Tag Archives: All3Media International

Opening the Crypt

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Five years after her last appearance as 1920s private detective Phryne Fisher, Essie Davis returns to the role in big-screen outing Miss Fisher & The Crypt of Tears. DQ follows the adventurer to Morocco.

Located in south-west Morocco, south of the Atlas Mountains, Ouarzazate is known as the Door to the Desert. The city is also notable for the volume of movie productions that are attracted to the stunning landscapes that surround it, with Lawrence of Arabia, The Living Daylights, The Mummy, Gladiator and James Bond film Spectre among those to have filmed there.

More recently, Ouarzazate also welcomed the cast and crew of Miss Fisher & The Crypt of Tears, a big-screen spin-off from the hugely popular Australian television series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries that has aired in more than 120 countries and territories around the world.

The period drama first aired on ABC in 2012, centring on the personal and professional life of Phryne Fisher, a private detective in 1920s Melbourne. Essie Davis (The Babadook, Lambs of God) takes the title role as Phryne, a charming and determined “lady investigator” who has a habit of solving murders, much to the frustration of the local police force.

Three seasons were produced by Every Cloud Productions, the last coming in 2015. Five years later, the series has made the leap to the big screen, with feature-length Miss Fisher & The Crypt of Tears making its debut in cinemas in Australia and the US earlier this year. All3Media International, which distributes the series, secured deals with US streamer Acorn TV, which will release the film to subscribers today, and Alibi in the UK, where it will air in early April.

Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher in Miss Fisher & The Crypt of Tears

It’s October 2018, just days after the start of production, when DQ is taxied out of Ouarzazate and into the desert towards Oasis de Fint, where green shrubs and trees stand against a backdrop of red rocks and mountains that stretches for miles all around. From a unit base that comprises two large tents and an assortment of lorries, a track leads down into the valley where a number of crew members, scattered on the mountainside, slowly come into view.

Beside them, a Bedouin village set has been constructed. Extras sit in huddles in front of mud huts and tents that circle a well, with palm trees standing beside a small stream. Sand and straw cover the ground.

It’s here where some early scenes from the story take place, featuring a young Bedouin girl called Shirin and her mother, played by Nicole Chamoun (Safe Harbour, On the Ropes). What follows is murder, mystery and mayhem as the story takes Phryne between London and Palestine.

After freeing the now grown-up Shirin from her unjust imprisonment in Jerusalem, Miss Fisher begins to unravel a decade-old mystery concerning priceless emeralds, ancient curses and the truth behind the suspicious disappearance of Shirin’s forgotten tribe.

Rupert Penry-Jones (Spooks), Daniel Lapaine (Zero Dark Thirty) and Jacqueline McKenzie (The Water Diviner) have joined the band of returning series regulars, which includes Nathan Page (Underbelly) as Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, Miriam Margolyes (Call the Midwife) as Aunt Prudence and Ashleigh Cummings (NOS4A2) as loyal assistant and maid Dorothy ‘Dot’ Collins.

The oasis forms just one part of the filming schedule in Morocco, with shooting also taking place in Erfoud, an oasis town in the Sahara Desert. On set, many of the crew are already taking regular shelter from the blistering morning sun, with director Tony Tilse (Serengoon Road, Wolf Creek) and cinematographer Roger Lanser (The Magic Flute) inside one tent watching the camera feeds on two monitors.

Writer Deborah Cox (left) and producer Fiona Eagger

“Part of being a cinematographer in Australia means we’re used to this sort of harsh light,” Lanser says of working in the desert surroundings. “But the difference you get here is you get these lovely contrasts with the costumes, the flesh tones and nature providing reds and earth colours for all these massive wide shots.

“We’re working with such beautiful actors and Essie’s a real trooper. She’s open to whatever makes it work for the shot. She’s happy-go-lucky and very much aware of how cinematography services her part in the show. She has to wear hats a lot – the hats are deliberately modified so that the face is framed beautifully. The costumes, the flesh tone, the make-up and the production design are all elements that come together to get the show this great look; it’s not just one single thing.”

Based on the novels by Kerry Greenwood, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries was created by producer Fiona Eagger and writer Deborah Cox, who are also executive producers. They conceived The Crypt of Tears as a standalone story after the series, though one that retains many of the themes and relationships that have made the original series so popular. They also launched a spin-off series, 1960s-set Miss Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, last year.

“We wanted to do sort of an Indiana Jones-type story with a bit of Romancing the Stone,” says Eagger of their ambitions for the movie. “Miss Fisher is a mix of adventure and murder mystery, and this film is probably tipping a little bit more into adventure. We’re still trying to satisfy the murder-mystery audience and the audience that want to come for the romance between Jack and Phryne.”

Both Eagger and Cox have experience in features, with Eagger noting that the size of the Australian television industry means many actors and crew operate in both mediums. Their preparation included looking at other TV-to-film crossovers and seeing where they both failed in order to avoid similar traps. So, after a few drafts of the script, Eagger and Cox sought advice from John Collee (Hotel Mumbai, Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World) about what to focus on in the transition from television to film.

The relationship between Phryne and Jack (Nathan Page) is a big part of Miss Fisher’s success

“Writing for television, you write for ongoing characters,” Eagger says. “You have progression in a relationship slightly, but you really want your characters to be the same. Whereas in a film, you’re doing a much bigger arc for your character. It’s the emotional world of finding Jack, and where do you take that? So with the television series, you could make that last for eight hours or 13. But in a film, you have to give a complete experience.”

Davis is certainly impressed by the scale and ambition of Miss Fisher’s move to the big screen. In costume as Phryne, with her trademark haircut, she says returning to the character is “like getting on a bicycle,” though the script will swap pedal bikes for motorbikes, camel rides and a set piece on top of a moving train carriage as it hurtles through the Palestinian countryside.

“She’s full of joy,” the actor says of Phryne. “She’s a fighter for the underdog, she’s a changer of rules. She’s super naughty, and her naughtiness is often on behalf of someone else. She drives a fast car, she can fly a plane, she can speak lots of languages, she can dance any dance that needs to be danced. She’s a great lover of men and a great fighter for women’s rights and human rights but in a very positive way.

“She’s such a joyful life force, and you do get completely influenced by the character you’re playing. To be her is to be in joy and to be curious and to be interested. She’s a fun person to be around so she’s a fun person to be inside.”

Davis is also an integral part of the team behind the scenes, working with Cox on the script and offering opinions during casting. “Even though Deb is the writer, we’re all wrangling, changing ideas, pulling characters out, merging characters and changing how they’re how relationships work,” she says. “It’s a pretty low budget to do a period action film, so there’s been some fantastic, amazing parts of it that have had to go. But then, all of a sudden, there’s just nothing there, and that’s just not good enough – so we go, ‘What can we do?’ and I make lots of suggestions and they say we can’t afford it.”

Parts of the movie were filmed in the Moroccan desert

As Phryne’s professional and personal sparring partner Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, Page is equally effusive about returning to the world of Miss Fisher and fanning the flames of the pair’s affectionate but often contemptuous relationship.

“They just can’t click back immediately into the world we left them in [several years ago], so they come together but they’re not expecting to be here under these circumstances,” Page explains. “Things get pretty dire out in the desert. There’s going to be some tension, which inevitably there has to because you can’t just go for the frisson alone. That’s the wonderful thing about these two characters, that there is that tension and one of them has to bend a little. Usually it’s Jack.”

Page says he has been surprised by the international success of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, revealing fans of the show have travelled to Australia to watch him in theatre shows. Notably, the A$9m (US$5.6m) budget has been boosted by A$1m raised through a crowdfunding appeal, which offered fans from all over the world the chance to become an extra or join the cast read-through. But why has it struck a nerve with audiences?

“Number one, it’s the era – it’s beautiful,” he says. “It has that nostalgia to it. You’ve got that scenery. I don’t think it takes itself too seriously at all; there’s a certain kitsch to it that works. But it’s still manages to address some issues here and there. The Phryne-Jack frisson is one of the key elements, so you’ve got all this action taking place but then you’ve got this side thing going on.”

A new face alongside the regular Miss Fisher cast is Izabella Yena as the grown-up Shirin, who joins Phryne to help solve the mystery at the centre of the story.

“Shirin is a soldier who has been through unimaginable trauma,” she says. “It just becomes so much for her that, a decade later, she’s risking her life to find out what happened. That takes incredible courage and bravery. That political backbone she has is there throughout the whole film and it really defines her.

Davis describes her character as a ‘joyful life force’

“Like Miss Fisher, she’s a feminist, and that is what the series has always championed. Shirin fits that really well and speaks to a really contemporary audience base and young women. It’s the kind of role I’d want to watch on TV and be like, ‘Yay, there’s a young girl my age who looks like me, who is changing things and making a stand and has a voice and isn’t being silenced because of her environment.’”

The film marks one of Yena’s first screen roles, the actor having graduated from drama school in 2016 before appearing on stage in Melbourne. She first auditioned at the beginning of 2018 and, after a callback, was told she had secured the part. With filming now underway, she describes Davis as her “guardian angel” on set, welcoming her into the show’s family.

“She knows the world better than anybody so as soon as you step on set, she’s there, Miss Fisher’s there, the world of Miss Fisher’s there and you just step into it,” she explains. “On the first day of shooting, I was first up and I was a little bit nervous. This is my first film, so it’s a baptism by fire. We were in the make-up van and she grabbed my hands and was like, ‘You’re going to be great. Just take a deep breath. You know, no matter what happens, just do your thing. Know that you know the character better than anyone, and just relax.’ So that was really calming.”

With The Crypt of Tears forming part of what could become a trilogy, Eagger says the film’s ending is left slightly ajar with a view to what might follow, with her dream to set the next film in India during the British Raj. “If this is successful, then we could do more films as Indiana Jones has,” she adds. “We end with the beginning of another potential journey.”

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Beyond the headlines

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Six-part factual drama White House Farm revolves around a night in August 1985 when five members of the same family were murdered at the titular farmhouse.

Sheila Caffell, her twin six-year-old sons Daniel and Nicholas, and her parents, Nevill and June Bamber, were all discovered dead. Police officers originally believed Sheila, who suffered with mental health problems, had murdered her family before turning the gun on herself.

But Jeremy Bamber was eventually charged and convicted of murdering his parents, sister and nephews. He remains in prison and maintains his innocence.

In this DQTV interview, stars Freddie Fox and Mark Addy discuss their roles in the series, playing Jeremy Bamber and DS Stan Jones, respectively. They talk about their own memories of the murders and how they were covered at the time by the media, and remark on how the series serves as a study of 1980s society in terms of police procedure and the support available for people suffering mental health issues.

They also discuss the weight of responsibility playing real people and Fox’s decision not to meet Jeremy Bamber.

White House Farm is produced by New Pictures for ITV and distributed by All3Media International.

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Out of the woods

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Welsh noir Craith (Hidden) finds new shades of light and dark in a fresh urban setting for its second season, but with new terrors to uncover, the crime drama promises to be as menacing as ever.

Much of the success and allure of gloomy Welsh crime drama Craith (Hidden) comes from the fact the show reveals the murderers very early on.

In fact, the killers are revealed in the first episode of the second season of the breakout drama, allowing its creators to explore why people commit such heinous crimes rather than distracting the audience’s attention in trying to solve the crime throughout the season.

“Using the ‘whydunnit’ as opposed to ‘whodunnit’ mechanism allows audiences to delve into these characters’ lives and to understand why they have done these really terrible things,” Craith producer Hannah Thomas tells DQ. “Once that baggage is removed from the audience, it can free them to really dive into the story, the nuance and to explore the world we’ve created.”

A ‘whydunnit’ mechanism allows audiences to delve into characters’ lives

The BBC Wales and S4C series, which debuted last year, again follows detectives Cadi John (Siân Reese-Williams) and Owen Vaughan (Siôn Alun Davies) as they try to solve the gruesome murder of an elderly man in North Wales. Craith’s second season picks up nine months after the first installment ended, with both major characters having gone through life-changing events.

Cadi is dealing with the aftermath of her father’s death and going through the grieving process, but she has also received a promotion to detective chief inspector ¬– a career move, she is told, her late father would have been proud of.

The character has become such an iconic and popular protagonist that producers brought on Reese-Williams as a consultant much earlier in the production phase this time around so she could contribute her ideas to the drama’s progression. The show’s directors, Gareth Bryn and Chris Foster, were also invited to contribute to development in earlier stages than season one.

Siân Reese-Williams as Cadi John

“Siân is such an integral character and I can really trust her opinion and her instincts,” Thomas says.

In the meantime, Owen’s coping with life as a first-time father as he and his wife struggle to adjust to their new lives with a newborn baby.

Thomas explains these “profound changes” have reshaped the characters not only personally, but also professionally. “They’re both more empathetic and compassionate because of going through these life changes, which will have some kind of impact and change you.”

Once again produced by Severn Screen with backing from distributor All3Media International, Craith’s latest season has moved away from the previous backdrop of the scary isolated house in the middle of the woods but is still based in rainy North Wales in a town called Blaenau Ffestiniog. While there is more light and shade this season as it is set in different locations around the town, the fact that the events unfold amid a backdrop of mountains and slate quarries adds to the grim feeling of the series.

Detective Owen Vaughan played by Siôn Alun Davies

The constant rain and short days made it very challenging to shoot, especially for continuity. But the apocalyptic feel of the series helped set the tone for the brutal murder and subsequent investigations.

“It’s really jagged and austere, and it suffocates you because the mountains are all around,” Thomas says. “What’s really interesting is, in North Wales you are in some places that are extremely beautiful but then telling a dark story like this one against that backdrop is quite incongruous and it really stays with you.”

Another on-set challenge is the fact that the series is shot back-to-back in English and Welsh, with S4C airing the Welsh version and BBC1 Wales and BBC4 airing a bilingual cut. Young actress Annes Elwy (Little Women, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams), who plays the troubled teen Mia Owen, expected the transition between languages to be far more complicated, except for when it had been a long day on set.

