Hacked off
The Hack director Lewis Arnold and executive producer Patrick Spence take DQ inside the making of this ITV and Stan factual drama about the British tabloid phone-hacking scandal, the stylistic approach to its two story strands and creating challenging television.
The day after US comedian Jimmy Kimmel returned to the airwaves to front his eponymous ABC late-night talkshow after a controversial weeklong suspension that shone a spotlight on truth, freedom of speech and abuse of power, a fact-based drama that delves into those very issues is about to debut across the pond.
From the team behind Mr Bates vs The Post Office, The Hack is a seven-part series that centres on the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of Sunday tabloid News of the World in 2011 after 168 years of publishing.
Set between 2002 and 2012, the plot interweaves two real-life stories – the work of investigative journalist Nick Davies (David Tennant), who uncovered evidence of phone hacking at the News of the World, and the investigation into the unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan, led by former Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook (Robert Carlyle).
Directed by Lewis Arnold (Time, The Long Shadow), the show’s ensemble cast also includes Toby Jones as the editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, while Dougray Scott plays British prime minister Gordon Brown and Steve Pemberton is Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News of the World publisher News Corp.
“It’s fair to say that our relationship with the truth – our trust, in fact – has been massively polluted and the origins of that pollution is this story,” executive producer Patrick Spence tells DQ. “Not entirely, but mostly, this is where it started to go wrong, and we need to ask ourselves why.
“Look at what happened with Jimmy Kimmel and any number of things, by the way,” he says, pointing to how the US host’s show was temporarily pulled after comments he made about the assassination of Republican activist Charlie Kirk, drawing criticism from President Donald Trump and starting a debate over free speech. “We live in a world where the very idea of truth has been polluted. That’s something we need to keep talking about.”
Following on the heels of Mr Bates, the acclaimed, award-winning drama that highlighted the plight of sub-postmasters caught up in the biggest scandal in British judicial history, Spence was drawn to the idea of a drama about the phone-hacking scandal for a number of reasons.
First, though he remembered the events from the time they happened, “it became abundantly clear we didn’t know the half of it, and that’s always exciting,” he says. Through research, he then uncovered the Daniel Morgan story, with which he was also familiar without being aware they were connected.
“We’re not the first people to make that connection. Peter Jukes did it in his brilliant podcast,” says Spence, MD of AC Chapter One, which produces The Hack with writer Jack Thorne’s One Shoe Films. “But we were excited to begin with when we saw the connections, and then they started to make us angry. And that’s the point.”
When those two stories were put together, “you realise there’s a bold new form of storytelling, in which you can place two apparently unconnected stories side by side and set the audience the challenge of, ‘You work out why they’re connected.’
“Apparently they’re not. They’re years apart. They’re different casts, different setups, different worlds, and yet they are connected. When you work out why they’re connected, you get angry. That gets me excited. The one similarity with Mr Bates is this is a story about an abuse of power. It’s about bullying. It’s about betrayal of proper values, and that incenses me.”
The difference in the approaches to the two storylines in the show, which debuts on ITV tonight, is stark. Episode one introduces Tennant as Nick, who playfully breaks the fourth wall to set the scene for viewers as the journalist takes his first steps in uncovering the scale of the phone-hacking scandal. Episode two then plays as a more traditional crime thriller, with Carlyle as DCS Cook investigating Morgan’s murder and finding numerous players involved in attempting to shut down his work.
Arnold partnered with Thorne, Spence, fellow EP Joe Williams and script producer Imogen Greenberg to develop his initial thoughts about the stylistic approach and work on the later episodes. Annalisa Dinnella penned episode four. He also offered his own ideas to Thorne, particularly concerning moments where the story would have to be condensed.
“I was sent episode one, and Jack had tapped into a satirical nature that we see more commonly in American films – The Big Short, Wolf of Wall Street – and less in maybe our own cinematic history,” Arnold says. “I just felt the wit of Jack’s writing against the density and the dramatic points of this story was really interesting, and the challenge of pulling it off appealed to me.”
At that point, he didn’t know episode two would follow a completely different story. “Then the challenge was how do you interweave them and make them work without it feeling too alien?”
