directors Lucy Bevan and Emily Brockman. Following in the footsteps of the hit film franchise, the small-screen series is described as a faithful adaptation of JK Rowling’s wizard novels that will stream on HBO Max where available. The show is being written by Francesca Gardiner, with multiple episodes directed by Mark Mylod. Other cast members include John Lithgow (Albus Dumbledore), Janet McTeer (Minerva McGonagall) and Paapa Essiedu (Severus Snape).

Fotini Peluso
Italian rising star Peluso (Everything Calls for Salvation, Greek Salad) heads the cast of The Great Chimera, an adaptation of Greek author M Karagatsis’s epic novel of the same name. In the six-hour drama, she plays Marina who, fascinated by classical Greek culture, falls in love with Greek ship owner Yannis (Andreas Konstantinou) and quickly joins him to start a new life on the idyllic island of Syros. But caught between cultures and social expectations, Marina struggles to balance her passion and desires and soon gives in to her love for her husband’s brother Minas (Dimitris Kitsos), and finds herself trapped in her very own Greek tragedy. With filming taking place in Athens, Syros and Trieste, the series comes from Foss Productions and distributor Beta Film. ERT will broadcast the show in Greece.

Gustaf Skarsgård
Swedish star Skarsgård is following in the footsteps of Krister Henriksson and Kenneth Branagh by taking the lead in a new iteration of iconic detective series Wallander. Henning Mankell’s literary character has been reimagined for a new era by Jarowskij/Yellow Bird, TV4 and Banijay Rights, with the first season comprising three 90-minute films based on the novels One Step Behind, Sidetracked and Faceless Killers. The series finds life unravelling for the 42-year-old Kurt Wallander. Newly separated after two decades of marriage and estranged from his daughter, he’s a man on the edge. Wallander drinks too much, sleeps too little and carries the weight of every unsolved case. He is pushed to the limits as he confronts high-stakes cases, with this new adaptation promising to go under the skin of this intriguing character, with a raw portrayal of a modern man navigating personal collapse while attempting to uphold his detective work.

DIRECTORS

Malin-Sarah Gozin
Screenwriter Gozin, whose Flemish series Clan inspired Sharon Horgan’s Bad Sisters, took on her first directorial role in her latest drama, Dood Spor (Dead End). A blend of crime, comedy, drama and psychology, Dead End introduces Ed, a man with a unique skill: he can ‘see’ the last moments of anything he puts in his mouth by tasting or eating it. Both gift and burden, he uses this quality to run a business, The Aftertaste, offering grief-stricken people an insight into the final moments of their dead loved ones. But when his next client is a homicide detective struggling to solve a series of mysterious killings, Ed faces a moral dilemma: if his gift works on a toothbrush or a sausage, would it work on a body too? Caviar and Lompvis produce for Streamz and Play4. Federation Studios is the distributor.

Caleb Azumah Nelson
Nelson is the lead writer and director on a BBC adaptation of his own debut novel, Open Water. The eight-part series, produced by Mam Tor Productions and B-Side Productions, introduces aspiring photographer Marcus and dance student Effie. From the moment they meet, they feel an immediate, undeniable connection. However, as Marcus soon learns, Effie is in a relationship with Marcus’s friend Samuel. It’s a boundary that Marcus is unwilling to cross. But when a shared project draws them into each other’s orbit, can their burgeoning friendship resist the pull of desire? Banijay Rights will handle distribution.

Molly Manning Walker
The How to Have Sex director is following up her debut feature film – which won the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival – with Channel 4 drama Major Players, which she has co-written with Yasmin Joseph (A Thousand Blows). Inspired by Walker’s experiences at high school, where the crowd control was more urgent than the education, it follows two girls on the brink of adulthood and their mission to start a women’s football team. Produced by A24, the show is described as a love letter to football and a funny and wild exploration of young people in London today, tackling topics from friendship to gender politics.

Alberto Rodríguez
The director of Spanish historical drama La peste (The Plague) is partnering with La Casa de Papel (Money Heist) star Álvaro Morte for The Anatomy of a Moment, a four-parter based on Javier Cercas’s novel about the 23-F coup d’etat attempt in Spain in 1981. When Civil Guard Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero entered the Congress building with a pistol in his hand, only three men – Adolfo Suárez, Santiago Carrillo and Gutiérrez Mellado – remained seated, while the rest ducked for cover. Through this trio who led the transition to democracy and the three main leaders of the coup d’état, Tejero, Milans and Armada, the series recounts the chain of events and tensions that led Spain to the brink of a return to the previous military regime. With filming taking place in Madrid, it is produced by DLO Producciones for Movistar Plus+ and Arte France, with Movistar Plus+ International handling distribution. Rodríguez also recently directed Movistar Plus+ film Los Tigres, a character thriller about two siblings set in the world of industrial diving.

