Tag Archives: Two Brothers Pictures

Production shutdown

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In part two of a focus on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on television drama productions, DQ speaks to three more producers to see how their latest series have been affected and how development has been pushed to the fore.

About 10 days ago, Chris Aird was in the middle of the Australian outback, 200 kilometres north of Adelaide, on a recce to uncover potential locations for upcoming mystery drama The Tourist. Commissioned by the BBC and Oz streamer Stan, the show opens with a British man being run off the road by an enormous tank. When he wakes up in hospital, he has no idea who he is, while his search for answers is hampered by merciless figures set on pursuing him.

But when Aird, head of drama at UK prodco Two Brothers Pictures (Liar, The Missing), heard US president Donald Trump was about to close the countries borders to many EU countries as a result of the emerging coronavirus threat, he faced an uncertain five-and-a-half-hour journey back to the city. Initially intending to postpone some preproduction plans, Aird soon realised he and his partners would have to suspend everything and get home as soon as possible.

The Tourist is just one of hundreds of television series around the world shut down or put on hold over the last fortnight as the industry, like every other, comes to terms with the devastating coronavirus pandemic. Cast and crew face an indeterminate time out of work, with production companies rallying to support those who have been left in limbo by the shutdowns.

Chris Aird

“We’re early enough [in the process] that we’ve only got a core group of HODs and the producer and the director on board,” Aird tells DQ about work so far on The Tourist. “But it has an impact in as much all the people we were planning on bringing on over the coming weeks, with a view to filming in mid-May, they’re not going to be employed now for the foreseeable.”

Another Two Brothers drama, crime thriller Baptiste, was further down the line – eight weeks into a 14-week shoot – when the decision was made to halt production in the Hungarian capital, Budapest. The series continues to follow detective Julien Baptiste, who first featured in two seasons of The Missing before a standalone series launched on the BBC last year.

“It’s been a really challenging process, trying to predict what was going to happen and the international situation and trying to get a sense of the direction of travel, while listening via my colleague John Griffin, the producer, to what was going on on the ground,” Aird explains.

“Because that crew is 80% Hungarian, there was this tipping point around Friday night [March 13] where we went from the crew saying, ‘Look, we want to carry on. These are our jobs,’ to quite quickly, ‘Actually, this is frightening now and we need to get home and be inside.’ It was about being really responsive to that. It’s probably the most challenging management position I’ve ever been in, in terms of fast decisions and really having people’s welfare as much at possible at heart when making those decisions.”

The decision was taken at 09.00 last Monday, with the British crew members back in the air and heading home by Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, sets were left standing, with the art department set to return under safe conditions to pack things up until such time as the production can resume.

“We had a whole production to shut down. In the first instance, that meant walking away from sets,” Aird says. “The office will pack things up. We’ll get all the equipment back. But the first thing to do was to disband the unit as quickly as we could. We’re paying people’s notice and giving people severance pay, but that only lasts so long.”

Baptiste was shooting in Hungary when production had to be shut down

Now working with Griffin for the next couple of months, Aird is focusing on “Baptiste 2.2,” looking at any decisions that need to be made before shooting can resume, they hope, by the end of the year.

“Most of the crew are local Hungarians, so I’d hope we’d be able to put the team back together,” Aird continues. “There’s cast to think about as well and you hope, certainly with your leads, no one’s going to come sweeping in [to take them away]. If we have to change locations or if we didn’t manage to get some cast members back for whatever reasons, we’d make whatever decisions we needed to and rewrite the scripts.”

In Ireland, Dublin-based Element Pictures has been providing production support for The Drowning, an upcoming Channel 5 and Virgin Media drama from Unstoppable Film & Television, while also finishing post-production on Normal People (pictured top), the eagerly awaited adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel that is due to air this spring on UK online channel BBC3 and Hulu in the US. Development is also underway on Conversation with Friends, based on Rooney’s first novel and also commissioned by the BBC, with a virtual writers room now set up with writers in Ireland, the UK and the US.

Normal People follows the relationship between Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal) from their school days in a small Irish town to university at Dublin’s Trinity College. Working remotely, post-production is continuing apace, with one person in the editing suite at Outer Limits and everyone else who needs to be involved viewing from their own homes.

“It made it complicated but it’s actually doable,” says Andrew Lowe, Element’s joint MD. “It’s interesting that it has been viable to keep it going. Our big fear was the post house itself would close, but they’ve been very responsible and careful about how they do their business and they’ve managed to keep the thing going, which is great.

Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in Normal People

“We’re also continuing with our development meetings and production meetings. Everyone just dials in remotely so there are lots of people on the screen at the same time, which is a nice thing for everyone. It gives some sense of normality and continuity in what’s an otherwise strange and unsettling time. The positive thing to come from this is it’s enabling us to focus more on development. With fewer other things going on to distract us, we can focus more on opportunities that have been around for a while but we haven’t managed to advance.”