“Sometimes if you’re really tired you get confused… and you see the other actors’ faces and you can tell you’ve probably gone for the wrong language,” she says.

Her character also has a different backstory in the Welsh and English versions purely because of the language choices. But Elwy admits there is a different approach to the same scenes because of nuances in the languages and for the actors it can have a completely distinct feel.

Annes Elwy plays troubled teen Mia Owen

One example is that in the Welsh version, she attends a Welsh school and speaks Welsh at home and with friends. But in the bilingual edition, “Mia comes from an English-speaking home and goes to a Welsh school but chooses to socialise in English with people who do speak Welsh,” she says. “So it’s quite fun to play those different versions.”

Her co-star and chief protagonist, Reese-Williams, agrees. She says memorising a four-page interrogation scene in two languages can be difficult, but that challenge keeps it fresh for her as an actress.

“There’s a different vibe to the two languages, which I think is imperceptible onscreen. There’s a different flow to the people you’re playing and it’s quite exciting,” Reese-Williams says.

Thomas points out that the English version is actually bilingual as viewers will get to see characters converse in their first language as well as English, arguing it accurately reflects how the Welsh use language every day.

“Craith is obviously the Welsh version and Hidden is the bilingual version and it’s lovely because it’s reflecting the makeup of Wales and how we actually speak the language,” she says.

The cast and producers clearly have a good relationship that translates onscreen, especially for the two detectives who have a respectful and honest professional partnership. It was important to foster good onset chemistry to help each other through filming under extreme weather conditions, while portraying some very morbid story lines.

Thomas believes the strength of Craith lies in the fact it doesn’t judge any of its characters, but rather the show allows viewers into their lives.

“Exploring every character in depth and their motivations shows nothing is black and white in life –I don’t think there’s such a thing as a good person or a bad person,” she adds. “We’re all various shades of good and bad. That’s what’s great about this show – it explores those nuances.”

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Blind ambition

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Swedish actor Julia Ragnarsson talks to DQ about financial thriller Fartblinda (Blinded), in which she plays a journalist tasked with investigating her married lover.

After appearing in one of the biggest films of the summer, Sweden-set horror Midsommar, Julia Ragnarsson is now leading the cast of eight-part drama Fartblinda. That the series is launching hot on the heels of director Ari Aster’s film reflects the way the two productions were filmed back-to-back, with Ragnarsson jumping from one to the other over an intense eight-month filming schedule.

In Fartblinda (known as Blinded internationally), she plays financial journalist Bea Farkas, who, in pursuit of her next scoop, detects irregularities in ST Bank’s trading department – a matter made more complicated by the fact she is having an affair with the bank’s CEO Peder Rooth (Matias Varela), a married man.

It’s in this ethical and moral malaise that much of the drama takes place, with Blinded placing financial thriller and relationship saga side by side. Ragnarsson’s Bea is a compelling character through which to follow the story, while her white blonde hair marks her out as an edgy, perhaps rebellious figure within the straight-laced newsroom.

The actor, best known for playing police trainee Olivia Rönning in Swedish drama Springfloden (Spring Tide), joined the Blinded cast just days before heading to Budapest, Hungary, to film Midsommar after she was invited to audition for the show. Filming for Blinded then began less than two weeks after Midsommar wrapped.

In Blinded, Julia Ragnarsson plays financial journalist Bea Farkas

“It was strange. I just jumped on a train and went into the audition room but I did not know what this was and hadn’t read the script. I didn’t know anything!” Ragnarsson admits of the audition process. “Matias was already cast and then the day afterwards, they said I’d got the part. It was an extremely quick process. Everything happened so fast, so I was a little nervous when we started filming. I was like, ‘Am I prepared enough for this?’ I don’t really remember a lot about the first couple of weeks, it’s just like, ‘Which country am I in? What am I doing? Why’s my hair white?’ It was very quick but extremely fun.”

Bea’s hair makes her stand out immediately, marking a stark change from Ragnarsson’s usual brunette look. To ensure continuity, a hairdresser visited the set every three weeks to ensure the actor’s natural roots didn’t begin to show through.

“It’s rare you do a big change like that. I’ve always had pretty long hair that’s a natural brown colour,” Ragnarsson says. “This was an opportunity to make a big change, but at one point my hair started falling out – it just melted. So it was interesting! But it helps a lot for a character to make a drastic change.

“I feel like in Swedish cinema and TV, you have to look like a very common or average person. We don’t do anything to stick out. They want it to be very plain, normal, low key, like it could be anyone. But in this case, they wanted to go the opposite way, which was refreshing and fun. Also, with my clothes and styling, it could be something different. There are so many shows being made, you want it to feel a bit different.”

Bea finds herself tasked with investigating her lover, bank boss Peder Rooth (Matias Varela)

The series has been adapted from economics journalist Carolina Neurath’s book of the same name, which is based on real events. However, Ragnarsson says she didn’t read the book before shooting in order to avoid that story clashing with the plot of the show. Instead, she worked alongside directors Jens Jonsson and Johan Lundin to build Bea’s character based on the scripts by Jesper Harrie, Maria Karlsson and Jonas Bonnier.

“I had the opportunity to try different things on set and was very free to try something new,” she says. “They’re extremely generous when it comes to that sort of thing. That’s what’s fun about what I do; even though it’s hectic, you have some time to play, which I think is very important.”

Produced by FLX (Quicksand, Bonusfamiljen) for Nordic streamer C More and Sweden’s TV4, Blinded also represents the first major investment in the region’s drama by distributor All3Media International. Ragnarsson believes the show has a fresh style that will make it stand out.

“It’s not a cop show, which it tends to be if you look at [other Swedish series such as] The Bridge and Wallander,” she notes. “Not a lot of people really know what is going on in the financial world. It’s very closed and secretive, even for journalists. You have to start digging to find out what’s going on.

Director Jens Jonsson (left) on set with Varela

“This is about a private, niche bank but we’re starting to see now there’s a lot of weird shit going on with bigger banks, and I think the setting is interesting. It’s about tons of money, good-looking people, greed and how far [people will] go for the sake of money, or how far you go not to get caught. It’s just as intriguing and exciting as a cop show when there’s a serial killer on the loose, but we’ve seen that many times before.”

The most interesting aspect of the show is the internal conflict troubling Bea, who wants to do her job but is also in a relationship with the person she must investigate. Flashbacks reveal the origins of the relationship between Bea and Peder, showing that their affair is not simply a short-lived fling and that they have feelings for each other – to the detriment of Peder’s wife, Sophie (Julia Dufvenius).

“So do I fuck him over and potentially reveal a huge scandal that will take my career to a whole other level, or am I going to stick with this person, even though I don’t really know if he’s lying to me or not?” Ragnarsson says. “She decides to find out if he’s lying. It’s a very thankful thing for a character to have that conflict. It’s a suspense thriller but it’s also a love story and a relationship drama. It’s not just about the bank and the newspaper and the war between them; it’s also a war between these two people who are in love and might end up hating each other.”

Filming was split between Riga, the Latvian capital, and Stockholm. But despite the rapid production process, Ragnarsson says walking the right line through the Bea’s morale maze was the most challenging aspect of filming the series.

The drama airs on C More and TV4

“I wanted the audience to understand how Bea makes this decision to start investigating and basically screw the person that she loves, and how her work and her profession are just as important as, or maybe more important than, this married man,” the actor adds. “So there are so many things that make it difficult. My challenge and my responsibility as an actor was to try to portray that.

“We’re going to see different sides to Peder, too, not just his flattery. It will be interesting to see what people think and if they’re rooting for us as a couple or they hate us both.”

Fartblinda launched with its first two episodes on C More earlier this month, before entering a weekly release schedule. TV4 will debut the drama on Monday.

“I hope this will be a nice mixture of a relationship drama together with this financial world, the investigation stuff and also the thriller elements,” Ragnarsson adds. “It gives the show some extra spice. It’s always fun to watch people in love.”

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Getting Blood to flow

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Sophie Petzal, writer of Irish drama Blood, reflects on a pivotal scene in this psychological thriller about a woman who returns home to her estranged family following her mother’s death. The series is produced by Company Pictures in association with Element Pictures and distributor All3Media International for Virgin Media Television in Ireland.

From the earliest days of storylining Blood, we had written up on the episode two whiteboard, in bright blue marker: ‘LINE OF DUTY DINNER SCENE!!’

Sophie Petzal

You’ll often find playful abbreviations in a writer’s notes – an instantly evocative reference to jog the memory and conjure the tone and feel being striven for in a particular scene. This seemingly jocular nod to one of my and producer Jonathan Fisher’s favourite shows began as just that. But as the sequence developed and unfolded, the reference proved to be one of our most influential starting points and became the key to unlocking the subversive crime drama flair we yearned to inject into the domestic and seemingly ordinary world of Blood.

The scene in question takes place after the funeral of Mary Hogan, wife of Jim – played by Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar. The couple’s daughter, Cat (Unforgotten’s Carolina Main), has returned home to rural Ireland after her mother’s sudden death following a fall by the garden pond, circumstances she finds suspicious.

Once the crowds had dispersed from Mary’s wake, I knew we would have a quiet, ‘After the Dance’ sequence where our core family members would be sat together, eating leftovers, decompressing and grieving, and it was at this moment that I knew Cat would finally, openly confront her father.

Though it is perhaps the most hilariously inappropriate moment conceivable, Cat has learned by now that it is too risky to confront Jim alone, so she has waited for a moment where the family are together, where she can present the discrepancies and secrets to Jim in full view, so he will have – to her thinking – no choice but to answer them.

Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar as Jim in Blood

Instead, Jim turns the tables on Cat, asking her the question he knows will hurt her the most, the very question that ironically, she has been asking him this whole time – ‘Where were you?’ But when Jim asks the question, he is not asking for an alibi. He is asking, ‘Where have you been all these years? Where were you while your mother was dying?’ It speaks to the very heart of Cat’s guilt, a potentially crippling counter-move.

Perhaps by now, the Line of Duty reference makes sense, referring to the infamous 20-minute interrogation sequences in Jed Mercurio’s BBC police drama where anti-corruption unit AC12 fastidiously present their findings and their theories, only to have the tables turned on them by a questionable yet capable suspect.

At the outset, the aim for this scene was for Cat to put Jim on the spot, and for Jim to turn the spotlight back on his daughter. I wanted the audience to be left torn between the two, trusting no one. That I always envisaged Adrian in the role of Jim when writing this was only an amusing fraction of the motivation for the Line of Duty reference.

What I hadn’t quite anticipated was just how this scene would take on a life of its own, and rather than – as I always worried about – fall into the TV drama trap of ‘normal woman suddenly becomes Sherlock Holmes,’ became one of our most delightfully human and kitchen-sink family moments. It was a sequence that delivered twists and tension, and subversions in the vein of a crime drama, but also all the family dynamics – the drunken, overwrought explosions and black humour of domestic drama.

In the writing of this show, it was in this scene where the tone of Blood finally came alive. This was instrumental in the writing and re-writing of this episode and every other episode until production.

Carolina Main plays Jim’s daughter Cat

I vividly remember this scene being read aloud by our full cast at the readthrough. These are often horrifying experiences for writers. You lose all sense of perspective and instead hear every dud line, every missing plot detail. It can be excruciating. But I remember watching our incredible cast read this scene and forgetting I had even written it. I was just spellbound. Watching Adrian stare across the table at Carolina, asking her, ‘Where were you, Cat?’ I remember eyes lighting up around the room. Stolen glances. It was an audience and players moment, the moment where everyone catches the glimpse of the show we’re trying to make – if we don’t cock it up.

Across all productions, there are peaks and troughs. You watch through rushes that work and others that don’t. You learn to roll with the punches, to trust the process. You learn to know you can make things work. But this scene was always our fulcrum, in whatever form, be it a readthrough, an on-set rehearsal, a set of rushes or a first cut.

This was the scene we would watch when times were tough to remind us of the show we were trying to make, of the way we wanted our audience to feel. There never felt to me a scene more representative of Blood than this dinner confrontation sequence and, as such, it will always have the place closest to my heart – alongside, of course, Line of Duty…

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Midsomer love-in

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Airing in more than 200 countries, Midsomer Murders is celebrating its 20th season on television this year. DQ visits the set of the popular crime drama, which boasts some of the strangest deaths on screen.

At its heart, Midsomer Murders can be described as a traditional murder mystery – but there’s nothing orthodox about the way the show’s plethora of victims meet their grisly end. The long-running British drama, which ushers in a remarkable 20th season in 2018, has seen victims drown in a cauldron of soup, electrocuted while riding an exercise bike and poisoned by a tropical frog.

Even more bizarre was the death of a woman crushed by a wheel of cheese, while another killing was the work of a headless horseman. One man died after being hit by bottles of vintage wine while he was pinned to the ground as a human target.

But that’s part of the charm of the long-running series, which delicately blends stories of serious crimes and its light-hearted tone to concoct an antidote to the darker, more brutal crime series on television.

It also continues to strike a chord around the world, with the new season of the ITV series already picked up by ABC (Australia), DR (Denmark), FTV Prima (Czech Republic), SVT (Sweden), VRT (Belgium), Sky (New Zealand) and Acorn Media (US). LA 7 (Italy), Fox (Portugal), RSI (Switzerland), ZDF (Germany) and France TV, meanwhile, have renewed their long-running deals for the show with distributor All3Media International.

“My personal favourite was [season 16’s] Wild Harvest, where a man is tied to a tree, covered in truffle oil and eaten alive by wild boar,” reveals leading actor Neil Dudgeon, who has played DCI John Barnaby for the last seven years. “It’s not the sort of thing where you think, ‘That could have been me.’ It’s a really twisted and bizarre way of killing someone but it’s kind of fun. We’ve never gone in with people getting bashed over the head with a shovel. Mostly the writers try to come up with the most exotic deaths they can, which I think is part of the fun of the show.”