Storm Saulter
Jamaican filmmaker and photographer Saulter (Sprinter, Better Mus’ Come) is helming five-part Sky drama Inheritance, a thriller set between Bristol in the UK and Jamaica. It stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Claudia, an ambitious young biracial lawyer who embarks on a journey to Jamaica to challenge an inheritance claim filed by an unknown local resident, Cudjoe East (Sheldon Shepherd), against Oliver Connaught (Jonny Lee-Miller), a wealthy white aristocrat. Her quest takes an unexpected turn when the contested estate reveals the ominous house that has haunted her nightmares: the Connaught family’s Jamaican plantation, Hope Hill. As Claudia and Oliver investigate, they uncover a chilling connection between historical horrors and present-day injustices. Written by actor Karla Crome, Inheritance is produced by Snowed-In in association with Sky Studios for Sky in the UK and Ireland, with NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution handling international sales.

WRITERS

Constance Cheng
Cheng’s credits include The Great and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. She’s now writing and showrunning Red Butterfly, an “explosive and stylish” eight-part crime drama that follows the rise of an all-female gang run by two sisters in 1950s Singapore, a city of crime dubbed the glamorous but lawless “Wild West” of Asia. It will be filmed in English and Chinese languages, and shot on location in Singapore and Malaysia. The series is produced by StudioCanal in partnership with Beach House Pictures and MOMO Film.

Mackenzie Crook
On screen, Crook is perhaps best known for playing Gareth Keenan in Ricky Gervais’s seminal mockumentary The Office. He’s also the writer and director behind Detectorists and Worzel Gummidge, and is taking on both roles once again for BBC comedy Small Prophets. Produced by Treasure Trove Productions and Blue House Productions, with Sphere Abacus distributing, the six-part series is the comic tale of eccentric Michael Sleep (Pearce Quigley) who, since his darling Clea disappeared seven years ago, has lived a very ordinary life. He eats Shreddies, works in a DIY store, visits dad Brian (Michael Palin) and hopes for Clea to return – until Brian shares an old recipe involving rainwater, horse manure and more than a little alchemy. With recipe in hand, Michael sets out (albeit with some scepticism) to create Homunculi – magical prophesying spirits that can predict the future – in the hope they can tell him if he’ll ever see Clea again. Filmed and set in Manchester, the series will also include elements of animation.

Sophie Goodhart
A writer on Rivals, Sex Education, Boat Story and The Baby, Goodhart writes all six half-hour episodes of her first original series, Alice & Steve, which has been commissioned by Disney+ in the UK. With Nicola Walker and Jermaine Clement in the title roles, it follows the fallout between the titular best friends when middle-aged Steve begins a relationship with Alice’s 26-year-old daughter Izzy. Although both are no strangers to chaos and dubious decision-making, their once rock-solid friendship is turned upside down and tested to its limits – threatening their families, futures and everything in between. The ‘anti-romcom’ is produced by Clerkenwell Films (Baby Reindeer), with Tom Kingsley (Stath Lets Flats) directing.

Dennis Kelly
The Pulling, Utopia and Matilda: The Musical writer is behind BBC drama Waiting for the Out (working title), an original six-part series based on Andy West’s memoir The Life Inside. Produced by Sister and distributed by BBC Studios, it stars The Responder’s Josh Finan as Dan, a philosopher who begins teaching a class of men in prison. Each week, Dan leads discussions about dominance, freedom, luck and other topics that have troubled philosophers for thousands of years – topics that gain a new meaning when seen through the prisoners’ eyes – both igniting passions and creating tension, and leading Dan to explore his own past with his violent father. Levi David Addai (Damilola, Our Loved Boy) and Ric Renton (One Off) are also on the writing team, with Jeanette Nordahl (The Responder) and Ben Palmer (Douglas is Cancelled) directing.

Karianne Lund
Okkupert (Occupied) creator Lund is the writer behind upcoming Norwegian medical series Still Breathing. A “raw and gripping” portrayal of young doctors navigating a system pushed to the brink in one of the world’s wealthiest nations, it centres on four young interns – Petra, Joakim, Ashan and Kissy – as they are thrown into the world of emergency medicine. Idealistic and ambitious, they quickly face the harsh realities of long shifts, impossible choices and life-or-death decisions. Based on an idea by Lund and Nicolai Moland, and directed by Eirik Svensson, the eight-part drama is produced by Rubicon and distributed by DR Sales. Season one is due to air on NRK in May 2026, and the series will also be available on ZDF (Germany), NPO (the Netherlands), VRT (Belgium), SVT (Sweden), DR (Denmark), YLE (Finland) and RÚV (Iceland) under the New8 coproduction partnership. Season two has already been confirmed.

SERIES

Amsterdam Empire
Famke Janssen stars in this extravagant Netflix crime drama full of the glamour and grime at the heart of the Amsterdam cannabis scene. When his affair with a well-known journalist comes to light, coffee shop empire mogul Jack van Doorn discovers that his most dangerous enemy has been living under his roof: his betrayed wife, Betty (Janssen), an ex-pop diva who knows all his weak spots and secrets and will not rest until she has taken everything from him.

