Caught on camera
During filming for BBC surveillance drama The Capture, producer Derek Ritchie and actor Killian Scott take DQ inside the show’s thrilling third season – one full of rising tension and paranoia as the line between reality and deepfakes become increasingly blurred.
On the site of a disused air base, large swathes of green fields are broken up by the curved roofs of numerous hardened aircraft shelters, relics from one of the largest US bases in the UK during the Cold War.
But in this corner of Oxfordshire, on a bright, sunny day in August 2025, DQ finds itself standing in the middle of an international conflict.
A row of anti-tank obstacles known as Czech hedgehogs have been placed around the perimeter of a large patch of land that has been transformed into a military base, which is surrounded by a chain link fence and several rings of barbed wire. Beyond a red and white traffic barrier there are numerous buildings standing in various states of disrepair, military vehicles and a television crew in the midst of shooting scenes for the third season of BBC surveillance drama The Capture.
The events portrayed at the border will appear in its fifth episode, which promises to shed some light on the traumatic past of new character Noah Pierson, played by Killian Scott. He’s a key figure in the season, which begins 12 months after the end of S2, when Rachel Carey broadcast a live deepfake of a government minister to the nation, exposing the UK intelligence service’s clandestine video manipulation programme known as Correction.
Amidst an inquiry into the unlawful use of Correction, Carey (played by returning star Holliday Grainger) has become acting commander of Counter Terrorism Command (CTC, also known as SO15) and is determined to regain the public’s trust in surveillance technology through the new Operation Veritas camera system.
But when a brutal and exceptionally well-coordinated act of terror strikes at the heart of the British establishment, leaving behind just one witness, Carey is drawn into an unfolding geopolitical crisis that infects the British political establishment, the security services and the media.
“As we come back to the start of The Capture, it is a year after Correction has been exposed by Carey, Isaac Turner [Paapa Essiedu’s politician] and Khadija Khan [the BBC newsreader played by Indira Varma],” producer Derek Ritchie tells DQ during a break in filming. “Carey is now the acting commander of SO15, and she’s been tasked with bringing public confidence in surveillance technology back. So Carey has, over that time, surrounded herself with a very trusted group that includes people like DSI Tom Kendricks, played by Nigel Lindsay, DI Nadia Latif, played by Ginny Holder and the wonderful Tessa Wong, playing DC Chloe Tan.”
Carey is the driving force behind Operation Veritas, a dual-lens camera system simultaneously delivering footage to an internal hard drive and an online surveillance network. If a camera is hacked and someone tries to ‘correct’ the feed by altering either the appearance of people or their actions, the system recognises there are two different images and an alert is sent to CTC to inform them Correction is being used.
“So we join our heroes at the start of the season certainly riding the wave after the exposure of Correction and what that’s meant for all of them,” Ritchie continues. “But soon as ever with The Capture, all of that will be turned on its head, and Carey is going to find herself not just dealing with a Correction conspiracy, but [she is] the victim of it at the same time. In previous seasons, we’ve had a character who’s ostensibly the victim of the conspiracy and Carey is investigating it. This season, Rachel Carey is front and centre. That positions her quite differently from seasons before.”
Throughout The Capture, creator and writer Ben Chanan’s scripts have stayed ahead of the technology curve by focusing on the corruption of CCTV in S1 and deepfake videos in S2. Season three is no different, with AI at the centre of the story and how it could be used by particular organisations – for better or worse – in geopolitics and the media.
“So we’re very much, once again, looking at the themes of how technology and the state function together,” Ritchie notes, “and what that means for liberty. In the context of this season, AI absolutely becomes an aspect of that discussion.”
As series producer and an executive producer across all three seasons of the series – which is produced by Universal International Studios’ Heyday Television and distributed by NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution – Ritchie says it has been “fascinating” to make a show that has never sought to stand still or be predictable.
But as Chanan’s storytelling ambitions have grown, so too have the demands of production, from the kinds of characters that feature to the situations in which they find themselves. That also explains the extended development periods between seasons, with the show debuting in 2019 and S2 airing in 2022. The third run is now set to launch on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on March 8.
“As a series, it takes us a few years between seasons in The Capture because we’re really trying to develop an interesting new iteration for it, so that audiences are hopefully delighted by something unexpected,” Ritchie says. “We want it to be another puzzle, another box of delights for people to dig into and enjoy. Ben’s ambition of writing gets ever more heightened, gets ever more genre, gets ever more unashamed in the thriller bones of the show, but it’s always trying to enjoy the grounded truth of the characters who we put into these situations. As his writing gets ever more ambitious and he leans into these moments, we try and meet that with how the show is made.”
That means S3 promises some of the series’ most thrilling stunt sequences to date, alongside fight sequences and gun work, which is new to the show. “We’ve not really done much of that before,” the exec states. There is also a lot of car work in a season where each episode is anchored by a specific action set piece or significant character moment.
“There’s no episode where we just see how everyone’s getting on in the story,” Ritchie says. “That comes from the fact that we have so many good characters that we want them all to have a moment in this season, so all of the audience’s favourites, from Carey to [Ron Perlman’s CIA chief Frank] Napier to [Lia Williams’ DSU Lia] Garland to [Ben Miles’ character Commander Danny] Hart, everybody gets their moment in this season. Across six episodes, it means that every single episode there’s another treat for people to enjoy.”
