Declaring This City is Ours Taking flight with Crows Feeling Bookish with Mark Gatiss and Polly Walker Actors turning to screenwriting Exploring Portugal and Iceland with Cold Haven And much more…
Features
IN FOCUS: This City is Ours
Stars James Nelson-Joyce, Hannah Onslow and Jack McMullen join writer Stephen Butchard to take DQ inside the world of this BBC crime drama, where a delicate love story takes centre stage against a backdrop of ambition and power on the streets of Liverpool.
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT: From acting to writing
From learning lines to writing them, actors Andrei Alén, Genevieve Barr, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson and Leah Purcell discuss their individual journeys behind the camera to become screenwriters, and how they have used their unique experiences and perspectives to shape the stories they want to tell.
IN FOCUS: Corbeaux (Crows)
DQ hears from the cast and creative team behind this Québécois crime drama about how they blended horror, the supernatural and local folklore to tell a story of two detectives on the hunt for a serial killer.
STAR POWER: Mark Gatiss & Polly Walker
Stars Gatiss and Walker introduce DQ to Bookish, a murder-mystery series that introduces Gabriel Book, a bookshop owner with the knowledge needed to help the police tackle some baffling cases in post-war London.
DQ100: Part One 2025/26
We pick out a range of shows to tune in for and the actors, directors and writers making them, as well as the trends and trailblazers worth catching up with.
End Credits
SIX OF THE BEST: Helen Perry
The UKTV drama commissioning head’s picks include a “groundbreaking” US crime series and a character-led sports show.
FACT FILE: Cold Haven
Andri Óttarsson from Icelandic production company Glassriver and Pedro Lopes from Portugal’s SPI discuss six key locations from this crime thriller, which is set between the two countries.
DRAMATIC QUESTION: Style and substance
DQ editor Michael Pickard looks at how Netflix’s one-shot drama Adolescence breaks new ground in production – without sacrificing storytelling depth.
This City is Ours
Ciudad de sombras features in the DQ100
From Portugal to Iceland for Cold Haven
SCOUSE RULES
After roles in Little Boy Blue, The Virtues and World on Fire, actor James NelsonJoyce (pictured below) broke out with a ferociously violent performance in prison drama Time. He now gets to show his sensitive side as one of the leads in BBC drama This City is Ours – a series that has all the hallmarks of a gangster crime drama but might actually be the tender story of a couple seeking lasting love in the most challenging circumstances.
“He brings a bit of freshness to it and he brings real youth,” writer Stephen Butchard ( Shardlake , The Good Mothers ) tells DQ about casting Nelson-Joyce as Michael Kavanagh. “We were looking at James and we knew he could be violent, but could he fall in love? We were doing auditions with him – and he could do it. He brings such a tenderness to it, which is the real James. He’s such a warm, sweet guy.”
Filmed and set in Liverpool, the eight-part series introduces Michael, a man who has been involved in organised crime all his adult life, working for his friend and gang leader Ronnie Phelan (Sean Bean, left). When Ronnie begins to hint at retirement, Michael too begins to imagine another life and a future with Diana (Hannah Onslow).
The show opens 18 months after the deeply in love Michael and Diana first got together, with the couple undergoing IVF treatment in the hope of starting a family. Yet their relationship is set against the backdrop of the disintegration of Michael’s gang, which has been bringing cocaine into Liverpool and beyond for years. When a shipment goes missing, they know they are under attack. Then when Ronnie’s son Jamie (Jack McMullen) decides he should be the one to inherit the business, it puts Michael and Jamie on a collision course – but Michael’s biggest battle might be to save Diana.
“I just saw the complexities of the character and the consequences that come along with his actions,” explains Nelson-Joyce of his interest in playing Michael. “It comes at a point in his life where he’s at a crossroads. With the IVF, in a very masculine world, he also has that struggle with himself. There’s all different layers to it – stuff with Ronnie, Jamie and Diana. I think the writing is beautiful.”
Stars James Nelson-Joyce, Hannah Onslow and Jack McMullen join writer Stephen Butchard to take DQ inside the world of This drama where a delicate love
City is Ours, a BBC crime story takes centre stage against a backdrop of ambition and power on the streets of Liverpool.
Ronnie’s admission he might be stepping back from the business certainly gives Michael pause for thought, as he considers how he can rise to power while also having the future he and Diana have always wanted. “No matter how much money you’ve got, no matter how big your house is, an empty bed is the loneliest place in the world – and Michael knows that,” Nelson-Joyce says. “The ultimate goal is to be happy with Diana, and the consequences that come with the life he’s involved with mean you either end up in jail or dead.”
Of course, the path to true love never did run smooth. “I’ll tell you one thing. Michael is desperately trying to save his relationship but, at the same time, he’s trying to save his reputation and what he feels should be his. He has to lose one of them,” Nelson-Joyce adds.
Onslow ( The Doll Factory , This is Going to Hurt ) found her character to be unlike >
SOFIA ESSAÏDI IRÈNE JACOB ALEXIS MICHALIK ARCADI RADEFF
IN FOCUS: This City is Ours
anyone she’d ever met, and was drawn in by the “simple” love story between Diana and Michael.
“They just get each other,” she says. “I’ve played a few characters where I’ve not been loved back, so it’s nice to play a role [like this], because he loves her and she loves him. I thought the relationships in it were really strong and all the characters felt really vivid.”
The love story separates This City is Ours from many other crime dramas, with gang life often taking a back seat to the numerous romantic relationships portrayed in the series. There’s Ronnie and Elaine (Julie Graham), the heads of the Phelan family, as well as Jamie and Melissa (Darci Shaw), who have a new baby; Bobby and Rachel Duffy (Kevin Harvey and Laura Aikman); and Davy and Cheryl Crawford (Stephen Walters and Saoirse-Monica Jackson).
“It’s almost not about their work; it’s about how their work affects their lives, and how it affects their relationships with each other,” Onslow notes. “I thought the relationships were so strong. I’ve never had a boyfriend on screen like this where it’s so important. He [NelsonJoyce] just made it so easy.”
While Diana isn’t intrinsically linked to the gang – she works as a sommelier – she does have familial problems of her own, namely her incarcerated mother (Leanne Best). “We definitely dive into that. It is a huge part of her arc,” Onslow says of her character’s backstory. “She’s had quite a dark childhood. What’s happened to her is quite extraordinary, not in the best way, but she’s just like any other girl. That could be me up there, and that’s why it’s so well written. I felt like I knew Diana. You wouldn’t look at her and think what has happened has happened, yet it has – and that dichotomy is going on with all the characters, which is such compelling TV.”
they knew how things would turn out for the gang. “I’ve never been on a set where the crew love the show as much as us,” Onslow says. “Sometimes they would rather be anywhere else, but they were all reading the scripts. There was a sweepstake at one point about what they thought was going to happen at the end. It’s not happened on a lot of the jobs I’ve been on, for people to love the show so much.”
Like Nelson-Joyce and Onslow, McMullen ( Time , Hijack ) was “blown away” by those first scripts. He praises Butchard’s ability to “keep the tension high all the time” while bringing a “human element” to a gangster show. “It’s about family, and he gives us these moments where you see the group together and they’re all wearing a mask, and then he gives us these private moments to show the different sides to each character,” the actor says. “I read the first two scripts when we first started talking about this, and then scripts came as we were filming and each one just got better and better. It really drives through towards the end.”
