“THIS is not just a robbery. This is an attack on the very cornerstone of England.”

The Great Train Robbery is a new two-part BBC1 drama which tells the story of the crime of the century from both sides.

Feature length A Robber’s Tale and A Copper’s Tale star Luke Evans as robbery mastermind Bruce Reynolds and Jim Broadbent as the detective who caught him.

Writer Chris Chibnall details for the first time on screen the minute by minute drama of the 1963 robbery, along with the story of how it was planned – and what went wrong.

Then turning his attention to the specially assembled squad of Scotland Yard detectives and the investigation that tracked down the gang and brought them to justice.

It’s a story of one man taking on the Establishment….and losing.

Along with a gripping tale of two teams of men both intent on achieving their goals on different sides of the law.

An authentic depiction of what happened, including the attack on train driver Jack Mills with the robbery scenes filmed on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway in Yorkshire.

Broadcast 50 years after the robbery took place.

The BBC screened both films at a media preview in London yesterday attended by some surviving members of the police team who solved the case.

Coming to a TV screen near you soon, both are cracking, top class dramas.

From the people who produced the acclaimed United – with Chris, of course, also being the man behind award-winning ITV hit Broadchurch.

There will be more to say about The Great Train Robbery nearer the broadcast dates.

But, for now, here’s my first story from last night’s Q&A following the screening.

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HARRY Potter actor Jim Broadbent said he would love to star in the return of hit crime drama Broadchurch.

The Oscar-winning star plays a top cop in The Great Train Robbery, a two-part BBC1 drama by Broadchurch writer Chris Chibnall.

Asked if he would consider working with Chris again in the second series of the award-winning ITV show, he replied: “Of course I would.

“I’d love to do something else that Chris has got up his sleeve.”

To which the acclaimed writer joked: “Yes, I’m going to sign him up now.”

Jim plays Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler, the Scotland Yard Flying Squad officer who led the hunt for the Great Train Robbers.

He appears in The Copper’s Tale, which tells how police tracked down the gang who stole £2.6 million from a Royal Mail train in 1963 – the equivalent of over £41 million today.

Iris star Jim, who played Denis Thatcher in The Iron Lady, was just 14 when Britain was shocked by the crime of the century.

He recalled being gripped by the story and had hero worshipped racing driver Roy James, later revealed to be part of the gang involved in the Buckinghamshire raid.

Even watching him win at Jim’s local racetrack – Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire – in the summer after the robbery.

Many years later Jim saw Roy James and fellow train robber Charlie Wilson back in the dock when researching to play a role as a barrister.

“They were back in court to do with some VAT bullion fraud and when I went into the Old Bailey there was no-one else in the viewing gallery apart from me.

“I thought, ‘These are train robbers. These are stars! Where’s the audience?’”

Added Jim: “My point of view had matured somewhat since I was 14. I’m certainly on Tommy’s side now.”

The production was inspired by the book Signal Red by Robert Ryan.

Writer Chris used now published material from previously locked police files to tell the untold story behind the raid and how a crack squad of detectives put the gang behind bars.

“I wanted to show both sides of the coin,” he said.

Luke Evans plays train robbery mastermind Bruce Reynolds in both feature length films, starting with A Robber’s Tale, on screen soon.

One scene features two young uniformed policemen checking on a flat, unaware that it is the hideout of on the run Bruce – the most wanted man in Britain – and his wife.

They knock on the door to alert the occupiers that someone may have been planning to burgle the premises.

As his wife lets the policemen in, quick-thinking Bruce takes all his clothes off in an attempt to fool the officers about his real identity.

“It actually happened,” explained The Hobbit and The Three Musketeers star Luke, who revealed all about one take of the scene that wasn’t used in the final edit.

“Nude scenes are a nightmare. They’re really embarrassing and very uncomfortable and there’s lots of people in the room.

“But I managed to take all my clothes off very quickly, which was being filmed, and I’d left my glasses on – which is the obvious sign of Bruce Reynolds. They were the giveaway.

“He could have taken all his clothes off but if he’d left his glasses on they’d have totally got him straight away.

“So yeah. My butt’s on the BBC!”

The Great Train Robbery

World Productions

BBC The Great Train Robbery

Signal Red

Keighley & Worth Valley Railway

United

Ian Wylie on Twitter

IT was quite a day at the reveal of the new Coronation Street set at Trafford Wharf.

The exterior lot has been upscaled and the Street itself is now wide enough for two cars to pass.

But otherwise it looks exactly the same as the current set at Quay Street in Manchester.

Where the final scene will be filmed just before Christmas.

With cast, crew and production team starting work at Trafford Wharf / Media City UK early in January 2014.

Tony Warren outside the Rovers Return at Trafford Wharf.

Coronation Street creator Tony Warren was, of course, on the new (but old) cobbles at Trafford Wharf on Friday.

I asked him to describe his feelings about the move.

And received a classic Tony Warren reply:

“Coronation Street hasn’t moved at all. It’s exactly where it always was.

“Which is wherever you want it to be inside your own imagination.”

The new set is the fifth in the 53 year history of the Street and takes over from the Quay Street lot which opened in 1982.

“I’m the only person here today who has been in four times to see the brand new set installed,” pointed out Tony.

I asked him what his initial impression had been the first time he visited the Trafford Wharf set.

He laughed: “Well, if it looked any different there would be something very wrong!”

Was he sad in any way about leaving Quay Street?

“What’s to be sad about? It’s still here. Move? What move?”

And he recalled what Trafford Wharf by the Manchester Ship Canal had been like in the early 1960s when Coronation Street first came to the screen.

“The docks were still going in a big way. The street leading down through Trafford Road was known as the Barbary Coast because it was ships and sailors and lascars (Indian sailors).

“And there were cafes that were run by Maltese and then there were the ladies of the night on Trafford Road. It was a very different area.”

As the rain started to fall, someone else asked Tony if he was proud that all those years later ITV had invested in everything that now stood around us.

“I’m just very fortunate. Very, very, very fortunate.

“I’m the luckiest man I know.”

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All involved deserve huge praise for the painstaking re-creation of Weatherfield, right down to the last door scratch.

It’s a staggering achievement.

This is the rather moving video celebrating Coronation Street’s long and glorious history that we were shown just before seeing the new Weatherfield for the first time.

I’m sure I’m not the only one of a certain age who had a tear or two in their eyes as this beautifully edited film unfolded.

So many memories from both the cobbles and our own lives as we watched through the decades.

Also knowing that life on this very special street will continue long after we have departed to the Red Rec in the sky.

Followed by the moment executive producer Kieran Roberts revealed the new set to the media.

A very short video taken on my phone, so not the greatest quality – but a historic moment worth recording all the same:

Kieran and I later took shelter from the Weatherfield rain at the bus stop by Audrey’s Salon.

“We are bringing over lots and lots of details,” he explained.

“The lot has been completely rebuilt and at the moment in the end of November and through December there will be two parallel universes – one in Trafford and one in the centre of Manchester.

“It’s quite strange standing here and suddenly thinking, ‘Am I in Quay Street or am I in Trafford?’

“But obviously the old lot, after we finish around Christmas…we will strip everything from the old lot that we can move.

“We can’t be spending money on duplicating things.

“So lots of the dressing of the Street, things like the neon lights and the signs and the boards and things that go around it, we will move and we’ll bring over here.

“But substantially, everything you see here has been completely rebuilt and we’re still filming on the old set for several more weeks.”

The Coronation Street team has built up an extra bank of episodes so they are now even further ahead than normal in their filming schedule.

“It’s been an extraordinary year for us and an amazing achievement by the project team to get this new lot done.

“But also an amazing achievement by the programme team to get involved in the planning of this and also we’ve made two extra weeks of episodes in the course of this year.

“What it does mean is when we start working here in January we don’t have to start at 100 per cent full speed. We can just have a week or two to get up to speed.

“Which I think we’ll need because of simple things like finding our way round – the journey from the dressing room to set will be a different journey and people are going to take a day or two to get used to it.

“Even coming from home to the new studio.

“So we factored all that in and we have extra episodes on the shelf.”

The first official day back is January 6 2014.

“Although I should stress there will be people working over the Christmas period, moving sets, moving equipment and all of the rest of it, getting us ready.

“And we expect to be back in production that first week. But we don’t have details yet. We don’t have a schedule.”

Has it been decided who will film the final scene at Quay Street?

“To be honest, we’re just scheduling the programme in the way we always do.

“Obviously it will be a momentous occasion when we do the last scene on the old set.

“I don’t know what it is. They’re just finalising the schedules for that block because we’ve still got three weeks of production. So that block doesn’t quite start yet.”

I then asked Kieran for his personal feelings about the move.

“It’s a huge milestone.

“Coronation Street has seen so many changes over its 53 year history – two episodes to three to four to five, black and white to colour to wide screen, to high definition, the building of the modern houses.

“There has actually been several different versions of the Street. So it’s been constantly a story of change and innovation and very dynamic.

“But I think this is far and away the biggest, the most dramatic change in the programme’s history. It’s a really historic occasion.

“You look back at those 53 years of history and the amazing production of it and then you think of all the stories and the characters.

“And you think, actually, we have now got a facility that will equip us to go forward and make the next 53 years be just as brilliant – and do justice to the first 53 years.

“We have the new Studio Support Building and it contains the production offices, the editorial offices, there’s a wonderful Green Room for the cast, lovely shiny new dressing rooms, there’s a wonderful restaurant there.

“We’ve got a brand new state of the art facility.

“And the other great thing is, everything is under one roof. In the old building there was quite a lot of walking between offices and departments.

“Now we’re all under one roof. One big family. And I think it’s going to be a wonderful place to work. We can’t wait to get over here.”

The first scenes filmed at Trafford Wharf in early January are due on screen in March.

But there will be no fanfare.

“No. The big news is the move. This reveal today and the move in January.

“Then I personally don’t want us to make a big fuss about the new set on screen.

“I want the viewers to just carry on enjoying Coronation Street, being engrossed with the stories and to carry on loving our characters. That’s what we want to be doing.

“We’ve got some really great stories coming up next year.

“I hope the viewers think the new set absolutely enhances their enjoyment but doesn’t in any way get in the way of them following the stories and loving the characters.”

You can see my full set of 48 photos here.

ITV Coronation Street

My Coronation Street Blogs

Coronation Street Blog

Ian Wylie on Twitter

Nov 1 2011: The build begins.

July 2 2012: The footprint of the new Street takes shape.

Sept 3 2012: The Medical Centre and Bonded Warehouse join the Street structures.

Nov 4 2012: The viaduct behind the Rovers Return is clearly identifiable.

Feb 5 2013: Roofs of the modern terraces and The Kabin take shape.

April 6 2013: Brickwork nears completion on the main terrace and the roofs are on.

April 7 2013: Coronation Street is now clearly visible from the air, along with the ITV support building.

April 8 2013: The Corner Shop awaits its main windows.

July 9 2013: The cobbles are laid.

October 10 2013: The ginnel is almost complete.

The first official photo.

Rory Kinnear as Lord Lucan.

“THERE are an awful lot of things that are plausible and just a few things that are probable.”

Rory Kinnear talking to me about new two-part ITV drama Lucan, which tells a story most will not know.

He plays the Lord who created a headline-grabbing mystery after murdering his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett (Leanne Best).

Having mistaken her in a darkened basement kitchen for his wife Lady Lucan (Catherine McCormack).

And then vanishing – never to be seen again.

The two 90-minute films by award-winning screenwriter Jeff Pope tell the wider story of a Mayfair gambling world where fortunes were lost by the aristocracy.

Most of the money ending up in the pockets of gaming club and zoo owner John Aspinall (Christopher Eccleston).

A man who befriended people like Lucan and drew them into his orbit.

The drama details the bitter marriage breakdown of John and Veronica, Countess of Lucan, along with the battle for custody of their children.

Moving on to the murder and then what happened to the 7th Earl of Lucan after his disappearance.

Christopher Eccleston as John Aspinall.

My interviews with Rory Kinnear, Christopher Eccleston and Executive Producer Francis Hopkinson are in ITV’s production notes for Lucan at the link below:

Lucan Press Pack Wylie

Inspired by John Pearson’s book The Gamblers, the second part of the drama has a fascinating conclusion.

Revealing that story of Lucan’s fate after that awful night in November 1974.

No-one can know for certain.

As Jeff Pope points out in the production notes:

“It’s important to underline that what John Pearson was told is only a theory, a version of events given to him by a dying woman.

“Could there be a ring of truth to it? Ultimately, that’s for the audience to decide.”

Having seen the first film and read the script for the second, I found it to be a very convincing explanation.

As ever with these “real life” dramas, there’s been a bit of fuss about whether it should have been made or not.

But as Jeff says, best watch for yourself to make your own mind up.

With the cast also including the likes of Jane Lapotaire, Gemma Jones, Rupert Evans plus Paul Freeman as John Pearson and Michael Gambon as the older John Burke, who was the financial director of Aspinall’s club in Mayfair.

Lucan begins on ITV at 9pm on Wednesday December 11 and concludes at the same time on Wednesday December 18.

Catherine McCormack as Lady Lucan.

Leanne Best as Sandra Rivett.

Paul Freeman as John Pearson and Michael Gambon as the older John Burke.

ITV Drama

John Pearson

BBC News Lucan

Ian Wylie on Twitter

“PEOPLE come, people go. And the Street goes on.

“The Street is the star. That’s how it should be.”

One of the other real stars of the Coronation Street Trafford Wharf reveal was another national treasure – Sue Nicholls.

The actress who has played Audrey since 1979 gave countless interviews to the media on the day and kept smiling in the face of hundreds of questions.

Looking much younger than the 70th birthday she had celebrated just six days before.

As is the way at these events, I waited patiently to speak to Sue as she was interviewed by yet another TV crew.

After a few minutes I was joined by one or two other media colleagues also wanting a word.

And by the time Sue was free to talk I had been joined by around a dozen others.

Which makes the “exclusive” tag in a national newspaper today on a story about some of her quotes in this group interview rather surprising!

Good-humoured Sue was such good value and a joy to speak to on the day that I thought some would appreciate reading what she said in full.

So here’s my transcript of that interview with one lovely, classy lady who, yet again, did Coronation Street proud:

Q: (From me as it happens) You’ll have been asked this many times today: What are your feelings about leaving the old Quay Street set in Manchester and coming here to Trafford Wharf?

“I am sad to leave the old set and I will hold up my hand and say it, because it’s been part of my life and everybody’s life for a long time. I think it’s part of Manchester. But, having said that, this is fantastic and time moves on and you have to go with it and I’m very, very happy to go with it. But I have fond memories of where we are still at the minute and I always will have. You can’t take that away from me!” (laughs).

Q: There must be a lot of ghosts and memories in the old set?

“Yes, loads. And it is quite sad at the minute because everything has stopped, almost, apart from us – and we’re slowing down a bit. And it is quite sad when you walk through the building at Quay Street that there’s nothing going on now…it’s a bit like when you move house and when you’ve taken all the furniture out and everything is there…all those things…you can actually see it’s just a shell and therefore all the feeling and the fun and the warmth has been transposed to here. But it’s still got fond memories…for Manchester, really, because you have to remember all the shows that were done there. You’ll never forget that history because that’s there.”

Q: What was your initial reaction when you heard several years back that the Street was moving?

“I won’t say what I said! (laughter) You would have to edit it. And there’s a bit of me too, I’ll be honest…I only live at the minute a hop and a skip, literally, another street away from where we are. I’m not the best at getting up in the morning and I know I have now got to pull my socks well and truly up, and my tights, because I’m going to have to re-think the whole early morning programme. I just hope maybe they don’t put the Salon scenes on first. (laughter) But that’s one of the things. That’s a big thing in my life. But I’ve got to grow up and I have – age-wise I’ve grown up but not mentally. And I’ll have to face it and get in there and battle on.”

Q: How did you feel when you first walked on to this set?

“Well, we were all in a line like The Tiller Girls. It was lovely. It was bigger. It is wider. That’s lovely, it’ll look good. But it’s hell to walk on those cobbles. I don’t wear, like all our gorgeous girls wear these heels that are like stilts. How they manage I don’t know. I fall over ever in flats. So we’ve got now a hundred thousand more cobbles to get over. But apart from that I think it will look the same and it will be lovely. I can’t wait to see the inside of the sets which we haven’t seen today. I’ll be looking at that. That will be fun. And I’m very fond…me, me, me again, selfish, selfish, selfish…I’m very fond of my Salon and I’m a bit of a bossy boots in real life. And if things aren’t neat, I don’t like it.”

Q: Were there niggles on the existing set with Audrey’s Salon and things that when they moved, you said, ‘Could you sort this out and could you make that work?’

“No. I wish I’d met you before. (laughter) I didn’t think of that. Oh gosh. I’ll write it down. Thank you. Well I’ve still got time to do that! Thank you for that little hint. When I go in I’ll take my pad! The appointment book has seen better days, mainly because the appointment book…if you know who works for me, and she looks such a sweet beautiful girl…Maria…Sam (Samia Ghadie), and then my terrible but gorgeous grandson David…Jack (Jack P. Shepherd), the things they write in that appointment book! And the pictures have to be seen to be believed.”

Q: They’re X-rated are they?

“I wouldn’t even dare tell any of you. It’s absolutely…never mind what you’ve all written on the garage doors. I’m suddenly booking in Mrs Smethurst or something and I open it, in the middle of a scene, and I can’t tell you – Jack P. Shepherd is dreadful.”

Q: So are there are lot of outtakes with you laughing?

“I’m afraid so, yes. They’re terrible. And the pictures. My God.”

Q: Can you tell us some of your favourite memories from the old sets?

“The old set – I’m talking 100 years ago when I was married to lovely Alf…Bryan (the late and much loved actor Bryan Mosley), I loved being in the corner shop. Because he owned that. Were you born then? So I loved that. I think I like that period. I married Alf…poor Alf, but thank God I did. I probably wouldn’t be in the show if I hadn’t married the main man.”

Q: Because it was 1979 when you arrived?

“When I arrived. For Gail’s wedding. ‘Hello luv.’ That was terrible, wasn’t it? ‘Hello luv!’ That was my first scene. I was very flightly. Do you remember that? And look what happened there. She used to lay her head, Audrey, anywhere that she possibly could.”

Q: Do you wish she was still a bit like that?

“I think it’s in me, really. (laughter) They’re always trying to palm you off, to get you together with someone, aren’t they? I think having grown up myself a bit I suppose you do change a bit. I don’t know whether I want to be involved with somebody. Not after Lewis (Archer – played by Nigel Havers). That was a failure. I mean a lovely failure. Yes, I think the corner shop funnily enough. And I don’t really go in there a lot anymore. I don’t know why not because I quite fancy Dev…(laughter) Maybe I have grown up, I don’t know. He’s lovely.”

Q: What are some of your favourite memories of the family you work with?

“Oh, I just think seeing them all grow up, the kids. When Jack arrived, David, and then funnily enough when Nick was tiny…I’ve seen all these little ones change, actually, a lot of them. I just think it is like a family. And then poor Gail seems to have so much trouble. I don’t know, I try and counsel them all but it doesn’t really work, in my back room. But I wouldn’t have it any other way because if they were all an ordinary family there wouldn’t be any drama there, would it? Sometimes there’s a bit too much drama but there we go.”

Q: Have you seen your new dressing room yet and do you know where it is?

“No. But I have been talking to three young men that were building the dressing rooms and asking them about that. And bless their hearts, they looked sheepish and said, ‘We’re just having to rip them out again.’ I said, ‘Where are the dressing rooms boys?’ And they said, ‘Well, up there but we’re just having to rip them out again because there’s something wrong.’ I said, ‘You mean you’ve built them?’ He said, ‘Yes, but we’re having to rip them out because there’s something wrong with the sound.’ The sound, it didn’t kind of relate. So it might be a tent!”

Q: Will everybody get their own dressing room now?

“I hope so. To be honest, I don’t know the ins and outs of that. I hope so. And I pity anybody that has to share with me. So I think I probably would have a tent.”

Q: Do you share with anyone now?

“No. They wouldn’t cope with it. Mainly because everybody that’s been in over the years, like Alma, Amanda Barrie, and everybody, made their dressing room look really lovely. They had a lovely little rug…they’re only like rabbit hutches anyway. Mine is like bedsit land when I used to tour in shows…things on the wall, pictures, I can’t tell you what’s in the drawers. And I’m trying to not take anything with me, if and when I get a new dressing room, so they can start from scratch. But I don’t know that that’s going to happen. I’m dreading packing it all up and a bit of me thinks, ‘Just take it out and shove it in a sack.’ But I know I won’t. I know I won’t.”

Q: Could you tease Christmas a little bit for us because it’s not going to be very happy for the Platts, is it?

“No, Christmas is not brilliant. I can’t tell you about the other people in the Street because ours (storyline) is pretty full on. Yet again problems. Let’s say it’s not a swinging Christmas, really. Stuff happens, as somebody said.”

Q: Audrey has sympathy for David out of everybody?

“Yes. I think Audrey – and I quite like that – tries to look after David and try and understand him. But I think…this is me now being rather kind of method…I think you find grandparents sometimes connect with…however troubled the son is or the granddaughter, they try and connect. Maybe it is that generation thing. It happens to be that I absolutely adore Jack P. Shepherd and therefore I obviously love David and I think he is a brilliant little actor. That helps. And he’s also very funny and he makes me laugh. So that helps. But before Christmas I try and do my bit for him.”

Q: What’s happened with your house?

“I had dry rot. What happened there? I was with Maria for a while and that fizzled out. It’s all sorted. But they had to take the roof off. it was hell.”

Q: Do you give advice to the younger members of the cast?

“I wouldn’t dare. No. I learn from them. Because they’re so sweet. And we all do our own thing in our own way. I don’t think I’ve ever given advice to a young person in my life. Perhaps I should? (laughter) No I haven’t, funnily enough.”

Q: How do you feel about the future of the show. Kieran (executive producer Kieran Roberts) was saying that obviously ITV are investing in the show. It’s 53-years-old and they’re building a new set?

“Well, I’ve always thought this anyway…it’ll go on, won’t it? There’s never a star – I know we all have our favourites and the public have their favourites. Of course they do and that’s right. But people come, people go, people sadly leave or they’re ill. And the Street goes on. The Street is the star. The cobbles are the star. That’s how it should be.”

Q: There are obviously some extensions to the set…we see the back of Maudsley Street..?

“That will be fun.”

Q: So would you like to see more characters..?

“No!”

Q: …the back gates from the other street open as Deirdre is having a fag or whatever?

“Well you probably will, yes. But at the minute there’s quite a lot of us and I feel maybe…why am I putting actors out of work..?(laughter) No, it’s absolutely wonderful. If they do, they do. You have to just go with it.”

Q: What about your own future? Are you happy to stay?

“I’m institutionalised. (laughter) I am a bit of a fixture. I thought someone meant like a light bulb! No I am. And it’s lovely. And I just said earlier to someone, the funny thing is, and I don’t like to admit this because it makes me sound a bit mental, whatever happens in the Street and the stories in this, I love doing it. And when I then have some time off, I feel the real world really kind of very difficult to cope with. Whereas here, the murders, the rapes, the attacks, you kind of come in and do it…bankrupt, dry rot…but just facing the real world…so it’s an escape as well as anything else. Really, I’m very pleased to be working. Not just that. I love the show. And I don’t really have any ambition to say, ‘Ooh gosh, I’ve got to go and try that.’ Apart from trying to hit a top C. I want to sing. But not for you. Just for myself. Before I drop dead. I just want to drop dead singing a high C again.”

Q: (From a Spanish journalist) Could you explain for a Spanish audience what is the secret of a so lasting series?