Midsomer Murders stars Neil Dudgeon and Nick Hendrix during filming

It is a sunny June 2017 day at a secluded building, surrounded by woods, on the outskirts of north-west London when DQ finds the Midsomer cast and crew preparing to shoot the final scenes of season 20’s third episode, Drawing Dead, which centres on a comic-book convention featuring scores of new superheroes imagined by writer Jeff Povey. There are no capes or masks here, however, as DCI Barnaby and DS Jamie Winter (played by Nick Hendrix) have joined new pathologist Dr Fleur Perkins (Annette Badland) in the lab to discuss her forensic findings after examining the latest victim’s body.

“We generally finish in the police station and mortuary, which is a good thing because it usually just involves me and Nick explaining the plot to each other,” Dudgeon jokes. “On odd occasions, we’ve had to do the police station stuff at the beginning of the episode, which is a bit of a car crash because we haven’t been to any of the locations, we haven’t seen any of the murder scene or met the other characters. We’re just explaining something we’ve barely got a handle on. So doing it at the end is much preferred.

“We’ve spent most of the last two weeks on a lovely village green with a big marquee and various stalls and stands with extras all dressed up as new superheroes we’ve invented for the purpose of the show. All these people come to this village where they celebrate all things comics and this terrible thing happens. Then while we’re on the trail, somebody else bites the dust.”

Dudgeon describes Midsomer, set in the fictional eponymous county, as a police show that’s less about the police and more about the characters the detectives meet during their investigation, each with something to hide. “Everybody’s got secrets but only one person is lying about the fact they’re actually the murderer, and that feeds Barnaby’s interest in all of the characters,” the actor explains. “I’ve always liked that the police aren’t very interesting. [Creator] Betty Willingale’s idea was for an antidote to the police shows of the time where it was about having an interesting policeman, whereas this is not – he’s not an interesting policeman, he’s happily married, goes out to work and investigates murders, then goes home and puts his feet up.”

Dudgeon joined the series to replace original star John Nettles, who played DCI Tom Barnaby (John Barnaby’s cousin, owing to the fact the series is known as Inspector Barnaby in many overseas territories) for 13 seasons. Between them, they have worked alongside several partners, with Hendrix joining the main cast ahead of season 19. His move to Midsomer came as the actor sought to step into a leading role, having previously appeared in The Crown and Marcella.

Dudgeon says his favourite death in the series is in season 16 when a man is eaten alive by a wild boar

“It’s a fun job and every episode’s different – every four weeks you get a new group of actors, a new story, locations and fun things to do,” Hendrix says. “It has to have jeopardy but, whereas in a gritty drama I’d jump out of the way of something, hit my head and knock myself out, in this I’m face-down in manure. This particular season is quite a lot funnier and the producers have encouraged us to embrace that tongue-in-cheek humour a little bit more. There is a line, because it’s still murder, it’s still crime, but they’ve embraced that fun side of it, which is what I think people love about the show.”

For executive producer Jonathan Fisher, who joined the Bentley Productions show in September 2016, Midsomer Murders is underscored by its great sense of theatricality, best seen in the various deaths invented for the show. He’s also keen to keep pushing the idiosyncrasies of the characters that appear in each episode to create an eccentric, larger-than-life ensemble.

Early in the development of each episode, Fisher will meet with the writer to discuss story ideas, usually beginning with the world the episode is set in. As well as a comic-book convention, season 20’s six episodes include a monastery that has been converted into a brewery, a chocolatier and somewhere the producer describes as a cross between a circus and a pig farm.

“We like to have a specific world per episode,” he says. “We try not to repeat where possible and we’ve got Ian Strachan, the coproducer who has been on the show for 18 years, who’s fantastic at identifying what we’ve done before. He’s a great source of knowledge for us.”

But that’s just the starting point for creating what Fisher stresses are very tautly plotted murder mysteries, each with nine or 10 potential suspects. “It’s harder than people think to get that right because they’ve all got to stay in play until the denouement at the end, so you can’t just eliminate one by one. Then we try to add some characteristic Midsomer flair and colour where possible.”

Midsomer Murders originally starred John Nettles (left), who exited the show after 13 seasons, and Daniel Casey, who left in season seven

With the trend for gritty and often brutally violent crime dramas on screen, it’s Midsomer that provides a “refreshing” alternative, Fisher believes, describing the show in terms of its escapist quality and sense of joy. “The crime drama genre is pretty crowded at the moment and we’re really set apart from that in the fun of what we do,” he continues. “At all times, murders are taking place but the thing about Midsomer is those murders can be fantastically theatrical and elaborate, and that’s something we pride ourselves on.

“I can reveal one death from season 20 – we’re going to do our first ever ‘death by chocolate.’ So our poor victim is going to have his head encased in chocolate and made to look like an Easter egg, which I think will be really good fun. The challenge for me is to get the deaths as colourful and imaginative as possible, but everything has to be underscored by an emotional truth. So we allow our killers to kill in these theatrical ways but, ultimately, come the denouement at the end, the motive has to have some emotional truth to it.”

As Dr Perkins, Badland joins the cast this season playing a pathologist she describes as a strong lady who knows her own mind and enjoys winding up DCI Barnaby and DS Winter. But she admits that she tries not to get too attached to any of the characters or guest cast members, as she doesn’t usually see them on set unless they’ve met an untimely end.

“I meet characters at the read through and then they’re dead by the time I see them again,” she deadpans. “So they’re lying on a slab or somewhere uncomfortable in the countryside. Usually they’re cold, tired, grumpy or laughing, or it’s a double for the body. That is odd because I come in and do my four or five days in a [shooting] block but the crime’s happened, so you don’t have an emotional journey. You don’t have those connections. You come in and work – she works it out.”

Fleur’s arrival is a step change for Midsomer, with Fisher explaining that those behind the show wanted to move away from the romantic frisson between previous pathologists and the detective duo, instead casting a more established actress to shake-up proceedings. “She’s got some fantastic, acerbic putdowns so I think she’s going to bring a new energy to the show,” he says of Badland’s arrival. “The scenes we’ve shot with her have been fantastic, a real treat.”

The series will have run for 122 episodes by the end of season 20, with 333 deaths up to the end of season 19 (the producers wouldn’t confirm how many more there will be this season). Nevertheless, the show’s longevity continues to surprise Dudgeon, who first signed up not knowing how many episodes he would be involved in. “It’s all got a bit out of control and it goes on and on,” he says. “They keep saying they want more and I’m powerless to resist.”

Similarly, Fisher believes there’s no reason why Midsomer can’t run for another 20 years. “The thing about Midsomer is it has a timeless quality to it, so while new trends will come and go, Midsomer remains constant and at the top of its game,” he says. “The fans love it and keep coming back to it. People do forget Midsomer is a relatively large county, so the death rate is not ridiculously high, but obviously that’s the running joke and we’re fine with that. We’ve far from run out of murder methods. There’s plenty left to go.”

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Road trip

The Director’s Chair, , , ,

Mystery Road is the latest Australian feature film to hit the small screen. Series director Rachel Perkins discusses working with stars Judy Davis, Aaron Pedersen and the stunning Western Australian landscape in a show that blends cop drama and outback noir.

Picnic at Hanging Rock, Wake in Fright, Wolf Creek, Romper Stomper – in the last few years, Australian drama has revisited some of the country’s most famous feature films and novels to bring new series to TV that are either sequels or reimagined interpretations of the original versions.

Now comes Mystery Road, a spin-off from Ivan Sen’s award-winning feature films Mystery Road (2013) and Goldstone (2016). The six-part series, which will air this year on the ABC, sees Detective Jay Swan (played by Aaron Pedersen) assigned to investigate the mysterious disappearance of two young farm hands on an outback cattle station. One is a local Indigenous footy hero, and the other a backpacker. Working with local cop Emma James (Judy Davis), Jay’s investigation uncovers a past injustice that threatens the fabric of the whole community.

“I’d long been an admirer of Ivan’s work so I was very excited about doing something that was a homage to that but then extended the idea further,” director Rachel Perkins says. “Having an opportunity to expand on the original film and make this noir outback cop show that dealt with both race relations and history was a really interesting crossover for me.”

Rachel Perkins

Produced by Bunya Productions and distributed by All3Media International, Mystery Road was filmed on location in Wyndham, the northernmost town in Western Australia. The harsh landscape meant Perkins was able to take the show’s characters and turn up the heat on them, literally, in this small community where everybody knows each other’s business.

“It was so hot shooting in Wyndham, 40°C most days, but the landscape is this incredible backdrop,” she says. “It really is an outback town; it’s almost like a frontier town and it has all of those qualities television has when it’s really great these days. It’s not just the story you’re interested in but the world. So we looked at series like Fargo and True Detective and looked at where they were set and how they really conjured the places. We wanted to set this story in a place that was very distinctive. So far, people have been amazed by the setting and that’s been part of people enjoying the series, that experience of the Australian outback in its most incredible form.”

The location was also appropriate for its history of racial conflict, a theme that bubbles beneath the surface of Mystery Road. “It’s not a cop show, it’s not just really about two missing boys. It’s about black and white Australians and how the simmering tension of history sits under our relationship,” Perkins adds.

Fronting the show alongside Pedersen is Hollywood star Judy Davis, who recently appeared in FX series Feud. The actor’s familial history with the region meant she had a deep understanding of, and interest in, the story. “I try not to think too much about how incredibly talented she is because otherwise it might be overwhelming,” Perkins says of Davis. “But I couldn’t have asked for a better collaborator. She was really terrific and I’m not sure what I’ll ever do now because I’ll want her in every role.”

Best known for films and documentaries such as Jasper Jones, Bran Neu Dae and First Australians, plus TV series like Redfern Now, Perkins says she enjoys telling stories across a range of genres. “But I’ve particularly loved working on Mystery Road because it’s a genre piece, it’s a TV cop drama but it has all this interesting, rich historical context, shot in one of the most shootable places in Australia,” she adds. “The landscape was so extraordinary. And with people I loved working with, so it’s very special to me. Having helmed all six episodes, it was wonderful to work across a canvas that was so large, and to be able to see the story through the whole evolution and its various chapters was such a privilege. I feel very lucky.”

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Jack of all trades

The Writers Room, , , , , , ,

As British drama Kiri makes its US debut, writer Jack Thorne tells DQ about penning the four-part miniseries and his approach to writing, with upcoming projects including The Eddy and His Dark Materials.

Widely regarded as one of the busiest people working in television, Jack Thorne hardly has a spare moment. So it’s no surprise that when DQ catches up with him, the writer is in New York combining promotion of his four-part miniseries Kiri with preparations for the Broadway transfer of his West End play Harry Potter & the Cursed Child.

Having worked on Skins and the Bafta-winning The Fades, Thorne is best known for collaborating with Shane Meadows on miniseries trilogy This Is England, as well as The Last Panthers, feature film Wonder and an episode of dystopian anthology series Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams.

More recently, he penned National Treasure, which sought to examine the fallout from a public figure being accused of historical sexual assault. But his most recent television outing is Kiri (pictured above), which launches on Hulu on April 4 and examines the disappearance of a young black girl (Kiri) who is soon to be adopted by her white foster family, and the trail of lies, blame, guilt and notoriety that follows.

Jack Thorne

Central to the drama is social worker Miriam (Sarah Lancashire), who arranges for Kiri to have an unsupervised visit with her biological grandparents, leading to her abduction. The series reunites Thorne with National Treasure producer The Forge and distributor All3Media International.

“It was quite stressful,” Thorne says of writing Kiri. “I was so happy with National Treasure and I feel very confident now in it in terms of what it said. So I was very anxious Kiri had something to say and what it had to say was something worth saying. The first draft of Kiri was one of the worst drafts I have ever handed in. [Executive producer] George Faber took me to dinner to say, ‘This is brilliant but a mess.’ He was being nice by saying it was brilliant but there wasn’t anything brilliant about it. Then started a long process of excavation.”

Writing Kiri was particularly troublesome because it was so personal, Thorne explains. His mother was a social worker, while he and his wife have looked into the adoption process, so transplanting those experiences and memories into a television drama proved to be a “scary process,” particularly when the transracial element opened up even more avenues to consider.

He continues: “All you have got to do as a writer is tell the truth but sometimes telling the truth is really tricky, and on Kiri it was. You’re dealing with a wasp’s nest of issues and that wasp’s nest is full of other people’s scars. Episode two sent me mad.”

Faber was also instrumental in helping solve the conundrum of the story’s structure, which shifts perspective between several different characters in a narrative method known as a relay race. “I thought about how to structure it and that idea came about, which is what Abi Morgan did brilliantly with [BBC drama] Murder. If I’ve got another show that can be my model, that makes me feel better,” he says.

Kiri stars Sarah Lancashire as social worker Miriam

Thorne says he works out a lot of knots in the storyline by writing through the problems, though he admits he needs to know the end of the story and what he thinks about it before he turns out a script. National Treasure proved to be an exception to the rule, however, when it came to deciding the courtroom verdict.

“I remember the moment when we realised [central character] Paul was not guilty as being quite late on, but we were talking about how we felt about him all the way through. He was guilty for a long time. It was just in that moment, going, ‘It’s a drama about someone who’s going to be found not guilty,’ and what that means and what that says.”

“In Kiri, it was about who did it and what that means. When it became clear it was about someone’s indignation that someone else wasn’t grateful for what they’d given them and that psychopathic anger inside him, we thought, ‘OK, that’s the truth we’re getting to, so how does every episode ask a question that leads to that ending?’”

Like National Treasure, the themes of blame and responsibility and the role of the media run through Kiri, so although it wasn’t billed as such in the UK (where both shows aired on Channel 4), the two miniseries form the first two instalments of a planned trilogy. In the US, it will air under the title National Treasure: Kiri.