Bust Up
Morgana O’Reilly and Roimata Fox pair up to lead this New Zealand series for Sky NZ and Germany’s ZDF. Produced by Lippy Pictures in coproduction with MadeFor Film and distributor ZDF Studios, the series finds former romantic partners Deb Brighton (O’Reilly) and Mihi Renata (Fox) reunited after a decade apart and forced to partner up again as cops on the beat in the fictional town of Waitote, in the north of New Zealand, when Mihi returns to her hometown. Coming home was always part of Mihi’s life plan, but working with her ex was not. Can these two ex-lovers survive 10-hour shifts together while taking on the likes of bank robbers, drug dealers and car thieves? It will air in 2026.

California Avenue
This six-part series marks the latest collaboration between writer-director Hugo Blick (pictured with Emily Blunt), his Eight Rooks production company, producer Drama Republic and BBC One, following The English, The Honourable Woman and Black Earth Rising. The story is set in a secluded canalside caravan park deep in the luscious English countryside, whose peace is irrevocably disrupted by the arrival of Lela (Erin Doherty) and her 11-year-old child, both on the run, looking for refuge in this hidden world. It is here that a fractured family will come together, ghosts and demons will firmly be put to rest and an unexpected love is forged. Bill Nighy, Helena Bonham Carter and Tom Burke also star, with Mediawan Rights and Entourage Media handling distribution.

Montmartre
Created by Julien Simonet and Brigitte Bémol, with Louis Choquette directing, this eight-part historical drama – coproduced by Aline Panel’s Authentic Prod with TF1 – is set against the pulsating and uncompromising backdrop of the iconic Parisian neighbourhood at the turn of the 19th century. It’s here that Céleste, a determined can-can dancer, sacrifices her reputation by becoming Paris’s first nude performer, in order to fund the search for her long-lost siblings Arsène and Rose, separated after their father’s murder.

We Come in Peace
Former X-Files showrunner Frank Spotnitz is making a return to sci-fi after his company Big Light Productions (Leonard, The Man in the High Castle) boarded this Scandinavian series – its first non-English-language project – produced by Black Spark Film & TV for Sweden’s TV4 and Germany’s ZDF. The grounded sci-fi series explores the chaos unleashed when a mysterious jellyfish-like object appears in the sky over Stockholm, sparking widespread panic, fear and confusion among the population. Created and written by Lars Lundström, it stars Fares Fares (Westworld) and Evin Ahmad (Snabba Cash). Newen Connect is handling distribution. The series also counts Lundström’s Snyggfin Production, Infinite Entertainment in Sweden, Dansu in Lithuania and Beside Productions in Belgium as coproducers, in association with TV2 Norway, MTV in Finland and C More in Denmark. It is set to premiere in late 2025.

TRENDS & TRAILBLAZERS

Babylon Berlin
Sold to more than 140 territories around the world, this German period drama is coming to an end with its fifth season. The director/writer trio of Henk Handlogten, Achim von Borries and Tom Tykwer all return, with Volker Bruch (Generation War) and Liv Lisa Fries (The Wave) reprising their respective roles as Gereon Rath and Charlotte Ritter. Based on Volker Kutscher’s fifth novel The March Fallen, the new season’s story will take viewers into the dreadful events of February 1933 and the Nazi party consequently taking power. S5 might never have been made at all after original commissioner Sky Deutschland pulled back from its scripted output in 2023 – but producer X-Filme Creative Pool and coproduction partners ARD Degeto, SWR, WDR, Radio Bremen and distributor Beta Film came together to ensure the acclaimed series will receive the finale it deserves.

Beth
In March, Channel 4 in the UK revealed it had commissioned its first digital original drama, which would be broadcast on YouTube as well as C4’s linear and online platforms. Beth subsequently debuted in June in three 15-minute webisodes online, while C4 also aired it as a one-off 45-minute film. Written and directed by Uzo Oleh (Edicius), the sci-fi drama introduces couple Joe (Nicholas Pinnock) and Molly (Abbey Lee), who seemingly have it all. They’re deeply in love, successful in their careers and living the high life. But one thing is missing – a child. So when Molly falls pregnant after years of false hope, it feels like a miracle. Months later, when their baby daughter Imogen is born, she’s as Caucasian as can be, with no resemblance to Joe, who is black. As Joe and Molly’s life is thrown into turmoil, Joe begins to unravel a shocking truth that rocks him, Molly and, potentially, the world to the core. It is produced by Dark Pictures.