“I think it identifies with…it’s tried to keep up with issues of the day and decades. So we change. If you saw the earlier ones of the very early days in the Sixties, it fitted into that era. Then if you go through the Seventies and the Eighties, we try and keep the stories that apply in today’s world. On a lighter level, perhaps, sometimes. Also I think it’s to do with the stories. It has a huge fanbase now of people who have watched it since 1960 and then they’ve watched it with their daughters and then the daughters have watched it…and I meet people all the time in Sainsbury’s, which is my second home…Salford Sainsbury’s…that have watched it and know the stories better than me. And they really identify, hopefully, with the characters in the show. We try and keep it a bit real. Sometimes you can get a character that is, perhaps, ‘big’. But for the most part I think as long as you can believe in the characters, you have to believe that that character exists. Does that make sense? And as long as we can keep that up. And as I say, the stories. Hopefully the acting has a bit to do with it. But it’s just generally keeping going.”

Q: (Spanish journalist again) So do you really think it can last another 50 years?

“Yes, I do. Not with us, necessarily. But I don’t see it not lasting. I can’t see why it wouldn’t last. The viewers are always very loyal. And I’m surprised – you get it in Spain?”

Q: (Spanish journalist again) You mean Coronation Street? We know it but no. It’s not very popular. It’s just that I would like to explain to people why can a series be so lasting.

“I don’t know. Well, if we knew the secret then I suppose every director, producer, television executive would put it on. To be honest, nobody knows the secret and you can only think that’s probably why.”

Q: (Spanish journalist again) It is the oldest series in the world, ever?

“Yes. Apart from The Archers. Da, de, de, doo, da, doo, doo…”

Q: (From me again as it happens) Not to be flippant, Sue, but do you think Audrey might take the opportunity of this move to put her prices up? Even though viewers won’t notice the difference on screen?

“That’s a very good idea as well. Thank you both very much for saying that. (laughter) Two good tips. Yes. I’m quite genuine. I’m not too bad because we have a lot of older clientele, as you know. And so I have special offers for them. I won’t even ask you to come in because you don’t qualify for that. And I might start doing other things, perhaps in the back room. We’ve kept to hair mostly. We used to do massages.”

Q: (From me again) Would you like Audrey to move back into the Street or are you happy where she is?

“I love Grasmere Drive. When you’ve seen Audrey’s lovely house. It’s a semi-detached. It’s about Ashton-under-Lyne. But in real life I think it’s meant to be just around the corner. Because the times I’m staggering home. Or I can’t stagger home because I’ve been in the Rovers. So I don’t know how I get home. I get a taxi or something.”

Q: On the last day of filming on the old set, what would you like to take as a souvenir?

“Oh gosh. I wish I could think on my feet.

“Do you know, I’m going to be really kind of cheesy and say…

“Just my memories.”

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You can see my full set of 48 photos here.

ITV Coronation Street

Coronation Street Reveal: Tony Warren

My Coronation Street Blogs

Coronation Street Blog

Ian Wylie on Twitter

The 2013 Christmas Special.

Eeeeeeeeeh!

I could not let 2013 pass without a special mention for my comedy of the year – Hebburn.

Shamefully ignored in last week’s British Comedy Awards, the first BBC2 series was screened in October and November 2012.

Just about as impressive a TV sitcom debut as I can remember.

And I was there in September 1998 for the very first press screening of a new BBC2 sitcom called The Royle Family.

Hebburn is a worthy successor to Geordie comedy classics like Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

I truly loved that first series and hoped the Hebburn team could at least match it with the second, which began last month.

In the event, they have surpassed all my expectations with a series that has built from episode to episode, along with the cast performances.

Culminating in a classic end of series episode six tomorrow (Tuesday) night.

Which includes the Swayze’s launch of Hot Guilt, the “first debut album” by pub singer Gervaise – a beautifully judged performance by Neil Grainger.

Gervaise, of course, being the love child of Star Turn.

With Big Keith (Steffen Peddie) on bongos.

Not forgetting to make use of your freeze frame to check out his album tracks in full.

Creating and sustaining a genuinely funny new sitcom is one of the toughest tasks in television.

But to produce one with such wit, warmth, heart and knowing humour is a real achievement.

And if you manage to include a scene involving a saveloy dip, then you’re touched by genius.

You’ll have to wait until tomorrow night for that little gem – but meanwhile here’s a preview of episode six:

I was born and raised almost directly opposite Hebburn on the proper side of the Tyne.

It also just so happens that my brother and his Hebburn-born wife live a few doors down from the house used for the exterior of Pauline (Gina McKee) and Joe (Jim Moir) Pearson’s house.

It follows that I’ve made many visits to Hebburn, usually under the cover of darkness.

So even though it is set in the deep south, I recognise the DNA.

As well as local newspapers like the Hebburn Advertiser.

There was the usual nonsense when the first series began, with some “locals” upset by Hebburn’s portrayal of the area.

Making the error of mistaking an affectionate sitcom full of love for the town with a hard-nosed documentary expose.

In any case, neighbouring Jarrow comes off far worse.

While thanks to the magic of telly, most of the show is actually filmed at MediaCityUK in Salford.

At its core, Hebburn is the story of Jack (Chris Ramsey) and Sarah (Kimberley Nixon), their family and friends.

It’s been a delight to see that world blossom with some cracking scripts from creator Jason Cook, who also plays Ramsey, and co-writer Graham Duff, who pops up from time to time as dynamic Hebburn Advertiser photographer David.

Matched by a top class cast including Pat Dunn (Dot), Lisa McGrillis (Vicki) and Victoria Elliott (Denise).

The whole production growing in confidence as the weeks fly by.

Series two also attracting the acting legend that is John Woodvine, as Arthur, along with a cameo role by Tim Healy.

Plus the welcome recent arrival of Melanie Hill.

Comedy is, of course, subjective and I know there will be some who just don’t get Hebburn.

Me? I cried with laughter ALL the way through tomorrow night’s episode.

Luckily episode six isn’t really the end of the second series.

That honour falls to episode seven. Also known as the Christmas special. On screen this Sunday night.

It features a question about executive producers I’ve always wished someone would ask.

A guest appearance by Miriam Margolyes as Millie.

And a quite perfect festive conclusion.

Television can inform, educate and entertain.

The latter is certainly true of Hebburn.

Most of all it has brought me joy.

Pauline might not agree.

But for my money, every room Hebburn is shown in has to be…a good room.

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Hebburn series two concludes on BBC2 at 10pm on Tuesday December 17.

The Hebburn Christmas special is on BBC2 at 10:30pm on Sunday December 22 and repeated at 11:50pm on Christmas Day.

Hebburn BBC Site

Baby Cow

Channel X

Star Turn

Saveloy Dip

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Neil Grainger as Gervaise.

Pat Dunn (Dot), Gina McKee (Pauline) and Jim Moir (Joe).

Neil Grainger and Steffen Peddie as Gervaise and Big Keith.

Chris Ramsey and Kimberley Nixon as Jack and Sarah.

Miriam Margolyes as Millie and Pat Dunn as Dot.

Lisa McGrillis as Vicki and Stuart Martin as Lindsay.

Jason Cook as Ramsey and Chris Ramsey as Jack.

John Woodvine (right) as Arthur.

Lisa McGrillis as Vicki.

Victoria Elliott as Denise.

Graham Duff (David), Chris Ramsey (Jack) and Jason Cook (Ramsey).

“I gather there was a lot of excitement online.

“We trended on Twitter as #ladynerds – which I love.

“Bletchley and these girls represent everything that is brilliant about Britain.

“They’re eccentric, non-conformist and think outside the box.”

Rachael Stirling talking to me about series one of The Bletchley Circle and reprising her role as Millie in the second series.

Which begins on ITV at 9pm on Monday (January 6).

I was delighted to be asked to write the cast interviews for the new series, as I had done for the first one.

Talking to Rachael, Anna Maxwell Martin (Susan), Julie Graham (Jean), Sophie Rundle (Lucy) and Hattie Morahan, who appears in the new series as former Bletchley Park code-breaker Alice Merren.

You can read those interviews in the ITV Production Notes here:

The Bletchley Circle 2 ITV Production Notes

Rachael, Julie and Hattie were also on good form when they attended the series two press launch at the end of November.

Together with writer Guy Burt and executive producer Jake Lushington.

The Bletchley Circle’s success on screen has also had a rather nice spin-off in the real world.

With increased visitor numbers at Bletchley Park, where exciting developments are taking place.

As you can read at the end of the production notes and via the link below.

Hattie Morahan as Alice.

ITV Drama

World Productions

Bletchley Park

Ian Wylie on Twitter

Anna Maxwell Martin as Susan.

Julie Graham as Jean.

Sophie Rundle as Lucy.

Rachael Stirling as Millie.

Paul McGann as John Richards.

Hattie Morahan as Alice at Bletchley Park.

Hattie Morahan as Alice at Bletchley Park.

Faye Marsay as Lizzie.

“IT’S the most full on thing I’ve ever done.”

Keeley Hawes speaking tonight about being “waterboarded” in the second series of Line Of Duty.

Not quite the infamous torture technique.

But struggling to breathe after having her hair grabbed and being violently flushed face down several times into a police HQ toilet.

“You just do it and then have a big glass of wine,” she smiled.

Keeley joins the cast as “outsider” Detective Inspector Lindsay Denton.

With Call The Midwife star Jessica Raine another new face as Detective Constable Georgia Trotman.

Who also tonight revealed – right on cue – her hidden talent at sinking Pool balls.

A product of a misspent youth at university.

The first World Productions series was BBC2’s biggest new drama series for 10 years with an average audience of 4.2 million viewers.

And writer Jed Mercurio will have viewers hooked from the very start of series two.

A police convoy is ambushed leaving three police officers dead and a protected witness seriously injured.

Det Insp Denton is the only survivor of the attack and immediately comes under suspicion as police investigate who leaked details of the convoy.

A London screening tonight of the first episode was followed by a Q&A with Keeley, Jessica, Vicky McClure (Det Con Kate Fleming), Martin Compston (Det Sgt Steve Arnott) plus Jed Mercurio and executive producer Simon Heath.

Tonight’s London Q&A line-up.

Keeley said: “It was harrowing. It’s pretty full on. It’s the most full on thing I’ve ever done.

“But saying that, I loved every minute of it.

“It’s not every day you get to go to work and be waterboarded and have your head flushed down the toilet, being beaten up, poisoned…I’m sure there were some other things.

“So, yeah. You relish it. It’s exciting.”

I asked Keeley to say a little more about filming that scene.

“It felt like it went on forever,” she replied.

“And I did have my lovely stunt lady there and she did a fuller version of it.

“But I definitely did enough. (laughs)

“It’s one of those things. You just have to throw yourself into it. There’s no way of mocking that up.

“And there’s no way of being polite about waterboarding somebody.

“As with all of those things, you have to throw yourself at them. You have to say to whoever you’re doing the scene with – ‘Just do it.’

“I think it works.”

A colleague asked if she felt panicked filming the scene.

“Well it was a bucket – it wasn’t a toilet. (laughter)

“No, not really. Because there’s an empty-ended mocked up toilet.

“It’s like anything. It’s like doing a sex scene or a kissing scene. It’s never as it appears.

“You just do it and then have a big glass of wine.”

Asked about playing Lindsay, she said: “It’s some of the most fun that I’ve ever had.

“She is incredible fun. It was actually kind of liberating to play Lindsay, with her being somebody for who vanity just isn’t part of who she is.

“That was really brilliant for me. It was quite odd getting used to the feeling of walking into the make-up department in the morning and then going, ‘Yeah, OK.’

“I’ve got what we called ‘the psychotic fringe’ going on – like I’d been doing it myself.

“And sometimes they allowed me to keep some mascara on from the day before. That’s it.”

Asked to compare her new detective role with DI Alex Drake in Ashes To Ashes, Keeley said:

“They couldn’t be more different.

“I never really think of Ashes To Ashes as a cop show, really. For some reason it never felt like that.

“I know obviously it was. But not in the same way. This is realism and that certainly wasn’t…some people think it was.”

*********************************************************

Jessica – who returns this Sunday as midwife Jenny Lee in a new BBC1 series of Call The Midwife – revealed how she almost turned the role down.

“I got the script and I was determined not to do anything because I was about to start shooting Call The Midwife and it’s a big six month shoot and I really didn’t want to do anything.

“So I reluctantly said, ‘OK, I’ll read it.’ And then I just thought, ‘Oh, it’s really, really good.’

“And went in for an audition and heard a week later that I’d got it.

“I couldn’t say no to it. It was so different and really refreshing for me to do a part like this.

“The main difference being I could drop a lot of ‘ts’ and I didn’t have to be ‘so, very, very posh’.

“I’m really excited to be in it. When I watched it, at the end I went, ‘Oh my God, it’s really good, isn’t it?’”

Asked if she was posh in real life or not, Jessica replied: “ I don’t know. I don’t consider myself posh. But I don’t know.

“I definitely posh up for Call The Midwife.

“So it just felt very refreshing to do a very contemporary role and something so dynamic and well shot and well written and have such an incredible cast in it.

“I couldn’t say no.”

I asked Jessica about a scene in a bar where her character displays her Pool playing skills.

She explained: “That scene wasn’t written for me because I’m an amazing Pool player…although I am.

“I think Jed seemed very nervous on that day. You were like, ‘Can you play Pool?’

“I spent a lot of time at university, when I should have been in lectures, at the Pool table. So I could play Pool.

“But we did that scene three times. And there are loads of extras around. So there’s extra pressure.

“And it wasn’t going well the first two times and the third time I did it, I was so ecstatic and we shouted ‘cut’ and the whole room’s like, ‘Yaaaaay!’

“Because we could have been there potentially for a very, very long time.

“But I was quite proud of myself that day.

“We also set up the balls on the Pool table in a specific way that made it slightly easier to pot them.

“But still very talented on my part.” (laughter)

*********************************************************

My immediate reaction after watching the first episode in the new series was: “Wow.”

And writing this just a few hours later, that’s pretty much how I still feel about this compelling thriller.

Due to begin on BBC2 in the first week of February, these are six one-hour episodes you will not want to miss.

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BBC Line Of Duty 1

World Productions

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As Owen Newitt in The Vicar of Dibley 1994.

The death of Roger Lloyd Pack last night is a great loss.

He will, of course, be remembered in headlines as Trigger in Only Fools And Horses and Owen in The Vicar of Dibley.

But as many have already pointed out, his TV, film and stage career encompassed a huge variety of roles.

Including a truly extraordinary performance in a two-hour ITV drama called What We Did On Our Holiday, screened in October 2006.

It made a big impact at the time and still resonates today.

My 2006 feature on Roger is below.

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ONLY Fools and Horses star Roger Lloyd Pack had a confession to make at the screening of a moving new ITV1 drama.

What We Did On Our Holiday features Roger as Jim, a husband and father in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s.

His son Nick is played by Shane Richie, in a very different role to that of Alfie Moon in EastEnders.

Shane may be a familiar face to millions of TV viewers, but Roger had never heard of him.

“I have to admit, I wasn’t that familiar with him, to be perfectly honest, quite simply because I’m not a soap fan,” he explained.

“I don’t watch EastEnders and the soaps, they kind of come at the wrong time of day for me. So I didn’t know who he was, which will sound ridiculous to some I should imagine.

“Consequently, I had no preconceived ideas about what kind of actor he would be. He’s been a pleasure to work with.”

There may be a few tears at the end of the one-off drama, which is screened this Sunday at 9pm.

Although, at times, hard to watch, Roger gives an extraordinary performance, even though he has very few lines of dialogue in the two-hour film.

“It was pretty draining,” he reflects. “It was a pretty emotional thing to do because it makes you realise how anything can happen in your life. It’s a difficult illness to deal with and quite misunderstood.

“What did strike me very much in talking to people who’ve got Parkinson’s was – it’s a prison that they’re in. They were treated as if they were mentally defective because of their eccentric outward appearance and mumbling and incapacity to speak and move properly.

“And yet, when you got through that, they were often highly intelligent people able to relate to you in the way that anyone else could, but who would be condescended to and patronised by people who weren’t prepared, or were shocked, by their quite disturbing physical movements. That would be upsetting to people who, maybe, would not be able to get through that to see the person underneath.

“So I did feel very strongly that people were imprisoned and that upset me more than anything. It must be very hard to bear and it must be very, very lonely.”

Pauline Collins plays Jim’s wife Lil, demonstrating how the disease also affects the lives of partners. At one stage her frustrations finally explode and she hits out at the man she loves.

“It’s an awful thing to have to do to anybody. And, of course, it happens. This woman is in her mid-sixties and tired. He’s had the disease for 20-odd years, so she must be at the end of her tether.”

The film is based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by John Harding, with an ending you may not see coming.

Roger – about to return to the role of land owner Owen Newitt for two final episodes of BBC1’s The Vicar of Dibley – hopes the drama will give viewers a new insight into Parkinson’s.

“It was very interesting and humbling looking into this illness because it’s a lot more complex than I first thought.”

As Trigger in Only Fools And Horses 1990.

BBC News: Roger Lloyd Pack dies aged 69.

Roger Lloyd Pack IMDb

Parkinson’s Disease Society

What We Did On Our Holiday: Shane Richie

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JEREMY Piven has plenty in store for viewers when he returns tonight in Mr Selfridge.

I was delighted to be asked by ITV to write the cast interviews for this 10-part second series.

Having also done the same for the opening season.

And on the first of a number of visits back to the Mr Selfridge set in London last year it was immediately clear the bar has been raised.

I was a genuine fan of that first series and the second, set five years on in 1914, delivers a step up in all departments.

Including an even richer look on screen as the backdrop to some truly terrific storylines and new regular characters.

As well as some delicious twists and turns for the cast members we first met on screen a year ago.

Jeremy takes the lead as store owner Harry Selfridge with Frances O’Connor as his wife Rose.

Both real life characters from exactly 100 years ago.

The cast were, as ever, fascinating to talk to with many stories to tell.

Not least the tale of Jeremy Piven and a Rolling Stone.

Frances O’Connor on the guest appearance by English tenor Alfie Boe and her new look.

Aisling Loftus (Agnes Towler) and her visit to the real Selfridges on London’s Oxford Street.

Katherine Kelly (Lady Mae) on a dramatic change for her character.

Aidan McArdle (Lord Loxley) as the man viewers will love to hate.

Amanda Abbington (Miss Mardle) on the Great War about to claim so many lives.

Amy Beth Hayes (Kitty) on Tango terror.

Cal MacAninch (Mr Thackeray) on cutting a dash.

And Polly Walker (Delphine Day) on the impressive new Delphine’s Club set, where we chatted for her interview.

You can read those interviews, plus one with executive producer Kate Lewis, by clicking on the link to the ITV Production Notes / Press Pack below:

Mr Selfridge 2 Wylie Interviews

As Kate Lewis told me:

“Harry Selfridge is back for a vibrant new chapter in both his own story and that of the store, along with the characters we love and some colourful new additions to the cast.”

Mr Selfridge is a real Sunday night TV joy.

Opening its doors for business on ITV at 9pm tonight.

Scroll down for more photos from the new series.

Including Ron Cook as my favourite: Mr Crabb.

Five years on: Aisling Loftus as Agnes Towler.

Frances O’Connor as Rose Selfridge.

Katherine Kelly as Lady Mae.

Lord Loxley (Aidan McArdle) and Harry Selfridge (Jeremy Piven).

Amanda Abbington as Miss Mardle.

Aidan McArdle and Katherine Kelly as Lord and Lady Loxley.

Jeremy Piven as Harry Selfridge.

Frances O’Connor as Rose Selfridge.

Ron Cook as Mr Crabb.

Polly Walker as Delphine Day.

Trystan Gravelle as Victor.

Amy Beth Hayes as Kitty.

Tom Goodman-Hill as Mr Grove.

Aisling Loftus as Agnes Towler.

Cal MacAninch as Mr Thackeray.

Calum Callaghan as George Towler.

Polly Walker as Delphine Day.

Aidan McArdle as Lord Loxley.

Gregory Fitoussi as Henri Leclair.

Open for Series Two Business.

ITV Drama

Mr Selfridge 2 Production Notes

Mr Selfridge Series One Interviews

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Opening the new Coronation Street “lot”.

“IT’S going to be hard to walk through that door for the last time.

“I will cry. I know I will.”

Veteran actress Barbara Knox is not the only one to shed a tear in Coronation Street: A Moving Story.

Screened on ITV at 9pm on Thursday March 6, the hour-long documentary tells the story of the cast and crew’s farewell to the show’s historic site in Manchester.

Then captures their excitement at the move to a scaled up but identical Weatherfield at Trafford / Media City.

There has been the odd daft story this weekend derived from what both Barbara and Street creator Tony Warren say in the film.

Barbara, who plays Rita Tanner, recalled ghosts from the past on an emotional tour of the Quay Street sets.

“Some of the essence of us, our spirit or emotions, must be still in here,” she said on her last day of filming before the move to Corrie’s new home.

“You can hear and feel the people who worked here.”

While Tony said: “This isn’t just a street of memories, it’s a street full of ghosts. I just hope they get on the right bus to Media City.”

Leading to a “creative” front page lead and page three story in a certain tabloid yesterday, including the headline: “Ghosts snub new set.”

Make your own mind up about the worth of that when you watch the documentary.

Barbara Knox as Rita.

Barbara, 80, first appeared – briefly – on the cobbles in 1964 as a friend of Dennis Tanner (Philip Lowrie) and became a regular cast member in 1972.

She dabbed her eyes before shooting her final scene on The Kabin set.

“My little kingdom. This is where I have spent some of the happiest hours of my life with some wonderful people.

“And it’s going to be hard to walk through that door for the last time. I will cry. I know I will.”

Co-star Philip, 77, who now plays her just departed screen husband Dennis, was one of 21 original cast members in the first episode on December 9 1960.

The documentary shows him visiting the Granada studio where Coronation Street began – walking through the doors for the first time in almost half a century.

An emotional Philip said: “My goodness. Isn’t it small? This is astonishing.”

Philip Lowrie as Dennis.

Having played the teenage son of Elsie Tanner (Pat Phoenix), he left Weatherfield in 1968, returned in 2011 and was seen leaving the Street with Gloria Price (Sue Johnston) in last Friday’s night’s second episode.

Reflecting on the show’s 53-year history, Philip added: “I’m very privileged and very emotional to have been a part of that. And still part of it.”

A TV team spent two years documenting the rise of the new Corrie HQ at Media City where cast and crew began filming in early January.

With the first episodes made at Trafford due on screen soon.

The documentary also includes film discovered in the Granada archives and unseen for half a century.

It features original Rovers Return licensees Jack and Annie Walker, played by Arthur Leslie and Doris Speed, filming on the original set.

Tony Warren recalls how he drove around the streets of Salford with a designer and found the inspiration for the original Weatherfield.

While cast members reflect on the move as they pack up their dressing rooms to head for the fifth version of the Street in its 53-year history.

A lovingly made film and essential viewing for all Coronation Street fans.

And yes. Best have that box of tissues handy.

Doris Speed, who played Annie Walker, before a previous new Street incarnation.

ITV Coronation Street

Coronation Street Blog

Coronation Street Reveal: Tony Warren

Coronation Street Reveal: Sue Nicholls

Coronation Street Trafford Wharf Photos

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Dominic Mitchell and Luke Newberry (Kieren) at today’s launch.

IN The Flesh creator and writer Dominic Mitchell told a story today about the power of drama.

He spoke at this morning’s London press launch for the second series of the BBC3 show.

Shortly before BBC director-general Tony Hall confirmed that BBC3 will be moving online in autumn 2015 to save £50m a year.

BBC3 controller Zai Bennett had been expected to introduce the screening, as he did for the first series launch 13 months ago.

But, unsurprisingly, he had more pressing business back at the BBC’s New Broadcasting House just a short walk along the road.

It fell to Kate Harwood, the BBC’s Head of Drama, England to welcome the gathered media.

She began by saying: “The astute amongst you will have noticed I’m not Zai Bennett.

“And obviously this morning’s eye needs to stay at NBH and be there for the announcement that will come later today about BBC3.