Yet for all the returning cast and new guest stars – Scott joins alongside Joe Dempsie, Andrew Buchan, Hugh Quarshie, Amanda Drew, Linus Roache and Jonathan Aris – there’s no doubt The Capture belongs to Grainger. “Holliday is astonishing, and this season she’s been even better,” Ritchie remarks. “Her confidence, her poise, the intellect she brings to the role, the emotional range she brings to the role, and to work with, she’s just an absolute delight. We all feel very privileged to work with Holliday and she’d hate me saying that, because she’s so self-effacing, but she’s superb. She is one of our finest actors. When people see her work in this season, they’ll understand just how brilliant a performer she really is.”
During filming for S3, the cast have taken in locations such as Camden Town Hall, Dover, Basingstoke, tunnels under central London and the capital’s Garden Studios. The production also spent two full days at Stansted Airport.
Back at the military base, director Johnny Allan is talking with stunt coordinator Marvin Campbell before leading Scott through the scene. As the walkthrough continues, the crew watch on as the wind billows dust across the set and carries the smell of petrol through the air.
When the camera starts rolling, Scott’s Pierson emerges from a building before shooting one enemy soldier and then being tackled from behind by another, with both actors falling on a padded mattress lying on the floor out of shot. It’s just one example of the physicality the role has demanded of Scott, who also had to get to grips with long dialogue-heavy scenes, and moments where he had to speak two foreign languages.
“It’s one of the best roles I’ve ever had,” says the Irish actor, who is best known for parts in Dublin Murders, Kaos and Love/Hate. “The way Ben writes is at that intersection of this classy espionage surveillance, thriller stuff, but then these human beats are in there as well. You’re playing all these different colours.”
One notable scene sees Pierson engaging in a lengthy war of words with Napier that ran to around 10 minutes, meaning the actors “really get to fall into a theatrical space where the cameras just fade into the distance and you get to just be in this moment,” Scott says. “We’ve had all that kind of stuff. But then also these John Wick-style stunt pieces, which for me, I really like doing that kind of stuff. In the UK, the stunt teams are the highest quality, really, in the world.”
The actor was already a fan of The Capture before the offer to join S3 landed in his email inbox. After discovering he would follow in the footsteps of S1 guest star Callum Turner and S2’s Essiedu, he immediately wanted to sign up.
“Then it was one of those things that was really quick,” he remembers. “I got a script on a Friday, then I was on a plane on the following Friday and we had the read-through on the Wednesday. We started filming the next day. My first day on set was about eight days after it first came to me, but Anthony [Philipson] was so good.” Philipson (The Day of the Jackal) is the lead director, with Allan (The Devil’s Hour) shooting two episodes and Chanan picking up the S3 finale.
On set, Scott found a familiar face in Grainger, after working with her on the first and third seasons of detective drama Strike. It meant they had already established an easy camaraderie and could “trust in the moment” when filming. “I try not to talk about it too much, and we just see what happens organically,” he says. “Me and Holliday were just on a very similar wavelength, and it was just really easy to find that dynamic on camera.”
Quite what their shared scenes – or anything to do with Scott’s character – involve will remain shrouded in mystery until the show is broadcast, with potential spoilers at every turn.
“Even while I was reading [the scripts], I was like, ‘Oh, so that’s what’s going on.’ I was as surprised as anyone,” Scott laughs. “There’s a lot of layers to it that keep it mysterious for a long stretch. What Ben has created in Pierson, my role, the audience will find themselves probably shifting positions [on him] quite a lot. Are we with this guy? Are we not? Who’s he with, and who’s he not with? With Pierson and Carey, it’s a slightly awkward, odd-couple relationship that evolves over the course of a few episodes.”
However, Scott does reveal his character is a “massive conduit” for the layers of paranoia that run through the story, as viewers are left to question the motivations of allies and enemies alike.
“That’s something Holliday is grappling with and trying to figure out while she’s doing her thing,” he says, “and she goes through quite an evolution in her own right from season two. Ben, in this season, has introduced more classic thriller action, which I get to be a part of, but also has just enhanced and ratcheted up the paranoia.”
It was only towards the end of the four-month shoot that Scott found he was able to reflect on his role in the series, which he declares as “one of the greatest things I’ve ever gotten to do.”
“You can’t quite fully appreciate in the moment, because it’s so busy,” he says. “You’re learning all the lines, and you’re doing rehearsals and stunt rehearsals, and there’s a lot of ingredients that need to go into the thing. But from Derek to Ben, his scripts and then Anthony and Johnny, who have completely knocked it out of the park… I’m such a fan of seasons one and two of this show, and season three is definitely taking it into new territory.”
The six new episodes promise to be packed full of tension as each character experiences increasing levels of suspicion and distrust at work, or finds their personal lives imploding as the implications of Correction come to a head.
“It’s been a real blast, and I’m so excited to see how they piece it all together,” Scott adds. “It’s cool when you’re on a gig where you’re looking at scripts, and you’re like, ‘This is just really high quality. I hope we do it justice.’ I think we’ve done it justice.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Bodyguard: A volatile Afghanistan veteran assigned to protect a controversial UK home secretary finds himself caught between his duty, his PTSD and a possible inside conspiracy that turns him from guardian into prime suspect.
Homeland: A brilliant but unstable CIA officer becomes convinced a newly freed American prisoner of war has been turned by terrorists, kicking off a years-long dance of surveillance, double-crosses and shifting loyalties between spies, soldiers and politicians.
Person of Interest: A reclusive tech billionaire and a former CIA operative secretly use a predictive AI surveillance system to stop violent crimes before they happen, constantly wrestling with the moral cost of total, unaccountable monitoring.
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tagged in: BBC, Ben Chanan, Derek Ritchie, Ginny Holder, Heyday Television, Holliday Grainger, Indira Varma, Killian Scott, NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution, Nigel Lindsay, Paapa Essiedu, Tessa Wong, The Capture