If you have something physical or visually dramatic, go for it, but be careful. It’s all about character. If you’re going to have a car chase, make sure people care about the people in the car.
Stephen Butchard Writer
“ ”
Nelson-Joyce and Onslow had a chemistry read together during the audition process, as they were among several combinations of actors still being considered for the key roles of Michael and Diana. “But it was something about us together that really worked,” says Essex-based actor Onslow, who listened to Liverpoolborn Love Island stars to perfect her own Scouse accent. “Sometimes in auditions, you can feel nervous because you’re being judged. There was just a sense of how well we connected. It felt e ortless, and James is amazing.”
Nelson-Joyce notes: “There’s not one character in this show that hasn’t got an objective. No one’s there to fill a blank. So he writes all the characters and their conflicting objectives. Obviously, that’s what creates drama, and Stephen has this beautiful way of building the tension and then you let it go. And then something will happen.”
is amazing.”
“She’s fantastic,” Nelson-Joyce says of Onslow. “I knew after the chemistry read that it was Hannah’s [role]. I didn’t know it was mine. But I certainly knew it was hers. She was magic, playful. She brought the fun out of Diana. But she also had the sense of class that Diana’s got within her, and Hannah just exuded that.”
The cast all boarded the project on the strength of the first few scripts, and were then kept on tenterhooks as filming began before
As soon as Ronnie begins to lay out his plans for the future, the tension becomes palpable between Michael and Jamie, with the good friends immediately becoming distant from each other. In a case of prodigal son syndrome, Jamie becomes attentive to conversations between his father and Michael, without him, and can see himself losing his grip on the ‘inheritance’ he always thought would be his.
The theme of fathers and sons runs through the series, and is seen through not only Ronnie and Jamie, but also the celebration of Jamie’s newborn son with a lavish christening and afterparty – the cast perform a group line dance to Andy Williams’s The House of Bamboo –
The love story between Michael (James Nelson-Joyce) and Diana (Hannah Onslow) is just as important to the show as the crime elements
and the difficulty Michael has in becoming a father himself.
“He’s not got a really good standing in the group yet to make the claim [for leadership], so he ends up doing something really drastic at the beginning of the series, which backfires spectacularly,” McMullen explains. “That sets up this rivalry between Michael and Jamie, brings pressure from outside the group and causes conflict inside the group. But he feels pressured to make that move. He’s got a young family and, in that world, not only would you be cast aside, but it can be dangerous. We start the series where the touchpaper’s about to be lit and it’s about to go crazy.”
“It’s that classic thing of a son trying to win his father’s love,” he continues. “Jamie just wants to win his dad’s love, but ultimately there’s an age difference. Michael’s been long established before him and he’s not really had the time or opportunity to make a challenge to Michael’s dominance in the group.”
The rivalry between Michael and Jamie doesn’t run too deep, however, as Nelson-Joyce and McMullen are best friends o screen and revelled in the chance to play ‘frenemies’ in This City is Ours – a dynamic that was enhanced by Butchard keeping them in the dark about where their characters’ paths would take them. “We didn’t know [what would happen next], so you’re not overthinking it or trying to plant little things for what’s coming,” McMullen says. “You’ve just got to play what’s on the page each episode. James and I were excited to read each one as it came through. We were calling each other going, ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen next?’”
Butchard says he was “channeling a bit of Macbeth” when he conceived the story and characters in This City is Ours, as ambition, jealousy and envy sit at the core of every action and reaction. “But the love story is the backbone,” he adds. “It was having a man like Michael who suddenly has something he really wants more than money, power and wealth, so how does he balance the two? We put Michael and Diana through it, we test them. But it was about keeping that relationship real as well.
“It’s about chasing two dreams– the dream of love and the dream of money and wealth. Which one do you abandon first? As things go on and get worse, and Jamie’s misbehaving, we explore the fallout.”
As the men “lose their way,” the women step up, Butchard continues. “Initially it’s dominated by the men, but the women come more into it because bravado and machismo is creeping into their behaviour. Suddenly it’s the women talking sense. We make decisions from an emotional point of view. It’s a very rare person who can sit down rationally and go, ‘I really want to do this but I’m not going to do this.’ Too often we’re up on our toes and doing the thing we feel rather than the thing we think. It’s exploring that. It’s emotion over intellect, and emotion wins too many times.”
“It definitely gets more intense between Michael and Jamie,” McMullen says, “and it helped that James and I had that relationship there, because if there are times when something’s not working, we can improvise. You can be physical with each other, and to do that, you need the trust there, and we had that
naturally being such close mates.”
Like Nelson-Joyce, McMullen and many of the cast and crew, Butchard is a Liverpool native, and the series is his first set in his home city since 2012’s Good Cop . Produced by Left Bank Pictures and distributed by Sony Pictures Television, the show was filmed in Liverpool for five months, using numerous locations from the city centre to the docks. However, by that time, the cast had already bonded during a block of shooting in Marbella, Spain, for scenes featuring the Phelans’ Spanish drug contacts and moments showcasing the lavish lifestyle their criminality has afforded them.
“A lot of the cast are from Liverpool and a good few of us have worked together before, so there’s a relationship there anyway, but we started in Spain all together where we all kind of bonded before going back to Liverpool, and that really helped the dynamic,” McMullen says.
Butchard wrote the majority of the series, with Robbie O’Neill co-writing on two episodes and providing support when the story and character arcs were being fleshed out during development. With eight episodes and a full roster of characters, it meant they needed a “rock solid foundation” for the series to build from, while also taking care not to rush through too much story and finding quieter moments to spend time with the characters.
“If you’ve got good characters, you want to spend time with them,” Butchard says. “If a big incident happens, it’s seeing different people’s point of view, and how it has a knock-on effect and what it will lead to. If you have something physical or visually dramatic, go for it, but be careful. It’s all about character. The point is, if you’re going to have a car chase, make sure people care about the people in the car. It’s thinking about those moments and getting the most out of them from an emotional point of view, as much as you do want people to be crunching their fingers at what’s going on.”
Debuting on the BBC in March, This City is Ours is a story about family – and whether love can stand up to the combined forces of ambition, pride and greed. “These people ultimately are businessmen. They see themselves as running a business,” Butchard says. “But it’s not a good business. It’s covered in blood, and the end product doesn’t do any good. Sadly there’s a real demand for it. They are criminals on the front line and they don’t pretend to be anything else, but they’re good company. It’s a really good story and it tells a familiar tale really well. It’s a good love story too.”
It’s also a show about how people can evolve, especially Michael. “People start off as one thing and they grow,” he adds. “They change from being criminals to men in love, and that change is always possible. If there is a message, that’s it.”
Jamie is played by Jack McMullen, one of many Liverpudlians involved in This City is Ours
ACT
From learning lines to writing them, actors Andrei Alén, Genevieve Barr, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson and Leah Purcell discuss their individual journeys behind the camera to become screenwriters, and how they have used their unique experiences and perspectives to shape the stories they want to tell.
From writing scripts and making homemade films when he was a young boy, Finnish actor Andrei Alén’s career has now come full circle after he created and wrote military drama Konflicti (Conflict) – and he’s not alone. Actors from all corners of international television are now stepping away from the set to write scripts for series that are entertaining, challenging and everything in between.
“I made a few short films in my teens but then I moved to acting,” Alén says. “I’m not sure if it was the vanity of youth that drove me to that side when I was younger. But [writing has] always been a part of my artistic process, and being at youth theatre in Finland, we’ve always been encouraged to write, as actors, and understand the content more intimately through the means of doing a bit of writing
ourselves. It’s always been a part of what I do. Maybe now, again, it’s one of the main things I do in terms of work.”