“So let’s just be absolutely clear that this is an event to celebrate a very beloved show, In The Flesh, and we won’t be taking any questions about BBC3.”

Fair enough. We were there to see the first episode of In The Flesh 2 and talk to those involved in making it.

It would also have been tricky for them to say anything about BBC3 ahead of the official announcement.

Kate went on to say: “I also want to make sure you all realise that the show is nominated for an RTS for Best Serial, which is quite an amazing achievement for a first time writer, for a BBC3 show.”

There will be more to say about the excellent In The Flesh 2 nearer the start of the series in May.

Today I asked Dominic if he had received any memorable feedback about the first series.

He replied: “There was one story – a lad who put on his Twitter…he said that he had watched it and him and his mum hadn’t had a very nice relationship.

“He watched it and he was a big fan of the show and he got his mum to watch it with him.

“And at the end of series one she kind of turned around and said, ‘I love you son.’

“And I was like, ‘Oh my God.’

“That, for me, that was like, ‘Well bloody hell, that’s why you do it.’

“That was incredible. That was a real moment for me.”

Today’s wristband. Best not get knocked over on the way home.

The move of BBC3 online is still some 18 months away.

But looking to the future – an acclaimed BBC3 drama series like In The Flesh would no doubt find a new TV home on BBC2.

As well as via the BBC iPlayer.

With Tony Hall careful to provide a “good news” headline today by also announcing that £30m of the BBC3 savings will go towards boosting BBC1 drama.

The BBC is simply trying to manage cutbacks forced on it by the last licence fee settlement – and there are no easy answers.

Yet I can’t help but wonder whether a thought-provoking, intelligent drama like In The Flesh, written by a first time TV writer, would have made the screen without BBC3?

As Zai Bennett told us at the series one press launch in February 2013:

“It was so different and arresting that I thought we had to do it for BBC3.

“Dominic wrote In The Flesh and submitted it to the (BBC) Writersroom. Then it was developed by BBC North through the Northern Voices scheme. So things like this really do happen. A first-time TV writer – here’s a three-part drama. In only two years.

“In addition to being written by a hugely talented emerging writer, we’ve also had the chance to blend some wonderfully seasoned actors with some great new talent.”

In The Flesh might well have been snapped up in any event.

But with BBC3 now itself suffering from Partially Deceased Syndrome, future new writers and talents may not be so lucky.

BBC One To Get £30m From Three Closure

BBC Three

In The Flesh 2 BBC Production Release

BBC Writersroom

In The Flesh 1

Ian Wylie on Twitter

The London preview screening.

“WE all know people who have stood too close to the fire and have died.

“It happened to Philip Seymour Hoffman very recently.”

Tom Hollander reflecting after last night’s premiere screening of A Poet In New York.

A remarkable BBC2 / BBC1 Wales single drama about the final days of Dylan Thomas before his death in 1953, aged just 39.

The star of Rev and so much more, Tom plays the self-destructive Welsh poet in a performance that will live long in the memory.

“I did find it very moving, this story about somebody that couldn’t conceive of a future for themselves,” he said.

Written by Andrew Davies, the film marks the centenary of Dylan Thomas’ birth.

It begins with his arrival at Idlewild Airport (now JFK) in New York in October 1953 ahead of the first performance of Under Milk Wood.

Before he was due to travel on to Hollywood to write an opera with Stravinsky.

Filmed in just 18 days, the drama also flashes back to both Dylan’s childhood and his marriage to Caitlin – another brilliant performance, by Essie Davis.

Plagued by ill health, alcohol binges, money worries and the 1950s’ New York smog, Dylan never made it home to Wales.

My edited transcript of last night’s post screening Q&A at The Soho Hotel in London is below and will be added to in due course.

The Q&A, hosted by James Rampton, featured Tom Hollander, Andrew Davies, director Aisling Walsh, executive producer Griff Rhys Jones and producer Ruth Caleb.

It includes Tom’s recollection of going into Dylan’s favourite pub in Laugharne, the village where he and Caitlin lived for a period of time, and meeting the locals:

“One of them was so drunk when I walked in that he briefly thought that I was Dylan Thomas and time somehow had kaleidoscoped and it was still the Fifties.”

Plus Tom on having to “fatten up” to play the ailing poet:

“I should have spoken to a Sumo wrestling coach.

“Who probably would have told me to eat chips and pizza and deep fried pork balls and egg fried rice and sweet things and McFlurries, chocolate.

“And I did. Just all the stuff you’re not supposed to eat. I stuffed my face with it.”

Made by Modern Television, A Poet In New York – also co-starring Ewen Bremner and Phoebe Fox – is due to be screened on BBC2 and BBC1 Wales later this spring.

With the third series of Rev starting on BBC2 from Monday March 24.

Tom Hollander, Griff Rhys Jones, Andrew Davies, Aisling Walsh, Ruth Caleb and James Rampton.

Tom Hollander:

Q: What appealed when you were first offered this role?

“Well, I’m afraid, traditionally the answer is that it was a wonderful script and a wonderful part. And a wonderful director who was extremely dedicated to her subject, despite not having a huge amount of money to do it and very constrained time. We shot it in 18 days. And Aisling with just sheer grit and determination made that work. As did Ruth. As did Griff and the production team. And so, I thought, ‘Gosh, it’s going to be tough but it’s such a good part you can’t not do that.’”

Q: Did you have time to prepare?

“I had a few months, actually, to prepare. But I then took another job…for financial reasons (laughter). So that meant that my fattening up lead time was severely reduced to about six weeks. So I stuffed my face for six weeks. Which is not as fun as it sounds, actually. If any of you fantasise about being able to eat whatever you want with impunity, you can’t. Because after about 48 hours of it you’re full and then you just feel sick and you have night sweats and go to the loo at all sorts of strange times of day. Anyway, you know, we suffer for our art in showbiz, as is well documented.”

Q: There are some very demanding scenes for you. Which one did you find hardest to do?

“I can’t remember, is the truthful answer.”

Q: (From Griff Rhys Jones) Tell us a little bit about the voice because that was an extraordinary thing. I remember when you first did the read through and sort of took off with Dylan, that was such a wonderful moment for us.

“Yes, the voice thing was fun. The initial just huge relief at discovering that he didn’t sound that Welsh. So I was able to think, if I can get that. I worked with a voice coach called Jill McCullough, who happens to be Welsh. And then listened to him a lot. That was actually the most enjoyable part of the preparation. It was not reading the biographies but was just absorbing the sound of him, which I did in my car driving around the place. And on my iPhone. I’ve still got all the recordings of him reading prose and poetry. That was a lovely thing to do. And then tried to find a version of it. His actual voice – I could put on my phone – actually now sounds so fruity that it would have been hard to believe. So it was a way of trying to find some sort of modern zone where it would be sufficiently faithful to his 1940s strange voice but also not laughable to a modern ear.

“As for this self-destructive thing, for me…what drew you to the character, the great script and the director and the usual things. But also I did find it very moving, this story about somebody that couldn’t conceive of a future for themselves. And that his best poetry, or the poetry that I found the most accessible, is the stuff about youth. So he writes about his boyhood and he somehow can’t imagine himself as middle aged man or as an older man. And so he is going to die. So there’s a sort of death wish.

“Also there’s addiction. And I have seen people of my own generation – we all know people who have stood too close to the fire and have died. It happened to Philip Seymour Hoffman very recently. When that happened I thought, ‘That’s not an overweight man in early middle age dying a terribly sad death because they can’t work out how to be…’ Dylan Thomas knows how to be a roaring boy, he knows how to be a roaring youth behaving badly, running around Fitzrovia. He doesn’t know how to be an eminent poet. A senior citizen. A teacher. He can’t perform the next level of role for himself. I found that compelling.

“Until Philip Seymour Hoffman died I used to say, ‘And it’s amazing someone that famous could have been neglected that much and could have died. Because surely, if you were that famous…’ An author these days, Ed Victor (one of the world’s leading literary agents) would have you in The Priory in five seconds. And then Philip Seymour Hoffman keels over next to his bath.

“I don’t remember the most difficult…the whole thing…we took one deep breath in and then we filmed for 18 days and then we all fell over. It was all hugely challenging. But there wasn’t time to think about it once we’d started. And then it was quite emotional finishing it when Dylan Thomas’ granddaughter (Hannah) came. She saw the last day. And she was so moved by it. And she had his curly hair, which was rather an amazing thing to see for some reason. That was very touching.

“Laugharne itself opened to us. It was hilarious…somebody amongst all the people in the local pub – Browns Hotel – insisted that he (Dylan Thomas) wasn’t a big drinker. One of them was so drunk when I walked in that he briefly thought that I was Dylan Thomas and time somehow had kaleidoscoped and it was still the Fifties.”

Tom Hollander, Griff Rhys Jones and Andrew Davies.

Q: Playing Thomas and getting to know about him, did it change any preconceptions that you had about him, if you had any? And also, which was easier – gaining weight for the part or losing it afterwards?

“Losing weight was easier. And I didn’t know very much about him. So there weren’t many preconceptions for me to be re-educated about. There’s this thing in his poetry…that’s in that poem, ‘The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower…drives my green age and is my destroyer,’ is the line. That’s very good. That’s about him. That my heart beating in my chest is also killing me. I mean, there are lots of really bad pop songs that have the same sentiment. But life and death are the same thing. That’s what I learned about him. And I learned that he didn’t sound Welsh.”

Q: (From me as it happens) Tom – In the whole process of researching and filming this production, did you formulate any burning questions that you would want to ask Dylan, had he been available?

“No. I didn’t. I must think on my feet. No. You just say, ‘Can’t you calm down for five minutes?’ Would be the question. ‘Just have a day off. Have a couple of days off.’

“But I met Robert Hardy when I was preparing to do it. We did a charity function together. Robert Hardy – Siegfried in All Creatures Great and Small – knew him. Because Robert Hardy, as is often spoken about, his best friend was Richard Burton and he met Dylan Thomas with Richard Burton in the BBC, in Broadcasting House, one day. And was introduced to Dylan Thomas. And Dylan Thomas said, (effected voice) “Hello, my name is Dylan Thomas.’ And Robert Hardy, who’s quite fruity himself, went, (effected voice) ‘Oh, my name’s Robert Hardy.’ Thinking that it was a joke. (laughter) And Dylan Thomas gave him this long, hard stare. Like Paddington Bear. And I said, ‘But was he fun? Was he fun? He must have been really good fun?’ And he went, ‘No, he was very drunk. He got drunker and drunker and more and more boring and then became mercifully incoherent.”

Q: Tom – how did you put the weight on? What did you eat?

“There are so many clever people here..well, I thought, ‘I mustn’t get diabetes because I’ve got to put it on very quickly and I’ve got to take it off very quickly.’ Because we were about to do the third series of Rev. And I had six weeks either side. So I went to this nutritionist and she said, ‘You must eat three times as much of the healthy stuff and that’ll do it, if you don’t want to get diabetes.’ So I did that. But it didn’t work. I should have spoken to a Sumo wrestling coach who probably would have told me to eat chips and pizza and deep fried pork balls and egg fried rice and sweet things and McFlurries, chocolate… And I did. Just all the stuff you’re not supposed to eat. I stuffed my face with it, having done a couple of weeks with it not working.”

********************************************************

Andrew Davies:

Q: Why focus on this period – his last days?

“It’s always nice to know what the end of a show is going to be. And death is always a convenient thing. I’ve always thought as a dramatist that it’s a shame that the death penalty was abolished. Because that was always a good point to flash back from.”

Q: The controversy over what killed an already ill Dylan Thomas?

“Actually that’s not really what I want to say about Dylan Thomas. Not a pathologist’s view of my favourite poet. I wanted to celebrate his life and his poetry. And the last few weeks of his life was a good place to flash back to childhood and particularly his marriage and his love affair with Caitlin, which started off so idyllic and then finished up in this terrible deadlock. That he couldn’t live with her and he couldn’t live without her. They loved each other and they hated each other.

“Dylan Thomas was a huge inspiration to me when I was a teenager growing up. His poetry was much celebrated at our school. I won a verse speaking competition reciting one of his poems when I was about 14.

“And also, his dad was Head of English at Swansea Grammar School. My dad was Head of French at Cardiff High School. There were no writers in my family and I thought, ‘Could I be a writer?’ The more I read about Dylan Thomas, he had a childhood which was remarkably like mine, really. A sort of South Wales childhood living in the suburbs, holidays in the country and by the seaside. And what he wrote about was all the sort of stuff that I experienced. So I thought, ‘Maybe I could do it as well?’ I was also very attracted by his wild lifestyle and I thought I would like all that. But preferably not die of drink at 39. I managed that by hook or by crook. I may die of it at 77 but…”

“The story of his life, to those who know it, is very moving. And he’s also written half a dozen poems that are among the greatest poems in the English language and will last for centuries. The book of short stories called Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Dog is another masterpiece. And Under Milk Wood is a masteriece as well, in its way. That’s why he’s worth remembering because he’s a wonderful writer.”

Director Aisling Walsh:

Q: Did you come to a conclusion about what made him so self-destructive?

“I think it’s that Celtic soul with a lot of people. We’re kind of dark, aren’t we? At the beginning of the Fifties, he is that first beat generation that makes it to Greenwich Village. It’s 1953, he’s kicking all that off. It’s before Bob Dylan, it’s before any of that. He’s that sort of Fifties rock star in a way. And the pressure on him to deliver, the pressure to make money for his family…huge pressure to be successful. He’s at the height of his career. That first performance of Under Milk Wood. A huge amount expected from that. And a combination of things. I think physically he was never very well. I think Tom does it rather beautifully in the film. You just get that sense of somebody with this…bad asthmatic, bad chest, bad winter, cloud down, you’re not supposed to go out. All of the things that he shouldn’t have done, he did. And suddenly they combine together and explode and that’s it. After one night of binge, ends up on the floor in a coma and that’s it.”

Dylan Thomas

The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower

BBC A Poet In New York Production Release

Modern Television

Tom Hollander site

Ian Wylie on Twitter

“I know what it feels like, that violation when somebody has been in your house.”

Les Dennis makes his Coronation Street debut next Monday (March 24) as opportunistic thief Michael Rodwell.

Having experienced burglary in real life, when he, his heavily pregnant wife Claire and their young daughter were asleep in their beds.

“Afterwards you think, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’”

Last month Les took part in round table interviews at ITV’s London South Bank HQ – embargoed until today (Tuesday March 18).

When he explained just how thrilled he was to be joining the Weatherfield cast.

And spoke, among other things, about how current stage co-star Gray O’Brien – former Corrie killer Tony Gordon – helped him prepare for the role.

By taking on the role of Gail as Les rehearsed the audition script.

Plus the prospect of becoming a Rovers Return regular.

My transcript of the chat I was involved with is below, along with some spoilers.

For my money it’s a great piece of casting involving a man who may surprise those not familiar with his acting talents.

So that Q&A is well worth a read.

First, let’s set the scene.

And note the surname of the character – “a burglar with a conscience” – has changed since the casting was first announced.

Michael is disturbed by a shaken Gail (Helen Worth) in the Platt home and then chased down the cobbles by Kylie (Paula Lane).

Before later being arrested and sent to prison.

Huge Coronation Street fan Les has so far filmed just two episodes but is due to return to the new Trafford Wharf HQ next month to reprise his role as Michael.

For scenes to be screened later in the year with Gail meeting up with him again as part of a “restorative justice” programme.

In a storyline aiming to explore the human cost of a burglary and then, perhaps, a potential friendship and more between Gail and Michael.

At the end of our round table Q&A, Les, 60, spoke about having worked in the business for 43 years as a comic, TV host and actor.

And about being back at the ITV South Bank building.

“The last time I was here, excited about being here with a new job, was 1982.

“So to still be here is just so exciting. Because I’m still here…and on the biggest soap in the country, in my opinion.”

The Q&A:

Q: (Mine, as it happens) You said in an interview last October that you’d “give my eye teeth to do Corrie”. So how did this role come about?

“Maybe that’s what did it! It was really just out of the blue. I was on my way to the first day of The Perfect Murder, the play I’m doing, in Bath. And I was driving, trying to find a Premier Inn. And my agent called on hands free and said, ‘How would you feel about Corrie?’ And I just went, ‘Hang on, I’m just going to have to pull over. Yes, yes, yes!’ And she said, ‘Well, we’re talking and we’re looking at your schedule. Because my schedule was always a worry because I’m doing this play until April 26th. Then she said, ‘Well, they’ve looked at the possibility and they’d like to see you for a screen test.’ So the next Monday I went for a screen test with Helen Worth. I didn’t even know until the day I got there – I thought I was just going on camera like you do just for the casting director. And we were full set and we did scenes. And then I started the next week. It literally was a whirlwind. But a fantastically exciting whirlwind. I didn’t even have time to get my eye teeth taken out!” (laughs)

Q: You’ve always been a fan of the show?

“I’ve loved it. Absolutely. I’m of the generation that was brought up with Ena Sharples and Albert Tatlock and all the brilliant characters from the very beginning. Dennis Tanner, who was one of the first characters – he’s still there. So I loved it. And then, of course, became associated with it by doing Mavis to Dustin Gee’s Vera – not Rita. Everybody thinks it’s Rita and Mavis but it was Vera and Mavis. And have been around the set, of course. Because when we did that, Liz Dawn would say, ‘Ay, come down, ‘ave a look at the set.’ So we’d go down. I did a talent show there called Give Your Mate A Break and I used to catch up with all the people there. So it’s a dream come true for me. To actually be playing a serious role in the soap. Not going in to do a spoof.”

Q: He’s a bit of a wrong ‘un?

“He starts off as a wrong ‘un. We don’t know what happens beyond that, other than that he’s an opportunist burglar rather than a career burglar. So he doesn’t intend to scare anybody. He’s burgling an empty house. He worries about the people, making sure that they’re insured. He sees a laptop..burglar with a conscience. But doesn’t realise that by just going and violating people’s spaces, how that affects them. So that’s where the restorative justice storyline will come in later. But beyond that…”

Q: How do you feel about being potentially Gail’s love interest?

“I’m really thrilled. Absolutely thrilled. I think Helen is a great actress. It’s a family that is really at the hub of the Street. One of the big families in the Street. That gives me a lot of potential as an actor to show Michael as an interesting character. And he might stay around for a while. He won’t end up in the canal. It’s funny that I worked with Brian Capron last year on Celebrity MasterChef. We were both in the last four. And now I’m working with Gray O’Brien, another of the soap villains.”

Q: Were you nervous going in to film on Coronation Street?

“I was. I was actually OK the day that I was doing my screen test. I was probably more nervous that first day that I went into…actually my most nervous day was my second day of filming. The first day I just had to run down the Street and I was running down the cobbles. And it was just like, ‘This is surreal but really exciting.’ And then it was the day that the character first appears. It’s not like I had a lot of lines to learn, whereas for the screen test I did. Five pages it was. It’s to maybe see that you can cope with a longer script so quickly. So it’s only a short scene the very first scene I’m established in. But you do realise that you do have to establish your character quite quickly and hit the ground running. So that was my most nerve-wracking day.”

Q: And were you nervous seeing these big names?

“Oh gosh. Walking round the corridors and seeing all the names on the dressing rooms. There’s Eileen Derbyshire, Anne Kirkbride…it was like I was in a dream. And because Corrie has moved from Granada now and is in this new brilliant purpose-built building with the new set and everything…so weirdly everybody was going, ‘We don’t know where we are? We don’t know how to get anywhere?’ So it was like, ‘How do I get to make-up?’ And they said, ‘Oh I don’t know yet. This is my first day here as well.’ Helen Worth saying to me, ‘I don’t know. This is my first day. I think it’s down that corridor and then down some steps and we’ve got these passes.’ So it was kind of weirdly surreal that I was there with everybody disorientated. We were all in the same boat.”

Q: How does your schedule work?

“The weird thing is that we moved up (to Cheshire) last year. I’m 20 minutes from work. In fact we’re renting at the moment and we’re looking for a house. I’ve lived in London since 1987 and when my family come down, like my sister, it’s like, ‘Do you want to come for the weekend?’ And it’s such a big deal. So we just thought, ‘Well, let’s get nearer to family and let’s move out of London.’ So we made the decision – we’ve been talking about it for a long time – to move up to Cheshire. And then I got Spamalot. Sod’s Law, I got the West End. So then I was commuting back to London! And then this job came out of the blue and it was just like manna from heaven. It was fantastic. So instead of me going, ‘Right, well, I’ve got Corrie, we’ve got to make the decision to move up.’ We were already there. We were in place. Which, again, is just fantastic. And I don’t think Corrie knew I had moved.”

Q: Looking forward to serious acting on TV?

“When I do stage work, audiences come along and say, ‘Wow, Les Dennis playing in a really straight role’ – in the play I’m doing at the moment. I did a one man play last year that I won a best actor award for. But generally that gets seen by the people who come to see it. Whereas this is in your living room and so you have the chance to make that stamp of being taken seriously.”

Q: Ready for the extra attention and level of fame that goes with Coronation Street?

“I know. We were in Padstow last week and there were loads of people there in Rick Stein’s restaurant. People were coming up and this young girl was like, ‘What have I seen you on?’ And I said, ‘Maybe Family Fortunes?’ And the other woman was saying, ‘She doesn’t know.’ But she knew Gray O’Brien because of Corrie. So it’s that. Corrie does bring you to a wider audience. Absolutely. I’m ready for it. Because I’ve had it before and I’ve had it steadily. I’m used to it to some extent. And Gray said to me that he would sometimes go to a pub and guys, because he was fancied by wives, he’s have guys wanting to have a crack at him. People do get confused, don’t they?”

Q: (From me) What’s been the reaction of your family?

“My wife is a massive Corrie fan. All my family watch it. They love it. So everybody is thrilled for me. I nearly – about six months ago…I was approached by Hollyoaks. But I’m so pleased that I’m in Corrie. Hollyoaks is a great soap but Corrie is my favourite. It was another character that is on screen, so I won’t say because somebody else got it.”

Q: Will your children watch?

“Tom is just about to be three. My eldest is 34, so he might watch. And Eleanor will definitely watch, I would think.”

Q: What have your Life Too Short co-stars said?

“Oh – Keith Chegwin was like, ‘Wa-hay!’ That’s always his first thing on a tweet. ‘Wa-hay! Can’t believe about Corrie. I’m so pleased.’ He’s thrilled. Ricky came to see the play I’m in in Bath and then found out about Corrie because I found out the next week. And he just tweeted and said, ‘Congratulations on Corrie.’ So yeah. That’s great to have. I attribute Ricky Gervais with a lot of my career change, really. Because if I hadn’t done Extras then I wouldn’t have been offered the kind of roles that I’ve been offered on stage and then I wouldn’t have eventually have got here. So I have a lot to thank him for – for helping my career re-invention. Everybody needs a boot now and again.”

Q: Why do you think you’ve been able to re-invent yourself so many times – a comic, game show presenter and now a straight actor?

“I think I’ve consciously done that. When I was doing Family Fortunes for 15 years, the luxury it gave me was that we’d film three weeks of the year and the rest of the year I could go and work for £250 at The Watermill in Newbury and do a David Hare play. Which was real baptism by fire because it was Michael Gambon who had played that role in the West End. Because when I very first started, when I was younger, I used to do plays at The Everyman in Liverpool, which is about to re-open, which I’m really thrilled about. And my niece (Jodie McNee) is playing the lead role (Viola) in Twelfth Night, and she’s a big mate of Jonathan Harvey. I was at school with Clive Barker, the horror writer, and Jude Kelly, who runs the South Bank now. So I’d started as an actor but then I went down the working men’s clubs and I made my career out of comedy. So it always was something that I wanted to get back to. So I consciously made that decision to keep re-inventing. Because if you don’t, it’s a fickle business and the variety era that I was part of, that’s all gone now. So there would be nothing for me to do now.”

Q: What’s your first love?