Robbie Coltrane in National Treasure, the first part of a trilogy from Thorne that includes Kiri and an as-yet-unrevealed story

“Hopefully we’re going to get a chance to do a third one, and hopefully [the link] will become clear,” Thorne explains. “It was always in my head as a trilogy of different things. Season one was gender, season two was race. Season three I know what it is but I don’t want to curse it [by revealing too much] and hopefully it will all join together in a way that makes sense for people. I’ve got a story but I’m trying to work out how to make it function.”

Work only seems like work when you’re not enjoying it, and that’s certainly the view Thorne takes, admitting that he takes on so many jobs simply because he likes writing. He points again to Morgan who, speaking on the Royal Court podcast, describes the moment she realised she had taken on too much work was when she had 14 projects on her slate and felt like she was constantly having affairs with each one, forcing her to strip back her workload.

“I don’t feel I’m quite in that place,” Thorne admits. “But I recognise the danger and it’s important not to overexpose. I’m also working out how, in an age when inclusivity is becoming increasingly important, to use my voice to make things better, rather than just propagate a world that is over-dominated by white men. I’m doing a lot of thinking about that at the moment. Visibility has always been very important to me and my logic has always been if I can get those faces and stories on TV, then I’m doing alright. I’m just working all that out.”

For television, Thorne is now developing The Eddy, a musical drama for Netflix with La La Land director Damien Chazelle, and the highly anticipated adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials triology of novels, first announced by the BBC back in 2015. Thorne came on board in April 2016. Season one, based on the first book, Northern Lights, introduces Lyra, an orphan whose search for a kidnapped friend uncovers a sinister plot involving stolen children, all set in a parallel universe where science, theology and magic are entwined.

Thorne also penned The Last Panthers

“We’ve been together working on it for so long now. I’ve written all eight episodes of the first season and am rewriting them now,” Thorne says. “It’s been joyous so far, working out how to do it to make it work.

“There’s huge pressure. My job is to tell Philip’s story as well as I can. In doing so, I have to make decisions [about what to keep or cut out]. There are constant battles in how we tell these stories as well as you possibly can, but we’ve got a lot of time to tell them as well. Hopefully we can please everyone. That’s the aim but I’m tremendously scared.”

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Best friends forever

ON LOCATION, , , , , , ,

Phyllis Logan, Miranda Richardson and Zoë Wanamaker star as lifelong friends in Girlfriends, Kay Mellor’s long-time passion project about “women of a certain age.” The trio and Mellor reveal the origins of the series and discuss the changing attitudes toward older actors.

Ageism and the lack of roles for older women has long been a concern for actresses in Hollywood and around the world. Then when they do land a part on screen, they often find themselves cast as wives, mothers or grandmothers.

But a new six-part television drama from the pen of Kay Mellor is set to put “women of a certain age” front and centre. Girlfriends, which launches tonight on ITV in the UK, tells the story of friends Linda, Sue and Gail as they struggle with the responsibilities and inevitable changes that come with growing older, bound together by the same friendship they have shared throughout their lives.

“I wanted to put women centre stage,” recalls Mellor, speaking on the set of the series in Leeds, West Yorkshire in August last year. “I went to a seminar at the West Yorkshire Playhouse many years ago where a lot of women were saying they only ever play the nana or the mum and no one speaks for them. There was a need to give women a voice and women of a certain age a voice. I have written Band of Gold and Playing the Field that have put women centre stage before, but women of a certain age and looking at the complexities of their life and what they juggle. They are a sandwich generation looking after kids, kids’ kids and their mothers. We all know what that is like juggling things.”

Mellor is on a hot streak at present, having last year written Love, Lies & Records for BBC1 and executive produced Overshawdowed for digital network BBC3. She also wrote and directed a musical based on her award-winning ITV television series Fat Friends, which is now touring the UK.

Downton Abbey star Phyllis Logan plays Linda

ITV also embraced Girlfriends, something Mellor admits surprised her, explaining that she was gearing up for a battle to get this story of women “past their middle-50s” on air. The writer even expected the broadcaster to request the characters be aged down into their 40s, but that note never arrived.

“I really thought I was going to have fight for this one but it wasn’t that hard a fight,” says Mellor, who is also lead director on the show. “It’s been coming along at the same time as  In the Club and The Syndicate [Mellor’s BBC1 shows, debuting in 2014 and 2012 respectively]. They were always moving forward but this is my passion project. I sit and watch these guys and have a little weep and I have a little laugh. And I am thinking that if I am doing that as the director then I think, dare I say it, it’s going to be good.”

Girlfriends sits particularly close to Mellor as the characters and relationships at the heart of the story are based on her own friendships, with Linda in particular based on the woman who has been the writer’s best friend since she was three years old.

“We used to live over the road from each other, she is the most wonderful person,” Mellor explains. “I don’t think I would be the writer I am if it hadn’t been for her. She supports me in everything I do. She is a very special, lovely woman. She lightens up a room when she walks in it and she certainly lightens up my life.”

On screen, Linda is played by Phyllis Logan (Downton Abbey), with her childhood friends Sue and Gail portrayed by Miranda Richardson (Mapp & Lucia) and Zoë Wanamaker (Mr Selfridge) respectively.

Girlfriends is the latest drama from prolific writer Kay Mellow

The story begins in the aftermath of the apparent death of Linda’s husband Micky, as the three friends find themselves back together and facing their own problems, from money troubles, a looming divorce and the loss of a high-powered job from age discrimination, to juggling the responsibilities of caring for their grandchildren and ageing mothers.

“It’s unusual because usually you are tagged on as someone else’s appendage, whether it’s a mother, an auntie or a wife in the background. So it’s nice to be right at the forefront of it all and the men are the add-ons, as it were,” Logan says of her part in the show. “It’s lovely to have three women as protagonists.

“It was so exciting to read it, as it’s very much women of a certain age and it’s all about them and their struggles and their highs and lows, but at the root of it is their friendship that binds them together. They come to each other’s aid, they really do.”

Looking back on a career that has spanned roles in Downton, The Good Karma Hospital, Lovejoy and Silent Witness, Logan says Girlfriends is a refreshing change from the way television dramas are usually cast.

“It was always that men get cast and their wives are 15 years younger, and that’s still there, but it’s nice in ours because it’s the other way around. There is slightly more [opportunity now] for women over 50. People have discovered that women of a certain age are quite interesting and they still have a viability, a sexuality and an attractiveness about them. Maybe people are beginning to cotton on to that – let’s hope.”

Miranda Richardson as successful and intelligent Sue

It was also a relief for Logan not to have to wear a corset or any other period costumes after six seasons playing Mrs Hughes in Downton.

“Period drama is a different thing altogether,” she says. “It has a much more leisurely pace but to a stultifying point. This is fast, and it is fantastic working with Kay. I loved the script, and when she said she was directing, I thought it was fantastic because what better person is there than the person with the vision of what she wants it to look like? It’s brilliant, it’s great fun.”

Playing the highly successful and fiercely intelligent Sue is Richardson, who was keen to work with Mellor. “She has such a fabulous record in writing for women,” the actor observes. “She is humane, so everyone is a hugely rounded character, but she likes to see everything from the women’s point of view. She’s always cooking – she has about five things on the go at the same time.”

During the series, which is produced by Rollem Productions and distributed by All3Media International, viewers will see Sue face challenges both at work and in her private life, seemingly unaware of the life-changing events looming ahead. And the fact that her story and the events and characters in the series are all mash-ups of real-life people and stories adds to the appeal for Richardson.

“They are all amalgams of people,” she says. “I thought of someone the other day who made me think of Sue. There is high drama in the way she operates with groups of people. She is always on show but all of these people have vulnerabilities and they mask their vulnerabilities but you know they are there in different ways.”

Zoë Wanamaker completes the leading trio as Gail

Meanwhile, Gail deals with a mother suffering from the early stages of dementia, a jailbird son who moves in with her and her husband, and a child from an old relationship. But she is able to juggle her responsibilities with the support of her friends.

“Very early on, we make relationships with people in our lives so even if you don’t see them for a long time you pick up where you left off,” says Wanamaker. “If you have that kind of connection, it really goes on. You accept them for what you had together and what you carry on in life, and that way they support each other.”

While she admits hers is a part she wouldn’t normally have done, Wanamaker says she was sold on the project after reading the first three scripts, noting that the opportunity to work with Mellor and play a role not often seen on television was too good to turn down.

“Have you seen how many women are on television now?” she adds. “The last 10 years have been incredible; the American stuff has been all women and very beautifully written and there’s more in this country too, at last. Open the doors. I think it’s a very optimistic time for women.”

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In plain sight

ON LOCATION, , , , , , , , ,

Dark and broody drama Craith (Hidden) looks set to keep the international spotlight firmly on Welsh drama. Co-creator Ed Talfan discusses making the bilingual crime series, which goes against the grain by revealing its villain from the beginning.

The landscapes in North Wales are breathtaking. With lush green hills and mountains standing on the edge of Snowdonia National Park, overlooking the Menai Strait, a stretch of water that separates the mainland and the island of Anglesey, the region must be a director’s dream.

Point the camera in any direction and the scale and atmosphere of the environment surely fills the lens. At least it would if you could see it. On the wintry November day DQ travels to Anglesey to visit the set of S4C drama Craith (known as Hidden in English), the weather is biblical. Rain and gale-force winds are lashing down on anyone that dares to stray outside, turning roads into rivers and largely hiding the towering peaks from view.

Unperturbed, the cast and crew soldier on, seemingly unaware of the conditions surrounding them. The day’s filming is taking place at the Ddraig Goch (Red Dragon) Garage, which offers passing motorists the chance to refuel and pick up supplies from the small shop adjacent to the forecourt, found a short drive from the village of Dwyran.

When the cameras start rolling, a small blue van pulls up in front of the shop. Inside sit a man and a young girl, Dylan Harris and his daughter Nia. After a short conversation, Dylan gets out of the van and comes into the shop, its shelves stocked with a range of household items and an array of Welsh flags adorning all corners of the single room.

Craith stars Siân Reese-Williams as DCI Cadi John

It’s a small but important scene, providing a window into the home life of Dylan, who, in contravention of typical murder-mystery rules, is revealed at the start to be the show’s villain.

The story juxtaposes the viewpoint of Dylan, played by Rhodri Meilir, with that of DCI Cadi John (Siân Reese-Williams), a police officer drawn back to her childhood home due to her father’s ill health. But after the body of a local woman is found in a remote mountain river, her world – and the world of those around her – is changed forever when it transpires there may have been more than one abduction.

Produced by Severn Screen for S4C and BBC Wales, the gritty crime drama is executive produced by co-creators Mark Andrew and Ed Talfan. The producer is Hannah Thomas and the series is distributed globally by All3Media International.

“Dylan’s a guy who’s had a terrible lot in life,” explains Talfan. “He’s had a very difficult domestic situation and comes from a family that’s toxic. The series doesn’t seek to use that as an excuse for what he does; he pays the price for what he does. Hopefully across the series we see a portrait of somebody who is in his own agony and inflicting that agony on others.

“There are moments, particularly in the first half of the series, where what comes across is a vulnerability and, within that, there is a flicker of likability, which is uncomfortable – it should be uncomfortable – but in the same way the best baddies always have their own charisma about them. We spend a lot of time investing in him and the world he inhabits because often these characters are people at the fringes of the drama. We just wanted to go on a journey with him.”

Co-creator Ed Talfan (left) with Rhodri Meilir, who plays Dylan Harris

In contrast, Talfan describes former army officer DCI John as a straight-talking detective who’s comfortable in her own skin and extremely good at her job.

“There’s a version of the crime genre where detectives have super powers, these magic moments where they’re better than everybody else,” Talfan continues. “Cadi is someone who’s bloody good at her job, is really hardworking and does the hard yards. All the police you talk to, it’s not about eureka moments. It’s about putting the work in and actually visiting the evidence, revisiting it and being like a dog with a bone. There’s a tenacity in her that’s real, rather than a Captain Underpants flies in and says, ‘I know what the problem is here.’ For me, that’s reductive and a bit tedious.”

The creative approach to the series is a far cry from 2013 Welsh drama Y Gwyll (Hinterland), which has gone on to become a global success. Many of the crew who worked on that show have now reunited for Craith, which dispels Hinterland’s case-of-the-week format.

Talfan, who also co-created Hinterland, says it was clear from the outset that they didn’t want to conceal the killer in Craith. “That’s not the game we’re playing,” he explains. “We’re up front very early on about who the abductor is and the question is getting to understand that character because he’s not just a two-dimensional evil-doer. We get to understand his world and see how he works and how he lives alongside his mother and his daughter, and the dynamic that unfolds when he loses a girl [who becomes the first victim], which is what kicks the series off, and then abducts a new victim. It’s a portrait of an unfolding crime from the point of view of the police and the criminal.”

Part of the reason behind following this format was a desire to do something completely different to Hinterland, in a way that allowed the creators to delve deeper into the cast of characters than is usually possible in a single 90-minute procedural.

DQ visited the Craith set on a grey day for a scene set at a petrol station

“It was great to be able to get a really good ensemble and know that all of those characters were going to travel across eight hours,” Talfan says. “It made it more fun to write, more fun for the actors to play and more satisfying for the directors as well, because they sometimes find it frustrating when they’ve got a visiting actor who’s got two days on set in which to film four scenes.”

While the story format differs between Craith and Hinterland, the two dramas are united by the way they are shot, with filming taking place back-to-back in Welsh and English. The Welsh version will debut on S4C on January 7, 2018, before a bilingual version airs later in the year on BBC Wales. BBC4, which previously acquired Hinterland, has already snapped up rights to Craith and will also air the bilingual version in 2018.

Quite simply, each shot is filmed in Welsh and then, if required, it is immediately repeated in English. “It’s an organic process that comes from the creators,” Talfan says, noting that there are no stipulations requiring a certain amount of the bilingual version should be in English.

“Actually, certain characters in the story world will speak Welsh and some won’t. So you might have an episode that balances 60/40 English but then you might have one episode that is considerably more Welsh, just because that’s where the story is at. It’s true bilingualism, rather than a country where some people speak English and some people speak Welsh.”