In a rapidly evolving situation, Lowe says the Element team will continue to work from home, while the production hiatus will offer him and partner Ed Guiney the chance to carry out some company housekeeping.

“Our attitude is very much, ‘Let’s hunker down for the coming weeks and months and, if this ends up being a very prolonged period, we have more than enough to be getting on with developing new material and cleaning up older stuff,’” he adds.

Aidan Turner

“As founders and directors, Ed and I often struggle to strike a balance between operational time running the business and actually standing back from it and spending a bit more time strategic planning, so this period will give us a chance to take a bit of a breather and complete some work we’ve been doing for a while in terms of strategic planning for the growth of the business. We just have to focus on the more positive aspects, because it’s obviously a grim and serious situation otherwise.”

Elsewhere, production has also stopped on Leonardo, a series based on the life of Leonardo Da Vinci. Created by Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files) and Steve Thompson (Vienna Blood), the show is produced by Lux Vide in collaboration with Rai Fiction and Spotnitz’s Big Light Productions, in association with Sony Pictures Television. Poldark star Aidan Turner will play the seminal artist and inventor, with filming underway since December.

“We are in the same situation as everyone else in Europe, where all production has stopped, as much of the world has as well. With Leonardo, we’re looking to manage the situation and get back as soon as we can,” says Emily Feller, creative director at Big Light (The Man in the High Castle).

“With regard to everything else, we are so fortunate and lucky that we have jobs where we can work from home. But what we’re aware of is a lot of team members won’t have been based from home on a very regular basis. We put together a pack of etiquette and expectations of working from home, just as a support, really, and also being quite aware of mental health and a sense of isolation in your home if you live by yourself. We’ve really wanted to be careful and proactive in thinking about the team as a whole.”

Big Light is also involved in a virtual writers room for an as-yet-unannounced series, working through stories, narratives and characters, while Feller says the move online has had no effect on the openness and creativity of the collaboration process.

Emily Feller

“Last week we were working on two episodes in particular and we’re screen-sharing so, instead of having cards on the wall, we’re using bullet points [on screen]. It’s working fantastically so far,” she says. “I don’t think anyone can plan for this. You can plan to work six or nine months a year, whatever your preferences are or needs are, but I don’t think anyone can plan for this. It’s such an incredibly unique situation for us all.”

The company will have a second writers room opening this summer, while progress is also being made on its proposed live-action Warhammer 40,000 series, in partnership with Games Workshop.

“It’s about maintaining our drive to be pushing forward the high-quality storytelling we’re lucky enough to be able to do and working with the writer we’re still working with,” Feller adds. “That side of things doesn’t change. What these next few months will allow us to do is get into a fantastic place to then go once production is up and running again.”

Read part one of this article here.

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Writing The Widow

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Writer brothers Harry and Jack Williams discuss the origins of The Widow, the globetrotting ITV drama starring Kate Beckinsale in her first TV role in more than two decades.

As is par for the course for a Hollywood actress, much of the media attention around Kate Beckinsale focuses on her romantic relationships.

But in the Underworld star’s new TV drama – her first small-screen project in more than 20 years – it’s the absence of a partner that drives the action.

The Widow focuses on Beckinsale’s Georgia Wells, who has been living as a recluse in the Welsh countryside for three years since her husband Will’s death in a plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Everything changes for Georgia when she spots a man with a remarkable resemblance to Will (Matt Le Nevez) in the background of a news report about the troubled African country. Convinced that, somehow, Will is still alive, she returns to DRC capital Kinshasa for the first time since the plane crash, embarking on a quest for truth that takes her down a dangerous and difficult path.

Harry (left) and Jack Williams

So begins the latest series from Harry and Jack Williams, the writing brothers behind acclaimed dramas such as The Missing (BBC1), Liar (ITV) and, most recently, Baptiste, a spin-off from The Missing. The show is produced by the writers’ prodco Two Brothers Pictures and distributed by All3Media International.

Making its UK debut on ITV last week after being released in its entirety on Amazon elsewhere in March, The Widow first began to take shape following conversations Harry had with his then girlfriend (now his fiancée), herself a widow. “She had actually written a blog about it, and being in that emotional place was something we’d been talking about – so naturally I ended up coming up with a TV drama with that at the heart of it,” he says wryly.

“We thought it was intriguing to start with a character who’s lost someone. And then, putting our mystery and thriller hats on, we thought, ‘What happens if you see that person again, and what does that do to you?’ It felt like there were a lot of stories there and a lot of ideas, which we were keen to embrace.”

The writers had hoped from the off that Beckinsale could be secured as their lead – something that must have seemed a tall order given it had been two decades since her last dabble with TV, in 1998 telemovie Alice Through the Looking Glass. Sam Donovan, a director on The Widow alongside Olly Blackburn, says: “She was nervous about doing eight hours. It’s a lot of work – four feature films back-to-back, essentially.