“I think it’s acting. Because it was my first love and then I went down other routes. And comedy is the hardest thing to do. It really is. And I think it’s a young man’s game, really. When I started you could go round doing summer seasons and have the same act. Whereas now these comics have to do an act then put it out on DVD and it’s massive arena tours and stuff. But then they have to come up with a brand new show every year, year after year. So the fact that I can do acting and sometimes play a comic – like I played a comic in Jigsy, the one man play, or it can be a comic character or have comic elements – I’m sure that Michael will not necessarilly…it won’t always be high drama. In Corrie it can’t be. It’s got both.”

Q: More on Michael’s Corrie storyline?

“It’s restorative justice. So Gail goes to see him in prison. I don’t know about love but she’s respectful of his apology. At least how we did it in the screen test. I don’t know anything until I start again in April and my character will have been on screen. You’ll have seen the first two episodes. But I don’t now start again until I finish the play, which is convenient. (smiles) I will start literally the Monday after I finish. And we’re actually going to Manchester with the play just two weeks before I start.”

Q: (From me) Bearing in mind Gail’s past history, was Helen Worth not a little worried about the title of your current play?

“The Perfect Murder! She might have been. I don’t know!”

Q: So what do we see in March?

“He is disturbed burgling the house and tries to make out that he’s come to fix the gas meter. He gets away but he gets chased by Kylie and ends up in court.”

Q: (From me) Have you ever been burgled in real life?

“Yeah, I have. So I know what it feels like, that violation when somebody has been in your house. And it happened to me in London. One of the reasons you kind of think, ‘I’m just getting out.’ Because when your kids are in the house. We had friends who were staying with us. They were jet-lagged because they’d come from South Africa and so we thought it was them getting up in the night – because we heard whatever was going on downstairs. And the night before they’d been getting up and making tea and we could hear people downstairs and thought, ‘I wish they’d be quiet making tea.’ And I went down about six and I looked around. And you’re really confused at first because you’re like, ‘Why is that window open?’ There was nothing necessarily missing. It was just like, ‘The window’s open. That’s a bit odd.’ And it had been jemmied and these people had been in. Nearly three years ago.

“We were all asleep in our beds. Afterwards you think, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ Actually Tom, my son, wasn’t born. It was just before he was born. Nearly three years ago. Because we had packed the car to go – Claire was due any minute. So we put all our stuff in the boot of the car. These people had come in, found the keys, taken the car. So we had given them the camera and all the stuff. All baby clothes and everything in a bag. So all that stuff had gone – and the car. But that was the least of our troubles. It was the idea that they had been in the house.

“Michael begins to realise just what the effect is. Because he thinks at first, ‘Look, it was an opportunity, I saw an open window, a laptop on the table and you’re insured, so nobody gets hurt.’ But it’s the mental thing, he doesn’t realise. So he then has a reason to take stock and apologise for that.

“When I got the (script) pages to come in, we were in Bath and Gray O’Brien, who played Tony Gordon, he was Gail for the week with me. He read my pages with me and he did Gail. And he kept saying, ‘Learn it, learn it, learn it.’ Don’t have your pages in your hand. So it’s down to him a lot that he got me absolutely word perfect. And he did Gail’s voice!

“He’s lovely Gray and we bonded straight away – him, me and Claire Goose, we’re just having a great time on this play. But Gray was staying with my Claire and our kids over the weekend. And I had to do the screen test on the Monday morning and then we had to bomb off to Norwich, which was quite a way from Cheshire to Norwich to be there for the get in for the play. So Gray came with me to the screen test and sat in the car. He sat outside. He wouldn’t come in.”

Q: Have any of the cast asked you to do your Mavis impression yet?

“No. But people on Twitter have gone mad about it – the first time you go into The Kabin make sure you say, ‘I don’t really know.’ And so many people have gone, ‘Maybe you’re going to be Mavis’s long lost cousin or something.’ I don’t think that.”

Q: (From me) Having been burgled yourself, how do you feel about restorative justice?

“I would have liked to have met them. The police did find the guys and nothing happened. It was one of those things where things were too busy. And you’d find yourself feeling angry and I would like to have seen them face to face. I don’t know how sympathetic I would have been, personally.”

Q: So were they prosecuted?

“It was one of those things that became so frustrating. We had the police…we lived right on the Parkland Walk and it meant that people could get over our fence quite easy. And I said, ‘I’m going to put barbed wire up.’ And they said, ‘That’s an offence, it’s against their human rights.’ To hurt their hands when they’re burgling you. So there are lots of things…and I just went, ‘You know what, I’m just going to draw a line under it and move on.’

“Somebody went into my daughter’s bedroom while she was asleep. That’s the thing. That’s really bad. I came down and went, ‘That door wasn’t that wide open?’ You know how you leave the door.”

Q: Gail becomes quite frightened and upset? Was that how you reacted or was it more anger and frustration for you?

“I think you go through all those emotions when you’ve been burgled. You go through the whole thing of feeling, at first, surprise. And then later in the day you go, ‘Ah, that’s gone, and that’s gone.’ It’s a kind of build up and you’re in shock. And then there’s the relief when something that could have happened that was worse.”

Q: Did it have a bearing on your decision to move house?

“I think it does subconsciously. We wanted to move up anyway. We wanted to give the kids more space and get out of London for other reasons than just that.”

Q: How has it changed your attitude to security?

“I think I’m very trusting. I don’t want to become like somebody who bars the doors and sits with a baseball bat under my bed. No. But I do have a big alarm. We all have to be security alert and my house is very secure.”

Q: (From me) You were delighted to have been included in the Top 100 Merseysiders of all time. Do you think this role will finally enable you to overtake Red Rum?

(Laughs) “Red Rum beat me! That’s not bad. I was above David Morrissey, which was amazing and Harold Wilson. Because I didn’t make the list 10 years ago. So I think it’s the work I’ve done. I did the big panto in Liverpool with Cilla Black, the Capital of Culture year. I’ve done a lot of plays at the Everyman. Also I did a show called Les Dennis’s Liverpool for Granada, which was a local show where I went round and talked to lots of different people with culture and sport and stuff. So it’s nice to be in that list.

“Michael Rodwell actually isn’t a Scouser. I did have a lot of people going, ‘Oh, stereotypical, Scouse burglar.’ But he isn’t. I would say he’s a Lancashireman. When I was a kid I was a Lancashireman. Until they shifted the borders and now I’m a Merseysider. So he’s got a quite soft Lancashire accent. Not a scouser. He’ll just have a slight Lancashire burr. Again, Gray was like, ‘I like that accent.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know whether I should do my own voice.’ And I contacted the casting director and they said, ‘Do it as it’s written.’ And in the thing it says, ‘I were that sorry.’ And so the fact that it was ‘I were,’ gave me the clue. And Gray was like, ‘I like that.’ So I decided to keep that. But, again, that’s a challenge as an actor to keep that all the time. David Neilson isn’t at all like Roy, is he? He’s so different.”

Q: How do you juggle being a dad with two young children and being so busy with work?

“Last week we were doing the play in Truro and Cornwall is a lovely place to have half term. So my kids were having a great time. It’s one of those things if you’re in this business and my wife is really understanding about the fact that this is what I do and it does sometimes entail travelling. The play that I’m doing has been really well received. It’s doing great business and is the first of Peter James’ novels to be made into a play. So it was an exciting project. We discuss those things all the time. But it meant that I didn’t do panto, so then I was home right through Christmas with the kids. So you have to do those shifts. And sometimes Eleanor will be like, ‘Daddy, when you coming home, how long are you home for?’ That’s hard. But I get home as much as I can and now I have a job that means I’m going to be at home all the time. It’s fantastic. And the fact that we’d moved up before I got the job doesn’t mean that I’ve got to say to my family, ‘Right, we’re uprooting and we’re going north now.’ She’s already established in her school up there.”

Q: Is it tiring being a dad a second time around?

“It’s a tiring as it ever is. But they say it keeps you younger and I think it does. You start to see things, again, things that you were excited about, again, with a child’s eyes. A pussycat or a, ‘Ooh cow!’ (laughs) It’s interesting. “Wow, look – bunny rabbits!’ So it’s great. It’s fantastic.”

Q: How long do you think you’ll be on the Street?

“I think that he’s going to be at the heart of the show. I’d be very happy to stay.” (As is normal, new cast members begin on a six month rolling contract which can be extended)

Q: Aside from working with Helen as Gail, what other characters are you looking forward to working with?

“Obviously I should imagine if I’m working with Helen, I’m likely to work with Sue Nicholls. Who, again, I’ve known over the years and I bumped into her in make-up on my first day and she just went, ‘I hope we get some scenes together.’ So that’s great to have a chance to work with her. And David Neilson, as Roy, I’d love to do some stuff with. All of them really. I think the standard of acting is so good. Rather than think to myself, ‘Who would I like to work with?’ – I’d like to see who Michael’s character gravitates towards. And, again, that’s down to writers.”

Q: Are you excited about your first Rovers’ scene?

“My first day was running up the cobbles and jumping into my van which was outside the Rovers. So that was scary enough. But to actually be in a Rovers’ scene will be really exciting, yeah. I actually overshot and jumped into the grip’s van! They said, ‘You run up and you jump into your van and you get away.’ So I ran up and I got into the van and I thought, ‘Where are the keys?’ And they went, ‘Best not to get into the grip’s van.’ So I got into this lovely big, grey shiny van. And they went, ‘No, your van is just tucked behind that. This white tatty thing.’”

Q: (From me) Do you still have an ambition to do Shakespeare? And do you view all the ‘dominoes’ that have fallen in your life as a progression towards that?

“I do. I do absolutely have an ambition to do Shakespeare. Somebody asked me if I had a bucket list and this was one of them – Corrie – and Shakespeare is another one. It’s smallers doors, bigger doors…I really believe in the idea of asking the universe. Because I did ask the universe and these things have happened. And by moving to Cheshire and then this coming along…careful what you wish for because things can come true. You’re not necessarily master of your destiny but you have a lot of effect to get what you want.”

Q: So do you believe in fate?

“To some extent, yes. I don’t think co-incidences happen. I think they happen for a reason.”

Q: Do you get a lot of Family Fortunes catchphrases still thrown at you?

“Do I get the ‘uh-uh’ noise down the street? I probably get it more than Vernon Kay. I keep meaning to ask Vernon, does he get it now? It’s something that follows me around and people always think they’re the first ones to do it. I’ve never heard that one before. But if it stopped happening then people would stop remembering that I did that show. And having had that I hopefully will be ready for the injection (of fame) that takes it to another level. Maybe ‘uh-uh’ will be replaced with something else. That’s fine. It comes with the job.”

Q: Where’s the strangest place you’ve had the ‘uh uh’ noise?

“Actually in my episode of Extras at the end, I’m in bed with the girl and she says something and I go, ‘I don’t really know…’ And she goes, ‘What? Get off!’ And then I said, ‘If it’s up there I’ll give you the money myself.’ And that line wasn’t written. I was supposed to say, ‘I don’t really know,’ again. And I said to Ricky, what if I said…and he went, ‘Ah-haaa!’ And he just laughed and said, ‘We’re doing that.’ And when we were filming it he had to be taken out of the room because he just laughs. He ruins a take. He stands behind the camera…so that was the catchphrase on Family Fortunes, if it was a stupid answer, I’d say, ‘If it’s up there I’ll give you the money myself.’”

Q: Are you a big fan of Twitter?

“I do enjoy it, yeah. I kind of treat it warily. I don’t post about football at all on Twitter anymore because I don’t think it’s worth it. So even though I’m a football fan, I’m a Liverpool fan, I don’t get involved. With trolls it’s easier to just block somebody, rather than get involved. Sometimes I kind of because Ricky will sometimes out them and post what they’ve written. I’ve been tempted to do that occasionally myself. But I think Twitter is fantastic. Because you do get a response – how people are feeling.”

Q: Will you be looking at it after your first episode?

“Oh definitely. When I did Celebrity MasterChef last year it went absolutely mad. And it does give you…sometimes you look at your phone and go, ‘Nobody has texted me about it…’ But on Twitter you can see reactions straight away. It’s good.”

Q: How to do you feel about Ricky’s reaction and Shaun Williamson when they first see you? Because they are your peers, aren’t they?

“Yeah, they are. I hope that they’ll love it. Shaun, of course, can give me some advice about being in a long term soap.”

Q: Do you think you could get Ricky on it?

“Get Ricky in the Rovers? The back of his head…”

Q: Do you still watch Family Fortunes?

“I do watch Family Fortunes and I enjoy it. It’s a different show now because it’s obviously celebrity based. At first it was a bit weird because it was like he’d burgled my house. (laughs) It was like watching Michael Rodwell. ‘That’s weird.’ No, actually, I was involved in the takeover to some extent because it was a show called Ant and Dec’s Gameshow Marathon and I used to go round the country and surprise people and give them their prizes from the show. And on the last week they were doing Family Fortunes and it was Vernon’s family against Carol Vorderman’s family and I had to present the shield. So that was the week when I thought, ‘This is my set.’ But I love watching it and I think he does a great job, Vernon. In fact, what I did was…I called him up when he got it. Because I remember Bob Monkhouse did exactly the same thing for me.”

Q: Have you done the show as a family?

“No. Well, at my 60th, Claire did this fantastic party in Liverpool Town Hall and when we went in there was a whole Family Fortunes set. And it was my family versus the Brookside family. So Sue Johnston and Dean Sullivan and Jennifer Ellison, they were all up there against my family and I was the head of the family. Michael Ball hosted.”

Q: (From me) So having turned 60 last October and been working for 43 years, so how would you sum up where you are, sitting here today?

“Yes, my first telly was Opportunity Knocks. I can’t believe that…I looked out and saw the sunny day and the last time I was here, excited about being here with a new job, was 1982. So to still be here is just so exciting. Because I’m still here. To me that’s my biggest…still being here and on the biggest soap in the country, in my opinion.”

Q: Do you have any regrets about Celebrity Big Brother?

“I don’t have any regrets about it because when I came out I thought, ‘Well maybe that wasn’t my greatest decision.’ And the phone didn’t ring for a while. But then Ricky Gervais rang. And if I hadn’t done Celebrity Big Brother and he hadn’t been watching, he wouldn’t have written the twisted, demented version of Les Dennis. So every cloud…you’ve got to think of it that way. Small doors, bigger doors.”

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THE latest TV puzzle starts with a crossword.

Plus a flashback to the young detective being shot at the end of the last story.

Endeavour returns to ITV on Sunday for a second series of the Inspector Morse prequel.

It’s May 1966 and the young Morse (Shaun Evans) is on his first day back at work at Oxford City Police with Det Insp Fred Thursday (Roger Allam).

But doubts remain about whether the Detective Constable is fully recovered from his ordeal.

“The light’s gone out of him,” Thursday tells his wife.

There are four 120-minute films in the new series, which again pays respect to John Thaw’s Morse while continuing to carve its own place in television history.

The first episode guest stars Beth Goddard as Labour Parliamentary candidate Barbara Batten.

Alongside Jonathan Coy, Pooky Quesnel, David Westhead, Jessie Buckley and Liam Garrigan.

With John Thaw’s daughter Abigail Thaw returning as newspaper reporter Dorothea Frazil and Anton Lesser as Chief Supt Reginald Bright.

The new series further explores the relationship between Endeavour and Thursday, while revealing more about the latter’s background.

There’s a taste of romance for the young detective on his journey towards becoming the older, lonelier Inspector Morse.

With a first glimpse of his lifelong conflicts with organisations like the Freemasons.

I went along to the London media launch of Endeavour 2 earlier this month.

A screening of the first episode and later series highlights.

Followed by a Q&A with Shaun Evans (Endeavour Morse), Roger Allam (Det Insp Fred Thursday) and Russell Lewis (Writer & Executive Producer).

During which Shaun spoke about that romance, studying the voice of Michael Palin rather than John Thaw and much else besides.

You can read my edited transcript below.

I had the pleasure of interviewing the late John Thaw many times over the years, including during the early days of Morse in the late 1980s.

And my main thought during the Endeavour series two preview screening?

Just how much he would have loved it.

Endeavour returns to ITV at 8pm on Sunday (March 30).

Q&A:

Q: (From me) We know that the relationship between Thursday and Morse obviously develops in this series. Do you want to talk a little about how it develops. Also I gather in the third film, we learn a bit more about Thursday’s past? I don’t know how much you can say about that?

Roger Allam: “Well it develops, I suppose, because this series starts off with Endeavour coming back to Cowley station, having been wounded at the end of the last series – and also the death of his father at the end of the last series. So I think there’s concern on Thursday’s part about whether he’s going to be up to speed, match fit, as sharp as he was. Because as imaginative as he was in the right way…in the way that I think attracted Thursday to begin with, about Endeavour…that here was someone who had a particular way of working which wasn’t usual in the police but it would be a very good ability to have in your police station, in your squad of men. To have someone with that imagination and intelligence. So there’s concern to begin with about whether he’s going to quite get back to that and some anxiety around there. And even those comfortable little pegs that you have, those everyday things like those jokes – he always knows what is in my sandwich…so there’s anxiety both trivial like that but fun and also larger. And then, of course, he gets back and it’s fine.”

Shaun Evans: “I think also you’ve got in this as well…as it develops they flip. At the beginning you have the Endeavour character thinking, ‘Is this the right place for me? Am I in the right job?’ But by the end of the fourth one it’s Thursday who’s questioning whether he’s in the right place, whether he has a future. So there’s like an about face from both characters. I think that’s what’s interesting as it develops. That you see that they need each other in order to move forward.”

Roger Allam: “And in film three, as well, I suppose Endeavour finds out something about Thursday’s past. Something specific about Thursday’s past which I can’t, alas, reveal to you now, (laughter) that adds very much to his knowledge of Thursday as well. So as you go on in time, like you do with anyone, they’re finding out more about each other.”

Russell Lewis: “I think that what we didn’t want to do is just let it fall into a too comfortable relationship. That it became predictable, week in, week out, how they were going to be with one another. So it’s the stronger for it, that it’s not just rubbing along like an old married couple. They’re constantly finding out things about each other.”

Shaun Evans as Endeavour.

Q: Endeavour has gone back to work and is almost learning again. Is that nice for you to almost go back to a blank canvas?

Shaun Evans: “Yeah. It’s funny because obviously you’ve done it before but it has to be brand new and you have to find all of those things again. So, yeah, this time I was going back for this first one – you’re re-evaluating your role in it and what the stories are as they develop. And also, one of the great things about this is it’s constantly evolving. And even while we may have done one there’s still things that need to be finished on the ones that come prior to it. So it is a funny, constantly evolving thing. And yeah, you are learning. I’m learning doing it. So it’s good that that’s reflected in it.”

Q: Grown-up drama to bring Freemasons in as well. Do we go further into that. The tension at the police station between those who are and those who aren’t?

Russell Lewis: “Yeah, we do. It’s canon really. Morse’s relationship with that fraternity. And we thought it would be interesting to look at that a little across these stories.”

Roger Allam as Det Insp Fred Thursday.

Q: Roger – Thursday seems to have many lines of wisdom in every episode. Do you have any favourite lines from this series?

Roger Allam: “I can’t remember any from this episode now. There are a lot. Not necessarily to do with wisdom but certainly in the way that Russell writes for Thursday, which is a slightly older generation way of speaking. They’re lovely to play and I find them deeply charming, to me, personally. Because Thursday is roughly around the age of my father, I would guess. He would have been born around about the same time as my father. Maybe my uncle, maybe his younger brother, who was also, curiously, called Fred. That way of speaking…London…lower working class thing, I have great love for. So I like that. Not just the wisdom but that way of speaking is a way, I think, of recapturing that time.”

Russell Lewis: “Very much he’s drawing on my own father…fundamental decency of his class and putting him into Thursday a little.”

Q: Shaun – how would you define the way in which Endeavour’s working method was different to other police inspectors? What makes him attractive in the way he works?

Shaun Evans: “Great question. I think there’s an imagination and an intuitiveness. But also an intelligence. He’s probably not particularly well suited to being a policeman but to that cryptic way of working things out. I think that’s what sets him apart from others. I would say.”

Q: Shaun – because you’re a young man, do you find it a problem to throw yourself back into the Sixties and the way people used to act as police officers in those days, entirely different to today?

Shaun Evans: “Whenever you take a job, if it’s set in a different period it gives you an opportunity to learn a little bit more about it. I think specifically for this, I don’t think the character is particularly in tune with his time. So how people are behaving in the Sixties isn’t that so important for me, to copy the mannerisms of that, if you know what I mean? But I think that for any job it is only really ever an opportunity for you to see that new…if it’s set in a new place, in a new time…People did have those attitudes. You just have to trust that. You have to trust that in the writing. Sometimes you think, ‘That’s perhaps a little sexist’ or whatever. But you have to trust that it’s there in the writing. And it is. Again, it’s just an opportunity to think, ‘Oh God, look how far we’ve come in that respect.’ In some ways.”

Q: Shaun – did you go back to looking at the old Morse and John Thaw or..?

Shaun Evans: “No, I didn’t. I didn’t think that would be useful for this. Because when the scripts arrive you have to depend largely upon your imagination to recreate something. That’s not to do down anything that’s gone before. It’s only with the greatest amount of respect. Plus if I’m going to sit here and talk about something I want it to be something that’s come from me versus something that’s been a copy of something else. So, no I didn’t. Perhaps I should have.” (laughs)

Anton Lesser as Chief Supt Reginald Bright.

Q: Shaun – could you summarise Endeavour’s state of mind at the beginning of this episode?

Shaun Evans: “At the beginning, when we return, it’s been four months since losing his dad and being shot. He’s been seconded to another station and he’s had a bit of time out of work. The first day back is the first day of this film. So you see him coming into the station, sort of brand new, not feeling a hundred per cent. I hestiated to say ‘post-traumatic stress’ but along the lines of being in deep shock and probably needing a little bit more time off. But that’s where we find them at the beginning. The interesting thing about that is that then you have a crime which occurs and it needs to be solved. He needs to solve it in a particular way to get himself back. And needs to be back in this groove in order to heal himself, in a way. I think that’s where we are at the beginning. I don’t want to spoil it but when you get to the end it’s in a very different place. By the end of the fourth film it’s in a very different place in terms of his relationship both to Thursday, to the job, to the station and to himself as well.”

Q: How are we going to see the relationship between Morse and Monica develop?

Shaun Evans: “That’s an interesting one. In a way I wish, and I think we all do as well…you could dedicate a whole film, or a large portion, to who this person is and how they relate, especially to a woman. But we just haven’t got the time and there’s so much other stuff to fit in. How it develops though, which I think we’ve achieved in this, is a relationship begins to blossom. Ultimately we know, having seen them and knowing that this guy (John Thaw’s Morse series) dies in the end on his own. So it’s not going to work out. But I think that creates a certain amount of conflict and drama. By the end of it, I feel like she’s probably slightly more keen than he is. In the third one we get to see that as he’s slightly fallen in love with her, his work is suffering. And so then – off screen – you have to make that choice. ‘How can I have both? And if I can’t have both, which one will I choose? Will I choose a happy relationship and try to emulate Thursday and his wife? Or will I go down another path?’ All of these subconscious as well. But that’s at least what we’ve attempted to achieve in both the third and the fourth (film) and as it progresses.”

Russell Lewis: “I think it weighs quite heavily on him, his great intellect. There’s a warning giving to him in Fugue, in the second film of the first series by the villain, which is, ‘That to be intelligent is to always be alone.’ And I think across this run of films there’s almost a push from him to try and reach for normality, to fit in, to be a regular guy. And given his nature we know that’s something that, although he’s going to strive for, it really does go against his better nature, which is solitary and thoughtful. But he’s certainly reaching for that, in places across these four.”

Q: It’s difficult to imagine any other actors playing Morse and Thursday. What was the point when you both knew that you had the key to playing your characters?