Alén says Conflict, which debuted in Finland in December, is “by far the biggest thing I’ve created.” He was also one of the main writers on a series that became increasingly topical as development progressed since it was first conceived in 2016.
Commissioned by MTV3, it explores the consequences of a proxy war when an unidentified enemy invades a picturesque Finnish peninsula, leading the US president and other allies to urge Finland’s newly elected president to take action as she faces the risk of all-out war. Alén (Roba, Rig 45) created the six-part thriller with director Aku Louhimies. Produced by Backmann & Hoderoff and XYZ Films, it is distributed by Keshet International.
“I really like being hands-on with many aspects of making a TV series or a film, or I’ve
Ólafur Darri
Ólafsson in The Tourist
TWO
learned to be,” Alén says. “But it’s fascinating from an actor’s perspective to understand you are part of a massive chain of other things that have to come into consideration. Then at the very end, it’s you standing there and delivering your lines. I do love the whole chain and the whole process. It’s just wonderful.”
Australian actor Leah Purcell is recognisable from on-screen roles in Redfern Now, Wentworth, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart and 2024 crime drama High Country, in which she plays a detective investigating the case of five missing people. It is produced by Curio Pictures for streamer Binge, and distributed by Sony Pictures Television (SPT).
But Purcell, a First Nations woman from the Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri tribe,
Every time you read a first draft, you’re like, ‘This is shit.’ That doesn’t mean I will be a shitty writer. It just means I have to go through that process. That’s probably the most di cult thing all of us go through.
Ólafur Darri Ólafsson
“ ”has always been a teller of stories from her Indigenous heritage. She initially worked as a consultant on the sets of Indigenous projects, ensuring they were made with authenticity, but always backed herself to become a writer alongside her acting work. “Of course, being a First Nations person comes with a lot of political responsibility,” she says. “[But] it wasn’t about pushing the agenda of politics. It was about telling my family’s story from the heart through their personal stories, which reaches people and audiences far better than if I came at it from a political viewpoint.”
Purcell has written on projects including Redfern Now (on which she worked with British writer Jimmy McGovern), Ready for This and legal drama The Twelve, while she also wrote, directed and starred in The Drover’s Wife, the western drama she initially conceived as a play before adapting it as a novel and then as a feature film through her own production
>
Leah Purcell recently starred in High Country
Genevieve Barr in The Silence, her first acting role
company. “It is testing and tiring. But I love it. I love what I do,” she says.
“It’s really interesting because it’s a different muscle from the acting muscle,” Icelandic actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson says about writing for the screen. “I don’t think I’ve ever had moments where I have to go to bed or have to stop writing because my brain is actually hurting from trying to keep everything together in the story. I really enjoy it. It’s always good to find a new muscle you haven’t used before.”
Known for local series including Ófærð (Trapped) and Ráðherrann (The Minister), Ólafsson has become an international star thanks to roles in The Missing, Emerald City, NOS4A2, The Tourist and Severance
‘I’m going to write this for me,’ but it’s important to be able to not push your will.”
His latest on-screen role is as a high-end chef in Reykjavik Fusion, a series described as Breaking Bad meets The Bear that is produced by his own ACT4 production company for Síminn Premium in Iceland and Arte in France and Germany.
Ólafsson is now also stepping into showrunning for the first time with another ACT4 project, Big Brother, a crime thriller based on the book by Skúli Sigurdsson. “Traditionally we don’t really have many screenwriters that work full time [in Iceland], so as an actor, you are involved if you want to be,” Ólafsson says. “I have a lot of writer friends, so I’ve read a ton of scripts, so I’ve always been a little bit into writing. I’ve certainly been involved in writers rooms, but this is the first time I’m helming a project, which is terrifying but also fun.”
Do you class yourself as a writer if none of the stu you’ve written has ever been produced? I think you should. It’s just really hard to get things done.
Andrei Alén “ ”
British actor Genevieve Barr, meanwhile, made her name on screen in series such as Call the Midwife, Liar and The Accident. But more recently, she has established herself as a writer, with credits on Then Barbara Met Alan and Ralph & Katie. For her first original series, the Channel 4 commission ID, she also plays the lead role of Emily, a young deaf woman who witnesses a neighbour taking pictures of her. This leads her to explore what she might have done to warrant this unwanted attention, while beginning a dance with a stranger that is as exhilarating as it is dangerous. Eleven is producing, with SPT distributing.
like, ‘I’m just going to write this, and then the actor can just throw it in my face,’” he jokes. “I’ve learned quite a bit as an actor [about writing]. I don’t want to drown the actor in information about who the character is. I love when I’m trusted with that as an actor. So that balance is really interesting to me.”
But when he sits down to write, Ólafsson tries not to write characters with himself in mind, believing it’s a “really valuable skill” for anyone in the television industry to be able to read a script without “pushing your will into them.”
Barr, who herself is deaf and identifies as a member of the disabled community, didn’t come to acting with any dramatic training when the casting team on 2010 BBC drama The Silence was looking for a deaf person to play the lead role. “I was a teacher and I auditioned for that and I got it, so I was kind of thrust into the world of television,” she says. “But over the course of that 10 to 12 years, I found it quite a struggle. I had a bit of an identity crisis. Writing came to me at the point when I didn’t really know what to do with myself, and I felt a little bit lost in who I was. There is something about acting when you are taking on the persona of somebody else, and sometimes you lose sight of who you are within that.”
He describes Big Brother, which is being
He describes Big Brother, which is being developed with Germany’s ZDF Studios, as a vigilante thriller about a newspaper reporter who is investigating a series of attacks in Reykjavik, the Icelandic capital.
“I’ve realised that, as an actor, I am very arrogant towards the writer sometimes. And now, as a writer, I’m
“That is a talent I developed many years ago. It really helps me because it’s important for me to be able to write without prejudice towards the characters,” he adds. “I might write something for myself down the road, and actors who their own
“That is a talent I developed many years ago. It really helps me because it’s prejudice towards the characters,” he adds. the road, and I really respect just take it into hands and say,
She also admits to feeling “like a bit of an imposter,” having grown up in a hearing family before being thrown into “this deaf world I’d never known.”
“There aren’t a lot of roles out there for deaf actors and deaf characters. There is a big problem with visibility of disabled people in this industry, so I didn’t really know what to do with that,” Barr says. “Sometimes, as an actor, you can be naturally empowered to become a producer, to become a writer, to become a director and make your own projects. And sometimes as an actor, you get told by your agent to just sit at the end of an email and these parts will come your way.
“I sat for a very long time not being sure if this was what I was meant to be doing. I was really lucky – I got some really great parts along the way – but writing came at a point when, weirdly, I’d just had a baby and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m a mother. I’ve lost my sense of self.’”
That moment was also a crosspoint between the lack of visibility of disabled people on TV and lack of risk-taking in portrayals of deaf characters. ID represents Barr’s attempt to “push the boat out” with a story that authentically represents the experience of a deaf person.
She describes it as “a Rear Window version of having a deaf protagonist,” >
Andrei Alén is the creator and writer of Konflicti (Conflict)
referencing Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1954 thriller. “My husband tells the story of never letting me sit in a restaurant looking at the room. He will always put me with my back to it because otherwise I’m lipreading other people’s conversations –and I suppose [in the series] I wanted to play with the fun of being able to be nosy and inquisitive and what you learn when you’re watching a private conversation.”