Notably, some scenes play out with no dialogue at all, but that wasn’t a conscious decision to avoid reshoots, Talfan insists. “It’s genuinely the kind of drama Mark and myself and director Gareth [Bryn] love, so those elements are shot once. For me personally, because my experience of being Welsh is bilingual, if you were making a single version it would possibly be the bilingual version because that’s reflective of how I live in the country. But there are people in Wales who speak Welsh pretty much all the time and you may find some programme makers would love to make solely Welsh programming.”

Meilir’s Dylan is revealed as the show’s antagonist from the offset

Development began in December 2015, with Andrew leading a scriptwriting team that includes award-winning Welsh novelist Caryl Lewis and Bafta Cymru-winning writer Jeff Murphy. Treatments and a script bible were completed in 2016, with all eight scripts finished by early 2017.

“It’s been quite intense,” Talfan admits, though he describes shooting in North Wales as a joy, despite the changeable weather. “We shot some of the series in South Wales for practical cost reasons and then some of it in North Wales, so those are the logistical challenges. Then because it’s a bilingual show, you need a bilingual cast and we’re always trying to bring in new faces. You’ve got no baggage with them [from previous roles] so you surrender to the characters. Celebrity casting applies to a lot of high-end drama. I understand why it happens, and there are very good reasons for it, but there’s a lovely sense of quality between the ensemble and the fact the audience don’t know them.”

Since its launch in 2013, Hinterland has certainly helped to put Welsh drama on the map, drawing comparisons to the wave of Nordic noir crime dramas over the last decade. But beyond the creative or production process, Talfan says the biggest game-changer for Welsh drama in the post-Hinterland landscape has been a psychological one.

“If we wanted to do something with a certain level of ambition, which requires a certain level of budget, we would always go to London and ask a broadcaster for their support and the green light,” he explains. “If for any reason they passed, usually you would get back on the train to Cardiff and think the project was dead in the water. But on Hinterland, the thing that changed everything was the back-to-back production that had first been done in the early 90s and doing it in tandem with a partner like All3, because they could see the show would sell and they believed in how we would deliver it.

“It’s completely changed how we approach projects now. If you get a ‘no’ from one organisation, you don’t think all your work’s in the bin; you think there is a way of financing this, you just need to be internationally minded and look at where those partnerships are. So for people working in the regions, it’s been hugely important because it used to feel like you could only get a ‘yes’ out of London. It doesn’t feel like that anymore.”

A seriously dark, broody and compelling drama, Craith is well placed to repeat Hinterland’s international success and, together with other recent S4C dramas such as Bang and Un Bore Mercher (Keeping Faith), ensure the international spotlight continues to shine on Welsh drama, whatever the weather.

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On the Record

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Kay Mellor puts her characters – and the audience – through the emotional wringer in BBC1 drama Love, Lies & Records, which stars Ashley Jensen as a working mother juggling her family life with the daily dramas inside a registry office.

The foyer of Dewsbury Town Hall is awash with crew members, its floor covered in cables and wires running between lighting rigs, cameras and monitors.

Banners promoting weddings, naming ceremonies, proms and parties are stationed in various enclaves or next to the large marble columns dotted through the room. A visitors desk is positioned beside the main doorway, a security guard sitting behind it.

Grand pictures of former mayors are hung across the walls of the elaborate Victorian building, which is filled with wood-panelled rooms, ornate painted ceilings and stained-glass windows.

When the cameras begin rolling, however, the setting becomes Greater Leeds Registry Office. Director Cilla Ware, helming the second block of filming, watches behind a monitor as Ashley Jensen, wearing a black leather jacket and black dress, and a suited Kenny Doughty walk across the room in conversation. Extras are waved forward into the shot, criss-crossing past each other as they walk in and out of doorways and stairwells.

Love, Lies & Records stars Ashley Jensen as registrar Kate

This is the set of BBC1’s emotional and heart-warming Love, Lies & Records, in which Jensen (Extras, Agatha Raisin) plays registrar Kate, a working mother who must juggle her personal life with the daily dramas of births, marriages and deaths and the impact they have on her. Doughty plays fellow registrar Rick, with additional cast members including Mark Stanley, Adrian Bower and Mandip Gill.

Written by Bafta-winning scribe Kay Mellor (In The Club, The Syndicate), Love, Lies & Records is directed by Ware and Dominic Leclerc and produced by Rollem Productions in coproduction with Acorn Media Enterprises in the US. All3Media is handling international distribution of the show, which launches on November 16.

The idea for the six-part series first sparked inside Mellor when she had to go to Leeds Town Hall to register the death of her mother, only to return to the same venue for a friend’s wedding just five days later.

“We were in the same place with the same registrars and it made me think about their lives and about everything that went on in this town hall,” she reveals, describing the building as “a hub of emotion.”

Mellor continues: “Who are these people who are one minute marrying people and the next they’re registering a death? How do they cope with that emotionally? Do they have home lives, and how does that impact on their home lives?

The Thick of It’s Rebecca Front (right) plays Kate’s office nemesis

“Kate’s looking after her daughter, who you see picking up strange things on her phone, while her son’s asking to get new trainers, and the next minute she’s registering a death and she’s got a woman in front of her who’s in floods of tears. How do you deal with that? It’s tough, it’s hard to do that. But every registrar I spoke to – and believe me, I spoke to a lot – people find their jobs absolutely fascinating and rewarding emotionally.”

The range of stories Mellor discovered from her research means 98% of the series is based on real events, she says. A wedding that takes place inside a hospice in episode one is just one example of a plot point based on a true story, while the show also touches on topical issues such as immigration, trafficking, cyber-bullying and poverty.

Throw Kate, a maverick who cares little for rules and procedure if it means finding a happy ending, into the mix and you have the potential for more drama than you can shake a particularly sharp stick at.

Unusually for a series written by Mellor, Love, Lies & Records is less of an ensemble drama, despite the large supporting cast, instead focusing mainly on central character Kate, who in the opening scenes discovers she has beaten office nemesis Judy (Rebecca Front) to a promotion. As such, Jensen is barely off screen, whether in scenes set at home surrounded by her family or within the walls of the town hall. Having previously seen Jensen audition for pregnancy drama In The Club – a role she didn’t ultimately land – Mellor was impressed enough to put Jensen at the top of her list for Love, Lies & Records.

The show is 98% based on true stories, according to Kay Mellor

“She’s clearly a leading lady and I’d gone out to her for In The Club to be part of an ensemble,” Mellor says of the Scottish actor. “But I think because of where she’s been, on the other side of the pond [in Ugly Betty] and she’s done Agatha Raisin, she’s a true leading lady in lots of ways. She’s never grand, she’s all embracing and lovely. She’s got a hell of a lot of lines to learn because she leads every scene.”

Inspired by female-led series including Madam Secretary, Doctor Foster and Danish dramedy Rita, Mellor adds: “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely just to follow this woman on her journey and let it open out?’ You see some of her staff, her home life and how that affects her. I just love it when it’s multi-layered and then getting glimpses of the other lives of the other registrars and her family.”

Jensen admits she has long been a fan of Mellor’s work, which she describes as “television people want to watch.”

“With Kay’s writing, it’s so human but it’s done with humour. It’s so honest and a bit painful at times and funny and just very real,” Jensen says. “Her writing is just so wonderful to play. She does make it easy to learn and I’ve had a fair amount to learn. So far, so good.”

The actor also says she’s “ready” to lead a primetime drama. “Because I started at the bottom, I was the day-player that came in for a day, so I’ve done all that and I feel as if I’ve very much served an apprenticeship and it’s not like I’ve suddenly come in [to be a leading actor]. I think I know how to conduct myself and I very much feel that ,on set, it should be a collaborative thing. It’s a worry if it’s not, because every job is absolutely vital. We’re literally all working together for an end gain and I just happen to be the person in all day every day, but that’s fine. I feel ready for it.”

Jensen is best known for roles in sitcoms Extras and Ugly Betty

Another actor arguably more recognisable for appearing in comedies than dramas is Front, best known for comedic turns in shows such as The Thick of It but more recently playing it straight in Humans, Doctor Thorne and War & Peace.

“I could see it in her,” says Mellor of casting Front as the officious and fastidious Judy. “She’s a comedian but I’ve seen her play [dramatic] parts where I thought it would be lovely if I could just get a bit more of that.

“Judy’s been working as a registrar for a long time and has been passed over [for promotion] twice. She’s turning a little bit bitter. All that was gorgeous to write, but down the line they do go on an interesting journey. They’ll never be best buddies [Judy and Kate] but they end up in a better place than they were in.”

Front says she loves straddling comedy and drama, and is particularly attracted to roles that mark a departure from her previous work. “What drew me to [Judy] is just she’s a really complicated woman and is someone who’s made her life unnecessarily complicated,” the actor explains. “That’s what I’m imagining for her backstory – that everything she leans on to make her life easier is somehow actually making her life more complicated. She’s not a bad person at all; she does some really horrible things but she’s not a terrible person and I just think she’s one of those people who ties themselves up in knots and makes wrong decisions.”

Love, Lies & Records hits the screens during a prolific streak for Mellor that began earlier this autumn with BBC3’s online drama Overshadowed, which she executive produced. Then airing in the New Year is Girlfriends, an ITV drama starring Phyllis Logan, Miranda Richardson and Zoë Wanamaker, which Mellor has written and directed. Meanwhile, she has also written and directed Fat Friends: The Musical, which is based on her long-running drama about a group of friends trying to lose weight.

“Kay’s writing has a connection with everybody,” says Doughty of Mellor’s ability to create dramas that stir the emotions. “She’s got the ability to really connect with people on a human level.

“The writing is funny, heartwarming and heartbreaking, and you do get all of that. But this is a different Kay – it’s not The Syndicate or In the Club. It’s got a different grittiness. It feels different. It’s Kay but a slight departure for Kay, and that’s what really excites me.”

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Suspicious minds

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Channel 4’s one-off drama Unspeakable follows a mother investigating whether her new boyfriend is in an inappropriate relationship with her 11-year-old daughter. Filmmaker David Nath and stars Indira Varma and Luke Treadaway discuss a story lifted straight from the headlines.

You’re a divorced woman in a new relationship with a handsome younger man when an anonymous text arrives on your phone, saying: “There is something going on between your boyfriend and your daughter.” Then a second text arrives: “It’s not right.” What do you do?

Do you approach your new boyfriend, knowing that if you are wrong he will be appalled that you even suspected him? Do you ask your 11-year-old daughter – and if so, how? These questions are at the heart of Unspeakable, a new one-off drama for Channel 4.

Created, directed and produced by Bafta-winning documentary maker David Nath of Story Films, a production company he set up with fellow journalist Pete Beard a year ago, the story could not be more current. Indeed, the project came out of several news stories in which accusations both real and false have been levelled against people from anonymous sources.

Nath is best known for his documentaries including Bedlam and The Murder Detectives, but he decided this story was best told via a drama.

David Nath (left) and Pete Beard of Story Films

“It’s fictional but this is based on real stories that have happened,” says Nath, who made his first drama, The Watchman (also for C4), just a year ago. “The consequences of a sexual allegation are quite terrifying. Initially I did look at making a documentary about it, but it became clear quite quickly that it wouldn’t be possible. The anonymity would have made it difficult, but even if you had got past that I felt the power in these stories is when the protagonist – in this case a woman – goes through a period of uncertainty, where she questions everything. That is difficult to represent in a retrospective film; I wanted to show it as it was happening.

“It was based on a real story I heard where an allegation had been made from an anonymous source and there was this window where the mother didn’t know what to think. In the real story the window was only two hours, but I thought that period of doubt was so interesting. It shows an accusation can completely change your view and perception of someone you think you know.”

Luther and Game of Thrones star Indira Varma plays Jo, the woman who receives the mysterious text message just minutes after dropping her obviously upset daughter and son off to school. The tense 60-minute film, set over 48 hours, is a masterclass in acting as you see her character go through the gamut of emotions as, at first alone and too terrified to talk to anyone about the information she has just received, she tries to figure out what is going on. Once Luke is home from work, she has to work out what she now thinks of him.

“The first third of the film is like an inner monologue representing a journey of increased suspicion,” says Nath. “Uncertainty creeps into terror as every seemingly innocuous thing becomes loaded as she looks for clues. The nature of that accusation is something you would find very difficult to ignore or compartmentalise because of the nature of what it is.

Unspeakable stars Game of Thrones’ Indira Varma as mother Jo

“Once the poison is in there, it is very, very difficult to remove. It has a hold over you. Your mind starts to play tricks and you selectively recall things. I wanted there to be a strong sense of her rattling around her house looking for clues.”

Varma admits she was worried that the first third of the film, being solely focused on her, would be “boring” but she quickly realised how dramatic the situation was. “The nuances are so clever,” she says. “This is someone who wants to stay in control of the situation and not get ahead of herself. She is on this knife edge because she wants to be a responsible parent but she is also a woman who is in love and wants to hold on to her relationship. You see her wrangling with this dilemma and that makes it a very interesting thing to play.”

Nath says he tried to get into the head of how a woman would react by asking female friends, who all said – as the daughter in the story was staying at her already-paranoid father’s house – they would confront the boyfriend. “But they struggled when I asked them how would you confront them, how would you say the words: ‘Did you do this?’”

“What worked so well is that it is all very subtle,” says Luke Treadaway, who plays Jo’s boyfriend Danny. “There is no dastardly twiddling of a moustache. Danny doesn’t know what is going on. He thinks he is having a normal weekend until Jo tells him about the text.

“The thing about the script was even as you get to the end you don’t know what is going to happen. The writing is so subtle that the ending might well have been different.”

Luke Treadaway stars alongside Varma as a man who may or may not be in an inappropriate relationship with Jo’s 11-year-old daughter

During the making of the film, which debuts on C4 this Sunday and is distributed by All3Media International, the team thought deeply about this particular crime. “I have come to think that men have somehow lost the trust of women,” says Nath. “There is an anxiety about new relationships. People who abuse children are manipulators, which is why [Jo] would be so worried. In society there is a presumption of guilt that has to be disproved, which makes the currency of this particular allegation very, very strong.”

