Bridging the divide
DQ heads to Belfast to meet the team behind Sky series The Lovers, which sees romance blossom between a mismatched couple in a modern city coming to terms with its past.
Suave political broadcaster Seamus is on the Lower Newtownards Road in East Belfast delivering a piece to camera. He is talking earnestly about “this divided city.”
Surrounded by houses flying the Union Flag and dwarfed by the gigantic yellow arches of shipbuilders Harland & Wolff – one of the city’s most recognisable icons – the journalist is standing in front of a loyalist gable-end mural.
It depicts two balaclava-wearing, machine-gun-toting paramilitaries flanking a funeral cortege. A half-dozen masked pallbearers are carrying a coffin draped in a flag. A large banner running down the middle of the mural simply reads: “East Belfast Batt. Lest We Forget.”
In this pivotal scene from the opening episode of The Lovers, a new Sky Atlantic series, the words hold a deep significance. They remind us that this is the first TV drama set in East Belfast in living memory.
Written by award-winning playwright David Ireland (Cyprus Avenue, Ulster American), the drama is a modern-day version of (a slightly older) Romeo and Juliet. Self-assured Catholic Londoner Seamus (Vanity Fair’s Johnny Flynn) and down-to-earth Protestant East Belfast supermarket worker Janet (The Dry star Roisin Gallagher) are from completely different worlds.
They meet quite by chance in Belfast when he unexpectedly jumps into her back garden. At first, they appear horribly mismatched; neither is comfortable in the other’s world, and he inconveniently has a celebrity girlfriend, Frankie (Alice Eve). Nevertheless, Seamus and Janet are inexorably drawn towards each other. Before you can say “through the barricades,” a quirky, funny and moving romance develops.
Chris Martin – no, not that one – is the producer of The Lovers, made for Sky Atlantic and NOW by Drama Republic, in association with Sky Studios. He comes from Belfast, and believes this particular location is vital to the six-part drama.
“We are really in the heart of East Belfast here. We are on the Lower Newtonards Road in Ballymacarrett,” he says. “This mural is political. It’s a paramilitary mural, and a lot of those don’t exist anymore. Recently they’ve been putting up more cultural murals instead. So the importance of this is to show the old Belfast in the opening episode.
“Then as we transition towards the romance during the series, Seamus and Janet find the love they have for each other and for the city. We go on to explore Belfast as a modern European city, but we start at this mural as a nod to the past.”
Martin goes on to detail why, as the Northern Irish capital emerges as a thriving city in the wake of The Troubles, it is so crucial to represent East Belfast on screen. “Years ago, it was hard for any regional area of England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland to have representation because of accents and class and divides. Executives would worry, ‘Will it sell? Will people watch it?’
“But there has been a gradual influx of shows that have broken down those barriers. Derry Girls helped to break the boundaries in showing working-class school kids from Northern Ireland. Now this drama is set in a working-class, East Belfast, Protestant community which, to our knowledge, hasn’t been represented on screen before. So that’s a first there.”
In a break between scenes, Gallagher agrees that The Lovers is a real breakthrough in terms of showing a community that has never been seen in TV drama. “It needs to happen. I’m from West Belfast, but it is very important that East Belfast, the community here, the community of the church, the community of the people who celebrate the 12th of July, is represented on screen.
“I’ve never seen a character like Janet being represented in anything before, and it’s a real privilege to be the first. Not to romanticise it, not to damn it, and not to make it seem that it’s all rosy in the garden, because that’s not what it is, either. But just to have that voice heard.”
The actor adds: “Janet has a line that really leapt out at me. Referring to [the late Unionist leader] Ian Paisley, she says, ‘He might have been all of those other things, but he was also a voice for our community when it felt like the whole world wasn’t listening.’ That’s a really powerful statement.
“It’s great that this is being done. It’s also great that it’s not just about the woman behind the Loyalist man. It’s terrific that it’s the female who’s the driving force and that the story is told from her perspective, not because she is a Protestant, not because she’s from East Belfast, but just because those things happen to be surrounding her.”
Another aspect of The Lovers that makes it stand out from other dramas is the fact the community it portrays has been profoundly affected by The Troubles. “Of course,” Martin says, “working class is working class. The problems are the same wherever you are: social deprivation, your bills, your food, your housing, your jobs.
“But the sprinkle of extra spice here is the backdrop of The Troubles within these communities. Some people from these working-class areas would have known people connected to The Troubles. That’s what separates The Lovers from other dramas. I think it is important for the rest of the UK to see that reflected on screen.”
The makers of The Lovers, which will be available on Sky Atlantic and NOW from tomorrow, hope the drama will also display the new Belfast in a positive light. According to Martin, “the city has been dramatically transformed, and we’ve tried to show that through our drama. Just the fact that it is now a prime location for TV and feature films really shows how far Belfast has come.”
Gallagher also believes The Lovers will demonstrate what a renaissance Belfast has undergone. “It is a rebirth. The last few times I’ve been in the city centre, it’s been pretty unrecognisable to me from when I was in my early 20s – in a really good way,” she says. “The food culture is massive and the restaurants are incredible, Michelin stars and everything.
“In Belfast, you’re 20 minutes away from the sea, and 20 minutes away from mountains at all times. It’s really lovely for the city to be celebrated and honoured for what it has been through without a sense of, ‘We can’t talk about that.’ We’re breaking through to the next generation and are further removed from the trauma of the past, so we’re now able to move forward with a sense of hope.”
The Lovers also proves that TV drama in this country can blossom outside London’s M25. Flynn, who has a successful parallel career as a musician, says: “Oh my God, I live in London and I’m so fed up with how London-centric the UK is culturally. Londoners have a sense of ownership over storytelling, and I think that’s to the detriment of a vast amount of rich culture in Britain and Ireland. It’s another form of colonialism, basically.
“I’ve been lucky enough to make a few programmes in different cities. I did a series in Glasgow for a few years [Netflix’s Lovesick] and that was hugely eye-opening and enriching. So I really jumped at the chance to tell a story here in Belfast. I travel a lot, especially with my music, playing gigs and doing tours. So I just have this constant sense of the world out there and all these wonderful people, the friends I haven’t made yet.”
The actor continues: “Belfast is such an amazing place and so culturally rich. It’s so full of stories and character and identity and the idea that human beings are beautiful. It’s really important to break out of that London bubble and tell stories from different places.”
Filmmaking is booming in Northern Ireland at the moment. A lot of that can be attributed to the ‘Game of Thrones Effect.’ Shot over nearly a decade, HBO’s gargantuan adaptation of the George RR Martin novels provided an enormous boost to the country’s film and TV industry.
Scott Houston, the location manager on The Lovers, notes: “Game of Thrones was a worldwide phenomenon. It made people sit up and think, ‘Jeepers, this is something. We can come to Northern Ireland to film and really show off the country’.”
Martin concurs. “It was the biggest marketing tool Northern Ireland could ever have had. Seventy percent of Game of Thrones was shot here, so it really put us on the international map.”
Evidence of the Game of Thrones Effect is still highly conspicuous in Belfast. The unit base for The Lovers is in the centre of the flourishing Titanic Quarter. Next to it is the enormous Game of Thrones standing set for King’s Landing, the splendiferous capital of Westeros.
If The Lovers were to be recommissioned, could Martin envisage incorporating King’s Landing into future series?
“That would be funny,” the producer laughs. “We could go through a magic door into an alternative King’s Landing universe: a new Belfast, a new dawn!”
tagged in: Chris Martin, David Ireland, Drama Republic, Johnny Flynn, Now, Roisin Gallagher, Scott Houston, Sky Atlantic, Sky Studios, The Lovers