Off the leash

As detective drama Dalgliesh returns, star Bertie Carvel tells DQ about realising his long-held ambition to direct for the screen in the third season of the Acorn TV and Channel 5 show, which is set in 1979.

For a very long time, Bertie Carvel has wanted to direct. Best known for screen roles in Doctor Foster, The Crown and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, he is also an award-winning stage performer, and it was in theatre that he first directed, helming a performance of John Galsworthy’s play Strife in 2016.

Since then, however, his “day job” hasn’t afforded him the time to repeat the feat beyond the stage – until now, as Carvel makes his screen directing debut on Dalgliesh, the detective drama based on PD James’s novels, in which he also stars as the title character.

Distributed by All3Media International, the Acorn TV and Channel 5 series returns this week for its third season, launching today on Acorn TV in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and then on C5 in the UK on Thursday. Carvel returns as uniquely enigmatic detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh in three stories set across six episodes, all taking place in 1979 on the cusp of Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power.

In Death in Holy Orders, Dalgliesh travels to a remote seminary overlooking a windswept lake, where a body has been found gruesomely murdered. Nearly everyone in the seminary has reason to resent the victim, and Dalgliesh and DS Tarrant must unpick a complicated set of motives to find the killer.

Cover Her Face sees Dalgliesh investigate a murder in the Essex home of the Mehtas, a staggeringly wealthy family with connections to the British government. With the help of local detective Clive Roscoe (Sam Swainsbury), Dalgliesh builds a picture of events in the weeks leading up to the crime, confronting a blanket of secrecy among his guarded suspects.

Then in Devices & Desires, Dalgliesh is sent on an urgent mission to investigate a terrorist plot against a nuclear power station on the Kent coast. He is soon drawn into a complex and highly charged hunt for a serial killer, working once more alongside former colleague Kate Miskin, now an acting DCI.

Carvel takes up directing duties in Cover Her Face – and as he explains, it was always part of the plan for him to direct an episode in season three should the series be successful enough to reach that milestone.

“We spoke about it when I was offered the role,” he tells DQ. “I basically said, ‘I’d love to do this, but I’d love to direct as well.’” At that stage, he was growing and developing various directing projects after Strife, so his focus was split between not wanting to give up acting but really wanting to grow as a director.

When he put this to Dalgliesh producer New Pictures, “they said yes, so the plan was always that if we were lucky enough to make a third season, I would direct and also slide into an EP [executive producer] role. So it’s been great that the show has been successful and that I’ve been able to do that, and also great for me because I’ve had a lot to learn.

“Obviously one always has a lot to learn, but it’s great to be doing that with a show I know inside out. In some ways it’s massively hubristic to try to be the lead actor in something and also direct it. It was an incredible stretch, but is also a huge advantage because I have a lived experience of how to drive that show from the inside, so it felt very natural, in a way, to step behind the camera. I learned quite a lot about myself doing it.”

What Carvel learned surprised him, because he always imagined himself as a director who would “create a blank canvas and allow a lot of freedom and creative chaos” on set. But what he realised is that while he likes chaos, “I also need control, and the [camera] frames were much more tightly controlled than I would have thought – possibly because I felt so clear that I had to prepare within an inch of my life to make sure I didn’t fuck it up. I needed to be very clear about what I wanted to see, and that isn’t the kind of director I had thought I would be.”

With lead writer Helen Edmundson returning to the series, Carvel joined the directing ranks alongside Geoff Sax (Death in Holy Orders) and Roger Goldby (Devices & Desires). And while his remit wasn’t to “reinvent the wheel” in terms of how Dalgliesh is filmed, he found he was able to incorporate many of his own ideas and “tastes” into the show’s visual stye.

“In terms of cinematic style, I like developing shots,” he says. “I like to think about a frame that can move, and to think about depth of field, and not just cutting for the sake of it. Wherever possible, I’ve constructed sequences that have a flow to them and a deliberate visual language rather than simply shooting a load of coverage and trying to figure it out in the edit.

“People look at the ‘continuity style’ as a way around not having much money. You collect wides, mediums, close-ups from a number of different angles, and then you make the film in the edit. But actually, if you don’t have a huge amount of time, I feel like that can be quite wasteful.”