But going from acting – where you look for every clue in the script that can inform your character and your performance – to writing, Barr found she didn’t appreciate how sparse scripts actually are. “You suddenly find yourself writing paragraph after paragraph of character description and saying, ‘This is their backstory.’ It’s all stuff you want as an actor just coming out on the page, but writing is about being able to do a lot with a little. That’s been a really interesting shift,” she says.
Like Purcell, Barr is striving to support stories from and about a specific community both in front of and behind the camera. On Then Barbara Met Alan, a TV film Barr wrote with Jack Thorne (Help, His Dark Materials) about the passing of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, there were 12 cast members with
< Sometimes having a unique POV or experience is a privilege because it means you look at the world in a certain way and you’re going, ‘What are the other ways of looking at the world that we haven’t seen before?’
different disabilities, plus around 60 people with disabilities on the crew.
“That was a unique experience,” Barr says. “The TV industry is inaccessible for a lot of different reasons, so that was a real challenge and it was quite pioneering. The second thing I did was Ralph & Katie with the brilliant Pete Bowker [The A Word], and that was also an all-disability-led writers room. I was lucky because I got to have the confidence to dip my toe in the water as a writer, but with well-established writers and a support network of people around me. Everybody had permission to tell their individual story, but they were also politically and socially motivated. Sometimes you have to have the balls to do that.”
But what particularly excites Barr about stories about diversity – “because we haven’t found a more interesting way to describe it” – is where they connect to genre, “and where the new spaces are to go with that,” she says. “Sometimes having a unique POV or experience is a privilege because it means you look at the world in a certain way and you’re going, ‘What are the other ways of looking at the world that we haven’t seen before?’”
Redfern Now, which debuted on Australia’s ABC in 2012, tells the story of six families living in the Sydney suburb of Redfern and provides an insight into the contemporary issues facing Indigenous Australians. Purcell notes that the series was “First Nations produced, [with First Nations] writers, directors and lead actors down to the grip on set.”
“It was an opportunity to give the First Nations sector a chance of proving what we can do, and it went through the roof,” she says. “That stuff is my heart and soul. I love writing about that. There’s still a lot more work to be done in bringing about that understanding, so if I’ve got a vehicle and an opportunity to do that then I’m there.”
The actor has unapologetically “thrown” herself into writing, though she admits it’s a challenge. Alén agrees that getting anything made in the current television climate, where broadcasters and streamers are tightening their commissioning belts, is the hardest part of the job. “Do you class yourself as a writer if none of the stuff you’ve written has ever been produced? I think you should,” he says. “It’s just really hard to get things done. I guess we’ve all been fortunate that we’ve broken through at some stage in our lives.”
a “bad” first draft before the rewriting and editing process can begin: “Every time you read a first draft, you’re like, ‘This is shit.’
That doesn’t mean I will be a shitty writer. It just means I have to go through that process. That’s probably the most difficult thing all of us go through.”
But the “glory” of being a writer is that it’s a skill that can be utilised constantly, says Barr. “It can be the first thing you do when you wake up or [the last thing before] you go to bed,” she continues. “I was lucky when I got into writing; I came off shooting The Accident and said, ‘I think I want to be a writer,’ and I turned to a writer and said, ‘What do I do?’ They said, ‘Well, write.’” Purcell also values the practice of learning through others’ mistakes. “I sit on set to see how directors work, or I’ll see the script supervisor or the writer might be talking about stuff and then I’m sitting there going, ‘OK, what can I take from what they’ve done and then go back and apply it?’”
Genevieve Barr
Big Brother marks the first time Ólafsson has been “responsible” for creating a series, sharing that vision with his team and ensuring they are all heading in the same direction. He says his challenge is “letting go” and allowing himself to turn in
After a career as an actor standing “at the very end of the long chain of other events” it takes to make a TV series or film, Alén now marvels at being involved from the start and creating the things other people are going to see. “When you have experience from doing that [acting], it does show in your writing because you know someone actually has to get up and do it, be it dialogue or why someone crosses the room. Would they actually fall asleep here? When you’ve done it, it does give you a very different kind of perspective.”
Genevieve Barr has focused on disabled stories in shows including Ralph & Katie (top) and Then Barbara Met Alan
A wing and a scare
DQ hears from the cast and creative team behind Québécois crime drama Corbeaux (Crows) about how they blended horror, the supernatural and local folklore to tell this story of two detectives on the hunt for a serial killer.
More than 250 years ago, a woman named Marie-Josephte Corriveau was condemned to death after being found guilty of murdering her second husband.
Over the decades since she was hanged and her body was left on display in an iron cage for several weeks, she entered Québécois folklore as ‘La Corriveau,’ with her memory becoming distorted by questions over how many men she killed and allegations of witchcraft. But was she really a villainous serial killer, or was she actually the victim of injustice and misogyny at the hands of an unfair legal system?
The legend of La Corriveau has long been a subject of fascination in art and literature – and television is no exception, following the recent release of Québécois series Corbeaux ( Crows ) on local streamer Illico+.
Produced and distributed by Encore Television, the sixpart series opens in the wake of a series of gruesome murders. Gabrielle, a rebellious young police officer who has recently arrived in the city, must team up with veteran detective Clémence to find the killer. But as the number of male bodies
continues to grow – the victims are all found with crow bones in their mouths – they face a race against time to solve the case while also facing their demons, leaving them to consider whether ghosts are real and if they can return to carry out their revenge.
Blending a dark crime procedural with elements of horror –and the supernatural – the series was created by Pierre-Louis Sanschagrin ( Contre-offre ) who for many years had wanted to use the legend of La Corriveau as the basis for a television series. “It was the initial inspiration for the story,” he tells DQ. “It’s something I’ve been thinking of, so for a long time I’ve been asking myself how to drive a story starting from that point. But I was happy when I had the idea of an investigation and some crimes built around that historical event.”
From the outset, Sanschagrin partnered with director Stéphane Lapointe to create a drama with a central police storyline that was infused with horror, hoping to elicit strong emotions from the audience. “I wanted them to be frightened, to be scared, which are not the kinds of feelings you always
>
< feel when you’re watching a classical crime show,” the writer says. “So, yes, it was definitely part of the DNA of the show from day one.”
Yet Corbeaux isn’t in a rush to reveal its true intentions. “The story was built to start as if it were a classical show, but more and more the layers add up and you find out it’s something stranger and stranger,” Sanschagrin says.
Central to the story is the relationship between Gabrielle and Clémence, played by Mylène Mackay ( Avant le crash ) and Pascale Bussières ( Transplant ). Gabrielle initially seems cold and unempathetic and struggles to communicate with Clémence, who is nearing retirement from the force. But she’s also harbouring past trauma that will come to the fore during the course of their investigation.
“All writers work differently. For Corbeaux , I started to build the investigation first and then I started to think about which characters could fit best in that specific story,” Sanschagrin says. “Obviously there is a theme about violence to women, so I thought it was organic to put two women as the main characters so they could be affected more by the investigation and what’s going on.
“I tried to build two different characters that will clash but also complete each other. I wanted Gabrielle to be more intuitive and impulsive, while Clémence is more laid back and experienced, so Gabrielle has everything to prove and the other one is close to retiring. I thought it made a good, interesting dynamic for the duo.”