Roger Allam: “Listen…when you put on a hat and smoke a pipe and, to some extent, wear a coat and stuff like that, it gives you a feeling of the period, which is one thing. And another thing is that it gives you a habit. Often those tiny things can be like a kind of portal into something else about the character. They’re not the character but they become like a sign of the character, in a way. And they’re very, very helpful. It would be foolish to deny. Also they’re very enjoyable to play with. Once you feel at home…for Thursday, I think it’s very different for Endeavour, but for me and Thursday, once you feel at home with those things, once you feel comfortable, you feel like you’re wearing the clothes of the man and you can go further in from there.”

Shaun Evans: “I think the feeling of ownership comes and goes. You attack each day and each scene in a script as best you can. Sometimes you think, ‘Oh yeah, I achieved what I set to do there more than I did yesterday,’ or whatever. I think it’s an ongoing thing. But then by the same token, we’ve made nine thus far with the same creative team. And so you hope you’re starting to get into a groove a bit more. But it still feels like it comes and goes, to be honest. For me, at least.”

Beth Goodard as Barbara Batten and Jonathan Coy as Archie Batten.

Q: Shaun – what does Endeavour’s version of romance looks like? Will we see him get quite romantic?

Shaun Evans: (Laughs) “I actually think that’s a question for Russ, more than it is for me. Whmat Endevour’s idea of romance would be.”

Russell Lewis: “Well, he’s a well read man. But I think it’s the disconnect between his own family life, which was fairly unhappy and I don’t imagine there was a great deal of romance going on in the Morse household, to the ideals of romantic love that he’ll have read about and studied, doing grades. So it’s almost like a Haynes Manual to life, really. That this is how things are meant to be, according to the books. And I think there’s a falling short for anyone that tries to make life conform to that written ideal. But, yeah, he’s a romantic.”

Roger Allam: “It’s obvious though, isn’t it? He’d stay in, they’d read Henry James aloud whilst listening to Tannhauser. It’s the perfect romantic evening.” (laughter)

Jessie Buckley as Kitty Batten.

Q: Were there little Mad Men references in there at all?

Russell Lewis: “Might have been. I think that we have a lot of fun with hiding things across all the films, to a greater and larger extent. Some you are meant to catch first time around and some…they’re just a little added bonus, really, as a kind of nod to…because we can’t set you a crossword at the start of each film, we hide little clues to other things that hopefully inform the drama and fun of it across the four. But well spotted.”

Q: Shaun – you said you didn’t watch the Morse tapes but you read the books. You’ve got the voice exactly right…

Shaun Evans: “I listened a lot to Michael Palin, who was from the north and went to Oxford and was alive around that time. I imagine his voice would be…that’s how I imagine the voice to be. So I listened more to that versus trying to capture something else. Only because it’s easier to get Michael Palin’s voice as well. I don’t know why. I’m glad that it works.”

Abigail Thaw as Dorothea Frazil.

Q: Are you planning for Endeavour to run for years like Morse?

Russell Lewis: “Well it’s very much down to how long the audience wants to see them and very much down to Roger and Shaun for how long they want to remain as Endeavour and Thursday. But yes. There’s never going to be a shortage of stories to do because each year we move on and draw on the events of real world, in one way or another, and pull those through the Endeavour filter. So we’re never going to run out of ideas. But it really is very much down to the audience.”

Q: Shaun – Endeavour takes quite a hiding in this first one. Is there more of that to come throughout the series and did you incur any real injuries?

Shaun Evans: “I didn’t incur any real injuries. But yes there is more to come. There is more to come for both of us, in fact. A bit of fisticuffs. I like those scenes because it’s so different from the rest of the stuff that we do in these stories. I do like them, just the pure physical stuff. It’s good.”

Pooky Quesnel as Muriel Todd.

Q: (I started so I finished): Two questions: I don’t know where it was filmed, but was filming the underground river scene particularly memorable? And I know there’s an episode including the 1966 World Cup Final, which I think Morse isn’t bothered about at all. Does that go against the grain for you in real life, Shuan, or not?

Shaun Evans: “It’s underneath Finsbury Park that place and it’s an incredible…”

Roger Allam: “It’s extraordinary.”

Shaun Evans: “Isn’t it? It’s a Victorian reservoir but cavernous and so well designed.”

Roger Allam: “Just under the park. It’s like this huge cathedral. Vast. It’s amazing.”

Shaun Evans: “Yeah, definitely one of the highlights. Football? Yeah, I can take it or leave it. I’ll go to the game occasionally but I’m more into boxing than I am into football. So, not too much of a stretch.”

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“SAVING lives, to save their own.”

The Crimson Field begins on BBC1 at 9pm next Sunday (April 6).

A six episode drama series about volunteer British nurses at a field hospital in northern France.

Part of the BBC’s First World War season, it features a strong cast including Hermione Norris, Suranne Jones, Kerry Fox, Oona Chaplin and Kevin Doyle.

Starting in 1915 with the arrival of new VADs – Voluntary Aid Detachment – to join professional military nurses like Matron Grace Carter, played by Hermione.

With Oona as Kitty Trevelyan, Alice St Clair as Flora Marshall and Marianne Oldham as Rosalie Berwick.

Kevin Doyle is Lieutenant-Colonel Roland Brett, the man in charge of the hospital.

But even he has to answer to others higher up the Army command ladder.

Earlier this month I attended a London preview screening of the first episode plus later series highlights.

You can read my transcript of the post-screening Q&A with the cast plus creator and lead writer Sarah Phelps below.

The Crimson Field explores the horrors of The Great War from a different perspective.

While also shining a light of the lives of women from different backgrounds, their reasons for volunteering and how they cope with what they find just a few miles from the Front.

When they were also facing a time of huge social change.

If you’ve got the time to read the Q&A, it contains some fascinating insights from Sarah and the cast members who took part.

I’ve also added links at the very bottom of the transcript to some of the material they refer to.

BBC Drama boss Ben Stephenson introduced the screening and said:

“The Crimson Field is a really unique way into the First World War that shows it from an angle we probably haven’t seen before. Which is the role of, in the main, the women on the Front Line doing the nursing. A combination of professionals and amateurs who are brought in. So not only is it a real insight into the factual realities of the war but it’s also an imaginative insight into what it’s like to be plucked out of England and thrown into this extraordinary world on the Front Line in France.”

Hermione Norris as Matron Grace Carter.

Q&A with Suranne Jones (Sister Joan Livesey) / Hermione Norris (Matron Grace Carter) / Kerry Fox (Sister Margaret Quayle) / Kevin Doyle (Lieutenant-Colonel Roland Brett) / Sarah Phelps (Creator and lead writer).

Chaired by James Rampton, with other cast members in the audience.

Q: Sarah – tell us what gave you idea for this great drama in the first place?

Sarah Phelps: “I read a book called ‘The Roses Of No Man’s Land’ by Lyn Macdonald, who is a very eminent historian in every aspect of the First World War. It’s a historical account of the nurses, both military, civilian reservist and volunteer during the First World War at Field Hospitals like the one here, hospitals at home and hospital barges and ships.

“And it sounds really mental because you feel like that you know a lot about the First World War and you know about the casualties and you’re very familiar with a certain series of images of the First World War and the kind of injuries and the casualties and the terrible deaths. And yet my brain hadn’t made that kind of leap into, ‘Well I knew all this stuff happened but I never even thought about the women who had done the nursing.’

“So this book really opened a door into this subject matter and on to both the military nurses and also on to these girls who came from these Edwardian drawing rooms and were thrown into this extraordinary, explosive and horrifying and exhilarating world.”

Suranne Jones as Sister Joan Livesey.

Q: Suranne – when you first read it, what appealed to you about this?

Suranne Jones: “Well, firstly I loved the scripts. So when I went to the meeting and David (Evans), who had directed me in Unforgiven, was there I got very excited. And I think when I left the room I said, ‘Oh, good luck with this.’ Thinking I’d just watch it, anyway, whether I got the part or not. Because I just thought it was beautiful. The way Sarah just drew the characters.

“I remember I read a book called ‘A VAD in France’ and Sarah told me to read a book about Mairi Chisholm and Elsie Knocker and it was wonderful. Then Sarah called me, because obviously I’m just at the end of ep one (when her character arrives)…and Sarah spent 20 minutes on the phone telling me what would happen in the rest of the episodes…and didn’t breathe once. At the end of the conversation she went, ‘Are you still there?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I’m still here. Oh my God!’

“Having seen it for the first time, it’s a wonderful mix of the girls and you smile at them and go, ‘Oh my God they’e just experiencing this for the first time.’ And then the heartbreaking stuff with Adam James and Karl Davies – (Colonel Charles) Purbright and (Corporal) Prentice – that makes you think, ‘That’s what it’s about as well.’ I think it’s just beautiful. I really, really enjoyed it and I think Sarah’s wonderful.”

Q: Hermione – was one of the attractions the fact it was a narrative about female contributions to the war. We’ve seen so many stories about the men and the trenches. But this was a different perspective?

Hermione Norris: “I’ve always had a passion about World War One. An absolutely fascinating period of history. A time of huge social change, for women in particular. But, again, it wasn’t really gender based for me. It was Sarah’s script. The characters were so beautifully drawn. It wasn’t about whether this was about the men in the trenches or the women in the field hospital, actually. The characters really spoke to me. Even the stage directions made me cry. And it was quite visceral and real. So it wasn’t gender based. I loved Sarah’s script.”

Kerry Fox as Sister Margaret Quayle.

Q: These nurses are flawed. They are human beings who make mistakes?

Kerry Fox: “Strangely, I came at it from a different angle and David (Evans – one of the directors) turned it around for me…I love the fact that Margaret is so bitter and foul. She is such a cow. So I had a ball doing it. It’s also quite rare to have scenes between or among women. It gets rarer. And the joy of that was really fulfilling.”

Suranne Jones: “With different ages and different social backgrounds, all in one place. Because these people wouldn’t meet and it’s under this circumstance that they meet. I think it was great.”

Kevin Doyle as Lieutenant-Colonel Roland Brett.

Q: Kevin – there are no goodies and baddies in this?

Kevin Doyle: “I think that’s something that David wanted to emphasise from the off. There are pressures on everbody. And you begin to understand the pressures from on high. If you’re born from a certain generation you’re so used to a particular narrative of the First World War, which is ‘Lions led by donkeys.’ And I think we’re beginning to see a different opinion of that being told now. I’m not one to echo the philosophy of Michael Gove but there was certainly something about…there were pressures on everyone. There were pressures on the generals.

“By the time this episode is screened, 1915, the British Expeditionary Force, which was 200,000, we thought we’d walk in there, save Belgium and everything would be fine. The Germans would go back home. But within months the 200,000 soldiers had been killed or captured or wounded and that Army was completely wiped out. And so they had to first of all ask for volunteers, and there were two and a half million volunteers. But then it became about conscription.

“So people were being wounded and dying in such extraordinary numbers that there was no room for people to go back home. Unless you were dying, really. Certainly I began to realise that it’s good to show a different perspective, to show Purbright’s need to get men back. It’s a very important story to tell.”

Oona Chaplin as Kitty Trevelyan.

Q: Sarah – you made the decision not to go to the trenches at all in this series. Why was that?

Sarah Phelps: “Who says we’re not going to go to the trenches?”

Q: Well certainly in the first episode?

Sarah Phelps: “One of the things that was really important – from a production point of view you have to have a fixed set. You have to have somewhere where we can get used to or we can go to our world. If we go to the trenches, that’s not to devalue what’s going on there. But we can’t go there with our women. Women didn’t go into the trenches. You could have them a step back at the casualty clearing station and at the field hospitals.

“But if we go to the trenches, we don’t go with the majority of our characters and we lose telling this side of the story, which I think hasn’t been told. There’s no reason why we can’t go to the trenches if we get series two…” (laughter)

Alice St Clair as Flora Marshall.

Q: Suranne – could you talk a bit about your character because she comes in at the end of the first episode? Could you fill in her background a bit and how she fits into the jigsaw of the hospital?

Suranne Jones: “She’s a reservist from Liverpool and she’s never worked in an Army hospital. But she arrives in France. She’s told the girls that she doesn’t have a partner but obviously we’ve just seen that she is wearing an engagement ring. So we will find out a little bit more about who is her partner.

“She rides a motorcycle, she’s had her hair chopped off. She’s quite modern. She’s a suffragist and she’s a very modern forward thinker. She thinks it’s wonderful that there are VADs and that they should have more work and more chores and more hands on.

“That clashes with, particularly, Margaret’s rules and regulations. So she causes a bit of stir. And then we will find out about her background which I’m not really allowed to say…no spoilers.”

Q: Hermione – could you fill is in a bit on your character? She seems very pursed-lipped and quite severe but, obviously, that’s never the full picture, is it?

Hermione Norris: “No. Grace has been recently appointed Matron and I think episode one shows her wrangling with the difficulty of embracing that authority. She has been very much Margaret’s protege and has been quite manipulated by Margaret over the years. We find out everybody’s manipulated by Margaret. Something in a name.

“So you see her being stringy-lipped and strict and a disciplinarian, which was absolutely required. To have discipline and a correct uniform in amongst such carnage, I think the rule was that that made everybody feel safe. But you very much see Grace’s compassion and here struggle with the decisions that she has to make as Matron. As the story moves along, more and more so.”

Q: Kerry – in some ways then, is it like any other workplace drama with the tensions and rivalries that are always visited. Is that an element of it?

Kerry Fox: “It’s quite interesting watching that (the episode) now because sometimes you think that rivalry and bitterness and the fake camaraderie, friendship between women, seems a lot more interesting often than we get the chance to see between men. It isn’t so submerged and hidden and complicated. So there’s a lot more of that, really. Of course Margaret is sweet and innocent and loving and kind and warm and supportive and generous and works really hard.” (laughter)

Marianne Oldham as Rosalie Berwick.

Q: Kevin – it was a time of immense social change, within three years women over 30 got the vote for the first time. Do you think that’s reflected in the drama as well? The end of the Edwardian era, the end of the British Empire? All those elements in there?

Kevin Doyle: “Yes. It was a massive catalyst for change. There were a lot of pressures before the war for women’s suffrage and the contribution that they made during the war, back home, in the hospitals, it spoke very eloquently to the Establishment about the rightful place for women in the workplace. It had a massive bearing on the next generation. They began to feel the change when they got back home.”

Q: Did you want to bring that in to the drama, the backdrop of what was happening in Britain, the cataclysmic social changes that were occurring?

Sarah Phelps: “I did a lot of research about what Britain was like before the war. I wanted to read a lot about the Edwardian period before, so I knew what kind of world everyone was coming from. I read loads of stuff. Edwardian ladies’ diaries and all their experiments.

“They were so bored. There was a kind of like End of Days scenario, like the last days of the Roman Empire. They weren’t exactly throwing members of their family on to the rocks in Capri but they were so bored. There was a sense of something glorious having been ended with Victoria’s reign, the end of the 19th century and they’re all waiting for something to explode and catapult them into the next stage.

“I read all these Edwardian ladies’ diaries and they used to have morphine parties and have their friends round. A nice cup of Lapsang Souchong and a bit of gossip about who’s got the best hat and then they’d roll up their sleeves and give each other injections of morphine. I read one lady – she experimented with Chloroform. And she’d say, ‘Oh dear old Chloro, dear old familiar friend.’

“This was an absolutely schizophrenic society. Sexually schizophrenic, bored and there’s almost a level of depravity in how bored they are. And at the same time, malnutrition and poverty which is absolutely unimaginable.

“There’s a really shocking statistic from medical officers and recruiting officers when they had all these young guys volunteering to go to war. Not always from patriotic duty but a job, money in their pocket, a pair of their own boots, a nice good bit of cloth on their back, a gun, off in a foreign country with your mates, a sexual freedom and licence that they would never have at home. Three meals a day. And there’s an amazing statistic which just shocks you to your core about the level of serious malnutrition in volunteers coming forward. Not your communal garden malnutrition – bad teeth and a bit skinny. Serious malnutrition.

“Those two extremes. You’ve got to remember that the world that they were coming from, in 1905 you’d already had a revolution in Russia which had scared the crap out of people at home. By the time we’re in 1915 we’ve already got Gandhi in India organising the protests against the Land Taxes. We have, in this period, the absolute seeds of the end of Empire, right now when they’re all fighting for Empire.

“Everybody in the world comes to this line, to the Western Front, everybody in the world. It’s incredible. I’ve found photos of Zulu warriors at the Western Front. They were there. 1918. And it’s extraordinary that at this time when everyone’s talking about Empire and who is on who’s side, the absolute seeds of the end of it are now flourishing – in Ireland, in India, everywhere. It has obsessed me.

“But we’re talking here about women getting the vote. It was kind of a trade off because no-one went, ‘Up the women,’ in 1918. They were all back, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen so the men can have the jobs back. So let’s not kid ourselves.”

Q: Suranne – it’s an amazing set. Can you talk a bit about it and did help you to get into character?

Suranne Jones: “Yeah. We went for a read through and it was half built and we were in one of the huts. And so we could see what was about to be built by the wonderful crew. And then we went back a couple of weeks later…well, the guys had started two weeks before me actually because Joan comes in later. When I got there it was just amazing because they planted actual corn..wheat…”

Sarah Phelps: “A strain from a hundred years ago so it looked right.”

Suranne Jones: “When I first got the job I thought, ‘Great, I’m going to France!’ And then I got on a train to Wiltshire. But it was beautiful. So where the cemetery was they planted wheat – a hundred year old wheat. Then we would have tents. So the scale and the depth of what the cameras could catch was absolutely amazing.

“And then, of course, we’d have the main hospital. Add on to that your carts and horses and vintage vehicles – we were getting out of our trailers every day and it was very easy to just walk down to the field and be in our uniforms in the actual place. So thank you to all the wonderful crew. It was beautiful.”

Kevin Doyle: “It must have been months before – they built an allotment for the camp kitchen. I don’t know if it was ever seen. But it just looked beautiful. The field of corn – it’s only used in one scene. We’re walking by on the way and back from a cemetery. And there are two or three guys scything the wheat. It’s just for that moment. But they planted it months in advance. Having that kind of expertise.

“When you went into the pharmacy or the wards, just the level of contribution from the art department was just extraordinary. Everything was there that you needed. If we were trained doctors we could have taken people in. It was extraordinary. So hats off to them.”

Suranne Jones: “And also the fact we started in summer, so we had wasps everywhere. Then we went into fields of mud and then rain and wind. So our dresses, for the nurses, were covered in mud up to here. We went through all that. And the set just got better and better looking. It was amazing.”

Suranne Jones as Sister Joan Livesey.

Q: Why are we still so fixated by the First World War?

Hermione Norris: “For me – I can’t speak for anyone else – but it’s a generation that I remember. I remember the smell of that generation, the attitude of that generation. And I think the scale of loss and devastation is beyond comprehension.

“I became interested in it about 20 years ago, I suppose, and read the Pat Barker trilogy and went to Flanders. Just the psychological effect and impact on us as a nation, I think we’re still living in the consequences of that. When Sarah’s script came along…‘We will remember them’…it was just on a very small scale from my point of view, a small act of remembrance every day. ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.’ And you really did feel that there.

“I hope for people on a Sunday night it’s a small act of remembrance. ‘Small’ without sounding pompous or sombre about it. It was a hugely significant war and it was a huge privilege to be a part of that.”

Rosalie Berwick (MARIANNE OLDHAM), Kitty Trevelyan (OONA CHAPLIN), Flora Marshall (ALICE ST CLAIR)

Q: Can I ask about the costumes. Did they also help to get into the characters?

Alice St Clair, who plays Flora Marshall: “Yes, they really did. Mainly because the corsets were quite restricting and you couldn’t believe that you had to do all the work – we only had to do it in the scene, like the bed making scene, which was exhausting. In a corset it was really difficult to bend over even. They were so upright in their beliefs and way of being as well and the costumes really helped you remember that all the time.”

Richard Rankin as Captain Thomas Gillan.

Richard Rankin, who plays Captain Thomas Gillan: “Just going back to discussing the set, it was really easy to immerse yourself in the part and in the environment because the entire set was there. Like Kevin says, you could pretty much start bringing in patients. The level of detail was so great. And then add to that the costumes and the level of detail, it was brilliant.”

Alex Wyndham as Captain Miles Hesketh-Thorne.

Alex Wyndham, who plays Captain Miles Hesketh-Thorne: “Watching that, it was really interesting being the love interest – it wasn’t a man’s story. And I was thinking, ‘Oh gosh, this is what it must be like for all those girls when they go to screenings, ‘Oh yeah, here I come and I just hit on the guy a little bit and then I’m off screen.’ I just was really struck by the strength of it. The women’s stories. Actually drawing the attention to female inter-personal relationships and making them really compelling and dynamic and fascinating. Not just a side story. It was just really wonderful to see women’s stories told incredibly strongly and vibrantly, at the forefront of things.”

Jack Gordon as Orderly Corporal Peter Fowley.

James then opened up questions to other members of the media in the audience.

Q: (From me) Following on from what Sarah was saying – was there anything about the day to day lives of the real people who worked at hospitals like this that took you aback or surprised you? That you didn’t expect?

Sarah Phelps: “You don’t even imagine for a moment just how hard they worked. One of the things that took me aback was the fact that the nurses would make a point – if they could – about making sure that dying men were what they called ‘specialled’. That they didn’t die on their own. And that every man would get a letter from that special nurse back to their families. Because obviously if a man died on a field then his commanding officer would generally write to the family. But they’re not in the field, they’re in the field hospital. So you have all these nurses writing back. And at the same time nursing men in the most appalling injuries.

“There’s one nurse’s book, Sister Edith Appleton, who’s quite a girl. And she’s alarmingly chuffed when spies are marched out to be hung and shot. But apart from that she’s fabulous. And she describes – and a lot of nurses and volunteers describe – having to to sit with men who are dying from their injuries. There’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. One of the things that just made me go shivering was about Sister Edith Appleton, sitting next to a patient’s bed, who took upwards of five days to die from an appalling head injury. And her description of listening to him trying to breathe through the brain matter dripping down the back of his throat.

“This is what they did. And made beds. And poured bleach over their hands to get rid of any infection because a grain of dirt under your nail was the difference between a man’s life and his death. So over raw hands you’d pour bleach so that you be aseptic to deal with your patient. Then you would sit by their beds and hold their hands and talk to them as they died. They went without sleep and their hands and feet split.

“Those tents – they lived in them in freezing northern French winters. You’re just staggered. And listening to the description about how many of layers of clothes they had to wear in order just to not freeze to death in their beds. And going to work and having to try and wash men who came from the Front, in those winters, clarted from head to foot in poisonous mud and suffering from hypothermia and God knows what. You’re staggered. Honestly, every single detail of it knocks me off my feet.”

Arrival: Rosalie Berwick (MARIANNE OLDHAM), Flora Marshall (ALICE ST CLAIR)

Q: Suranne touched on this a little earlier, about the wet conditions. How difficult did it get? How boggy did it get? And the missing toes that we saw – I wonder what they were in real life?

Suranne Jones: “They used to be kept in the fridge in make up with the ears. So we’d go in to get some milk and the wonderful make up designers and girls that did all the injuries, brilliantly…and there were teams and teams of make up girls when the troops were out…there would be a second make up van that were in at the crack of dawn with all these wonderful supporting artists. So the toes were kept in the fridge.

“Our conditions? When you hear Sarah talk about that and the couple of books that I read, the chilblains and the tiredness…we have to put into perspective that we’re a bunch of actors making a drama and we work long hours and I remember doing a shower scene in the middle of the forest and it was quite cold – it was open top…but you do then have to remember that it ain’t nothing compared to what Sarah’s just described. But it was cold and boggy and we are actors and we do like a moan.” (laughter)

Adam James as Colonel Charles Purbright.