Although this is his second short film, Nath says making a drama is very different to documentary-making and admits he found it nerve-wracking. “It’s more exposing,” he says. “With documentaries, you have a small crew and you direct them by being invisible and putting people at ease, while in drama it’s the opposite. You have to be quite demonstrative and everybody from the props to the lighting and the actors all want you to reassure them and make decisions. You can’t hide in any way when you are directing a drama.”

But, of course, dramas also hold plenty of advantages over documentaries – chiefly in that  you are not confined by what you’ve been able to film. “The thing that is the same is that both are absolutely about telling stories powerfully and the best that you can,” says Nath. “In documentary you might not have all the elements; you only have the elements you have been able to gather. In drama you can construct any story you want, so the responsibility is on you tell it perfectly. That is a different pressure.”

But despite Nath’s fears, Varma says she didn’t even notice he was practically a novice. “It’s hard to believe it was his second drama, as he was brilliant,” she says. “He told me that, as a journalist, he can tell what makes a good story, and he was right. And what was particularly brilliant was he was able to articulate what he wanted, which not all directors can do. It’s an intricate story and I felt David let me do what I wanted, but then he would tweak things very delicately. I felt very led. The drama is so precise, but that is also the joy of the piece.”

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End game

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The writers of The Missing turn the hunt for a serial killer on its head with a new drama that starts at the end and works backwards. DQ chats to Richard Dormer and Jodi Balfour about starring in mind-bending crime drama Rellik.

Since they burst on to the scene in 2014 with The Missing, Jack and Harry Williams have joined the ranks of the most sought-after writers in television.

The success of that series spawned a sequel two years later, while they were also behind crime drama One of Us and acclaimed comedy Fleabag. Forthcoming commissions for their Two Brothers Pictures label include conspiracy thriller White Dragon and The Widow.

But now the Williams brothers find themselves in the unique position of having two series debuting in the UK at exactly the same time. Liar, which begins on ITV at 21.00 on Monday, is an emotional six-part drama that explores the consequences of a meeting between a teacher (Joanne Froggatt) and a surgeon (Ioan Gruffudd).

In the same slot over on BBC1, meanwhile, Rellik looks to be a show that will tear up the detective genre and leave viewers on the edge of their seats as the Williams brothers tell the story of a serial killer in reverse. Eagle-eyed fans will have noted the title is the word ‘killer’ spelled backwards.

Drawing parallels to 2000 film Memento, the perpetrator is caught at the beginning of the series before the drama moves back in time across six episodes to the very beginning, where the crime and the killer are revealed.

At the centre of the story is damaged and disfigured detective Gabriel Markham, played by Richard Dormer, who becomes obsessed by the hunt for the killer who scarred him in an acid attack. Alongside Gabriel is his partner Elaine (Jodi Balfour), who is described as a bright and intense detective who is eager to please.

With a cast that also includes Rosalind Eleazar, Paterson Joseph, Paul Rhys, Michael Shaeffer and Lærke Winther, the series is produced by New Pictures and Two Brothers Pictures for BBC1 and US cablenet Cinemax in association with distributor All3Media International.

It’s a sunny May afternoon when DQ arrives at the production base for the series – a dimly lit multi-storey car park in Stratford, east London, a stone’s throw from the Olympic Park.

The series stars Richard Dormer as a detective disfigured in an acid attack

Two Metropolitan Police officers are standing beside their motorbikes, ready to escort the crew onto the adjacent dual carriageway that will serve as the setting for a car chase. Nearby, a mint-green Nissan Bluebird is hooked up to the back of a truck as two cameramen settle in for the ride.

“It’s very original; it’s a completely original way of storytelling,” says Dormer, fresh from the daily chore of having his facial prosthetics removed. “We start almost at the end and work our way backwards to find out how all these characters came to be the way they’re presented at the beginning of the viewing experience. So it’s like a puzzle that comes together.

“There are so many red herrings, so many clues left throughout, but you’ve got to go backwards through it. That’s also very hard to do as an actor because we’re not shooting it in order, we’re almost shooting backwards and you’ve got to imagine what you’re feeling at the beginning, or is it the end? I’m confused – but it’s very interesting.”

Dormer describes his character as “not a typical cop,” and as someone who is very driven, intense and emotionally explosive. And from the beginning – which is actually the end – the hunt for the killer is a personal obsession for Gabriel. Viewers will see the acid attack play out midway through the series.

“He’s so driven to catch the person who did this that he comes back to work. He’s not psychologically, emotionally or physically prepared to do that, but he does it anyway,” Dormer says about Gabriel’s life-changing injuries. “That’s why the drama is so good, because you’re watching somebody unravel. He’s a pretty unpredictable, scary guy. He’s scary because of his absolute intense conviction. He’ll do anything and break any rule to get this guy who’s done this to him.”

Jodi Balfour stars alongside Dormer as police officer Elaine

Actors often say the toughest roles to play are those that are most similar to their real lives. Dormer agrees with that sentiment, describing Rellik as the hardest thing he has ever done, despite battling the undead in Game of Thrones and prehistoric wasps in the freezing environs of Fortitude.

“The weird thing with this person, I’ve discovered, is that I’m almost playing myself but in an altered reality, which is very interesting,” the Northern Irish actor explains. “It’s very strange. As soon as I hear my accent – I’m speaking in my own accent – I’m a different person but I’m not. Obviously I’m not a cop, but what if 20 years ago instead of coming to London to become an actor, I came over to become a cop? That’s how close it is to me.

“The one thing I’ve always done with every character I’ve ever played is I’ve crawled into somebody else, I’ve become this other thing, which is really liberating because then you have no fear of showing ugliness because you’re a different person. But if you’re playing yourself, it’s a lot rawer and can be very truthful, and that’s pretty scary. But that’s what it’s all about. It’s a scary story.”

It’s proven to be a particularly challenging role for Dormer, who admits he has struggled to switch off after a hard day’s filming and has found listening to classical music with a glass of red wine in hand helps him to unwind.

Peep Show and The Leftovers actor Paterson Joseph is also among the cast

“Otherwise,” he says, “your head is buzzing with all the emotions and thoughts and fears you’ve been feeling all day. If it feels very real, it’s done something to your psyche. It’s invaded some part of you and shaken things up, so it’s important to recognise what those things might be and put them to bed and remind yourself they’re not your problems.”

Sharing the screen with Gabriel is his police partner Elaine, who “rocks his world,” Dormer says. “She’s a very mysterious, exciting woman and he is attracted to her. He’s married, it’s very complicated!” he adds.

Playing Elaine is South African-born Jodi Balfour, who starred in Canadian drama Bomb Girls and US series Quarry before landing her part in Rellik. She will also be seen on screen later this year as Jackie Kennedy in season two of Netflix’s royal biopic The Crown.

Describing the appeal of starring in the series, Balfour explains: “So often what draws you to acting is those great two-hander scenes where you get to have a really in-depth conversation with someone. But in this show, any time that’s happening, the characters are usually playing against what they really want or they’re concealing what they’re thinking, so that’s been really fun.

“The other thing I wanted to do, which I hardly ever get to do, is just to play someone who’s quite tormented as a human being, and [Elaine’s] whole life has been pretty dark and difficult. I hardly ever get to play those kinds of roles, so that was really exciting.”

Balfour says she has also found it difficult to switch off after filming, so much so that she set herself boundaries during the shoot. “The most boring and laughable of which is I don’t really work at night, on the script or anything,” she reveals. “Obviously we work at night but when I was prepping and running lines, I didn’t work at night. Any time close to bed it really has been affecting my dreams and my sleep and all sorts of stuff. I have a completely separate life to this character and really work at maintaining that.”

Was she surprised when she discovered who the killer was? “I was pretty shocked,” the actor admits, adding: “I think everyone was. No one knew who the killer was for the longest time. Then slowly as people started finding out, it was really funny to see everyone’s reactions. For all of us who are on the inside of it all and knew all the dynamics, it was quite a shock so hopefully the audience will be even more surprised.”

Made up

While Richard Dormer points to the similarities between himself and his character in Rellik, one thing that certainly sets them apart is the horrific injuries Gabriel suffers from an acid attack.

The hugely disfiguring scars his character bears give him a route into his performance, but they also meant the actor could look forward to spending two hours every morning having the silicon prosthetics attached to one side of his face. He then spent another 30 minutes each evening having them removed.

Heading a seven-strong make-up team was make-up designer Pippa Woods, who began work three months before the show started production.

“I started researching actual acid burns, which is the most horrific kind of research you’ll ever have to do,” she tells DQ on the set of the series. “We got Richard from about three or four weeks before the actual shoot started so we could only get the ball rolling from then. So we were gathering images of things we liked and talking to the directors and producers to find out how they wanted it to look as well.

“When we got Richard, we sent him to get a life cast from [make-up effects expert] Kristyan Mallet, who’s been making prosthetics for Gabriel and Christine [played by Rosalind Eleazar]. Christian took the designs and sculpted bits and pieces, and those images go backwards and forward between all the different companies and directors and execs, and you try and piece it all together.

“We bought the moulds from Kristyan and we’ve got two full-time prosthetics artists: one who does make-up with me and one who’s always running the pieces in the workshop and painting them up and getting other bits ready for other things.

“Gabriel’s got a few different stages of his make-up. His main one that you see was sculpted with all the big moulds, and then there are different stages where he’s got a recovery mask on, which stops the face from stretching, so it stops a lot of the scarring. We made a few separate pieces that go into his hair and down his neck. Everything under the mask is just colour, just to stop pieces from sticking to the skin, and it cuts down the time a lot. It’s been ongoing because you keep tweaking things. Even now we’re still changing little bits.”

New prosthetics had to be created each day of shooting, with a dedicated ‘prosthetics bus’ on set to handle the different pieces as they moved different stages of construction.

“In the bus at the moment, there’s 10 pieces in a row all at different stages of being painted,” Woods notes. “So they have to be painted exactly the same, and then we just have to try to stick them on in the same place every day. We worked out [Dormer] has had 60 days in full prosthetics.”

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Peering into Bucket

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Bucket is a bittersweet series about a dying mother who embarks on an ambitious road trip with plans to tick off a preposterous bucket list, and her daughter who has no choice but to go along for the ride. Here, writer Frog Stone, who also stars with Miriam Margolyes, reveals the inspiration behind the four-parter, produced by Solution 3 with Company Pictures for BBC4 and distributed by All3Media International.

The story of this show began with another idea entirely. But then real life got in the way and everything changed.

I had finished a film in the US and during the typical actor’s post-shoot slump I posted on Facebook that I feared never working again unless someone made a Miriam Margolyes biopic. My height and hair made me a shoo-in, right? I’d sold scripts before, so maybe I should even write it, I thought. It was as a private joke but then TV producers picked up on the idea. After a wonderfully fun lunch pitching my ideas, the legend that is Miriam was on board. Then came the commissioners with enthusiasm and backing, and soon I was writing a script. Then my father died.

Writer Frog Stone (left) stars alongside Miriam Margolyes

Dad had cancer and died within three months of diagnosis. There was no big reconciliation, no meaningful talks and suddenly no time left to mend our tricky relationship. He was very frightened and angry. So was I. Things were easier when we avoided the big stuff and chatted about doing one last trip to his beloved Lake District. We never made it. But stories give everyone a second chance. And so Bucket was born: two characters struggling with life, death and each other on the pot-holed road to wish fulfilment.

I must say, the similarities to my life and family end there. Mim [played by Margolyes] and Fran [Stone] are their own distinctive characters but I think everyone will recognise the sweet-and-sour dynamic of parent-child relationships. I wanted to bring the personal and generational conflict to screen, as we rarely get to see complicated, flawed women like this. Love and fury, that’s real life; funny, painful and without a fixed genre, an age limit or a dress code. Fran is a repressed 30-something scared to start life and Mim is a feckless baby-boomer outraged that life might end. They are both frustrated but forever bonded. The two women are unique but it’s a universal experience. We’d all like things to be better, we all make a mess of it and that’s both very sad and very funny. Life has this unknown expiry date and Mim says: “What are we going to do about it? Carpe bloody diem, that’s what!” Fran is dragged along fearing the worst, but it’s the best thing that could happen for them both. Ticking items off the ridiculous bucket list begins an emotional journey, too.

Bucket: the story of ‘two characters struggling with life, death and each other on the pot-holed road to wish fulfilment’

But there’s never going to be a Hollywood ending for Fran and Mim. As my comedy hero, the genius Victoria Wood, wrote: “Life’s not fair, is it? Some of us drink champagne in the fast lane, and some of us eat our sandwiches by the loose chippings on the A597.” There’s a lot of that bathos in Bucket. Although I’ll never match her, like Wood I’m from Lancashire. Stephanie Beacham, who plays cousin Pat, told me I write “Northern.” I took it as a compliment. I think it means to yo-yo from the sublime to the ridiculous, find the light in the bleakness and moan about it too. (FYI, Stephanie Beacham can always find her light.)

The scripts enticed a terrific cast and we had a wonderful team on both sides of the camera. It was a real labour of love working on a tight schedule and moving from silly to solemn on a sixpence in the coldest weeks of the year. I made septuagenarian Miriam Margolyes strip off in sub-zero temperatures, but I gave her all the best jokes too. The serial element makes Bucket a little different from other comedies; there’s a chance to laugh, scream, sigh and, I hope, reflect too before we hit the brakes and leave Fran and Mim on a cliffhanger. The journey is never straightforward with these two, but unlike real life, I do know what happens next.

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Creative heavyweights step up development

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Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman

Fox in the US is developing a drama based on the 2015 Netflix movie Parallels.

Entitled The Building, it centres on a group of people who enter a skyscraper that transports them into parallel universes, which are similar to but not quite the same as our own. In one, for example, Russia has dropped a nuclear bomb on the US.