Reading the scripts, Bussières admits she was taken aback by the horror within the story, which is played naturalistically at the outset. “Even though the story shifts to a surreal tone by the end, to have this uncertainty about whether this is real or unreal really attracted me,” she says. “I like the distance in age [between Gabrielle and Clèmence] and the fact Clèmence doesn’t want to go out of this life [as a police officer] because she really likes it, and also it’s somehow a way to avoid the pain of her own drama. She probably sees part of herself in Gabrielle, and that reflection between the two is interesting. We had a lot of fun, Mylène and I, exploring that connection.”
“Gabrielle isn’t the most sympathetic person, and I had to work a lot on that,” Mackay notes. “I liked the tone between them, which is really psychological and realistic. What also interested me was the spiritual part of it, which is also part of my own beliefs. It’s something I’m questioning in life, like those souls – do they come back, and can you come back in another body and have revenge? We go into horror but the question at the end of the series really captivates me.
“To work with Pascale, who is such a wonderful actress, it was the best thing that can happen to you, so I was really happy. Stéphane and I have done four series together so I know
he’s amazing and how he would go deep into everything, and he gave me that part because she’s really the opposite of my personality. She has no empathy, she’s a monomaniac, she’s really analytic. It’s a thriller also, so we get really into the thriller vibe. There are actually many different layers to it.”
That the series is inspired by La Corriveau wasn’t lost on the actors. “It’s amazingly feminist,” Bussières says of the series. “It’s revenge for the way women were the subject of corruption. I wasn’t aware she was suspended in this iron cage with crows coming to eat her. It was really exciting joining historical facts with very contemporary issues and questions about female sexuality.”
Writing the series proved to be particularly complicated for Sanschagrin, who employs flashbacks to reveal elements of the story as well as a structure that uses episode five to reveal to viewers the origins of the killings.
“The writing was very complex and challenging because I had to have the whole puzzle in mind,” he says. “There’s a big backstory, so it made the writing hard because we needed to find the layers between the characters. You also find out in every episode that there is another part of the story you didn’t suspect.”
“But when you don’t have lots of means, we have to work and work on the story,” producer Patrick Lowe says of making the most of the show’s limited budget. “The greater the story is, you will be able to have a great show. Pierre is a fantastic writer, and he worked a lot so that even though we have a great director and he did a fantastic job, it’s always the story, story, story.
The producer adds: “With what budget we have, it’s always a little miracle [a show is made]. People put in so much effort into every stage of the production, from the writing to post-production. It’s a little miracle each time.”
Working with director Lapointe, Sanschagrin found that one challenge of writing Corbeaux
The line is very thin – it can look like a caricature or a joke when you play with spirits and witchcraft. So that was the challenge. I think we managed to do it.
Stéphane Lapointe Director
From top: Corbeaux stars Mylène Mackay (left) and Pascale Bussières; Mackay on set with director Stéphane Lapointe; and filming on location in Québec
was conveying the right atmosphere. To make his point, he would suggest pieces of music or horror movie references, including The Shining and other titles based on novels by Stephen King. Lapointe reciprocated with his own influences, namely The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , Carrie and The Omen
The director ( Les Mutants , Faits divers ) joined the project three years before shooting began, when Sanschagrin wrote to him outlining the idea for the series and asking if it would interest him.
“I liked the tone,” Lapointe says. “It’s very rare for television series here [in Québec] to go that deep into fear and horror, that are more psychological. I was very excited by that. Also, I was surprised the broadcaster gave the green light to that, because it’s a bit radical. It goes into fear with no escape and no smiles or distance [from the horror]. Shows like American Horror Story always have a smile or it looks a bit artificial. The actors dived into the horror of this. It was a great project. I love to direct actors, and we were capable of going very deep here. I loved that.”
Filming the series, he drew on 1970s horror to play with zoom and colours to create a psychological “strangeness” to the story, but always keeping it grounded in reality. “I didn’t want to make the things too artsy or too stylish. I wanted it to stay real and to be very connected and not to feel the distance as if it’s a stage play,” Lapointe continues. “I wanted to be as realistic as possible. But I also like it when all the elements are there to describe the interior of the character. I wanted the set and the music to talk about them, to use everything to describe their psychology. I didn’t want it to look like a joke or fake or artificial. The line is very thin, and it can look like a caricature or a joke when you play with spirits and witchcraft. So that was the challenge. I think we managed to do it.”
Series producers Lowe and Jaime Alberto Tobon were equally excited at the prospect of bringing horror to Québec. Filming for all six episodes took place over approximately 32 days, predominantly in Montreal but also in Pointe-Lévy, near Québec City, where the body of La Corriveau was raised after her execution.
“We wanted to build a show where the investigation was not only about one murder, but many murders in a short period of time,” Lowe says. “That was part of the DNA from day one, so we wanted the investigators to be under a very high level of pressure. People who watch the show feel that.”
“It was fun because we don’t have that kind of show very often in Montreal, so it was a di erent shoot,” Tobon says. “With Stéphane, we had to quickly find the hooks of the show. But after that, we had to deal with the money and everything. But even if it was a di cult shoot, and it was very emotional for the actresses, it was always
fun. People were happy to come to the set. Postproduction was also fun because then we could see everything. Stéphane put all the layers with the music. The show was getting better and better at every step of the production.”
On set, “we laughed a lot,” says Lapointe. “But it was necessary,” notes Bussières. “It was always a shock on set to arrive with a new body. The humour was there. We needed some comic relief. But the speed of the shoot was a big challenge. We had to do some complex scenes and complex storytelling in a very short time.”
That tight filming schedule included numerous night shoots and finished with two “intense” weeks filming at the police station. “They were all the big scenes with lots of lines. It was very tough,” Lapointe says.
Bussières picks up: “Even for us to understand the [murder investigation] board with all the pictures and all the information, we really had to understand what we were saying. It’s interesting but it’s complex to shoot.”
Corbeaux quickly won over Illico+ subscribers when it debuted in 2024, attracting the highest number of unique customers during its first month on the platform and securing the best completion rate for a first season last year. The team behind the series will be hoping for similar success among international viewers after it was selected for the Berlinale Series Market screenings during the Berlin International Film Festival in February this year.
“The cast is amazing and each of them delivers great, deep and true performances,” Lapointe says. “The way we treat the horror, the fear, it’s touching something. There’s something darker here.”
Mackay adds: “I had a lot of comments from people who are not horror fans who really got into the series, because there’s the human side, the feminist side, the female gaze. This is quite unusual.”
“It’s a very local story but also international because every part of the world has its own witches and hidden stories,” says Tobon. “The subject of the show, violence against women, sadly it’s still happening. It’s also part of the message behind the spectacular story. There’s a real message and a real situation, a sad one. It’s part of what reaches people who watch the show.”
The show was selected for the Berlinale Series Market screenings in February
POWER: Mark Gatiss & Polly
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Stars Mark Gatiss and Polly Walker take DQ inside the world of Bookish, a murder-mystery series that introduces Gabriel Book, a bookshop owner with the knowledge needed to help the police tackle some baffling cases in post-war London.
world police baffling
e’s a member of comedy troupe The League of Gentlemen and co-creator of the BBC’s acclaimed detective series Sherlock. And now, the multi- talented Mark Gatiss is playing detective himself in a new period murder mystery drama called Bookish
The actor, writer, director and comedian stars as the erudite and unconventional Gabriel Book who, from his antiquarian bookshop, helps the police to solve a variety of mysterious crimes.