Kerry Fox: The thing that strikes me from reading about it was what Sarah said about – they had nothing. The fall back of their medical care was so limited. Don’t forget that Penicillin was used for the first time in the First World War. Because my children’s great grandfather was one of the first recipients of Penicillin on the beach and he had always said how much it hurt. He thought it was going to kill him. The Penicillin injection was the most painful thing he’d ever experienced – and he’d had half his arse blown off. That was one of the first times it was used. I just always had the feeling that there was so little they could do.”

Sarah Phelps: “At this stage of the war…you think about now what happens with any kind of traumatic injury. You have blood transfusions, you have ways of treating shock. At this stage, not until 1917 did they have any way of storing blood for blood transfusions. It is astonishing when you read the descriptions that anybody survives these kind of injuries. How they survived gas gangrene, how they survived shock, how they survived people coming in with virtually almost no blood left in their body – and they managed to operate on them.

“The anaesthetic at the time is really, seriously brutal. I’ve read descriptions of operations where the only way of giving a man anaesthesia is to basically shove it up his bum. And it’s really alarming. I’m stunned that men made it through. But made it through they did. And the reason they made it through is because of women and men like the ones I’m writing about. That’s how they made it through.”

Hermione Norris and Kerry Fox.

Q: Could I ask the ladies what it meant to you to play such forward-thinking women? Because this is really the start of women doing proper jobs and being accepted by men. What does it mean to you to play those roles that focus on that?

Hermione Norris: “Obviously that’s a huge privilege. It was a time of huge social change for women. Of course working class women had always worked…but for middle class and the upper class women, as these VADs were, they were doing jobs that were beyond comprehension. Men didn’t think…women probably didn’t think that they were capable of working in a munitions factory, being nurses, working in hospitals, doing any work at all. Literally they were deemed incapable of work like that. So obviously as an actor or as a woman full stop, that is a huge privilege to be a part of that.”

Kerry Fox: “The nurses that we are…at the beginning of the war there were 400 of them and by the end of the First World War there were 4000. There is a storyline later, which I don’t think is a spoiler, but my character is very old school. She sees herself as a soldier. It’s a calling very much like a career and she’s recognised as a soldier – she had worked in earlier wars. So she was that sort of type.”

Hermione Norris: “For the first time women had careers and being a nurse was, I suppose, the first career a woman was allowed to have.”

Suranne Jones: “It’s difficult without Sarah shouting ‘spoiler alert’, for me, but my character…I always try to do jobs, scripts that have some kind of conscience about them and are important. So it was great that this came up. And it was from the women’s perspective. Joan is not only politically forward thinking, socially forward thinking, she sees herself as an equal. She has a love of people and human beings and I think that when you get to episode three and four you’ll see how wide reaching that is. And that was the discussion with Sarah that I had about the end of the series. About how something huge and traumatic that happens to us as human beings can also make you see and bring people together.”

Q: She’s also quite forward thinking in that she’s got short hair and wears trousers. Were you surprised how controversial that was or how that would be seen by other characters?

Suranne Jones: “Yeah. Sergeant Soper (Jeremy Swift), as you saw there. I remember the actor saying to me, ‘You look great, quite sexy, actually.’ But obviously as a character back then he would have been absolutely horrified that this woman turned up in a gentleman’s greatcoat on a bike. Again the costume department…they did a great job. You watch the girls out of uniform, not only when we’re all in uniform, and the detail is wonderful. Although the goggles were made for men. Women have smaller faces so when you put the goggles on they go to either side, like Toad of Toad Hall. So the girls that we had to do the stunt riding couldn’t actually see very well. So it was very dangerous for them. But they did brilliantly. Obviously it wasn’t me!”

Q: To confirm the time and place of the drama?

Sarah Phelps: “We’re in Northern France and we start in 1915 because that was when the first wave of volunteer nurses went over to France. Obviously prior to that they thought it was going to be a two month exercise in spanking the Hun’s arse and sending him home without his tea. And everyone home in time for Christmas.

“By the time that it became violently obvious that not only was this entrenched warfare and that they were swiftly running out of medical personnel to deal with the extraordinary levels of casualties and in time to put the call out in Britain and train all those girls…so this is summer, June 1915. And it’s Northern France. I took some inspiration from a very similar hospital that was based near Etaples. So that’s where we are. About 30 or 40 miles back from the line.”

Q: Sarah – the conditions for all these volunteers, nurses, sound really horrific. What was it that motivated them to go over there?

Sarah Phelps: “So much motivated them. A load of people might have said it’s duty, patriotism, it’s being fired up. But also I think that at a very much deeper level it felt like a door being opened and there are loads of reasons. The same reason that loads of young men were clamouring to sign up to join the Army – for money, for a gun to be with their mates, for a good pair of boots and for adventure and thrill.

“I think a lot of women joined up for the freedoms, for getting out of these bloody claustrophobic drawing rooms where you were expected to behave in a certain way and the pressures were on you to be a wife and a mother or do good works and things like that. And then this thing happened and it was the call, ‘Rise up women of Britain and stand shoulder to shoulder with your menfolk.’

“It must have been like a blast going through the blood. I’d have dropped everything like a shot and gone. Just to do something. See a different country, to wear a uniform, a sense of pride to be active. And adventure and men and friendship and comradeship and all those different things.

“I think there’s loads of reasons why people join up. Lots of people could have put their hand on their heart and said, ‘For King and country,’ and they might have got there and been bloody useless. Some people might have gone, ‘I want to go because I want to meet men.’ And they might have got there and been bloody brilliant. It doesn’t matter why you go. It only matters what you do when you get there.”

BBC The Crimson Field

World War One at the BBC

The Roses of No Man’s Land

A V.a.d.in France

Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm

Pat Barker trilogy

Edith Appleton

Ian Wylie on Twitter

Jessica Brown Findlay as Mary Yellan.

“THERE’S nothing so dangerous as a headstrong girl who knows her own mind.”

Jessica Brown Findlay is mean, moody and muddy as Mary Yellan in a terrific three-part BBC1 adaptation of Jamaica Inn.

The former Downton Abbey star deserves to shake off all mentions of Lady Sybil and sentences that begin like this one after her dark and brooding performance as Mary.

Screenwriter Emma Frost stays faithful to Daphne du Maurier’s novel while adding her own stamp on the Cornish classic.

With BAFTA award-winning director Philippa Lowthorpe weaving yet more screen magic across three hours of drama.

Jamaica Inn begins at 9pm on Easter Monday and continues at the same time on the following two nights.

Co-starring Sean Harris as Jamaica Inn landlord Joss Merlyn, Matthew McNulty as his younger brother Jem Merlyn, Joanne Whalley as Aunt Patience, Ben Daniels as vicar Francis Davey and Shirley Henderson as his sister Hannah Davey.

If you’re read the book, you’ll know this is a thrilling tale of Cornish smugglers and much more set in 1821

Spirited Mary is forced to leave home after her mother dies and journeys “to the ends of the Earth” to live with her aunt and uncle in Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor.

“I never thought I’d struggle with telling good from evil,” explains Mary at the outset of a beautifully photographed epic.

Right from the opening shot of Mary dragging a heavy wooden trunk along a beaten track.

Here’s just a small flavour:

Last month I attended the London press launch of Jamaica Inn.

My full transcript of the post-screening Q&A is below, edited to remove a few sentences that would give just a little too much information for those who have not read the book, or investigated the story via Mr Google.

Taking part were Jessica Brown Findlay (Mary Yellan), Emma Frost (screenwriter), David Thompson (Producer, with Dan Winch), Philippa Lowthorpe (Director) plus chairman James Rampton.

As Philippa said: “It’s so wonderful to have a female heroine forging ahead in an adventure story, which is usually the preserve of boys’ stuff.

“I love Treasure Island – but this was wonderful to have a female heroine at the heart of it.”

While Jessica – known as Jessie – spoke about filming the role and then watching herself on the big screen at the preview:

“I was watching one scene and I almost started laughing because I remembered I stomped off and then immediately fell over flat on my face in the mud. And that’s not in there.”

Mary en route to Jamaica Inn.

All the photos on this page are by Robert Viglasky. There are links to him and lots more at the end of the Q&A below.

BBC Drama boss Ben Stephenson introduced the screening:

“I’ve always been a massive fan of Daphne du Maurier and have long wanted to bring Jamaica Inn to the screen. But Hollywood rights…you know what it’s like. So it’s been really, really difficult. So when David Thompson came and said that he thought it was going to be possible to make it, it was really exciting because she’s such an extraordinary writer. Tells popular stories but with real depth. And they always, I think, were perfect for TV. So it was a real honour to be able to bring this brilliant book to screen. I think it’s a really epic, exciting, moving story, led brilliantly by Jessica Brown Findlay who really gives a…well she’s already a star, but if she wasn’t, I would say star making performance. It’s a massive part and a massive journey that she goes on and she does it beautifully.”

The Q&A:

Q: Jess – what was your first reaction when you were offered the role of Mary?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “I was elated. I read the first script and just thought it was incredible. And then I couldn’t help myself, between auditioning and finding out I went straight to the book and started reading. And then I realised maybe that was a bad idea because I’d be really envious if anyone else got to play Mary. I really, really, really wanted to. I thought she was incredible. And I was really happy.”

Q: What is it about her that makes her such a special character?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “So many things but…the thing that struck me immediately and the most refreshing thing was that – for the story that it’s telling, it’s led by a heroine, led by a woman. But you could change her name to a male name and you’d have the same story, almost. And that was so exciting. It wasn’t just fluffy, girly, boring stuff…it was so exciting and I’d never read anything like it. And it was dark. I just think she’s incredible. She’s really stubborn, sometimes to a fault. There was so much there.”

Sean Harris as Joss Merlyn.

Q: Emma – for you, was that one of the appeals, that it’s an adventure story that traditionally, maybe, has been led by a male character but this has an astonishing female in the lead?

Emma Frost: “I think part of the appeal for me is that it’s the perfect fusion between…it’s a Gothic romance, it’s in the vein of Twilight, Wuthering Heights, The Piano, so many amazing films or books. But I think it’s the perfect fusion between an emotional interior story – it’s a big love story for Mary – but also that’s dramatised externally through this huge adventure in the wrecking. In the end it all comes down to…for me, when I read it, what made sense of it was that there’s central metaphor…in the wrecking they use false lights to lure ships to their destruction on their rocks. And I think the metaphor, for me, that Du Maurier is using is that she’s sort of comparing that to love and she’s saying, ‘We’re drawn to this bright light of what we’re attracted to and what you have to do is negotiate the rocks and see if you can find a way to get to what you desire without destroying yourself in the process. So there was this perfect parallel for me of the love story and this huge adventure story. And in the end the piece, for me, is a perfect triangle between desire, survival and morality. So there are people in this amazing epic physical environment who are trying to survive. Physically as well. They’re smuggling because there’s no money. There are no jobs, there is no way to survive. But, for Mary, it’s about trying to retain her own identity and her own integrity in the face of falling in love with a man who might destroy her because he might turn out to be the most criminal, worst person she’s ever met. So there’s this wonderful tension between those two things.”

Matthew McNulty as Jem Merlyn.

Q: Philippa – beforehand you said to me, ‘It’s not a period drama, it’s a drama.’ Was one of the attractions for you that the characters seemed very contemporary in some ways?

Philippa Lowthorpe: “I think the characters do feel very contemporary and starting with Daphne du Maurier’s novel, Mary feels like a very modern heroine in that. And then Emma’s interpretation of that was fantastically vivid and very strikingly modern. I think all period drama should just be dramas and the word ‘period’ should be dropped. Because unless they live and breathe, for me, as real people with real passions and real faults, it doesn’t feel like you should bother making them. But that’s the wonderful thing about Mary as a character – she’s just so flawed but so full of drive and passion. She’s very attractive. She’s like any young modern woman would be.”

Joanne Whalley as Aunt Patience.

Q: David – I know you’ve been involved with Jamaica Inn for some time, what has made you feel that it was so right to bring to the screen?

David Thompson: “Well I first started work on this some years ago with Hilary Heath. We were thinking of making it into a movie. But as we pursued it we realised there was so much material here it worked much better in a longer form television piece, where you’d have space and scope to deal with all the elements of the story. But what really drew me to it was, I wanted to make a really passionate, epic love story. And it’s so hard to find love stories which are set in a contemporary setting because there’s much less at stake. What you get in the period stories is this incredible number of impediments, which is what you’ve got here. So that’s what really drew me to it – this mixture, as Emma was saying. Intense romantic love and a really tense, dangerous, mystery story. And that’s the kind of web that Daphne Du Maurier wove in her book. And I thought it would be a really great, exciting challenge to bring that to the screen.”

Q: One of the appeals of Mary is her complexity and that is manifested in her attraction towards Jem – because she’s not quite sure who he is? Was that one of the things that drew you to it?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “Yeah, I suppose. It’s far more complicated than first meets the eye and also compared to many other things. Her attraction to Jem…she suppresses it hugely and hates herself for it. She’s – despite her best efforts – drawn to him and then various things come into play. She has questions about how good is he? How bad is he? What will it mean for her life to follow her heart? But also to deny her love for him, as well. It’s very complicated in that sense. But also what really attracted me and what was so exciting was the extraordinary people involved. Starting with Du Maurier, an incredible book written by an incredible woman, adapted by an incredible woman, directed by an incredible woman. It just felt really exciting and driven in a way and had something about that I’d never read before and never thought I’d even be allowed to be a part of. So that was a huge draw. It was really exciting.”

Q: Emma – you had a rather unconventional way of preparing to write this?

Emma Frost: “I don’t know if it’s unconventional. I went and stayed in a yurt on Bodmin Moor because in the book…the landscape is a character. So that has to feel real, it has to feel alive. I had to know what it smelled like and felt like. I’ve actually got family in Cornwall so then I wrote most of the first episode in a place called Trevoole Farm, which is in a weird named place called Praze-an-Beeble, in the middle of Cornwall. I also made a point of meeting Kits Browning, who is Daphne du Maurier’s son. He still lives in Fowey, in the house where Daphne lived. There’s amazing big portraits of her everywhere. It’s really incredible. And Kits was brilliant. He told me all the stuff about how Daphne du Maurier had been reading Treasure Island just before she wrote this. And so she was very excited about wanting to write a really big epic action adventure but to give it to a girl as the central character because it’s obviously what her preoccupations were as well. And Kits was really amazing in helping me understand his mum’s own response to what she’d written and being really supportive as well. The whole family, they really loved the scripts and gave it their seal of approval. And gave me a watch. It’s a du Maurier watch – there’s a reason I’m showing you. It says ‘du Maurier’.”

Q: Philippa – some very challenging scenes. The filming in the sea must have been quite difficult?

Philippa Lowthorpe: “The filming in the sea was extremely exhilarating but very scary – because I’m actually a bit of a wimp. I’m not very brave. We wanted to go to Cornwall to do the majority of the exteriors to make it feel very authentic, as Emma was saying. And following in her footsteps, I think you wrote some of it at Rough Tor, didn’t you?”

Emma Frost: “Yes.”

Philippa Lowthorpe: “We just wanted to go to the placed where Daphne du Maurier had been and then Emma had been. And then go and film in these extraordinary places. The landscape in Cornwall is quite extraordinary and Bodmin Moor is this great flat plain with these funny conical tors on it. Amazing. And the beaches there, obviously, are perfect for smuggling stories. But we spent a long time, five days I think, filming in and out of the sea. Poor Jessie was in there. We were all in there. The whole crew were in there and we all had to have an individual life guard to prop us up because it was a surfing beach and the waves were very high. It was a real adventure. But we wanted to go there and feel what they’d felt, when smugglers really had operated there.”

Emma Frost: “And you can’t shoot anywhere else for Cornwall, can you? There are certain really iconic bits of the landscape that you’d just know if it was somewhere else.”

Philippa Lowthorpe: “Absolutely. These weird hills are sort of made out rocks and they’re conical shaped. Up on those we went and filmed the final scenes in episode three up there. And it took 45 minutes to walk up. The 4x4s could only take us half way up. You came there didn’t you, Emma, to the filming? We trekked up to the top of this hill. Thank goodness it wasn’t too windy.”

Emma Frost: “And Jessie was amazing. The more difficult anything was, the more keen you were, weren’t you?”

Q: Jessie – can you give us your recollections of filming in the sea? Did you find it actually quite exhilarating?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “Er, yeah. It’s ridiculous. Well the thing is, at the end of day you do get to go home and have a nice cup of tea and a warm dinner, so it’s fine. But it was exhilarating and really special because if it had been in a studio or pretend…you were able to get to a place so far beyond where you would. Where it feels pretend, I hate that. It’s weird and I can’t do it. So it’s real and there is a certain level of fear. And working with Sean (Harris, who plays Joss Merlyn) was amazing and he just brought this…you were in the sea and everyone disappeared and you are there and you may drown. You wouldn’t but…you go under and for a second you can’t see where up is. But obviously within about half a second someone is like, ‘There you are, you’re fine.’ But it was extraordinary. I’d never worked in that way before. And it was great to be able to be allowed to be in that situation. And the rest of the time the landscape is so integral to the story. You get the sense that there’s a reason why Mary…she tries, numerous times, to leave but where will she go? There is nowhere. She could walk for hours and hours and hours and days and get nowhere. So it was an important thing to feel really isolated. And the way it’s described in the book, it feels desolate. At the end of the Earth, as she says.”

Q: Did you identify with Mary?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “Yeah. It’s not necessarily similarities between you and your character that’s interesting. In fact the more different the better. But you find things within those characters that you can relate to that excite you. I loved her stubborness, stomping around. She’s always off on some stomp somewhere. And then reluctantly goes back. But I love that she trusts her gut and goes with it and tries and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But she’s headstrong and believes in something even if she starts believing in exactly what she thinks she knows and she ends up changed but still with that central core there. It’s still unshaken but shaped, maybe, by the people in her life and what’s happened. And I love that. I love that she comes out at the end of it and she has changed but she embraces the fact that it may not be for the better. She’s really flawed.”

Shirley Henderson as Hannah Davey and Ben Daniels as Vicar Francis Davey.

Q: Emma – there is a famous 1939 Hitchcock film of Jamaica Inn. Did you worry about following in his footsteps?

Emma Frost: “No. It’s the only time you can re-make something Hitchcock did and people don’t throw bricks at you. Ther Hitchcock film is terrible. I don’t know if anyone has seen it. It’s a terrible film where Charles Laughton just grandstands and just goes, ‘It’s all about me.’ It couldn’t be more different. Daphne du Maurier hated it. It’s not even a story about Mary, is it? She’s kind of a bit part with a balsa wood trunk that gets thrown on the carriage and off again, and is so obviously really light. It’s a really bad film. Which is great for us.”

Q: Philippa – what is it that makes du Maurier’s writing so special and how did Emma render that in the script?

Philippa Lowthorpe: “Well I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t read the book before I read Emma’s script. What I loved about Emma’s script is that it was so visual, which is a very rare thing in a lot of writing. It was just so visual and so atmospheric and felt like something that was very, very different from a lot of normal television stuff. It was just so exciting to read it. And then, obviously, after reading Emma’s script I did go back to the novel and I thought how beautifully Emma had captured the heart and soul of the book, which is just so full of excitement and atmosphere. Like everybody’s being saying, it’s so wonderful to have a female heroine forging ahead in an adventure story, which is usually the preserve of boys’ stuff. I love Treasure Island and books like this. But this was wonderful to have a female heroine at the heart of it.”

Q: David – without embarrassing Jessie too much, could you say why you think she’s so right for this role?

David Thompson: “This is an incredibly dangerous, sexually-charged and emotionally overwhelming story and Jessie just seems to have that kind of strength, solidity and power and also – this will embarrass her – beauty, which is very important for this. Because this is a heroine who has to hold the screen across three hours. And Jessie does that quite amazingly well. In so many little facets and aspects. Whether she’s plunging in the water – and incidentally those scenes are usually filmed in a tank in the studio. So it was quite a challenge for an actress to do that. We did it all in the sea. Whether she’s in the water or riding across the moors – an incredible prowess on a horse. Have you ever ridden before?”

Jessica Brown Findlay: “Not really.”

David Thompson: “Well she’s extraordinary on a horse. It’s an incredibly dynamic…and that’s the whole thing about the story, Philippa and Emma have brought this to the screen…it’s a very dynamic and visual evocation of the story. So in just that scene of her charging across the moors it’s incredibly evocative of her emotional state. And above all, Jessie has the emotional range as an actress. An incredible amount she has to do by saying very little often, actually. Just by reacting and responding. So she’s got the subtlety and that emotional intensity to really convey this dangerous and sexually charged story. And I would say that all the actors were in some danger at various moments. The great thing about the film was…I guess the elements work for the story but they were also very challenging for the production. At one stage the inn, which is a real inn, threatened to blow down in the hurricane. So we had to stop filming because bits of the roof went hurtling across the front of it. So it was quite a challenge to film, given all the elements working against us and also with us.”

Q: Jessie – excellent accent. How did you go about nailing that?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “We had a week of rehearsals in London, where we got to talk through everything with Philippa and Emma was there as well some days. And we had a voice coach for all of us for a week. We were also given some actors who are based in Cornwall. They recorded a lot of the script, just repeating certain words that are quite hard to say. It was just really useful. Now everything is quite distilled and we all travel, whereas this is a point in time where you grew up in one place and you stayed there pretty much. And so sounds are a lot stronger and far more specific to certain areas. So you had to find a balance between what was right for the time, which would have been really strong, but also so that everyone can understand what you’re saying. Which is useful. But also because of the landscape and the world in which you’re in, you don’t waste time with warmth of vowels and things like that. You’re shouting across moors, so thinks are shorter and harsher. And with Mary’s character as well, for me I found she suddenly started taking on a really deep voice. So yeah. Another masking quality of Mary’s.”

Questions were then opened up to other members of the media in the audience:

Q: Emma – I found the psychology of the ‘sexual’ relationships very interesting. Particularly between Mary and her uncle. I’ve not read the book, I wondered how much you brought out from the book or whether it is actually already there?

Emma Frost: “I think there is a lot of it in the book. Daphne du Maurier always comes back to as central theme – gender battles and gender roles. She very famously said that she perceived herself as being half male, half female and it was the male part of her that actually writes and where the creativity was vested. It was something she struggled with enormously, her own sexuality, her own response to gender. So her books are always very full of it. And Mary, in the book, says she’d rather be a boy, she’d like to go and do man’s work on a farm. When she falls in love with Jem she says she doesn’t want to love like a woman because she perceives that to be weakness. So there’s a really strong seam through the book of Mary recognising her limitations as female and feeling that to fall in love is to lose herself and lose her identity. I think what du Maurier does between Jem and Joss, who obviously are brothers, is there’s this splitting of the same character almost. And Jem is the version of him when he was good or still redeemable. And Joss represents what Jem might turn out to be. So Mary and Jem could turn out to be Patience and Joss down the line and that’s the horrible spectre that she’s dealing with. He (Joss) does, I think, in the book say…he holds his finger out and says is she tame or does she bite? She doesn’t bite in the book but I felt she should. Which is about her ballsy-ness. It’s about her saying, ‘Don’t dismiss me just because you think I’m a girl. I’m equal to you, mate.’ The whole journey for Mary that feeds into that is about her being so sure. And so she thinks she knows what the difference is between right and wrong. She thinks she knows who she is. She thinks she knows everything and she’s challenged on it at every single stage. And the sexual challenge I think is part of that. In the book…she’s completely repulsed by Joss. He hits her aunt, he’s brutal, he’s vile, he’s horrible. And yet there’s a certain magnetism about that and, obviously, he echoes Jem. So there’s this man she’s really attracted to and Joss is like the dark side of that. So it’s confusing and dangerous.”