The idea is being adapted for TV by Neil Gaiman and Chris Leone (the latter wrote and directed the movie). Albert Kim, whose writing and production credits include Sleepy Hollow and Nikita, is the showrunner. The project caps off a busy year for Gaiman, who has also been adapting his novel American Gods for Starz.

Also in the news this week is Alan Ball, creator of HBO series Six Feet Under and True Blood. Ball is reported to be teaming up with HBO again on a series that will star Holly Hunter as the mother of a non-traditional progressive family.

According to Deadline: “Once a therapist in private practice, Hunter’s Audrey now reluctantly utilises her skills as a psychologist in the corporate world, balancing her more progressive personal philosophy with the need to make money. She is a smart, caring woman who believes she knows what’s best for everyone and has no problem telling them. But with her husband now fighting depression and her children mostly grown, she finds herself somewhat adrift.”

Holly Hunter
Holly Hunter

Other high-profile stories this week include the news that Sonar Entertainment has signed a first look deal with Robert Downey Jr and Susan Downey’s production outfit Team Downey. As part of the deal, Sonar and Team Downey are working on a project called Singularity. Also involved in the creation of the series is Anthony Michael Hall, who will star.

The deal is the latest link-up between Sonar and star talent. The company is also working with George Clooney and Tom Hardy, with the latter starring in upcoming period series Taboo.

Commenting on the new deal with Team Downey, Sonar CEO Thomas Lesinski said: “We are excited about Team Downey’s vision for developing and producing a broad scope of original premium content. [This] is another example of our commitment to forge creative collaborations with the most dynamic talent in the industry.”

In terms of commissioning news, US network NBC has renewed its military medical drama The Night Shift for a fourth season. The series, produced by Sony Pictures Television (SPT), follows the medical team at the fictional San Antonio Memorial Hospital. Season one of the show averaged around 6.5 million viewers, followed by 5.3 million for season two and five million for season three.

Night Shift
The Night Shift has been given a third season

At Fox, meanwhile, there are reports of a new dance drama being developed with director McG, who began his career in the music industry. The project, which sounds little bit like the Channing Tatum movie Step Up, is called The Cut and is set in a dance conservatory. It’s the latest in a line of Fox scripted projects with a musical theme – possibly inspired by the success of Empire. For example, Empire creator Lee Daniels has been working on a series called Star for the network, while last week we reported that Glee star Darren Criss was working with Fox on Royalties.

Also this week, it was announced that Phoebe Waller-Bridge, creator and star of BBC3’s Fleabag, is to write and star in a spy drama for BBC America. The network has ordered eight episodes of Killing Eve, a thriller about a psychopathic assassin and the woman hunting her. The show is based on a novella by Luke Jennings called Villanelle.

“[The show] is a brilliantly fresh take on the cat-and-mouse thriller from Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a major talent,” said Sarah Barnett, president of BBC America. “Underneath the deceptively simple and entertaining surface is a subversive, funny, obsessive relationship between two women, that plays out across some of the most and least glamorous locations imaginable.”

Bull
First-window rights to Bull in the UK have been taken by Fox Networks Group

It’s also been a busy week on the distribution front. Fox Networks Group (FNG) Europe and Asia, for example, has secured exclusive first-window rights to CBS legal drama Bull in the UK from CBS Studios International. This follows a previous deal that gave FNG rights to Bull in markets including Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Sweden.

Elsewhere, SPT has sold the much-anticipated new ITV period drama The Halcyon to broadcasters in Scandinavia, while Vimeo has continued its move into longform TV content. Among scripted titles that will now be available on its platform are All3Media International comedy Fresh Meat and seven seasons of Company Pictures’ cult youth series Skins, available globally excluding Australia.

Paul Corney, senior VP of global digital sales at All3Media International, commented: “Vimeo has a strong presence around the world with a great brand that reaches consumers in all key markets. Its team has a dynamic outlook on content delivery and we’re looking forward to working with them to bring more fantastic new shows to the Vimeo audience.”

Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag
Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag

In terms of new book rights deals, the big story this week is that BBC Worldwide-based indie producer Baby Cow has acquired the rights to Zadie Smith’s new novel Swing Time. Smith has been lined up to adapt the novel for TV alongside her husband Nick Laird.

Swing Time is Baby Cow’s first major acquisition since Christine Langan, ex-head of BBC Films, took over as CEO this month. She said: “Zadie Smith is the voice of a generation and Swing Time is a thrillingly ambitious story of friendship, rivalry and fame.”

Smith added: “I am absolutely delighted at the prospect of working with Baby Cow on an adaptation of Swing Time. Their extraordinary track record in both drama and comedy I have always admired from afar and it’s a thrill for me to get the chance to collaborate with [founder] Steve Coogan and Christine Langan.”

Smith burst onto the literary scene with her first novel White Teeth. Swing Time, only released this week, is her fifth novel.

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Spirited display from pay TV

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Outcast
Outcast was given a cross-platform launch

The success of movie franchise The Conjuring suggests the supernatural is back in business. After the original film came a spin-off called Annabelle, which grossed around US$250m worldwide. Then came The Conjuring 2, which recently topped the box office worldwide (except in China). And now there’s talk of a new movie spin-off called The Nun, which is based on The Conjuring 2’s demonic antagonist.

The TV business has also realised that ghosts and ghouls are fertile territory. In the US, HBO sister channel Cinemax has just launched Robert ‘The Walking Dead’ Kirkman’s new 10-part project Outcast, in which a young man searches for answers as to why he’s been suffering from supernatural possessions throughout his life.

Echoing recent trends, the show was given a cross-platform launch – starting two weeks before its official debut date (June 3). Aggregating the data from HBO/Cinemax platforms, YouTube, Facebook and Playstation 4 (all of which aired the first episode), the show was viewed around four million times – a record for Cinemax. With the show also generating a good response among critics and on IMDb (8.2), it looks like Kirkman could be in for another long journey.

The Enfield Haunting
The Enfield Haunting could come back to Sky in the form of a franchise

Sky TV in the UK has also decided there is a future in spookery. After the success of last year’s miniseries The Enfield Haunting, it has revealed plans to revisit the genre. Details are not yet clear but there are reports that Sky will revive the franchise as a series of 90-minute feature length dramas. It’s not obvious exactly how this will work as The Enfield Haunting was a self-enclosed story. It may decide to work with the same characters, or retain part of the brand (The XXX Haunting). But the fact that it is considering a feature-length format is interesting, since this is a growing trend among pay TV/SVoD platforms.

On top of Outcast, the HBO family has had a pretty good week in the scripted genre. Fantasy phenomenon Game of Thrones picked up the Jury Grand Prize at the Banff World Media Festival’s 2016 Rockie Awards. There was also good news for Damon Lindelof, who picked up Banff’s Showrunner of the Year Award. Lindelof, whose credits include Lost, is currently in charge of HBO’s acclaimed drama The Leftovers.

Feed the Beast
Feed the Beast stars David Schwimmer (left) and Jim Sturgess

The news was less positive over at AMC, where new restaurant drama Feed the Beast has had a lacklustre debut. Despite starring a talented duo in David Schwimmer (Friends) and Jim Sturgess (One Day), the show has seen its ratings slip badly after a reasonable first episode. The premiere attracted 976,000, but this was followed up by an episode-two audience of just 398,000 and an episode-three audience of 484,000. Its 6.9 IMDb rating is also discouraging.

Other shows in the news this week include Orphan Black, the cult sci-fi thriller that has been such a big hit for US cable channel BBC America and Canadian sci-fi channel Space. This week, just ahead of the season four finale, BBC America announced there would be a fifth season of the clone drama in 2017 – but that this would be the last.

Orphan Black
Orphan Black has been given a fifth and final season

“Orphan Black is a thrilling, genre-bending ride that has captured our fans’ imaginations and hearts like no other show,” said Sarah Barnett, president of BBC America. “Our genius team of actors, writers and producers have, time after time, taken us to a place of awe, delight and utter shock and surprise. Tatiana (Maslany, the lead actress) has been a complete revelation– hers is one of the most remarkable performances on TV –and she is joined by an extraordinary cast. We can’t wait to take our passionate audience on one final gobsmacking clone adventure.”

Co-creators John Fawcett and Graeme Manson added: “The past four seasons have been a phenomenal adventure and we are eternally grateful to our loyal fans who have loved our weird little show. We are thankful to our partners at Temple Street, and to BBC America and Space for their support and giving us the opportunity to end on a high.”

Also in the news this week is Filmpool’s constructed reality show Day and Night. Originated in Germany and sold as a format on the international market, each episode of Day and Night spans 24 hours in the lives of eight diverse young inhabitants of a trendy apartment in the heart of a vibrant metropolis. Although it is a drama, Day and Night adds to its authenticity by using amateur actors and real locations.

Day and Night Berlin
Day and Night Berlin

The show is sold abroad by All3Media International, which this week secured orders for more than 350 new episodes. RTL Hungary has just greenlit the highest number of episodes of Day and Night in one order (outside Germany) with 249 new one-hour episodes now set to air on RTL Klub. This brings the total episodes ordered for Hungary since its first airing in 2013 to more than 1000.

In Bulgaria, meanwhile, MTG has ordered another 140 one-hour episodes of Day and Night for air on the Nova channel later this year. Others countries where the show has done well include France (W9), Austria (ATV) and Slovakia (PLUS).

Lucy Roberts, formats sales manager for northern EMEA at All3Media International, said: “We’re delighted that Day and Night is continuing to go from strength to strength across the CEE region. The format is fantastic proof of Filmpool’s expertise in this genre, boasting scripts and characters that are always engaging and relevant to its target audience, and multiple story arcs and themes that keep viewers hooked across the whole series. Combine this with the ability to generate a huge buzz on social media and its diverse commercial interactive opportunities, and Day and Night represents a great proposition for broadcasters looking to target the youth audience.”

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Drama in demand at Mipcom

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Deutschland 83
Deutschland 83

A devastating flood at the start of this year’s Mipcom didn’t seem to affect the amount of business being done throughout the week, with the trade in scripted shows especially brisk.

One title that managed to rack up a number of sales was FremantleMedia International’s German-language spy thriller Deutschland 83, which was sold to Channel One (Russia), Sky Italia, Hulu (US), SundanceTV (English-speaking Canada) and Stan (Australia and New Zealand), among others. This follows on from previous deals with broadcasters including SundanceTV in the US, Canal+ (France) and Channel 4/Walter Presents (UK).

A coming-of-age story set in Germany during the Cold War, Deutschland 83 follows Martin Rauch, a 24-year-old East German native who is sent to West Germany as an undercover spy for the Stasi foreign service. The show is part of a broad trend in the TV business towards espionage-based thrillers – the trigger for which was probably the Israeli scripted format Hatufim (Prisoners of War), which was reinvented as Homeland in the US.

Occupied
Occupied

Other espionage-based shows selling well this week included Zodiak Rights’ Occupied, a Nordic series that imagines a situation in which Russia invades Norway to take control of the country’s oil industry. The show, which has debuted strongly in Norway, was picked up for broadcast in Poland (a country that also has an acute interest in Russian foreign policy).

Similarly, there was a lot of interest in Keshet International’s False Flag, which was featured in The Wit’s popular conference session Fresh TV Fiction. This Israeli series centres on five seemingly ordinary Israeli citizens who are accused of kidnapping a senior Iranian politician. It has been picked up by Fox International Channels – which is planning an English-language version via Fox International Studios and has also acquired the rights to the Hebrew version. The latter, which will air in 127 territories via FIC’s channels, is the broadcaster’s first non-English-language series acquired on a global basis.

FALSE-FLAG_KI_V12_1075X850_RGB_300DPIThere has always been a strong trade in non-English-language drama between countries where English is not the first language. But a big change in the business over the past few years has been the willingness of English-language broadcasters and platforms to air such shows. Netflix, Hulu and BBC4 in the UK can take a lot of credit for kickstarting this trend, but it has become a lot more widespread in the past six to 12 months.

One interesting development in this regard is Walter Presents, a foreign-language drama on-demand platform that is being launched in January by Channel 4 in the UK and its strategic partner GSN. Walter Presents was busy at Mipcom snapping up the rights to a wide range of non-English dramas. It struck a deal with German distributor ZDF Enterprises for a number of series, including 10-part Belgian black comedy drama Clan, which follows the exploits of four frustrated sisters as they plot to kill their obnoxious brother-in-law, and 10-part Swedish political thriller Blue Eyes. Also acquired from ZDF were eight-part crime drama The Team, six-part Polish crime thriller The Pack and Swedish family saga Thicker than Water.

The platform’s buying spree also encompassed deals with French content providers such as TF1 International and Film & Picture TV Distribution, plus 20 hours of Dutch-language shows from Netherlands-based Dutch Features Global Entertainment.

Rai Com, the commercial arm of Italian public broadcaster Rai, has been another beneficiary of this interest in non-English drama. At Mipcom it secured deals for the new season of its detective series The Young Montalbano, licensing it to the BBC, RLJ (UK video rights) and Hi Gloss (Australia and New Zealand video).

The Frankenstein Chronicles
The Frankenstein Chronicles

There have been numerous examples of US cable channels commissioning new scripted content recently. But making drama is expensive, so some channels have sensibly decided to explore the international acquisitions route as well. An example we cited a couple of columns ago is Esquire Network, which has picked up Spotless and Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands. A&E Network did something similar at Mipcom, picking up The Frankenstein Chronicles, produced by Rainmark Films, distributed by Endemol Shine International and starring Sean Bean (Game of Thrones).

SundanceTV is following a similar trajectory, though it prefers to get involved as a coproduction partner, giving it a little more oversight and input into the end product. Having previously partnered up on The Honourable Woman and D83, for example, it was busy at Mipcom picking up a new portfolio of non-US dramas.