Episodes three and four repeat the formula, before the two stories start to come together in episode five. “So Dave’s story catches up with the present of Nick’s story, and the two styles and characters have to exist together,” Arnold notes. “In Nick’s story, I was very drawn to Adam Kay as a filmmaker and his work. The Big Short was a big reference, because of the density of information they have to get across and how they do it in such a playful manner. And then on the Dave Cook strand, it was [David] Fincher thrillers; the listener becoming the observed and the observer becoming watched was what we were playing with.”
Separating the two stories out is certainly a risky proposition, but Thorne is keen to make television that challenges audiences – as seen with his Netflix sensation Adolescence – and Arnold and Spence both backed his ambition.
“Audiences will invest in episode one, and then we’re asking you to reinvest in episode two in a whole new story and then come back,” Arnold says. “We don’t know whether that’s going to be a success or not. It was a challenge, and we’re happy with what we’ve constructed. But whether an audience goes with it is the question.”
“The format serves the vision,” adds Spence. “It’s not just being playful for playful’s sake. It is deliberately two different stories, because the point is to say, ‘What’s the connection?’ The more separate those stories become, the more you look for why they’re doing this and what those connections are. It’s not just gratuitous, but let’s see. Audiences keep saying they’re hungry to be challenged. That’s what we’re doing.”
Despite the two distinctive storytelling styles, the fact that Arnold directs all seven episodes – as he did with Yorkshire Ripper true crime drama The Long Shadow – means there is continuity behind the camera. Supported by a “great crew,” the project saw him reunite with a number of regular collaborators including editor Sacha Szwarc and production designer Anna Higginson.
“Because of the two styles, and the fact the styles had to come together, it needed a clarity of voice across the whole thing,” the director says. “Otherwise they might not fit together, or it might not work. So it just made sense [to direct every episode].
“I always feel for actors that it’s good because they get one singular voice throughout the entire storytelling, instead of three directors coming in with three visions and three opinions on material. It was very clearly one voice across the entirety of the piece for the cast, which is very beneficial to them. It’s difficult, but you’re supported by brilliant people.”
That cast includes a number of other British stars, with Lee Ingleby, Lara Pulver, Eve Myles, Neil Maskell, Lisa McGrillis, Ace Bhatti, Rose Leslie and Katherine Kelly among them. But in a factual drama based on real events, Arnold had to work with them as they transformed – in some cases radically, thanks to hair and makeup designer Lisa Parkinson – into the real people they were portraying.
But when it came to their performances, “you have to cast people and trust them to basically find the essence of the individual. It’s not about trying to imitate and copy a person, but it’s about trying to find the essence of a person,” says Arnold, who highlights the “incredible” work done by Tennant, Jones and Scott, as well as Robert Bathurst as celebrity publicist Max Clifford.
“You’re never going to get certain people to look exactly right, but you just want to create the essence of that person and that energy. In real-life dramas, that’s what you’re looking for. You’re not looking for an imitation.”
Ahead of The Hack’s debut, distributor ITV Studios has sold the show into more than 50 countries worldwide, with buyers including Arte for France and Germany, YLE in Finland, SVT in Sweden, NRK in Norway, DR in Denmark, Cosmote TV in Greece and TVNZ in New Zealand. Notably, Australian streamer and coproduction partner Stan was an early partner and helped to develop and finance the series after the phone-hacking scandal proved to be big news down under. Of course, Rupert Murdoch is also Australian.
“Most people are interested in this, and it is not over yet, this complicated relationship we have with facts and truth and trust, and this is where it started,” Spence says.
Like Mr Bates, The Hack builds to an optimistic moment, concluding around the time of the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press in 2012 that was prompted by the phone-hacking scandal. But the show’s end cards then present a challenge to viewers to rally for justice, just as the furore around the real-world consequences dramatised in Mr Bates led to government action.
“It’s fair to say that our story ends on a moment of hope and in the way that Mr Bates did. Then our end cards point out what’s happened since and why the audience should get angry and, most importantly, ask questions,” Spence adds. “There remain several unanswered questions, and this drama poses them in the final episode. What we’re hoping is that people will get together and say, ‘Why do we not know the answers to these questions?’ It’s up to the police and the government to insist that someone goes looking.”
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tagged in: Chapter One, David Tennant, ITV, Jack Thorne, Lewis Arnold, One Shoe Films, Patrick Spence, Robert Carlyle, Stan, The Hack