The show opens in 1946. Book is a maverick consultant for the local police, and the thousands of books that line the shelves in his bookshop in Archangel Lane – called Book’s – provide all the knowledge he needs to solve the most puzzling of crimes. His wife Trottie (Polly Walker) runs the wallpaper shop next door, but though they share a deep love, their union is a ‘lavender’ marriage to help conceal Book’s sexual orientation at a time when it was illegal to be gay. Connor Finch also stars as Book’s mysterious new employee Jack, Elliot Levey plays Inspector Bliss and Blake Harrison is Sergeant Morris, with Buket Kömür as the spirited Nora.
Gatiss first pitched his idea for a period murder-mystery series to Walter Iuzzolino and Jo McGrath of producer Eagle Eye Drama after they asked him about the kind of project he wanted to make – and he just happened to have a pilot script for the show in a drawer at home.
“I’d only written one,” he tells DQ. “I didn’t know who did it [the crime at the centre of the plot]. It changed twice. I got that far, but I had an idea for the feel of the whole thing and what sort of show it might be. But it was only once I’d shown Walter and Jo the first one that I came up with the next one.”
It was a serendipitous meeting, as Iuzzolino and McGrath happened to be looking for exactly this type of series to complement a crime slate that also includes Professor T, Before We Die and Patience. They immediately joined the project, describing the solitary script as the best they’d ever read. UKTV then commissioned a six-part series for its U&Alibi channel, with Beta Film boarding as the international distributor.
An avid reader of detective fiction, Gatiss says the idea behind Bookish came from “years of reading and loving Agatha Christie and all the others, and just wanting to distil that into something special – and something new. That’s the hardest thing.”
He continues: “The biggest thing is that every detective has a ‘thing.’ The idea of the bookshop came first and I thought, well, this is like an analogue computer. We hint there’s a vault underneath – there are lots of books – but it’s what he does with them.” Gatiss has played a variety of characters in his screen career, from Mycroft Holmes in Sherlock and Mr Wickens in The Amazing Mr Blunden to Larry Grayson in Nolly and Tycho Nestoris in Game of Thrones. In The League of Gentlemen, meanwhile, his many parts included a sinister butcher and a hapless vet, plus multiple female characters. But initially, he wasn’t quite sure how to play the whip-smart and debonair Book.
“It’s a strange thing because you think, ‘Oh, well, I’ve written it,’ but then I literally said the words for the first time when we were doing the chemistry read [with Walker] and just went, ‘Is this how I’m going to do it?’ It’s strange, but it happened quite quickly. >
“As a TV historian, I know across the years a version of this has always happened. Patrick Troughton, when he took over Doctor Who, had this enormous hat for two episodes. You just don’t know. The only thing I said is I have to be comfortable. So you have to find it. In a first season, particularly in the first episode, you’re just going, ‘Is this it?’”
Finding Book’s relationship with Trottie was also a “lottery,” says Gatiss, who had never previously worked with Walker. “But it was lovely,” he adds. “And that warmth comes across. It was a very happy set.”
Walker, best known for roles in Bridgerton, Line of Duty, Prisoners’ Wives , was offered the role without needing to audition. “That was very nice. It doesn’t happen often,” she says. “But with that comes a lot of pressure because you think, ‘Do they know me? Have they got mixed up?’ Then meeting Mark and wanting Mark to like me – there are no guarantees. When I read it, I was like, ‘Really, they want me?’ I normally play much harder characters or badder characters, so it was nice. I was quite touched. I said, ‘My God, they recognise goodness.’”
a constant thing. I wouldn’t say we couldn’t do a single [story in each episode], but the elements of the precinct would be massively in the background because you just have to get on with it. The lovely thing about having longer is you can get used to people, you can suspect people, you can change motives.”
The first two-parter sees Book join forces with Inspector Bliss to investigate what appears to be a case of suicide – but suspicions quickly turn to murder. The second story is set within the British film industry, when a film crew comes to Archangel Lane and someone is poisoned. The third unfolds against the backdrop of a glamorous London hotel where Book is instructed to observe two foreign princesses, “and then things go awry” and Trottie finds herself among the suspects.
Guest stars appearing throughout the series include Joely Richardson, Daniel Mays, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Paul McGann, Michael Workéyè, Luke Norris and Jonas Nay. Tim McInnerny also appears, as do Elizabeth Berrington, Mark Umbers and Angeliki Papoulia.
Gatiss co-wrote stories two and three with Matthew Sweet, an “extraordinary scholar” of post-war history who is also the author of books Shepperton Babylon, about the British film industry, and West End Front, about London’s hotels during the Second World War. “I said [to Sweet], ‘Can you do one about that and one about that?’ The world [of British film] is so rich,” Gatiss says. “And then the third one is set in a great big London hotel, which is slightly creaking after the war. Those places were full of foreign spies, so it’s just a wonderfully rich world – and it’s that thing of the world being shaken up. Nothing is quite right.”
The modernity of the series arrives through the evergreen theme of people not quite fitting in, in this case after the war. “You have that all the time,” Gatiss says. “Particularly soldiers who just don’t know what to do. They’re trained to do one thing and suddenly they’re back in civvy street. So there’s that. It’s an optimistic time, but also quite scary.”
“I said she should play against type,” Gatiss jokes.
Prisoners’ Wives and Rome she Bookish happens. the unusual to play this dynamic as well [with Book]. That’s not often
“That’s not to say she’s some sap. She has a lot of strength,” Walker says of Trottie. “It’s interesting because normally there’s something in a script where I go, ‘Urgh,’ and I have to work past it. But I read it [ ] and wanted to know what happens. It was the mystery, the crime. I got involved in who did it, and it was unusual to play this dynamic as well [with Book]. That’s not often seen on television, that kind of relationship. I didn’t know what a lavender marriage was.”
Despite the show’s setting and exemplary production design –the series was filmed in Belgium, where a row of shops was refitted to become Archangel Lane – it’s the characters that navigate viewers through the numerous murder mysteries. “The story is really important but the characters tell me the story,” Gatiss says. “Plots and whodunits are really interesting and great, but actually the characters take us through that. So it is a balancing act, and sometimes you can see it on the page; sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you see it when you’re shooting it and then, when you get to the end, it’s really clear.”
After collaborating with co-creator Steven Moffat and stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman on four seasons of Sherlock, it’s no surprise to hear Gatiss reveal Arthur Conan Doyle’s character is his favourite literary detective. He’s now reading The Village of Eight Graves, a 1950 detective story from Japanese author Seishi Yokomizo.
With the six-part series comprising three feature-length stories, Gatiss found there was ample running time to explore the union between Book and Trottie, and to delve into the backstory of the recently incarcerated Jack, while also inviting viewers to help solve a trio of complex mysteries. Director Carolina Giammetta ( The Drowning), meanwhile, describes as “clever crime,” noting that it has a sharpened edge to it compared with ‘cosy crime’ series.
Suspect, Bookish Gatiss that, keeping It’s
But whether it’s Holmes or Christie’s Poirot or Miss Marple, “there are so many interesting ones over the years. That’s what I’ve sort of drawn on to try to come up with an original one,” Gatiss says about creating Bookish. “We know how people are killed and we want it to be a clever crime. But if the world around is unfamiliar, that immediately lifts it because you go, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen this before. I’ve never seen this relationship on screen before, I’ve never seen this weird gang of people.’”