Rebellion
Rebellion

One interesting title that it has jumped on board is RTÉ’s historical drama Rebellion, which tells the story of the birth of modern Ireland. It has also linked up with Sky Atlantic and Canal+ on The Last Panthers. Produced by France’s Haut et Court and the UK’s Warp Films, the series centres on the evolution of criminality in Europe, taking place in locations across the continent, from Serbia to Marseilles in France.

More evidence of the vibrancy of the European drama scene right now is the news that Zodiak Rights-supported Versailles has been given a second season, while TF1 in France and RTL in Germany are backing the new UFA Fiction/Beta Film drama series Hitler (working title). Meanwhile, The Copenhagen Film Fund has confirmed it is in talks about financing a fourth season of SVT and DR’s hit crime drama The Bridge.

Versailles
Versailles

Out of the UK, notable deals included the sale of All3Media International’s The Missing to German public broadcaster ZDF and FremantleMedia International’s No Offence to France TV.

The Brits are also beneficiaries of the growing demand for drama content from subscription VoD platforms. This week, for example, South African service ShowMax bought 125 hours of content from ITV Studios Global Entertainment, including Jekyll & Hyde, Rectify, Mr Selfridge, Good Witch and Texas Rising.

In terms of US series, the major TV studios were quick to seal deals. Disney Media Distribution licensed ABC Studios’ The Muppets to 122 territories, while the latest Shondaland drama series, The Catch, has been licensed to 186 territories. Executive produced by Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers, The Catch is a thriller about a successful fraud investigator who becomes the victim of fraud by her fiancé.

The Catch
The Catch

Sony Pictures Television also announced international deals for its shows. Wesley Snipes drama The Player hasn’t started very strongly in the US, but SPT has still managed to sell it into 105 territories, with high-profile deals in France (TF1), Germany (RTL), Spain (AXN) and Australia (Seven). SPT has also had a good start with The Art of More, a Dennis Quaid drama that was created for on-demand service Crackle. To date, the show has been sold into 25 territories via broadcasters such as Viacom’s Colors Infinity channel in India, OSN across the Middle East and D-Smart in Turkey. Of the two dramas, The Art of More feels more like a show that may run for a few seasons.

Other US shows to do business this week include NBC’s strong starter Blindspot, which was licensed to Sky Living (alongside Limitless and The Catch). Meanwhile, NBCUniversal thriller Mr Robot was picked up by Finland’s public broadcaster YLE.

While the majority of news from Mipcom 2015 concerned the sale of completed shows, there was also a smattering of commissioning and format announcements at the market. Viacom-owned BET, for example, is reported to be planning a six-part drama miniseries called Madiba, focusing on the life of Nelson Mandela and starring Laurence Fishburne; while StudioCanal-owned Tandem Productions is to adapt Code to Zero, the international bestselling novel by Ken Follett (Tandem previously adapted Follett’s Pillars of the Earth epic). Note also the above references to Versailles, Hitler and The Bridge.

The Art of More
The Art of More

On the format front, German network Vox is remaking Spanish drama The Red Band, TF1 in France is to produce a local adaptation of BBC drama The Escape Artist and CTC in Russia is adapting Keshet International’s romantic comedy The Baker and the Beauty.

Perhaps the most exciting format news of the week, however, is that US broadcast network ABC is adapting Janus, a drama from Austrian pubcaster ORF. This deal demonstrates that the powerful US networks are continuing to cast their net far and wide in search of great scripted ideas.

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Master adapter gets real

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Andrew Davies
Andrew Davies

Welsh screenwriter Andrew Davies is primarily known for his superb adaptations of literary classics. Among his many, many TV credits are To Serve Them All My Days, House of Cards (the original version), The Old Devils, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Moll Flanders, Vanity Fair, Doctor Zhivago, Tipping The Velvet, He Knew He Was Right, Bleak House, A Room with a View, Sense and Sensibility, Little Dorrit and the in-production War and Peace.

To this list must be added film credits such as Circle of Friends, The Tailor of Panama, the two Bridget Jones movies and Brideshead Revisited – confirming the view that Davies could probably adapt any book on the planet.

In a 2014 interview Davies was asked why he invested so much time on adaptations and came up with a beautifully succinct answer – that “fuck all happens to you” when you are a full-time writer. “There was plenty of material in the early days about infidelity, friction and all those kind of things. But I’ve settled down to a very even plane. So I haven’t really got material I would want to write about from my own life.”

As if to support this observation, one of Davies’ most famous original creations was A Very Peculiar Practice, a 1980s drama about a young doctor who takes up a post as a member of a university medical centre. This series, reportedly, was based on Davies’ experiences as a lecturer at Warwick University. In hindsight, it’s remarkable that Davies didn’t become a full-time writer until 1987, aged 50 – juggling his teaching responsibilities with a burgeoning career as a TV writer.

War and Peace is currently in production
Davies’ adaptation of the classic novel War and Peace is currently in production

While Davies’ work on War and Peace shows that he continues to be in demand as a novel adapter, he has entered an interesting new dimension in his work in recent years – dramas based on real lives. The link is obvious, which is that both areas provide source material to work with. But the beauty of the real-life/biopic format is that Davies can take greater liberties with storytelling. On the one hand, he doesn’t have to try to shoehorn any book-based dialogue into his screenplay. On the other, he can enter the central character’s story wherever he chooses, taking a pivotal period in their life and using it as the starting point to provide a coherent character analysis.

ITV’s Mr Selfridge, for example, focuses on Harry Selfridge as he begins setting up Selfridge’s department store in London. But TV movie A Poet in New York looks at Welsh poet Dylan Thomas as he moves towards his untimely death (aged 39).

The idea for the Dylan Thomas project was initially brought to Davies by comedian/presenter/producer Griff Rhys Jones via his indie company Modern TV. Davies has talked about it in affectionate terms because of similarities between his own upbringing and that of Thomas. With both Welsh and born into teaching families, Davies says Thomas was “very big in my life.”

Now, Davies is writing another film-length biopic about a Welsh icon, Aneurin (Nye) Bevan. Once again the idea, entitled A Nation’s Health, has come to him via Modern, and once again he will take a tangential look at his central character’s life.

A Poet in New York focused on Dylan Thomas's last days
A Poet in New York, another Davies show, focused on Dylan Thomas’s last days

Bevan is best known as the post-Second World War health minister who founded the UK’s National Health Service in 1948. But that could potentially make for quite a dry piece of TV. So Davies is going to drive the narrative along by focusing on Bevan’s fiery romance with his wife Jennie Lee. Speaking to The Sunday Times, he said: “I want it to be both personal and political. They would argue a lot. She kept him socialist and would have the last word on political matters, last thing at night in bed.”

The timing of the project is interesting, given the polarisation of British politics being witnessed at present. With the BBC also at loggerheads with the UK government over its future funding model and the question of impartiality, telling the story of an ardent Tory-hating socialist could be seen as bear-baiting. So the way Davies handles the story will attract close attention. That said, Davies is the man who adapted Michael Dobbs’ wicked political satire House of Cards for TV, so if anyone can steer a steady course through political controversy it’s him.

There was good news for another of the UK’s screenwriting titans this week with Stephen Poliakoff’s Closer to the Enemy being picked up by pay TV channel Starz in the US.

The six-part series, distributed by All3Media International, is a post-Second World War thriller that sees actor Jim Sturgess playing British intelligence officer Captain Callum Ferguson. Ferguson’s final task for the Army is to convince a captured German scientist (August Diehl) to hand over cutting-edge military technology crucial to national security – the jet engine.

The show will premiere in the UK on BBC2 before appearing next year on Starz, which previously picked up The Missing from All3. Stephen Driscoll, senior VP for sales at the distributor said: “Stephen Poliakoff and this wonderful cast of actors are creating a thrilling miniseries that will enthral audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. We look forward to announcing further deals in the near future.”

The movie version of Time After Time
The movie version of Time After Time

Still in the US, there was news this week that Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek, Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) has been commissioned to write the script for Time After Time, a TV adaptation of the 1979 novel of the same name by Karl Alexander.

Time After Time, which has already been adapted as a movie, imagines a world in which author HG Wells has invented a time machine that is then stolen by Jack the Ripper. Wells pursues the Ripper to 1979 in a bid to bring him to justice. Williamson is writing the script for Warner Brothers TV with Disney-owned ABC the commissioning network.

Another interesting story to come out of the US is a new Directors Guild of America (DGA) study that shows TV series with female showrunners are more likely to employ female writers, directors, editors and actresses than those exclusively run by men: “The findings suggest that creators and executive producers play an instrumental role in shifting the gender dynamics,” says the report’s author, Dr Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.

“For example, on broadcast programmes with at least one female creator, women comprised 50% of writers. On programmes with no female creators, women comprised 15% of writers.” It’s not too surprising, but this kind of statistic clearly warrants attention.

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Cleopatra succeeds Tut

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Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film Cleopatra, the most famous screen version of the Egyptian queen's story
Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film Cleopatra, the most famous screen version of the Egyptian queen’s story

After Tut, now comes Cleopatra. With the Egyptian boy king only recently departed from TV screens following the three-night event series on Spike TV, the girl queen is the subject of a new series being developed by feted director Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) and David Ellender, the former FremantleMedia exec who now operates under the Slingshot Global Media banner.

While it is inevitable that comparisons will be drawn between the projects, the creative sensibilities and commercial starting points underlying them should bring about different results. While Tut was written by US scribes for a US channel, Kapur and Ellender come from Indian and European backgrounds respectively. This will presumably affect their approach and funding model.

Kapur, who will write the series, said: “Cleopatra is probably the most famous and the least known/understood figure of all time. Her life will reflect a modern-day parable of our lives today.” Ellender added: “As he did with Elizabeth, Kapur will reveal the human being behind the myth. We couldn’t think of a better filmmaker than Kapur to tackle this subject.”

If there’s one name you’d love to see at the bottom of your production sheet, it’s Jerry Bruckheimer. With film and TV credits that include Pirates of the Caribbean, Beverly Hills Cop, Bad Boys, Con Air, Top Gun, CSI and Without a Trace, he is a bona fide hit machine. So US cable channel TNT must be dancing in the aisles having picked up a Bruckheimer pilot called Home this week.

TNT has picked up the pilot of Jerry Bruckheimer series Home
TNT has picked up the pilot of Jerry Bruckheimer series Home

Originally set up at Fox, Home explores the secrets festering behind the facade of an idyllic suburban family. It centres on a pregnant woman who has a successful business and a wonderful home life with her husband Joe, a respected prison psychologist, and his two sons, to whom she’s stepmother. But the peace and tranquillity are shattered when she discovers long-buried secrets.

Home’s package is further enhanced by the fact the pilot has been written by Aron Eli Coleite, whose credits include Crossing Jordan, Hostages and Heroes (for which he was writer and producer for most of its run). The show is designated as a Jerry Bruckheimer Television and Warner Horizon TV production.

A notable trend in the last few years has been to fictionalise the lives of famous historical figures. Da Vinci’s Demons is a classic case in point, as is ITV’s upcoming series Houdini & Doyle (and so, for that matter, are Tut and Cleopatra). The idea behind this approach is to get pre-transmission brand awareness that will help a show cut through the clutter of competition. Imagine if, for example, Da Vinci showrunner David Goyer had said he was going to make a series about the fantastical youth of a medieval Italian genius. He probably wouldn’t have got more than halfway through his pitch.

Seth Rogen in controversial movie The Interview
Seth Rogen in controversial movie The Interview

There is a parallel process that involves taking fictional characters and giving them new settings. Traditionally, this involves looking back at the youth of the character in question (The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Endeavour et al) or putting them in a different period (Sherlock). A novel take on this was announced this week by CBS, which is to pilot Sawyer & Huck. In this case, Mark Twain’s classic Mississippi characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are to be aged up and placed in modern-day America as adults.

Scripted by The Blacklist writers Brandon Margolis and Brandon Sonnier, the story will see Sawyer as a lawyer, who hires his boyhood friend Huck Finn as an investigator on a murder case. If the series progresses beyond pilot, the plan is for the characters to take on cases for people who don’t have anywhere else to turn.

In other news out of the US, NBC has acquired a drama project entitled The Bourbon Kings from Endemol Shine Studios. Based on a novel by JR Ward, the story centres on an aristocratic Kentucky family who make their fortune in the bourbon industry.

Interestingly (and what are the chances of this?), there are reports that Fox is also developing a TV series about a Kentucky bourbon empire. All that remains to be seen is whether either project will be filmed in Kentucky. A year ago, the answer to that would probably have been no. But in May the state increased its refundable tax credit from 20% to 30%, an aggressive move that will make it a viable alternative to Louisiana and Georgia, two US states that have made excellent use of film incentive schemes.

NHK Japan has picked up Partners in Crime
NHK Japan has picked up Partners in Crime

In the last couple of years, the scripted market has become accustomed to a steady stream of commissioning announcements from subscription VoD platforms like Netflix and Amazon. This week it’s Hulu’s turn to step up to the plate by announcing plans for a comedy pilot starring Seth Rogen.

The project, entitled Future Man, is about a gaming nerd who has to save the human race from being destroyed by aliens. Future Man is being produced by Sony Pictures Television and is the company’s first order from Hulu. Sounds like much safer territory than Rogen’s North Korea satire The Interview.

On the acquisition front, Asian broadcasters have been busy this week. RTL CBS Entertainment has announced it will premiere upcoming US drama Limitless in Asia within 12 hours of its broadcast in the States. Meanwhile, All3Media International has shipped new TV adaptation Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime to a number of international broadcasters including NHK Japan.

The Japanese market is notoriously difficult to crack but “Japan is Christie heartland in terms of a fanbase for the author and this show will introduce a further generation to her work,” says Stephen Driscoll, senior VP for sales at All3Media International.

Equally upbeat is Junko Fukano, senior producer of NHK Japan, who says: “We are delighted that we can broadcast this wonderful show in Japan. Agatha Christie’s dramas have attracted a strong Japanese following, so we believe it will be hugely popular among Christie fans, and hope that it will bring even more audiences to NHK.”

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