Totally Outrageous

Executive producer Elizabeth Kilgarriff and writer Sarah Williams reflect on Outrageous, a six-part series that dramatises the lives of the aristocratic Mitford sisters in 1930s Britain, revealing why the title perfectly describes both its protagonists and the way their story is told.

To paraphrase an old saying, never judge a TV show by its title. Yet it is the name of a new period drama that best sums up its vibrant, modern tone and the attitudes of its protagonists to their life of privilege in 1930s Britain.

Commissioned by UKTV for U&Drama and BritBox International, Outrageous is the story of the aristocratic Mitford sisters, who refused to conform to society or play by the rules as their often-scandalous lives made headlines around the world. The series follows the siblings across six episodes that explore family bonds and betrayals, public scandal, political extremism, love, heartache and imprisonment, with each woman charting a different, complex and dangerous path through life.

“When we stumbled upon that [title], that was really the moment when the whole show gelled,” writer Sarah Williams (Flesh & Blood) tells DQ. “If it was called The Mitford Sisters, I just felt like that would be the dullest possible route to go. We really wanted something that summed up the attitude they had.

“We should be fascinated and shocked by them,” adds executive producer Elizabeth Kilgarriff. “The show doesn’t try to make light of anything. In fact, you enjoy the fact that these are women often behaving badly. There should be a fascination. It’s just so interesting to watch. You think, ‘How did that happen?’”

As one of six children herself, Williams was drawn to the “bold, outspoken” lives of the Mitford sisters and the chance to bring the stories of six transgressive women to the screen. Yet despite the familiarity of the Mitford name – there have previously been TV adaptations of eldest sister Nancy’s novels The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate – “it’s the story you think you know, but you don’t really,” the writer says. “A lot of people have felt, ‘Well, I’ve seen The Pursuit of Love or Love in a Cold Climate, I know that. But the true story, my God, is so much more compelling.”

“Nancy’s books have been adapted and Diana Mitford was [a character] in Peaky Blinders. So they turn up in other things, but no one’s dramatised their story, which feels extraordinary,” says Kilgarriff, whose Firebird Pictures produces the drama. “There’s something very relatable about a big family all sat around a dinner table, all the different rivalries, all the different things that were happening. But the stakes are very high because, actually, they went down different paths, but they did it in such an explosive, scandalous way. They all worked against what they were supposed to do.”

Taking Mary Lovell’s biography, The Mitford Girls, as her inspiration, Williams used “thousands” of letters the sisters wrote to each other to capture their individual personalities and tones of voice. That Lovell also knew four of them was “absolute gold dust” to Williams, giving her a personal route into the story.

Distributed by BBC Studios, the series follows the lives of the sisters – Nancy (Bessie Carter), Diana (Joanna Vanderham), Pamela (Isobel Jesper Jones), Unity (Shannon Watson), Jessica (Zoe Brough) and Deborah (Orla Hill) – from the perspective of Nancy, a witty yet not entirely reliable narrator, through the years 1932 to 1936; a time between two world wars when the siblings were able to shrug off their parents’ control after growing up with a very strict father.

In fact, using Nancy as the narrator was another “key” to opening up the series. It’s an element that brings an immediacy to the drama, while the character also serves as an anchor in a show where the sisters all head off in different directions.

“She was the one who was sort of much more down the middle,” says Kilgarriff, “and was able to stand back and observe and go, ‘Gosh, well, can you believe this?’”

“If you think of Jane Austen, who also wrote thinly disguised novels about her own family upbringing, she was also unlucky in love but wrote about romance all the time,” Williams says of Nancy. “There’s a real connection there about those big families of girls who must marry, so that it’s an archetypal story for women. And these women just refused point blank to live the conventional lives that society and their parents wanted for them. They all went in their own very different ways.”

Kilgarriff and Williams wanted to create a fun world for viewers while also tackling some dark themes. But even those moments are punctured by the sisters’ gallows humour over their own predicaments.

Producing the series, which was filmed in the Cotswolds, the Home Counties and parts of London, was about “giving it scale,” Kilgarriff says. “We wanted it to be beautiful, but not over-stylised. There’s an energy to it and there’s an effervescent quality. I feel like I know so many versions of that 1930s, 1940s world, and it was about trying to make it feel authentic and true, but with this sense of maturity about it so it doesn’t feel like it’s a period drama. It’s big energy. It’s not quiet, small and delicate. It’s outrageous.”

With LA-based musician Sami Goldberg giving Outrageous a “punchy, propulsive” soundtrack that is “jazzy, rebellious and anarchic,” Kilgarriff adds: “I hope there’s a modernity and a contemporary feel to the storytelling. The way the story unfolds, it’s not slow. The story keeps turning and you forget you’re in the 30s. You really relate to these women and these characters.”

Williams already has designs on how she might continue Outrageous, taking the Mitfords to the brink of the Second World War in a second season and then seeing their lives during the conflict in a third run that would end with the death of the sisters’ only brother, Tom. “He dies in the very last days of the war. That’s a natural end to this series and it brings all the sisters back together, after they’ve been quite fragmented,” she says. “It’s in my head. If it happens, I don’t know. It’d be interesting to see what the appetite is.”

While period dramas continue to hold a special place on British television – and British period dramas among international viewers – Outrageous promises to be a “different, distinct” proposition when it debuts on U&Drama on Thursday, June 19 thanks in part to its six female leads and the fact it is based on a true story. “And the eccentricity and, dare I say, the outrageousness,” Williams adds. “That title is a big pull. It’s ticking quite a lot of boxes that you don’t necessarily expect to be next to each other.”

tagged in: BBC Studios, BritBox International, Elizabeth Kilgarriff, Firebird Pictures, Outrageous, Sami Goldberg, Sarah Williams, U&Drama, UKTV