Gatiss continues: “It’s about balancing the backstory and how much you reveal of all that, plus juggling of the story of the week. That’s the challenge – not to get so distracted by Book and Trottie’s backstory that you forget keeping the suspects in the air. It’s
That viewer appetite for detective drama seemingly cannot be sated also gives Gatiss confidence that Bookish will find an audience when it debuts this summer. “I’m thrilled there’s still a demand for it and, particularly in a world of modern police procedurals, that there’s room for it, but it’s not just cosy,” he adds. “It’s a warm environment and it’s a funny show. But it’s definitely got an edge, because that’s what the times were like.”
Polly Walker (above) and Mark Gatiss (below) play a couple in a ‘lavender’ marriage in Bookish
RIOT WOMEN
In the first part of the DQ100 2025/26, we pick out a range of shows to tune in for and the actors, directors and writers making them, as well as some of the trends and trailblazers worth catching up with.
HAPPY VALLEY CREATOR SALLY WAINWRIGHT’S LATEST SERIES
BRINGS TOGETHER FIVE WOMEN (played by Joanna Scanlan, Rosalie Craig, Tamsin Grieg, Lorraine Ashbourne and Amelia Bullmore) who create a makeshift punk-rock band in order to enter a local talent contest. But in writing their first original song, they soon discover that they have a lot to
say – and this is their way to say it. As they juggle demanding jobs, grown-up children, complicated parents, absent husbands and disastrous dates and relationships, the band becomes a catalyst for change in their lives, and it’s going to make them question everything. Wainwright is the writer and lead director on the series, which is produced by Drama Republic for the BBC in the UK and BritBox US and Canada. Mediawan
Rights distributes.
JUSTIN KURZEL
NITRAM) DIRECTS THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH, a five-part Australian drama series that had its world premiere at February’s Berlin International Film Festival. Based on the book by Richard Flanagan and set against the shadows of the Second World War, it tells the story of Lieutenant-Colonel Dorrigo Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi, pictured alongside Kurzel) and how his all-too-brief love affair with Amy Mulvaney (Odessa Young) shaped his life. The series premieres on Prime Video in Australia, New Zealand and Canada on April 18, with Sony Pictures Television also shopping the show to the BBC (UK), Sky (Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland), RTÉ (Ireland), Movistar Plus+ (Spain) and more. Curio Pictures is the producer.
Evans ( Young) shaped his life. The
URÐUR EGILSDÓTTIR
ICELAND-BASED JOURNALIST AND SCREENWRITER
EGILSDÓTTIR was present in the courtroom covering what has come to be known as ‘The Terrorism Case’ – Iceland’s first ever terrorist attack – and has now written Manifesto, a series based on this true story with themes of extremism, racism, misogyny and mental health. The six-episode series centres on Harpa, an aspiring police officer who must prove her friends’ innocence after an attack is carried out by Matti, a member of her friend group. The stakes get even higher as his manifesto warns of a second, even deadlier, attack on the horizon. Glassriver is producing the series for streamer Síminn, with Wild Bunch TV handling global rights. Egilsdóttir also took part in a writers room at Glassriver for the Nordic crime series The Trip, which is currently in development, and co-wrote two episodes of the show.
THE WALKING DEAD STAR
Sister ( his
ANDREW LINCOLN ADOLESCENCE
LINCOLN MAKES HIS LONGAWAITED RETURN TO BRITISH TELEVISION IN COLD WATER, a six-part thriller produced by Chernobyl) for ITV and STV. He plays John, a repressed, depressed man who is shocked to find himself in middle age, secretly raging at his life as a stay-at-home dad. When his failure to intervene in a violent confrontation in a playground brings his identity crisis to a head, John ups and moves his family to the (fictional) rural idyll of Coldwater, where he befriends his next-door neighbour, who is harbouring secrets of his own. Due to air this autumn, the show is being distributed by ITV Studios.
FROM THE DIRECTOR OF ONE-SHOT FEATURE FILM BOILING POINT comes this four-part Netflix series that is pitched as the first TV drama whose every episode is filmed in one continuous take. It tells the story of how a family’s world is turned upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) is arrested for the murder of a teenage girl who goes to his school. Boiling Point alum Stephen Graham plays Jamie’s father and ‘appropriate adult’ Eddie Miller. Ashley Walters stars as Detective Inspector Luke Bascombe, and Erin Doherty is Briony Ariston, the clinical psychologist assigned to Jamie’s case. Philip Barantini directs from a script by Graham and Jack Thorne (Help). It is produced by Warp Films, Matriarch Productions and Plan B.
HEAD TO DRAMAQUARTERLY.COM FOR THE REST OF PART ONE OF THE DQ100 2025/26, FEATURING...
ACTORS
Ebba Katrín Finnsdóttir, Fabrizio Gifuni, Pascale Kaan and Matthew Lewis
DIRECTORS
Janus Metz, Lisa Mulcahy, Michele Soavi and Nikki Toscano
WRITERS
Aimee-Lou Wood, Imran Mahmood, Meredith MacNeill & Jennifer Whalen and Tina Gharavi
SERIES
Cuidad de Sombras (City of Shadows), Danefæ, Lume and Reunion
TRENDS & TRAILBLAZERS
Mozart, North of North, Smärtpunkten (Pressure Point) and Marie Colomb
Helen Perry SIX OF THE BEST
The UKTV drama commissioning head’s picks include a “groundbreaking” US crime series, a character-led sports show and a fact-based drama that made real-world headlines.
The Shield
I’d read that the pilot episode of The Shield was groundbreaking, so I watched it purely for research. Little did I know I’d be sucked into the world of Vic Mackey and the Strike team for seven seasons. I binged 88 episodes and felt bereft when it was over. Apparently, showrunner Shawn Ryan instructed his co-writers to tell each story with the fewest beats possible and to end every scene with an ad-breakworthy hook. These techniques give the show a relentless pace and energy that has a visceral impact. You don’t passively watch The Shield, you breathlessly live it.
Mr Inbetween
Another anti-hero show. I love dramas that explore the complexity and messiness of morality and human behaviour. This Australian gem by Scott Ryan is a rare treat. I spend so much time thinking about story structure, genre and tonal cohesion that a defiantly ambiguous series that throws away every rule in the book feels truly revolutionary. You never know where Mr Inbetween will go next, and I love its unpredictability.
Succession
It takes extraordinary skill to keep a single storyline – who’ll inherit the business – spinning over four seasons. Succession mastered the ‘event of the episode’ shape and provided unforgettable moments such as Kendall’s rap and Boar on the Floor. It also managed the
remarkable – delivering an ending that was both surprising and inevitable. There’s a razor-sharp rawness to Succession, from the visual aesthetic to the line-byline writing. It’s testament to the deep characterisation and allround outstanding performances
“illustrative of three major lessons: a strong sense of place can elevate and authenticate a show; bigger plotlines aren’t always more impactful (S2 was nearly derailed by a murder plot that’s best forgotten); and if you’re clever enough, you can reinvent a show over and over (Coach’s S4 transfer to East Dillon is a genius piece of storytelling). Fundamentally, Coach and Mrs Coach make me want to be a better parent. That’s the power of great drama.
You don’t passively watch The Shield, you breathlessly live it.
Helen Perry
who greenlit it without a script, proving that some stories need to be told and bold decision-making equates to great commissioning. The other revelation was the sheer volume of tireless research and detailed personal care that was poured into the show by the producers and screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes. The dedication of passionate storytellers is not to be underestimated. Nor should we ever underestimate the power of television to inspire, enrage or to make change in the world.