Deaf series making noise
A pair of this year’s standout series so far put deaf characters, and actors, in the spotlight with authentically told and produced stories representing the deaf experience. Described as a bilingual series mixing spoken English with British Sign Language, BBC drama Reunion (pictured) is an emotional thriller about revenge and redemption. It follows the journey of Daniel Brennan, a deaf man determined to right his wrongs while unravelling the truth behind the events that led him to prison. Written by deaf writer William Mager and produced by Warp Films (Adolescence), it boasts a cast featuring Matthew Gurney, Lara Peake, Anne-Marie Duff, Eddie Marsan and Rose Ayling-Ellis.
The latter also starred in ITV and BritBox crime thriller Code of Silence, in which she plays Alison, a smart and determined deaf woman whose life takes an unexpected turn when her remarkable lip-reading skills catch the attention of DS Ashleigh Francis (Charlotte Ritchie) and DI James Marsh (Andrew Buchan). Recruited for a covert operation, Alison must surveil a dangerous gang planning a high-stakes heist, thrusting her into a world of crime and deception. The six-parter is produced by Mammoth Screen and distributed by ITV Studios.

Dreamers
This Channel 4 coming-of-age drama is set in a dance school, where an eclectic group of students navigate today’s complex world, brought to life via its dance choreography. But this Leeds-based series isn’t just set and filmed in the city. Behind the scenes, creator Lisa Holdsworth built the story on characters who were workshopped and inspired by true stories from Leeds with support from the Young Audiences Content Fund, which was managed by the BFI and funded by the UK government. The Duck Soup Films production also offered gave 10 Leeds-based people the opportunity to break into the broadcast industry as part of a 4Skills training initiative backed by the National Film and Television School. In particular, it was tailored to people with no previous production experience, providing training, mentoring, one-to-one sessions, career planning and the chance to work on a major production, enabling many of those who worked on the series to further develop their careers in the industry.

Soap crossover
Drama crossovers are more common in the US, where characters from franchises like the Arrowverse, NCIS and One Chicago have often stepped outside their familiar surroundings and come together for amped-up stories set over multiple episodes. Now, two British series are getting in on the act, with Coronation Street and Emmerdale joining forces for the first time in soap history for an hourlong episode set to air on ITV in January 2026. Little is known about the story that will unite the two on-screen communities, except to say an “ambitious stunt that will have everlasting consequences” will be involved, leading familiar faces to depart and new characters to arrive in both soaps. Viewers will also get to choose which two characters, one from each programme, they would like to see meet in a scene. If the experiment proves to be a success, watch out for further extensions of the ITV Soap Multiverse.

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Not your average Joe

The Writers Room, , , , ,

As the writer behind Giri/Haji, The Lazarus Project and Black Doves, Joe Barton has worked across multiple genres while retaining his trademark humour and style. He discusses creating characters, casting and the things up-and-coming writers should focus on.

Back when he was an emerging writer, Joe Barton adopted a “laissez-faire” approach to his craft, writing anywhere at any time of day. Now, he says, “the older I get, the more entrenched I am in my home office,” where he’s currently penning the second season of Netflix spy drama Black Doves.

The series, which debuted on the streamer in 2024, is described as a sharp, action-filled and heartfelt story of friendship and sacrifice. Keira Knightley stars as Helen Webb, a quick-witted, down-to-earth, dedicated wife and mother – and professional spy. For 10 years, she’s been passing her politician husband’s secrets to the shadowy organisation she works for: the Black Doves.

In the first season, when Helen’s secret lover Jason (Andrew Koji) is assassinated, her spymaster calls in Helen’s old friend Sam (Ben Whishaw) to keep her safe. Work is now underway on a follow-up, with filming on S2 due to begin in September.

Earlier this month, Barton took to the stage during SXSW London to lift the lid on his writing process, the collaboration behind making Black Doves and how he builds the worlds in which his stories are set. His previous credits include Sky’s time-travel drama The Lazarus Project, Netflix YA fantasy The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself, and Giri/Haji, a BBC-Netflix crime drama set between London and Tokyo.

Joe Barton

Writing can be a solitary experience, but that changes as soon as a project is commissioned.
If you’re lucky enough to write something that gets made, then before you know it, there’s a whole building full of people who are wading through your scripts or gently nudging you about deadlines and budgets. I remember the early part of my career when it was just me and nothing I wrote got made. It was just me. But if you sell something then you’ve got a producer or a script editor and then you’ve got commissioners and you’ve got all these people.

Now he’s more established, Barton has frequently returned to work with the same people and companies, not least Sister, the producer behind both Giri/Haji and Black Doves.
I like working with the same people as much as possible. That’s one of the things you learn. There are a lot of independent production companies, there are a lot of channels as well now. There are all sorts of different people, and some of them are good and some of them are not as good, and you learn the ones you like as you go along. As you get a little more say in the process, you try to work with people you enjoy working with a bit more. So I try as much as possible to keep the same team.

Barton finds ideas for series anywhere and everywhere.
Quite often, it’s just real-life stuff that’s happened to me, little ideas, things that people have told me about, little stories, personal anecdotes or something that I feel, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ An experience or something you try to extrapolate out into a broader idea or broader narrative. It really depends.

Something like Black Doves was a mixture of ideas in the back of my head. I’d read about the ‘spy cops’ scandal, about police officers who went undercover in this environmental group and pretended to be environmental protestors. Several policemen formed relationships with some of the women [among the real protestors] and got married, had children and had lives with these women.