Above all, Carvel’s priority was to ensure the audience know who the characters are and what’s motivating them. “I had a very clear idea about what I thought Cover Her Face was about, and I wanted every frame to encode that subtext, but not in a way that hammers an audience over the head.”

Cover Her Face begins at Martingale House, where the influential Mehta family hosts its annual village fete. Krishna (Parth Thakerar), is angry with his mother Anita (Soni Razdan) and sister Devi (Ellora Torchia), who are desperate for him to propose to Catherine Bowers (Allegra Marland), but he is only interested in Sally Jupp (Holly Cattle), the maid of the house. Then the next morning, Sally is found dead.

Dalgliesh arrives to investigate with local detective Clive Roscoe, before another attack strikes the residents of Martingale.

Carvel’s directing choices can be seen in the way the camera moves around groups of people, placing characters in front of one another to convey the depth of the set. One police interview scene frames the two detectives either side of a suspect, who sits with the back of their head to the camera.

“It is true that I composed much more, because I was scared of getting it wrong and because I was very clear that I had to be very well prepared,” he says. “Composition was much more important to me than I would have thought, partly because I wanted to draw frames so that I could be clear as a newbie who doesn’t necessarily know how to translate composition into action. I couldn’t be as relaxed as I would like to be and say, ‘Hey, you guys do something nice.’”

As a “newbie,” Carvel believes he initially guarded his vision more than a director with greater experience would. “But then as the shoot went on, I learned to relax to some extent and to realise that it wasn’t going to come off the rails. But also others around me had to realise that it wasn’t going to capsize and, as a consequence, it is very composed.

“So there are a lot of shots where Krish is in the foreground. I really enjoy playing with focus. You’ve got Krish in the foreground, Catherine in the mid-ground, Dalgliesh in the background. I very much enjoy thinking in terms of shots that develop from one image to another, because the whole story seems to be about exclusion. So as a visual language, what you put inside and outside of a frame, how you imprison someone inside the design and the composition of the frame is almost like an obvious language that you would want to use, but almost without it being noticed. It should be subliminal so that people are thinking about that thematic idea without knowing it.”

When he first sat in the director’s chair, Carvel admits he was “shocked and somewhat traumatised” by how many unknowns there were despite his experience as an actor. In fact, he describes it akin to a parental role, “and I hadn’t really prepared for that,” he says.

“Whereas things that I had expected to find more challenging because they were things of which I had no experience were generally just a complete delight, because it was like having a new toy,” he says. “It was an extraordinary cast that we managed to assemble, a brilliant team, most of whom have worked on successive seasons of Dalgliesh. All the heads of department and most of the crew are returning alumni of Dalgliesh, so I was very well supported by the team, a brilliant DOP, a brilliant producer and a brilliant editor.”

That support extended into post-production and shaping the edit alongside editor Stephanie McCutcheon and sound mixer Chloe Dalzell. “That’s not a part of the process as an actor you’re really ever very much invited to,” he says. “Frankly, having that amount of control was just a huge joy and I was very well supported by the execs.”

Of course, directing Dalgliesh also meant Carvel had to direct himself. “I’m afraid if you talk to some of the other actors I’ve worked with, they’d say I always do that,” he jokes. In fact, he found his extensive preparation to direct the double episode meant he’d already done a lot of the work for his acting role. “So when you are both, it cuts out the middle man,” he notes.

“The only part of it that was challenging wearing the two hats was that I had to edit the film while I was shooting the second block. That meant being in two places at once, which was almost impossible, so I barely saw my family. I didn’t really sleep for the rest of the shoot, so that was physically challenging. But we managed to make it work.”

After collecting his first screen directing credit, Carvel is now hungry for more. “I remember going around [after Strife] and saying what it had taught me was that I’m a good actor and that I’m not sure I’m a good director yet,” he says. “What this has taught me is I am a good director; I’m better than I was and I should do more. It’s really nice to be able to say that with huge confidence. I really think it’s good, and I’m not ashamed to say that.”

tagged in: Acorn TV, All3Media International, Bertie Carvel, Channel 5, Dalgliesh, New Pictures