Q: (From me) Jessie – you touched on it earlier on when you were talking about the sea scenes and David also mentioned the weather, which you can see a lot of on screen. Can you talk a little more about acting in all that mud and rain? And does it add to how you play the character in terms of how earthy it is and her predicament?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “Yeah. It helps pretty much in every single way. It was really incredibly muddy outside the Inn. It changes how you walk. You can’t just elegantly walk down the road. It’s a massive effort. Whoever invented those dresses, I don’t know what they were thinking. They’re really long and so as soon as you step outdoors it just drinks mud and rain. So it changes how you walk, how you hold yourself. It starts pouring with rain and you’re cold. We had no hair and no make-up. Well I obviously had hair. We just kept everything incredibly minimal. So if it was cold and windy and raining, normally there would be someone running and and making your nose as if you’re not cold at all. Whereas if you are, you’ve got a bright red nose and blotched cheeks, blue lips quite often. And that’s fantastic because it looks how it would. You wouldn’t look perfect. I hate that, ‘Oh look, it’s raining,’ but she’s come inside and her hair is lovely and she’s had a manicure. How convenient. So all that helps. You’re just grubby for seven weeks. I don’t know how many people would like that. But I liked it.”

Philippa Lowthorpe: “Jessie told me a very funny story…because she was very dirty for the whole shoot…and going into the chemist to buy some aspirin or something and giving you very funny looks. You still had all your dirt ingrained into your hands.”

Jessica Brown Findlay: “They asked me, ‘Do you pay for your prescriptions?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I do.’ And they said, ‘Are you sure?’ Because I had mud all over my face and a cut lip. I was like, ‘That’s really weird. I am willing to pay.’ Then later I looked in the mirror and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I understand maybe why the might have asked me.’”

Q: Where was the real Inn?

David Thompson: “The real inn was actually in Yorkshire, because we had some investment from Yorkshire. In a very wild location. We hadn’t quite realised how wild it was until we started shooting, it’s fair to say. To light these night scenes you had to put up these great cherry pickers, which are kind of cranes. And Sod’s Law, the nights we were filming it the wind really whipped up to an incredible speed to the point where it was too dangerous to have these great big crane lights up. So we had to bring them down. So there were a lot of production problems. We had to build a road to get the equipment to the Inn. But Philippa, quite rightly, wanted it to feel really authentically remote and wild. Of course that did present a lot of production challenges. And the mud, of course. Great on screen, it looks really authentic. But unfortunately bloody hard for the actors to move in – and the crew. The actors might have sucked down into the mud, it was so thick.”

Q: Getting the rights to the book?

David Thompson: “For many years it was held by a studio and eventually Hilary Heath got the rights and then we worked together with Hilary to turn into a television drama. So it had been something we’d been tracking for a long time. A lot of people have been tracking it for a long time. But the moment just seemed right. As I said before, the story seems to lend itself best to television adaptation, to give it that long form treatment and to really let it burn with that kind of intensity.”

Q: Jessie – what was it like knowing that you were going to be make-up free on HD TV and what was it like watching yourself?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “I wasn’t fussed at all. Nick, who was our head of hair and make-up, she called me and said that herself and Philippa had been talking and asked how I felt about minimal and I said that I hoped that it would be nothing. And then it was. So that was good. It fitted the story. It would be ridiculous if everything else was as it was but everyone looked perfect and clearly wearing make-up, mascara and whatever. We had mud added and Sean was covered in tattoos and broken skin, which was fantastic. So there was plenty of work to be done. But just not prettifying. Whatever, it’s fine!” (laughs)

Q: Lady Sybil was quite headstrong when it came to men. Did you draw on that character at all for this or did you find it completely different?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “No it’s totally irrelevant. Just the book and the scripts. That’s all you needed. I went back to the book, read it once, picked out some key paragraphs or moments of description or conversations or whatever that related, that I wanted to go back to. And then it was just the scripts. But everything was there. She was so fully formed. As soon as you met her she was just an absolute real, round, whole person. So not at all.”

Q: Are you quite Tomboyish yourself?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “I don’t know. I just think there was so much within this story. There’s a love story side to it but there’s struggle emotionally. Everyone has something…no-one’s just good or bad. Everyone has this other side to them that slowly starts to come out or in certain situations are challenged. Even Joss. Mary says at one point, ‘There must be good in you. I know there is.’ There were so many elements within the story.”

Q: Philippa – the shipwreck scenes look amazing. How did you realise them?

Philippa Lowthorpe: “We had to film massive great plate shots and then we had a fantastic production company called ‘BlueBolt’ who created the ships and put all the mist in. It’s their fantastic work that’s enabled those ship scenes to look so brilliant. They’re very hard to do. And then the actors had an incredibly hard…all my lovely smugglers, and Jessie as well and obviously Sean, had to act as if the ship was breaking up, just with their imaginations. Because obviously there was nothing to see. We were at the beach. And I thought they did that particularly well, to have to inhabit the world of fear and tension just before you were going to kill people or whatever. It was hard for them but they did it brilliantly.”

Q: Do you think there are any resonances of this having been made during a recession, that people feel desperate to learn a living?

Philippa Lowthorpe: “I think what Emma was saying is very true – that these people had no living, so how did they survive? And it’s about survival, really. They’re not bad people although they do very bad things. I remember Sean Harris was very, very interesting about his character Joss. He said that he felt like he was a working man. I think that’s very true. They had to do that to survive. There was no work. no food. So how else would they have kept going?”

Q: In the book, the vicar is an albino. Is there a reason why you didn’t make him an albino in this?

Emma Frost: “From the script point of view…it’s interesting…the thing about him being an albino is, it’s a physical manifestation of his freakishness. And that’s how it’s described. And he says in the novel that he’s a freak of nature. He’s actually described almost as a hermaphrodite. He has a soft voice like a woman and he has long eye lashes like a woman. So du Maurier kind of fuses male and female into one and that’s sort of the basis of his freakishness and it’s also why Mary doesn’t find him threatening at all. What was important for me was to try and find a different way to dramatise what du Maurier does within one character, which you can do in a novel because it’s all in the description and in how Mary responds to him. So actually in my version he’s sort of split into two. So he’s split back into the male and female version. So that’s why his sister appears, so that there is still the male and female and they’re transgressive and threating and slightly sexually odd in a slightly different way.”

Philippa Lowthorpe: “Ben Daniels (who plays the vicar)…it was a nod to the albino. He is blond himself and he’s got very, very pale blue eyes in real life. And that seemed to be enough of a nod to the albino. I agree with Emma’s decision.”

David Thompson: “Generally speaking the television drama is pretty close to the book but there have been some changes, particularly in the third episode. Necessary changes to make the story unfold over three hours. But I think both Philippa and Emma have been really truthful to the spirit and elemental qualities of the book. Whilst from time to time making the kind of adaptations that are necessary to make the drama really work.”

Jessica Brown Findlay as Mary Yellan.

Q: Jessie – I noticed a couple of times while you were watching, you were hands over your face…how did you find watching it and how do you find that in general? Can you watch yourself, do you watch yourself?

Jessica Brown Findlay: “Yeah. It’s fine. It’s a learning curve. You watch it a few times and think about what you’ve done. ‘Do that again, don’t do that again.’ And then move on. It was such an emotional incredible…the best job in the world. I can’t detach myself from it at all. I can’t be objective, whatsoever. And you watch it and certain things you can remember, like what happened that day and how that drives you. I was watching one scene and I almost started laughing because I remembered I stomped off and then immediately fell over flat on my face in the mud. And that’s not in there. But I know it’s there. So it’s a different experience. It’s always just a bit weird.”

Jamaica Inn begins on BBC1 at 9pm on Easter Monday and continues over the next two nights.

BBC Jamaica Inn

Character Biographies

Daphne du Maurier

Origin Pictures

Screen Yorkshire

Robert Viglasky

Visit Cornwall

Jamaica Inn Cornwall

Ian Wylie on Twitter

“IT was a very physical role, lots of running, hanging off bridges and climbing fences, hard work.

“But I must say I absolutely loved it.”

John Simm talking about his lead role as Det Sgt Marcus Farrow in Prey, a three-part ITV thriller written by Chris Lunt.

I spoke to John on location during filming on a cold and wet day at the start of January.

And again later when he had returned from making the first episodes of Intruders in Vancouver and was about to begin work on The Village 2.

While Chris and I chatted at ITV’s new Trafford / Media City HQ on January 6 – the official first day in that site’s history after the move from Quay Street in Manchester.

A fresh and exciting TV writer – currently bound for Hollywood – at the dawn of a new era for ITV in the North West.

You can read my interviews via the link to the ITV press pack / production notes below.

Including how John threw himself into the part and was injured during filming:

Prey Wylie ITV Interviews

Also scroll down the page here for some of the production photos by Ben Blackall and a short film by Tim Royle from the Royal Television Society preview screening.

I’ve seen all three episodes of Prey and they are superb.

Yet another TV gem from the Red Production Company.

Filmed – as I saw on location – using only natural light.

A fast-paced, edgy and compelling drama directed by Nick Murphy, whose previous credits include Occupation, The Awakening and Blood.

As you would expect, it’s a gripping performance from John.

Backed by a strong supporting cast, including Rosie Cavaliero, Craig Parkinson, Anastasia Hille, Benedict Wong, Heather Peace and Adrian Edmondson.

Prey begins on ITV at 9pm on Monday (April 28).

Update: Here’s a short five minute film taken at the Royal Television Society preview screening of Prey episode one in Manchester which features extracts from the panel Q&A discussion, including Chris Lunt, John Simm, Nick Murphy and Nicola Shindler. Film credit: Tim Royle of whitenosugarproductions

Heather Peace and John Simm as Abi and Marcus Farrow.

Marcus Farrow and his two young sons.

Anastasia Hille as Det Chief Insp Andrea Mackenzie and John Simm as Det Sgt Marcus Farrow.

Rosie Cavaliero as Acting Det Chief Insp Susan Reinhardt.

Craig Parkinson as Det Insp Sean Devlin.

Benedict Wong as Det Sgt Ash Chan.

Adrian Edmondson as Assistant Chief Constable Warner.

ITV

Red Production Company

John Simm

Chris Lunt

Nick Murphy

Ben Blackall

The Railway Arms

Ian Wylie on Twitter

“WE nearly died in there. Doesn’t it make you think?”

Daniel Cotton (Philip Glenister) asks the question of his father Samuel (Bernard Hill) in From There To Here.

The three part BBC1 drama, written by Peter Bowker, opens with the June 1996 Manchester bomb which destroyed a large part of the city centre.

But this is not a story about the IRA attack. It charts the ripples of that initial trigger on two families across Greater Manchester and Cheshire.

Last night I attended a screening of episode one at BAFTA in London followed by a Q&A, including Phil and Pete.

You can read my full transcript below, edited very slightly to remove any major spoilers.

Including Phil and Liz White talking about being reunited in Manchester where they, of course, filmed Life On Mars together.

And Phil’s response to an attempt to grab a cheap headline from him.

On the evidence of the first hour and the showreel of later highlights we were also shown, this is one of the best things Phil has done in recent years.

BBC Drama boss Ben Stephenson, who was at university in Manchester in 1996, described it as “a towering, moving, really surprising performance”.

Director James Strong, whose previous credits include Broadchurch, told the Q&A how he experienced the 1996 blast for real in Manchester that day.

He begins episode one with the closest look at Mr Glenister’s eyelashes you are every likely to get.

“Still alive,” Daniel remarks to wife Claire (Saskia Reeves).

Before he heads from their luxury Cheshire home to a Manchester city centre hotel where Daniel is hoping to broker a peace deal between his wayward brother Robbo (Steven Mackintosh) and their father Samuel.

Daniel having been adopted when he was around five years old.

It’s Saturday mid-morning and the hotel bar is otherwise empty, aside from cleaner Joanne, played by Liz White.

Who is a single mother of two boys.

Philip Glenister as Daniel and Liz White as Joanne.

You could hear that pin drop in the BAFTA auditorium when the bomb went off on screen.

Pete’s script then follows those ripples from that summer of football, through New Labour’s triumph in 1997 to the Millennium celebrations as 1999 turned into 2000.

There is much to love about From There To Here.

Not least the slices of humour, such as Daniel’s immediate thought after the explosion.

The music, including classics like I Wanna Be Adored by The Stone Roses and an original score by I Am Kloot.

Both of which capture the smell and feel of Manchester.

Samuel is the head of Cotton’s Confectionary, a Chadderton sweet factory, where Daniel also works.

With shades of Phil back in Clocking Off’s Mackintosh Textiles.

Daniel Rigby and Morven Christie co-starring as Daniel and Claire’s childen Charlie and Louise.

From There To Here begins on BBC1 at 9pm on Thursday May 22.

Will update this blog with more cast photos when the BBC embargo on them expires.

******************************************************************

Q&A with director James Strong / writer Peter Bowker / executive producer Derek Wax / Philip Glenister / Saskia Reeves / Liz White. Chaired by James Rampton.

Q: Derek – tell us how you developed this project?

Derek Wax: “Pete and I worked together on a show called Occupation, a three-parter also about the stresses of family and trauma within a family. We just started talking. Pete said he wanted write a big modern…like a modern Dickens novel, wasn’t it? A sort of tragi-comic modern epic about Manchester. This was just after Occupation came out about 2009, probably. We both talked about the novel American Pastoral by Philip Roth and we both loved that book and it was about a family that were involved in making something, a manufacturing business. And I remember you (Pete) wanted it to be a family sweet factory. And I said, ‘Couldn’t it be something a bit nobler than sweets? Couldn’t it be leather shoes or something?’ Sweets being something which you can feel pretty worthless but they’re fun. Out of that the thing was born. Pete came up with this fantastic story. Again about a family and all the epic canvas of Manchester. So the bomb was a trigger and a catalyst but not the story.”

Q: Obviously the bomb is a very dramatic opening. Why did you decide to use that as the opening and how did you develop it from there as a catalyst for the story?

Peter Bowker: “First, I wanted to write something about that summer because of the contradictions in it. You’ve got this very feelgood factor around Euro ’96. And then I remember the Manchester bomb happening. I’d mis-remembered it. I’d parked it. I didn’t think it was at the same time as the tournament. It happened some time that summer. And it was interesting that the Manchester re-build was done of the back of…riots or terrorism were the only way you could get a northern city re-built…but Scousers had already rioted. Is that potentially libellous? So there was an interesting contradiction. That you had a rock solid ‘Northern People’s Republic of Mancunia’ being invested…re-built itself in a very dynamic and capitalistic and entrepreneurial way. And the speed with which it all happened. There’s a great book called Rebuilding Manchester, written by an architect – the speed with which everything went through planning and everything. And being Manchester, rumours had started by that afternoon…by that afternoon there was a rumour. By Sunday it was an inside job. People in Manchester were saying, ‘How else are we going to get rid of the Arndale Centre?’ We tell stories. That’s what we do all the time. So there’s a kind of conspiracy theory. Part of Robbo’s character was that thing about the people outside the red line. The people whose businesses were still screwed but didn’t get compensation. The resentment of that as well. Obviously what I didn’t want to do was write a docu-drama about the day of the bomb and I didn’t want to belittle the experience of people who’d gone through that trauma. I suppose the central question is, ‘I could have died. How does that make me feel for the rest of my life? In that moment, if Robbo stood one side or the other he would have died, what does that do to you? And it takes them all off in different directions. That’s why it seemed such a powerful starting point.”

Q: Phil – what appealed to you when you first read Pete’s script?

Philip Glenister: “The script. For me it’s always in the writing. We all come from a perspective where we have something to work with. The writer comes with a blank page and we all work off that, whether directing, acting, set design, producing, whatever. Obviously I’ve known Pete for quite a few years. We’re neighbours, you see. So I just used to annoy him and knock on his door – play Knock Down Ginger until he gave me a part.”

Peter Bowker: “I used to hide behind the settee.”

Philip Glenister: “Yeah. I used to peer through. ‘Pete, Pete, can I have a job?’ (laughter) I think what I love about Peter’s writing is, the ambition is all his characterisation. It’s all in the characters. And for an actor it’s an absolute gift. You sit there in a read through and you don’t have to change pretty much anything. We had a week’s rehearsal where we just sat round and chatted and had quite a long lunch, courtesy of Derek. (laughter). It was a great part and a chance for me to go back to Manchester as well, which was a great appeal. Because obviously Manchester has been incredibly important for me as a city and for my career. It’s like my second home in many respects. I felt I’ve done some of my best work, without a doubt, there. Hopefully this adds to the gig. So it was a good gig. And obviously to get the chance to work with (comedy actory voice) marvellous, marvellous, darling actresses Saskia and Liz. Obviously Liz and I worked together on Life On Mars and so it was a really fantastic, enjoyable shoot. It was seven weeks and it flew by. Helmed by old ‘Strongy’ over there. All the elements just seemed to come together. It was just a really, happy, enjoyable…hard working. We did work hard. But it was great. Real fun.”

Bernard Hill as Samuel and Steven Mackintosh as Robbo.

Q: Saskia – what drew you to the project?

Saskia Reeves: “The same as Phil. The writing was so strong and I loved the humour – the complication and the confusion of it. Reading it knowing that I was possibly going to be playing Claire, it was sort of, ‘Oh no, he’s doing that. And he’s said that.’ For me, I really loved the way she ended up in the story. Which you’ll find out if you watch two and three. I just loved the dark humour and the clearly drawn characters from everybody. I loved also the family, just the lovely family set pieces which we did at the beginning of the shoot. It was great to have that as a feeling to carry through all the other scenes. They were great fun to do. The breadth of emotion as well.”

Philip Glenister: “It’s about families. The bottom line. It’s about family and the complexities and the heartache and the humour and the extraordinary thing that is family, which we can all relate to because we’re all from them. Well, most of us. (laughter) And it’s that depth and complexity that is so extraordinary and amazing.”

Derek Wax: “Without trying to analyse Pete’s writing…You (Peter) said when we were making Occupation, that was about the gap between what people experience and what they articulate. I think Pete writes those characters better than anyone. That sense that people are trying to articulate profound feelings but not being able to. And other people being able to articulate things just like that. Snapping ideas out as soon as they come into their heads. And you have that incredible contrast with Daniel, who’s going through all sorts of stuff, that only comes out very obliquely and it remains enigmatic. Capturing inarticulate characters is a great strength of Pete’s.”

Q: Is it particularly a problem with male inarticulacy do you think? Our inability to express what we’re really feeling?

Peter Bowker: “I think it’s general. I don’t think human beings are very good at communicating, full stop. And that’s good for me because it gives me a living. Humanity. I also just wanted to say about the family set pieces that it takes an incredibly skillful director to just let them sit. And there are a number of set pieces in this where the way James films those family moments. when everybody’s got an agenda, but he films it in such a way that they don’t put their agendas out there. This came together for me…the Euro ’96 thing helped because talking about football is another way about talking about emotion. I know my dad never said he loved me, because he was from Salford. But he took me to the match. And that’s what I confuse with love.”

Liz White as Joanne with her screen sons in the pub plus Philip Glenister as Daniel.

Q: Liz – tell us about your character (Joanne) and what appealed to you about her?

“The line that pinged out when we were watching it then was, again, ‘I don’t need saving.’ I loved that about her character and the fact that she’d brought up these boys by herself and she’d reached a point in her life where it seemed on paper that she was functioning brilliantly and she certainly didn’t need anybody in her life. But along came this guy under these circumstances and it’s almost like it was the fairytale that we’ve all got within us. Which was, perhaps this knight in shining armour has come and knocked at my door? And in this circumstance, there’s just been a bomb and death is a bit of an aphrodisiac and so why not? You really lose potentially everything. It was a great woman on the page and I really wanted to play her. I was so thrilled to get that opportunity.”

Q: James – you were there in Manchester on the day of the bombing?

James Strong: “Yeah, I was training as a director at Granada and I went into Manchester, I think in an England shirt. And I was walking down Deansgate and it was a beautiful sunny morning. Then I remember right at the other end there was this bang and then the windows started going out at the other end of the road. And then I was lying on the floor. I got up and it was silent after that for about a minute. Then all the sirens and police and stuff. So when I got the script – well, I think I can bring along some experience. So we had to read it and then go to meet everybody and then know I was there. Also living in Manchester, that actually by the afternoon it was more about England v Scotland than what had happened.”

Peter Bowker: “What’s remarkable is that Old Trafford did host a match on the Sunday afternoon…that says something about the era that, I think, is very different to where we are now. I just can’t imagine that being cancelled or more being made of the fact it went on. It was under-reported. It (the bombing) felt nationally under-reported because there was this other big narrative going on and nothing was going to interrupt that. Even for the people involved. And when Samuel, the Bernard Hill character, says, ‘Make sure you’re home for the match,’ that seems entirely believable to me. That’s where your priorities would be.”

Derek Wax: “And given the circumstances, 80,000 people were actually evacuated in two hours. It could have been a horrendous loss of life on that day. A mixture of the Greater Manchester Police and the extraordinary evacuation of the Arndale Centre. 80,000 people were evacuated. And it was, in terms of explosive energy, the largest peacetime bomb every exploded in the UK. An over 3,000 lb bomb. But no-one was killed.”

Q: Those scenes are very vivid and very powerful. Were they hard to make and were you aware of local sensibilities?

James Strong: “I think you have to be aware of getting it right and as accurate as you can. There’s lots of photographs and there’s lots of archive. The police have lots of records. And our brilliant production designer. We studied them all and we made it all as accurate as we could. You do feel a responsibility to get it as accurate as we can.”

Q: And I understand you had a very good reception in Manchester last night? What did people in Manchester say about it?

Peter Bowker: “As James said, people were mainly concerned that the detail and the feeling – the emotion of the immediate aftermath they were concerned about and once it was seen that we weren’t trying to trivialise it in any way. I think there was a general story of relief that we took the story off in the direction we did. I think if we’d done something that dwells on the day of the tragedy and maybe people not recovering or reacting in a more conventional way, it would have stirred up more local sensibilities. But there’s a sense of ownership around Manchester of portraying Manchester full stop. It’s getting that right. They’d have been as concerned if you’d used the wrong music in the club. It’s getting detail right. When you’re saying Manchester is a character in this drama, then you’ve got to get the detail right across the board. Otherwise you’re not doing your job.”

Liz White: “One woman said it was really nice to see a drama set in Manchester that didn’t involve someone getting murdered.”

Derek Wax: “Someone picked up on the fact that it was about the emotional ripples of the bomb. The shock waves. As Pete says, it’s not a story about post-traumatic stress or the obvious effects of the bomb. It’s about the emotional effects – effects that you don’t quite understand. It’s not an obvious consequence of the bomb.”

Saskia Reeves: “The bomb is like an outward expression of what happens to Daniel in his life. For me, also what was interesting about Claire is her marriage to Daniel and how much did she guess or not guess. I found it really interesting talking to myself about how much is she responsible in a relationship when something goes so off like that. I found all that really interesting to think about.”

Q: You called it a love letter to Manchester, Pete. Could you expand on that?

Peter Bowker: “Obviously everything I do is probably a love letter to Manchester in the end. Actually I wanted to capture something that was about the relationship between the suburbs and Manchester. I grew up in the suburbs and most people do – and that sense, if you grow up in the suburbs, that something very exciting is happening in that city centre and you want to be part of that. Whereas if you are part of it like Robbo, you’re probably ******. It’s that strange relationship between the allure of the dark streets and the danger that attracts you. Whilst living, actually, getting the night bus, the 192, to the suburbs. And again the way James has shot, the sense that you’re in green pastures. But feels that his (Daniel) life is essentially dull. One of the reasons he’s baling out his brother is he wants to feel he’s part of that. But in terms of Manchester city, it’s a kind of celebration of the spirit of the place and all these conflicting wishes. Tony Wilson was a great myth-maker for the city. And there’s all sort of (inaudible) in Manchester which basically claim that we invented everything – a picture of a cave man with a wheel is clearly Mancunian. (laughter) And, again, there’s a comedy to that local pride and I wanted to capture that. So in that respect, that’s how it’s a love letter and a love letter to that era and that summer.”

On Southport Pier.