I’d been reading about that, and I had read in the newspaper about this woman who had written in about her problem – her lover, the man she was in a relationship with, had just died so she was grieving her partner, but the twist was he’d been married to someone else. I thought that was an interesting predicament, and we took those two things and then combined them with a bunch of other ideas from my life to turn into this spy thing. Inspiration comes in instalments, rather than one lightning-bolt moment.

Barton is currently working on the second season of Netflix spy thriller Black Doves

But the spy organisation in Black Doves was very much a work of fiction.
It was a very quick process. Keira’s playing a spy for this pretend thing. It’s very heightened and fictitious. For the second series, we are doing more research. But for this one, because the process was so quick – I wrote the script in December and we were filming in September – there wasn’t time to properly do that stuff. The second series, I’m talking to some spies.

Two scripts for S2 have been written, with a continued focus on the character relationships and dynamics at the heart of the story. But Barton admits he doesn’t know how it will end.
Different writers have different processes. I didn’t for this one know how it was going to end [in S1]. And the second series I also don’t know how it’s going to end. We’re hopeful an idea will be had along the way. We’ve got some ideas.

I know some people map out every beat of the story beforehand, which I think is also helpful. But I prefer doing a little bit of that but more a method of discovery through the writing process. I find it very hard writing treatments, breakdowns or beat sheets, when you write story beats in prose. ‘So-and-so will meet and fall in love’ – you can write that on a Post-It and put it on the wall, but if you don’t believe it in the script and the dynamics in the characters, it doesn’t work. I prefer just sitting down and writing.

Character backstories and breakdowns can be useful for writers and actors, but Barton likes to find out what might happen when two characters end up in a room together unexpectedly.
In Black Doves S1, there’s a character called Williams, who’s played by Irish actress Ella Lily Hyland. She was originally intended to be the villain of the whole series, because in episode one Ben’s character kills her partner. And then you’re like, ‘OK, so she’s going to keep popping in and she’s going to try to kill him throughout.’ I wrote a scene with them in the second episode and it was instantly just really fun writing them together and the idea of making them work together. Then we cast Ella and Ben in those parts, so the whole dynamic of those two changes and the scope of what that character’s going to be changes in writing and discovery.

The show stars Keira Knightly as Helen, who has been leading a secret double life as a spy

While Barton enjoys writing for specific actors, he didn’t have Knightley in mind for the lead in Black Doves.
With Black Doves, I didn’t write specifically for Keira because I wrote it on spec at the beginning. But she came on and then I knew it was going to be her from very early on. For me, there’s usually a process where you’ve started filming before you’ve finished writing. For other people who are quicker and more organised, that doesn’t happen. But for me, we’ve started and I’m still writing, so you get to see the different actors’ dynamics and what they do, so you can start to write to that. You change it based on what you’ve got and what their skills are.

Often they’ll come to you about ideas for line changes. Sometimes you write a scene you spent months and months perfecting, and then the actor has some ideas about it in the taxi on the way to set, and maybe that’s better. It can happen! We can try things as long as we make sure we get the results.

Writing a spy thriller like Black Doves, Barton was sure to include numerous action scenes, but each one must have a purpose and play a part in the larger narrative.
You’re there to develop the character, whether it’s a car chase or a conversation. The purpose of any scene is you want to learn about the character. You have to build character moments and development into that sequence. Some times that’s easier than others. Ben and Omari [Douglas, as Michael] going down the stairs [in a scene in S1], that was always like that because it was the moment when Ben’s boyfriend discovers he killed someone. So you’ve got this great characterful moment between the two of them and it lends itself to that.

But other times it’s less characterful and more plot-based. There’s a scene in series one when Ben, Gaby [Gabrielle Creevy as Eleanor] and Ella storm a nightclub, and that’s a big shootout, but the purpose of that scene is they have to find this other character. So you try to fill that full of character moments. You’re always looking for the humanity and the character in these sequences.

In terms of plotting and planning, you put as much as you can on the page. The process then is you get the locations manager to find somewhere for you to shoot it, or you build it. Then you get the stunt people in. There are dozens of people, and through that process, what you’ve written will change through the practicalities of shooting.

Black Doves also stars Ben Whishaw as Helen’s close friend and ‘trigger man’ Sam

Writers should always put specific details in the script, to better inform collaborators of their own intentions for a scene or location.
One of the worst pieces of writing advice you ever hear is that you shouldn’t direct on the page, which is a lie because when you’re writing something, your job is to create this entire world.

But whatever the genre he’s writing in, Barton’s shows are unmistakably his.
The longer I’ve been doing it, I just have one way of writing. That’s what I do. So it [Black Doves] was always going to have the tone it has. It wasn’t an intentional thing, but if you’re writing something that has quite dark themes, you have to find that levity. You have to find that humanity. This one was always going to be a bit more silly. The situations and scenarios in the storytelling are plainly ridiculous anyway.