The Widow stars Kate Beckinsale, best known for her work in the Underworld movie franchise

“We had a lot of rehearsals, we worked with all the other actors together, we did big page-turns, we had chats on the phone. It was the whole kind of skirting round each other before she agreed, before we agreed. We checked each other out, essentially, before we all said yes. But she got it – she got the character, she got the loss and the determination that Georgia has, and she was super excited to get stuck into the eight hours.”

Donovan was one of several members of the team behind Liar who reunited for The Widow, alongside the Williams brothers and producer Eliza Mellor. “Sam directed the second block of Liar,” says Jack. “There are some scenes that you write and you go, ‘This could be awful’ – it’s a good scene but it could, in the wrong hands, be shit. There was a scene where Joanne Froggatt’s character drugs Ioan Gruffudd’s character and kidnaps him, and it was one of those that could have been awful. But it was amazing when we watched it, so we were like, ‘He’s good – let’s get him again.’”

Harry adds: “It looked fantastic, everything he did in Liar, and we were on the same page in this one as well.”

Beckinsale was undoubtedly encouraged by the continuing success other movie actors have found by migrating to the small screen, offering them the opportunity to flesh out a character across several hours of drama. The latest include Richard Gere in BBC series MotherFatherSon and Julia Roberts in Amazon’s Homecoming.

“You can tell proper character stories over a longer period of time,” Harry says of TV drama. “You can really dig into character. For us as writers, we love having eight hours to dig into a story and tell loads of stories, so I suppose the same must apply to actors when they’re looking at roles. People don’t see it as a step down to go and do a TV show.”

Much of the action unfolds in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although these scenes were filmed in South Africa

Jack adds: “Everyone’s getting spoilt by the amount of good TV. Actors want something to get their teeth into, a proper role to get stuck into.”

Georgia is the latest in a long line of strong, believable female characters written by Jack and Harry Williams. “With her character in particular, it was quite interesting. You see her in Wales, very closed off, very shut off emotionally. Over the first hour, it’s interesting to watch someone face the challenges that she goes through,” says Jack.

“It was a very good character to write but a very hard one to play,” says Harry, praising Beckinsale for both her performance and her stunt work throughout the show, with Donovan describing her as a “one-take wonder” when it comes to action scenes.

The brothers decided to marry their widow starting point with a longstanding aim to place a drama in Africa. “We’d been talking about something set in Africa for a while, something about the Congo,” says Jack. “It’s just a very interesting place to set something. It was lots of different ideas coming together at the right time.”

While the series is fictitious, it touches on many real-life issues facing countries like the DRC, including child soldiers and corruption. Jack also admits true events helped feed the story, but adds: “I can’t fully say what. A lot of it was informed by the Congo as a place – historically why it’s important, why it’s interesting and why the country faces challenges. Some of that has been in the news recently and I think that’s reflected here. There are some specific things that I won’t spoil.

“This story couldn’t happen anywhere else; by the time you get to the end, this is not a story that could have happened in any other country. It’s not an issue-led show, but that’s there and it’s part of the tapestry. Hopefully it’s accurate.”

Harry adds: “There was a lot of research. A lot goes into it.”

The supporting cast includes Game of Thrones’ Charles Dance

Unfortunately, it proved too complicated to actually film in the DRC, so much of the action was shot in South Africa instead, with the globetrotting production also spending time in Wales and the Dutch city of Rotterdam. The latter plays host to a subplot involving experimental treatment for the blind, which promises to tie into The Widow’s complex narrative as the plot develops.

“We’ve done a lot of shows that are very intricate and involved, but this one more than anything. It’s one of those that, when you get to the end, it would bear re-watching,” says Jack, revealing that the writing process for the series took around 18 months.

“Quite often, we’re working it out as we go, but with this one we kind of knew the shape and the arc of the whole thing a little bit more,” adds Harry. “It took a long time, but I really enjoyed it.”

Despite their impressive hit list, the brothers say the way they write together is far from a fine science. “There’s no process or anything,” says Jack. “It’s like making sausages – no one wants to see that; you just want to eat them.”

Harry picks up: “It’s struggling through ideas and thoughts for a really long time and talking about what the story might be, what we want to say, and then interrogating it as much as we can. Once we’ve figured out what the story is, we divide it in half and go away and not look at each other. Then we write our own halves and swap them over. You can kind of rewrite over the other person’s as much as you want.”

The approach often leads to confusion in terms of who has written what in the final script, with Jack admitting he has found himself praising his brother for his own work on more than one occasion. “I turned to Harry after watching something the other day and I was like, ‘That’s so good, that was a great scene,’ and he said, ‘Well, you wrote it,’” he explains. “I did feel quite ashamed but also quite proud of myself, like, ‘Good on me!’”

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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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