James then opened up questions to the audience:

Q: (From me) While I perhaps should ask Pete why he didn’t use dramatic license to change the result of that (England v Germany) penalty shoot out…can you expand, Pete, on the themes of second chances or fresh chances?

Peter Bowker: “There’s a great irony at the centre of that day. And it’s that this terrible thing that happened in the morning, the bomb, allowed Manchester to re-invent itself yet again. And so this very bad thing caused good things to happen. And that the myth of Euro ’96 being a new start for English football and that was clearly the stepping stone and we were going to be winning the World Cup within four years…I’m not saying that they occupy a moral equivalence by the way…so I think this kind of irony. Sport is full of second chances and life is rarely full of second chances. So that’s the kind of parallel I’m trying to draw. I want people to judge particularly how the women are portrayed over the three hours, rather than the first hour. The women aren’t dupes. It’s not all about Daniel’s angst and, ‘Oh, this poor man torturing himself by doing what he likes.’ There is some comeback. There’s considerable comeback. And I suppose it’s wanting to portray that thing where you’ve taken for granted what you’ve got at home for a long time then something is shifted in you that allows certain other chances to be made. Robbo, in a way, is the comedic equivalent of that.”

Cotton’s Confectionary

Q: A question for Phil – a slightly nerdy, motor car question. How was this Audi to drive compared to the Quattro in Ashes To Ashes?

Philip Glenister: “She was a babe. Well it wasn’t as old, for a start. It didn’t break down as much. I don’t think it broke down at all, actually. For me, it was quite a recent car. The fact that it happened to be an Audi was purely co-incidental. It wasn’t planned. It was all right.”

Q: I wanted to ask Phil and Liz if they found it strange working in Manchester together again (after Life On Mars). Did they recognise many of the locations?

Liz White: “Yeah, we did. The street that Joanne lives on we used in Life On Mars. We’d often point out locations to each other and anyone else who wanted to listen.”

Philip Glenister: “It’s true. I remember I bored Daniel (Rigby) and whoever was in the van on the way to our house, which was in Cheshire…Knutsford…it was about 40 minutes. So we used to go past all these places and go, ‘That was series one, episode two…Manc Way…’ And I’d go into detail to Daniel and I’d just see him…the earphones would go on. Sorry Dan.”

Derek Wax: “I just want to pay tribute to the other fantastic cast members who are not on the panel but..Daniel Rigby, who plays Charlie, who’s here tonight and was in Manchester with us last night. And Morven Christie, who played Louise and Steven Mackintosh who is fliming away. And Bernard Hill, who is thousands of miles away in New Zealand.”

Peter Bowker: “The main thing about Bernard Hill is…so you’ve got two alpha males in Phil and Steven, and we needed someone who was going to scare even them. There’s only one man for the job. Bernard Hill.”

Philip Glenister: “He scared the life out of the crew when he parked his car on somebody’s lawn. Day one.”

Derek Wax: “It was the first day of the shoot. He insisted on driving to set and he drove straight on to the lawn.”

Philip Glenister: “Of his own (screen) house. The house you see him in…a beautifully manicured lawn. Straight in with this four by four.”

Peter Bowker: “He never smiles, Bernard, when he’s joking. So we were on set on the day we were doing the big set piece where the two…guys are looking at the plume of smoke. I was standing with Bernard and this real policeman was talking to him making small talk. And Bernard was giving nothing back. He said, ‘And how long is it since Boys From The Blackstuff?’ And Bernard went, ‘We’re not doing Boys From The Blackstuff.’ Then nothing. I’m going, ‘It’s 19 years, isn’t it…?’ Then Bernard got me by the arm and he walked me across and said, ‘I got you out of that…’” (laughter)

Q: The use of music is brilliant. Why is the music so important?

James Strong: “Well, it was so important to the era. Manchester was famous for its music and so that was something we had to get right. We had a lot of help from our music producer and I Am Kloot, who did the score. We wanted to get a modern Mancunian sound and so they gave us that, which was brilliant stuff. But then all the period music, obviously everyone knows and loves it. It was just a joy to get it all together. But, yeah, it’s very important to the Manchester of that time.”

Q: I apologise – this is another nerdy question for Phil. If Gene Hunt were around today, do you think he could be persuaded to stand for UKIP?

Philip Glenister: “Are you from the Daily Mail?’ (laughter)

Q: “No.”

Philip Glenister: “You should be….I don’t think I can answer that one, sir. God knows. No. In a word.”

BBC From There To Here

Kudos

Manchester 1996 Bomb

Occupation: My MEN feature

Life On Mars Blogs

Ashes To Ashes Blogs

The Railway Arms

Ian Wylie on Twitter

Sarah Lancashire as Catherine Cawood.

“I’LL make a note of the fact that you apologised profusely…in tears.”

Sarah Lancashire as Sergeant Catherine Cawood in tonight’s Happy Valley episode three. (BBC1 9pm)

Sally Wainwright’s brilliant script matched, yet again, by Sarah’s work on screen.

In a series reminding us that Sally’s writing CV includes dramas like Unforgiven, as well as Last Tango In Halifax, Scott and Bailey and At Home With The Braithwaites.

Back in March I attended the London launch of this six-part drama, followed by a Q&A.

A few hours later I wrote the story further down this page, which has not gone online – so best put that right now.

James Norton as Tommy Lee Royce.

I’ve now watched the first five episodes of Happy Valley – yet another gem from the Red Production Company – and cannot wait to see the finale.

We knew there were dark twists ahead but tonight’s episode contains some proper shocks.

While next week’s episode four – directed by Sally – has a stunning “bloody hell” conclusion.

Happy Valley is full of top class performances, including James Norton as psychopath Tommy Lee Royce and Steve Pemberton as accountant Kevin, trapped in a nightmare.

I could go on, but would just end up writing out the entire cast list.

While adding honourable mentions for directors Euros Lyn and Tim Fywell.

But when the 2015 BAFTA Television Awards come around, it would indeed be a crime if Sarah Lancashire’s name is not on the ‘Actress’ list.

Following on from her ‘Supporting Actress’ nomination for Last Tango In Halifax at the 2014 awards this Sunday.

Steve Pemberton as Kevin.

I have been lucky enough to interview Sarah many times since she decided to leave Raquel and Coronation Street behind.

Which despite lazy references in the press, is a very long time ago now.

A woman who ignores the nonsense sometimes written about her and gets on with the job.

Also appearing to know what is important in real life and what is not.

Her depiction of Coral Atkins in the 2000 ITV drama Seeing Red remains one of my all time favourite performances.

With, I suspect, flawed Catherine Cawood also destined to live long in the memory.

If you’ve missed Happy Valley, there’s still time to catch up via the BBC iPlayer.

And if you’re already hooked like me, just hang on for the ride.

Happy Valley continues on BBC1 at 9pm tonight (Tuesday)

The British Academy Television Awards 2014 are on BBC1 at 8pm on Sunday.

LAST Tango In Halifax star Sarah Lancashire witnessed the daily violence police face when she went on patrol with officers.

“We were called out to a house where the bailiffs had turned up and they needed to take some belongings away,” revealed the actress.

“I didn’t get out of the van because I was a bit bothered.

“It turned into the filthiest, dirtiest fight. That’s when I stayed in the van. But that just happened in the course of five minutes. The whole day changed.”

Sarah, 49, was out with police near Halifax in Calderdale, West Yorkshire to research her latest role in BBC1 drama series Happy Valley.

She plays Catherine, a no-nonsense police sergeant who is also a bereaved and divorced mother after her young daughter killed herself following a brutal rape attack.

“I’ve great admiration for the police but I’ve learned I really don’t want to be a police officer. It’s interesting but it’s not for me.

“I also learned when I went out with them just how undermanned they are.”

The former Paradise actress joined the police patrol during the day but had to step aside at nightfall.

“They didn’t want to take me out at night because things change. They felt I would be very compromised.

“During the evenings they’re dealing with a lot of drug issues, much more violent cases and I would have been a complete liability.”

Siobham Finneran as Clare.

Happy Valley executive producer Nicola Shindler said police had inspired the title of the six-part drama, which begins next month (April) and co-stars Siobhan Finneran and Steve Pemberton.

“It’s a nickname the police have for the Calder Valley because of the drug taking. 

“It’s an extraordinarily damaged area because of drugs trafficking and drug taking. So they call it Happy Valley.”

Award-winning writer Sally Wainwright added: “It’s a nice place to live and it’s full of drugs as well.”

Joe Armstrong as Ashley.

Sarah, playing her first ever police officer role, said she found her time on patrol very useful.

“I’d always imagined that police officers are just people and that’s exactly what they are.

“One minute you’re on the radio and coming out with all this police jargon and then you’re suddenly saying, ‘Do you want to go to Tescos and grab a sandwich?’

“We also had a police advisor on set. She was fantastic with the prodecural stuff and had a very keen eye on making sure everything was accurate.

“There’s one scene where Catherine delivers bad news to somebody and she said, ‘It’s OK to cry. That’s what we do. It’s OK to hug them. It’s fine.’

“Which is a huge relief because that’s what you want to do, that’s what human nature is telling you to do. It’s everything in your instinct. But it tends not to be how we see that world portrayed.”

Sophie Rundle as Kirsten.

Added Sarah: “But it’s really not about a police officer at all. 

“It’s about a woman who is clearly very damaged by her experiences of losing her daughter – where she’s trying to get by day to day.

“She’s a bit ****** up. And I like that. But we all are, whether we like to admit it or not.

“Catherine does have an incredibly emotional story – it turns into an emotional marathon.

“But she carries on. We all do it every day, just getting through life the best we can, the only way we know how.

“She’s a very compassionate character but she’s also cruel and parts of her character are particularly ugly at times. But it’s real.

“She wants revenge for her daughter. But she’s not doing it as a police officer. It’s as a mother. And I do admire the way that she does the things that she does.”

George Costigan as Nevison.

Sarah returns later this year to her role as Caroline in a third series of Last Tango In Halifax, also written by Sally, with Sir Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid as a couple reunited in their 70s.

“We overlook how interesting older people are because of the wealth of their experience,” said Sarah.

“Also they’ve got great faces to look at, which move. I’m very keen on that. Mobile faces. Almost a thing of the past.

“Sally’s made a love affair between older people something that we want to watch.

“She is never afraid, especially with women, to portray their flaws. Which is great, because we’re all flawed.”

Adam Long as Lewis.

BBC Happy Valley

Red Production Company

Sarah Lancashire

Sally Wainwright

Ian Wylie on Twitter

“IT was just like getting a fantastic present.

“It’s so rare to find a crime book that’s so beautifully written and so rich and deep and complex.”

Screenwriter Andrew Davies talking about adapting Benjamin Black’s Quirke novels for BBC1.

The first of three 90-minute Quirke film – Christine Falls – was screened at the BFI in London all of 11 months ago in June 2013, followed by a Q&A.

But as is sometimes the way with TV schedules and dramas that don’t fit into neat one hour slots, the start of the series was delayed until now.

With that first Quirke story on BBC1 at 9pm tomorrow (Sunday May 25).

Having already been screened in Ireland and New Zealand.

Set in the Dublin of 1956, it stars Gabriel Byrne as Quirke, the chief pathologist in the Dublin city morgue.

With Aisling Franciosi, Michael Gambon, Geraldine Somerville, Nick Dunning and Stanley Townsend among the cast.

The books are actually written by award-winning Irish author John Banville, using the pseudonym of Benjamin Black.

Against the “Dublin Noir” backdrop of what producer Lisa Osborne describes as “the peaty, smoky, whiskey-glimmering bars and drawing rooms of Black’s imagination”.

Happy Valley actress Charlie Murphy and Inspector George Gently’s Lee Ingleby feature in next Sunday’s second film Silver Swan.

With Merlin’s Colin Morgan playing Jimmy Minor in the third story, Elegy For April, adapted for the screen by Conor McPherson.

And while the story in the first film moves from Dublin to the outskirts of Boston, it was all filmed in an around Dublin.

My edited highlights from that Quirke Q&A are below.

Followed by a separate quick chat I had with Aisling Franciosi, who you may recognise from series one of The Fall.

Aisling Franciosi as Phoebe.

BBC Drama boss Ben Stephenson introduced the screening by talking about John Banville, who won The Booker Prize in 2005 for his 14th novel, The Sea.

“What a phenomenal writer. I’ve always been such a huge fan of his vast collection of wonderful literature. So it’s a real honour for the BBC to be able to be pairing up with him to bring his fantastic Quirke books to the screen. I was addicted to them when I first read them. They’re wonderfully characterfull and create this extraordinarily, atmospheric, engaging, complex world. And they’ve got great plots with real complexity as well. So they felt like a real must for television.

“Andrew Davies is a really phenomenal talent. There aren’t many writers in this country who when you say the name of the writer it speaks volumes about their work and it will actually get people to tune into their work. There’s absolutely no question that Andrew Davies, across his extraordinary career, is one of those. He wrote my favourite ever TV series House of Cards.

“Gabriel Byrne is an extraordinary actor. We’ve all watched him in movies and American TV shows and we are so thrilled to have him on the BBC. I think it’s a part that he just absolutely inhabits and like a true movie star he has to do very little with his face for you to utterly engage with him.”

Gabriel Byrne as Quirke.

Q&A with John Banville / Andrew Davies / Aisling Franciosi (Phoebe) / John Alexander (who directed the first episode):

Aisling Franciosi:

Q: Playing Phoebe in Quirke?

“I was really nervous about watching it but I think it’s great. It came together so well. It’s quite difficult to be objective about yourself.

“I had only seen an article online about the production saying that Gabriel was going to be Quirke. So when I got an audition I just straight away went to read the books because I wanted to know more about Phoebe and I read the scripts, obviously, as well. I tried to find out as much as I could.”

Aisling Franciosi as Phoebe.

Q: You were born in Italy but raised in Dublin, where Quirke it set, from the age of five?

“It certainly helped. I was a student when I took the part. I left university for the part. I think there’s a sense of where it’s set. But obviously it was in the 1950s so I had to find out a little bit about what was going on at the time.”

“I can’t speak highly enough of Gabriel. I was so lucky to get a chance to work with him. He’s like a mentor to me – and I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor.

“I cried when it finished. I didn’t want the job to end. It was really an amazing experience.

“Her world is turned upside down in the first film. And there are repercussions. Phoebe has a lots of interesting twists and turns.”

Nick Dunning as Malachy Griffin.

Andrew Davies:

Q: How did you become involved in adapting Quirke for the screen?

“It was sheer luck. I’d read John’s literary novels before. I wasn’t aware of the Benjamin Black novels. So it was just like getting a fantastic present. I loved it. It’s so rare to find a crime book that’s so beautifully written and so rich and deep and complex.

“I think audiences are cleverer than we often think they are. And they don’t like to be too spoon-fed about all that kind of thing.

“As for staying very close to the original, I would always say that if it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it. It seemed fine to me. I would just put the book down there and copy it out. (laughter). Sorry!

“I’d met John once decades before on a rather drunken day in London. I met him in Dublin when I was half way through the first draft and we liked each other enough to meet one to one and so I had a long lunch with him and then he showed me around some of the key places for him in Dublin, which was very useful to me.

“Then I actually, without telling anybody, the producer or anybody on the show, sent him the first draft when I’d finished it because I was a bit worried about whether I’d got the Dublin idioms right or not. I just wanted him to like it or at least say it was OK.

“And both those things happened. He corrected my Dublin idioms and he gave the script his blessing. So that was the extent of our collaboration. It was all there in the book, you see. Sometimes – when I was adapting Tipping The Velvet, I really needed to consult Sarah Walters about some technical aspects that I didn’t have any experience of. (laughter) But I thought – this is all about stuff that I’m deeply into myself.”

Aisling Franciosi and Colin Morgan.

Q: The character of Phoebe?

“Phoebe gets pushed through some terrible stuff. The character of Phoebe is like a little ray of light at the centre of it. We finish this episode with her really down but we can’t imagine her being down forever. She’s always lit like some lovely Fifties’ movie heroine in those dark bars. You get that and focus on her like she’s a guiding light.”

Q: Gabriel Byrne?

“He always seems to have had this curious integrity. You just trust him. I knew he was attached when I started writing and I was just thrilled. If you read the books attentively, Quirke is described as being a very big man, six foot four or something like that and fair-haired. And I never believed that. No – Quirke looks much more like Gabriel Byrne! So it was enormously helpful writing the script to think that’s who’s going to be playing it.”

Gabriel Byrne as Quirke and Michael Gambon as Judge Garret Griffin.

John Banville (Benjamin Black):

Q: Writing Quirke as Benjamin Black?

“I like the notion that people think that it was after I’d won the Booker. In fact, on the day that the Booker shortlist was announced in 2005 my agent was having lunch with my publisher and said, ‘By the way, here’s a new Banville novel. It’s rather different and it’s written under a different name.’ So I had become Benjamin Black before the Booker Prize. The problem with winning a prize like that is that people assume that your life began at that stage. I’m really only about seven. My life began when I won the Booker.

“I had written a script, oddly enough, for a mini series. It didn’t get made. I decided I would turn it into a novel because I’d begun to read Georges Simenon who greatly impressed me with what could be done with crime fiction. I’ve always read crime fiction all my life and admire it greatly. So I turned it into a novel. I didn’t know if I could do it. I went to Italy, a friend of mine lent me a room. One Monday morning at nine ‘o clock I sat down and thought, ‘Can I do this?’ And by lunchtime I’d written two and a half thousand words, which, for Banville, would be an absolute scandal. Because Banville, if you got 200 words done by lunchtime he’s feel he was doing well. And so Benjamin Black was born. He’s now free – I feel like Baron Frankenstein, the monster is now out in the world and he can’t be stopped.”

Stanley Townsend as Inspector Hackett.

Q: How much of you is Quirke and vice-versa?

“Oh nothing of me is Quirke. Of course they’re all me. All characters are oneself. I’m the only material I have to work with. My agent used to insist that I was in love with Phoebe. But it suddenly struck me one day that, in fact, I am Phoebe. If there’s anybody in the books that is me, then it’s Phoebe. Phoebe is strong. She’s stronger than Quirke.”

Q: The first story involves child trafficking which is a topical issue?

John Banville: “A lot of stuff had come out. All kinds of wriggling worms came out.” (re the church in Ireland in the 1990s)

“But we must not brand everybody in the church. There were very decent priests and nuns who did their best, who lived a religious life and who educated the country. They did it for free. So we must not forget that.

“But there were a lot of very bad people and Rome essentially covered up for them. But we had learned a lot of that – certainly by 2003 / 2004 when I started these books. But more and more came out. Everybody knew in Ireland when I was growing up. They knew and they didn’t know. Ambiguity, for me, is the essence of life and certainly the essence of fiction.”

Geraldnie Somerville as Sarah.

Q: Quirke’s intake of alcohol and cigarettes?

John Alexander: “We got through an awful lot of grape juice and herbal cigarettes. It’s part of the depiction of the period.”

Q: What was your inspiration for these sometimes dark and sinister stories?

John Banville: “Like all writers, I looked into my own dark heart and up popped Quirke. I don’t see myself as a particularly nice person. We all carry our secrets with us. We all carry our strange, dark urges that we don’t express – we can’t afford to express. Life would be unbearable. The world would not work if we did.

“But that’s what writers do. We are given license to betray our worst selves. Quirke is a damaged person. He drinks even more than I do, which is saying a lot. But I’ve done dreadful things in my life, as I’m sure we all have. Aisling’s too young but give it time.

“The world is a strange and dark place. It’s also an exquisite and luminous place. When I handed the latest novel into my Spanish publisher, who is absolutely crazy about Quirke – I think he’s the love of her life – she said, ‘Oh this is wonderful. But could you please lighten up a little bit.’ So I said, ‘Alright. Next time I’ll send him on a holiday to Spain.’ The world is rustic-coloured, like those Boston leaves.”

Colin Morgan as Jimmy.

Q: What does Gabriel Byrne bring to the character?

John Alexander: He’s got an amazing stillness and integrity. He plays the complexity of the character so well. You always trust that he’s trying to do the best and he has his dark secrets and his past.”

Q: What do you think of the end result on screen?

John Banville: “I’m completely screen struck. So when I see real people embodying my characters I’m completely undone. I’m just thrilled by it. Always am. Have been from the very start.

“I’m very impatient with writers who constantly whine about Hollywood and how they were betrayed and so on. Gore Vidal beautifully said, ‘Hollywood never destroyed anybody who was worth saving.’

“If you give your book up to the screen to be made into this big popular medium then that’s what you do – you don’t complain about it. My policy always is – it’s now your baby. You’re translating this into a different medium. And it fascinates me to watch the way that it’s done.

“Of course to some extent I watch it through splayed fingers. But I recognise after two or three minutes that this is now translated into a completely new and different medium. It’s mine in a peculiar way but it’s also not mine at all.”

Aisling Franciosi as Phoebe.

After the Q&A I spoke to Aisling Franciosi:

Q: Your take on Phoebe?

“Phoebe is a really interesting character. I was really attracted to the role because there aren’t a huge number of female parts that get you excited. And when I saw this part I said, ‘Oh my God, she’s so multi-faceted as a character.’ She’s from a wealthy background but is attracted by Quirke who is this loner who goes against the grain. So she wants to stoop to that level and try out the things that he tries out – goes drinking with him. She is asked to deal with a huge upheval in her life and in later episodes you see how complex a character she is in the way that she deals with the repercussions of how crazy her family is, without her having known for so many years.”

Q: What does she see in Quirke?

“He represents to her the excitement that she maybe doesn’t have at home. You can see from Mal (Malachy played by Nick Dunning) and Sarah (Geraldine Somerville), as many people were in the Fifties, they’re conservative. They don’t drink or smoke, they’re very religious and she’s a normal teen – she wants to rebel a bit. And Quike is this figure in her life who lets her do things like that. He brings her out to pubs and bars where she meets shady characters. How could you not fall in love with someone who show you the exciting side of life? And that’s what he does.”

Q: Working with Gabriel? Did he give you any advice?

“I said early on, ‘Please feel free – if you see any way you could help me, please I’d really appreciate it.” And he said, ‘What? Most actors would hate that.’ And I said, ‘I’m in the position here where I don’t want to screw up. So all the information I can get and all the learning I can do is only a good thing.’ He was really kind. He always knew when to say something and when to just leave me be. He didn’t really give me notes but we’d talk about scripts. He talked about the scenes with me a lot and we’d decide things between the two of us.”

Q: You said in the Q&A that you left university for this?

“I did The Fall in my third year of university and I just juggled the two. And when I found out I got this, I’d actually just missed the first three weeks of college anyway because I was doing Romeo and Juliet down in Cork, so I wasn’t particularly in favour at the university! But I couldn’t pass up on doing a job like this. So I thought, ‘You know what, university can wait for a bit.’” (laughs)

Q: What is it like to watch yourself on a big screen?

“I wouldn’t say it’s very pleasant. Of course I’m really proud to be part of something like that but you’re obviously going to always be a little less objective than other people. We all see things in ourselves that you don’t like. I guess it’s just part of the learning process. I’m starting out so I have to make myself watch it and go, ‘OK, I’m going to learn from that, what I just saw there and try and do better the next time.’”

Q: There is scope to see more of Phoebe in a possible second series?

“There are more books than the first three so I can’t actually honestly say whether they’re going to be going back or not. I would love to see them and there’s potential there for the Phoebe character. So I would definitely say yes.”

Q: The Fall?

“I couldn’t believe the reaction! It really got people talking, which was a great reaction to have. Again, that was, for me, quite a different experience to Quirke. It was great but I really felt a little bit like a rabbit in the headlights. I just had to deal with my first TV job. But, again, it was a great script. Both The Fall and Quirke had really good scripts.”

Aisling has since gone on to make her big screen debut in the new Ken Loach film Jimmy’s Hall and this week attended the Cannes premiere ahead of the UK release on May 30.

Charlie Murphy as Deirdre.

Quirke: BBC Drama

John Banville

Benjamin Black

Ian Wylie on Twitter