Filmed in London, it was important that Black Doves showed the city in a new way.
It’s an incredibly cinematic space. If you’re telling a story that’s set in government, it has to be London. That’s the other challenge, finding a way to put the city on screen in a way that feels new. There’s no shortage of films and TV set here so you’re trying to find new places. There’s nothing original about the South Bank, which is by the river where everyone goes. But, within that, you try to find a particular corner of it.

I did this show years ago called Giri/Haji, which was very Soho-based, and we made the decision early on that this would all be Soho and we’re going to actually film there. So what is your version of the city? Where are you based? In that, you’re talking to the cinematographer and director and finding out their visual influences for interpreting the space.

Barton’s previous series include Giri/Haji, about a Tokyo detective in London

Barton sees his job as creating characters that viewers feel they could meet. It’s just that their conversations are more interesting and heightened.
You have to try to layer them with everything from their backstory and history to where they are currently, what are their predicaments, what are their challenges, what are the challenges to those relationships, all that kind of stuff, all that texture and depth of human interactions, and try to capture that. This show [Black Doves] for me was always, beyond being a spy show, about a friendship, more than anything else, that came out of this woman I read about whose partner died. That just felt so interesting, having that as your core character. She’s grieving a lost love, so from that point your story’s not going to be romantic.

I wanted it to be a dynamic between two characters, so the obvious thing was to make it about a friendship, and how a friend would help another friend in that situation. Platonic friendship is such an interesting relationship. In your life, platonic friends are some of the most important relationships you’ll ever have. But in storytelling, we so often concentrate on romantic relationships or family relationships. I often watch things and it’s the friendships that interest me. I remember watching Bridget Jones and her mates, just people hanging out, and that’s what I wanted to do. It came from that; Keira and Ben and how [their characters] love each other.

Good chemistry on screen needs a little bit of luck.
You can’t audition Keira Knightley. There is a certain amount of, ‘OK, we’ve got Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw.’ You just assume they’ll be able to do it and you give them the material. They do have a spark and a chemistry. They’re great together. On certain jobs, you put actors together and it’s not there; it doesn’t work and there’s nothing you can really do about it.

The Lazarus Project, another Barton show, aired for two seasons from 2022

Barton always wants to write about morally complex characters.
[Black Doves] started from the story of someone who’s been having an affair and she’s lied to her husband and children for years, so she’s already a morally interesting person. We just lent into it, and it’s more interesting if you take away any kind of safety blanket from what she’s done. She is who she is. Let’s explore that.

When you’re watching, you can forget you’re watching characters who do despicable things. So often, we’re encouraged not to think about it, like James Bond, Jason Bourne or any of the myriad action heroes we watch who are just mowing people down left, right and centre and you don’t really bat an eyelid. So it’s interesting to dig into that and what effect it has.

There multiple aspects to being a screenwriter – but aspiring scribes should never forget that writing is the most important part.
If you’re trying to become a writer, there are two sides of what you need to control. One is the creative, one is the business side of it. You can do all the work in the world on networking and writing emails to people, and that stuff’s really important as well, but sometimes you forget that, without the writing side, there’s no point to any of it.

So my best piece of advice about becoming a writer is just to write and to develop your voice and your craft and your ability to do the job you eventually want to do. Constantly write the kinds of stories that excite you and don’t try to write something you think has a bigger chance of getting made. Just write what gets you out of bed in the morning. If you’re not giving it on the page, the rest of the stuff doesn’t really matter.

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Titans of Industry

SHOWRUNNER, , , ,

Industry showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay reflect on the unique journey behind making the HBO financial drama, reveal how they evolved from students to showrunners, and offer their advice to aspiring creatives.

As production steams ahead on the fourth season of Industry, creators and showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay describe their award-winning HBO financial drama as a “10-year overnight success.”

The friends met at Oxford University before they both landed jobs in London’s financial district. But after realising they were “ill suited” to banking, they instead decided to follow their love of film and television and look for work in the creative arts.

Down, who had written plays while at school and university, landed a job with a talent agency, where he was able to build his contacts book while making a series of short films in his spare time – at the same time Kay left his City job.

The pair then collaborated on their first “micro budget” feature film, Not An Exit, which was funded through a Kickstarter campaign and carries some of the DNA that would be infused into Industry.

Produced by Bad Wolf and debuting on HBO and the BBC in 2020, Industry follows a group of young bankers as they forge their identities within the pressure-cooker environment and sex- and drug-fuelled blitz of international bank Pierpoint & Co’s London office.

The cast is led by Myha’la (as Harper Stern), Marisa Abela (Yasmin Kara-Hanai), Harry Lawtey (Robert Spearing), Ken Leung (Eric Tao), Conor MacNeill (Kenny Kilbane), Sagar Radia (Rishi Ramdani) and Indy Lewis (Venetia Berens).

Kay and Down took time out from producing season four to take part in a panel at SXSW London earlier this month, where they talked about making the move into the TV business, working out what kind of show they wanted to make and why the cast are the secret to the show’s success.

Konrad Kay (left) and Mickey Down, the creators and showrunners of Industry

They first pitched Industry to HBO when the streaming boom was still in its early stages, and when there was no concept of a writers room or a writer-producer in the UK.
Down: You would write something, you’d pitch it to Channel 4 or the BBC, you’d wait a very long time for a response, and the response would 99 times out of 100 be no. If the response was yes, you write it all yourself – there’s no writing room, because they’re very expensive and that’s just not the way it was done in the UK – and then you would hand that script off to the director and the production company and, quite honestly, you’d be on set a few days and then just see it when it comes out. You might go to the edit once.
We were in a position after we made the micro-budget feature where we were going into a lot of rooms and pitching a lot of ideas, and we sold lots of shows. But selling a show in the UK is not like selling a show in the US. You sell a show in the US, that is a huge amount of money, that’s a lot of time, that’s probably going to be in a writers room. Selling a show to the UK, you might sell it for £500.
We sold like 10 ideas, just to keep working and trying to basically convince ourselves we were still writers and that actually the next thing was gonna happen. We had this rule, which is just say yes to everything – we need 10 plates spinning so, if nine of them fall, one’s spinning still.

They came up with one project called Highway – a “pulpy, gothic, Regency-set, sub-Tarantino” drama about a black highwaywoman who is sold into slavery.
Down: It was very violent and vicious, and it was a lot of fun. We sold that to [US cable network] Cinemax and we were in development on that. We’d written a lot of first episodes, and this was the first time we’d written a second episode, because Cinemax were like, ‘We’ll take four scripts before we decide whether we’re going to make this.’ So halfway through writing those episodes, Jane Tranter, who runs [Industry producer] Bad Wolf, said, ‘Have you considered writing about banking, which is what you know?’
We said, ‘Well, we have. We’ve written this thing called Not An Exit,’ which was just a mess, a bag of ideas. We got it out of a drawer, dusted it off, gave it to her, and she was like, ‘This is interesting. Do you want to write this for HBO, potentially?’ She pitched it to HBO on our behalf.

Myha’la plays Harper Stern, an American graduate recruited by Pierpoint at the start of S1

HBO quickly confirmed its interest in the new project. But as HBO and Cinemax were both owned by the same company, Down and Kay had to choose which series to continue with.
Down: We said, ‘OK, we’re going to do Industry.’ We were in Development Hell pretty much with Industry for three years. We wrote the first episode 60 times. We had three massive iterations of it. The first version we wrote, we were like, ‘We’re writing a show about banking for HBO. It has to be all this sort of verité, documentarian [series].’

Kay: We literally said in the pitch that it would be glacially slow, so you can imagine how fucking stupid [that was]. It was so bad – anti-commercial and weird. I don’t know why we did it.

But inspired by notes from Tranter and then-HBO head of programming Casey Bloys, they revisited the concept from the perspective of characters on the trading floor who don’t have any power.
Down: It allowed us to do what we wanted to do and what we had written before, which is a slice of life of London told through the prism of very ambitious young people, and then that unlocked the show. Richard Plepler, CEO of HBO, was stepping down, and one of the last things he did was greenlight our little show.

Harper’s colleagues include Yasmin Kara-Hanai (Marisa Abela), who comes from a rich family

However, they admit they still weren’t quite sure what Industry was even as they were making season one.
Down: The show has evolved season on season, but in the first season we really didn’t know what it was. We didn’t know what the tone was. We didn’t think it was supposed to be funny, sad, melodramatic. It is all those things now. We lean into different parts in different episodes, and every episode has a different kind of atmosphere. We lean into the actors’ abilities, which are monumental, but I really didn’t know what we were doing. I can’t stress that enough.

Kay: There’s this thing where you’re a young creative in any field and originality is by far the most important thing, especially in TV. We were so afraid to lean into any kind of trope or any kind genre element as a scaffold for the dialogue-driven character stuff. By the time we got to the end of season two, we were like, ‘Actually, we’ve made a quite granular ‘Inside Baseball’ look at this trading floor. It might become more exciting for us to write if we give the thing a proper motor and maybe lean a little bit out of the hard reality of it.’ Little elements of soap here, a murder, something about a father, maybe this IPO is going to go spectacularly wrong in a way that isn’t really true to life but will tell you something about the characters. It was just a little bit more about leaning into the scaffold of TV, which we were scared to do

Down: We were also learning to trust our collaborators a little bit more. At HBO, we realised that, actually, their notes are very constructive and excavate what we’re trying to do pretty well. They give very good notes, and we find ourselves taking 99% of them. They’re also not prescriptive. They will say, ‘Have you thought about this?’ If we show our working, they’ll always be, ‘OK, fine.’ We’ve barely worked anywhere else but that really does set them apart as collaborators.

Harry Lawtey (right) as Rob alongside Kit Harington, who joined the cast in S3 as Henry Muck

As the show has progressed, Down and Kay have found the confidence to take the stories in Industry away from the trading floor.
Kay: It’s years of our lives we’ve given to this thing. It is incredibly hard to do. It takes 18 months to make eight hours of TV, so it’s like, how are we going to keep ourselves creatively engaged? And the truth is, because we’ve got older and because we’ve become more interested in this stuff, it’s just a natural broadening of the canvas to keep us engaged in what we’re doing.

Down: S3, which I love and is a success in so many ways, I just think, ‘OK, well, we’ve done that now. Maybe the show is something different.’ It started off as this slice-of-life thing. Young people, very high stakes for them, but very low stakes universally. Then it’s developed and expanded into something else. Season on season, the show’s very different.

Kay: We almost thought every season was going to be the last. Because there’s no IP, which is very rare, there’s nothing to follow. There’s no roadmap for what we’re doing. As long as we take HBO on the journey, we get to Trojan Horse whatever we want into the show. There are genre elements that we’ve never played in before. We’re just going, ‘Oh, this episode’s going to feel a bit like this.’ I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s that kind of evolution. We’ll write an episode and think, ‘Christ, that feels totally unlike anything we’ve done before.’ That’s good, because that’s exciting.

Down credits the cast as the reason Industry is renewed every year.
Down: As we’ve struggled in some respects to figure out what the show is and to write the show, [they] have been just fantastic from the off. We were given a lot of responsibility by HBO to produce all aspects of the show. I’m not sure, in the old world of making TV in the UK, how much power the writers would have to choose their cast, but we had a lot of say in it. We saw so many people. It was very important to us to have unknown people. We also wanted people who looked young, who were the right age, and people you’d never seen before. It added a sense of realism and we thought it was an opportunity to find some really cool new actors.
We could throw anything at them, but we started writing towards the personalities and their talents, and we started moulding the characters around them. We wrote Robert as a ‘Jack the Lad.’ Obviously he has some issues with his home life and he has this class anxiety, but quite honestly, he’s there for a good time. Then Harry Lawtey came in and he played it like that. We were like, ‘I don’t know if this is right, actually.’ Firstly, it’s not that sympathetic. And also, it is quite one-note. Then when he dropped the persona and he was himself, he was great. He was vulnerable, and there was life behind his eyes. He came back in and he did the same audition again; he was loose and was just so good.
Harry has such a vulnerability as a performer that we just started writing into that, and then Robert became the emotional heartbeat of the show because Harry is a very vulnerable and great performer in that space. We write towards Marisa’s ability to do humour, we’re writing towards Myha’la’s steeliness. They’re so good at emotion. I can’t thank our cast enough.

Kay: And then like people like Ken Leung… Why the fuck a guy of his stature would come and shoot a first-season show with two nobodies in Cardiff, and then why the fuck we wouldn’t write enough stuff for him in season one and keep him in the wings, which is another one of our daft decisions…

Sagar Radia (left) is the abrasive Rishi Ramdani, while US actor Ken Leung plays Eric Tao

Down’s advice to aspiring writers and directors is just to make something, and build a community of like-minded creatives. He also says scripts need to grab the reader’s attention within the first few pages.
Down: If you are writing a spec script, make it interesting in the first few pages. And if you can make something, that would still be the advice. Then the other advice is find a collaborator. If you’re a writer, find a director you want to work with. Or if you are a director, find a writer or an actor. Create a little community of people you can work with.
This is a very lonely job; I’m very grateful I have Konrad. We have the same taste and we like working together. It would be impossible to produce the show as we are now without two of us. We split the workload. Psychologically, it is great to have a collaborator.

Kay: It can be really disingenuous when people say they’re in the right place at the right time. I hate hearing that because it’s not practical advice – but we were in the right place at the right time. We met Jane just at a time when she had the influence to put us in front of HBO. We effectively joined the industry at the start of the gold rush. If you were to list the things that happened in order to get us to where we were, it’s a one-in-a-million thing. That makes us grateful and we have gratitude for it.

Down: You’ve got to keep going. You need to be somewhat delusional to think you’ll be a success in this industry – and if you are that delusional, you should go for it. There’s other practical stuff like say yes to everything. Especially now that the market is contracting, just say yes to everything. That’s Valhalla for a writer, to be paid to write. So just get in a position where you can do that.

If they knew the formula for getting original series on TV, they say they would be very rich.
Kay: If you’re a writer or director without profile, the idea of doing something that doesn’t have IP behind it would be almost impossible. We’re so lucky because Industry is our thing and it doesn’t really come from anything apart from our brains. But even with the track record of the show being successful, if we came with an actual idea to one of the big players, it would be very hard for us to get off the ground. Unless it had a very easy conceit like a murder mystery or an actor or a director [of note attached], I can’t really see it happening.

But they hope to be making Industry for years to come.
Kay: We love our relationship with HBO, we’re in a deal with them and we want to do as many seasons of Industry as we feel creatively fulfilled by. To be honest, with the fourth season, we feel like we’ve reset the show and we would love to do probably a couple more seasons afterwards.

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