My So-Called Life
”that, even within a single scene, members of the Roy family make you want to cradle them in your arms, before wanting to smash them to pieces.
Friday Night Lights
This show plays a clever trick. It pretends to be a macho sports series but actually it’s a deeply feeling relationship drama about a small-town community. It’s
Axed after one season, yet it’s a cult classic. It’s a time capsule of 90s angst-filled teenage life. It was pioneering, featuring TV’s first openly gay actor playing an out gay character. It dealt with di cult topics without glorifying them (guns, drugs, sex). Watching it as a teenager, I remember feeling ‘seen’ by a show for the first time. It’s a great reminder that we need to engage with future generations of viewers on their terms, reflecting their authentic experiences now. It also highlights that character is everything. Great drama doesn’t have to be astronomically expensive. Character is free.
Mr Bates vs the Post O ce I was lucky enough to work
the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history. No one knew it would land with the astonishing impact that it did,
Mr Bates vs the Post O ce I was lucky enough to work on this series about one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history. No one knew it would land with the astonishing impact that it did, bar [ITV drama chief] Polly Hill,
Mr Inbetween
The Shield
FACT FILE Cold Haven
Set between Iceland and Portugal, Cold Haven is an eight-part crime thriller exploring the immigration experience. The story follows Icelandic detective Soffia as she attempts to solve a murder within the Portuguese community on Iceland’s Westman Islands.
Glassriver and Pedro Lopes from Portugal’s SPI discuss six key locations from this crime thriller, which unfolds across both countries.
ICELAND
Hafnarfjörður
Produced by Iceland’s Glassriver and Portugal’s SPI for respective national broadcasters RÚV and RTP, the series is predominantly set on the Icelandic archipelago of Vestmannaeyjar, as well as its capital Reykjavík and Portugal capital Lisbon.
Andri Óttarsson from Icelandic production company
Although Cold Haven evokes the rugged isolation of the Westman Islands, much of the primary filming took place in the town of Hafnarfjörður, situated about 10km south of the capital, Reykjavík. Here we discovered two houses positioned directly across from one another, which became central to the show’s visual storytelling, allowing for a seamless interplay between interior and exterior scenes. This setup reinforced the show’s themes of proximity and entrapment, where characters are constantly within sight yet emotionally distant, mirroring the tension that defines the narrative.
The town’s deep ties to folklore subtly reference a key theme throughout Cold Haven: the unknown. From a logistical standpoint, the ability to shoot both interior and exterior scenes in the same location (thanks to the kind Icelanders who answered the door to us) allowed for continuity and made these two houses a central part of our story.
Stórhöfði
Situated at the southern tip of Heimaey, Stórhöfði is known as the windiest place in Europe, which makes it one of the most challenging production locations. Despite this, the script calls for a particular location for a character who lives outside town and is an outsider in the community. Therefore, finding the right setting was crucial.
We discovered Stórhöfði, a weather station that perfectly fit our needs. It offers one of the most breathtaking views in the country and stands isolated on a high hill, making it impossible
to approach unnoticed. It’s safe to say Stórhöfði lived up to its reputation – we faced stormy conditions the entirety of our time there, even when the weather was calm elsewhere on the island.
Stórhöfði’s relentless gales and ever-present mist contributed to the bleak and dangerous atmosphere of the series and the iconic brooding Nordic noir aesthetic. Its desolate cliffs and rugged lava fields, overlooking the vast sea, heighten the sense of vulnerability, making the setting feel both hauntingly beautiful and inherently hostile.
Kristín Þóra Haraldsdóttir stars as Soffia, with the ensemble cast featuring Ivo Canelas, Maria João Bastos, Catarina Rebelo and Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson.
Here, executive producer Andri Óttarsson, CEO of Glassriver, talks us through the Icelandic locations, while fellow EP Pedro Lopes, content director at SPI, discusses the Portuguese places in the show.
Westman Islands
Often described as a miniature version of Iceland (you can travel across the main island in 10 minutes or less), Vestmannaeyjar (the Westman Islands) was a priority location for Cold Haven, with most of the action taking place in a small town.
What makes the islands unique is their location just south of Iceland. As a volcanic archipelago, whose largest and most populated island is Heimaey, its landscape stands apart from the rest of Iceland’s natural scenery. Currently, the only way to travel to and from the islands is by boat, as there is an airport but no scheduled flights. This setting complements and
contributes to the show’s themes of isolation, mystery and survival. The dramatic volcanic terrain, black sand beaches and jagged rock formations create an eerie and unforgiving backdrop that mirrors the tension between the characters.
The islands foster a closeknit community where everyone knows each other – and just about everything about one another. Our main challenges during the shoot were largely weather-related. In poor conditions, the journey to the islands takes three hours by boat, whereas in good weather, it’s only a 40-minute trip. This made any last-minute schedule changes particularly difficult.
PORTUGAL
Infante Santo Avenue
This series is very cinematic. We've given great importance to all the departments – art direction, photography direction, costume design – and I'm passionate about architecture, so we talked a lot about where we'd like to shoot in Lisbon. I've wanted to film on Infante Santo Avenue for a long time; I'm fascinated by the modernity of its buildings built in the 1950s, which contrast with the old Lisbon that is always the ‘postcard’ image of the city.
Infante Santo is made up of a group of five residential blocks on pilotis (stilts), isolated from each other, and is very influenced by the architecture of Le Corbusier. It's a good example of the sophisticated, upper-middle-class family at the centre of the show, and contrasts with the harsh life they'll find on the Westman Islands.
Infante Santo’s famous staircase has a panel by Carlos Botelho, from the same period, called ‘colourful city,’ which serves very well as a contrasting backdrop for the scene of a mother and daughter rushing out of their house, in a planned escape that will take them to Iceland, fleeing a situation of domestic violence.
Mouraria
Although I’m an executive producer on this series, my screenwriting background drives the way I read a script, thinking about the purpose of each scene, on the construction of the character, or what will allow the action to move forward, and, above all, making me ask myself about the emotional impact each scene will have on the audience. The directors did great work with the actors, building relationships between them, but also in their relationship with the camera.
Lisbon is known as the city of seven hills. The oldest areas, such as the Mouraria
neighbourhood, which owes its name to the Muslim population that concentrated there in the 12th century, are more than 900 years old, so the buildings are an amalgamation of different times, with narrow, labyrinthine streets, but with stunning views over the city and the river.
Today, it is an area inhabited almost exclusively by tourists, in a very current contrast to the transformation taking place in the city. This is a place of positive memories for our main character, of moments of adventure and complicity. It's an old, familiar, comfortable and sunny place, which will contrast with the new reality she will find outside her country.
The series travels through two different countries, so it's important the locations make it clear whether you’re in Iceland or Portugal. In addition to this, particular attention was paid to ensuring the locations served the dramaturgy, sometimes emphasising the tension between characters and sometimes acting as a contrast, with an idyllic landscape as the backdrop to a violent scene, for example – like the scenes that we shot in Guincho. This area is part of the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, which gives it a wild atmosphere, without buildings and with mountains in the background. The beach has a long stretch of sand, with dunes, and you must take a long road along the cliffs to get there. The environment is inhospitable but beautiful. It's harsh and violent, with rough seas and strong winds. We can have a fantastic sunny day and, in one second, the weather changes radically.
On the day we were shooting, we went through moments of bright sunshine and heavy rain. That's also what the scene we shot is about –a moment of family happiness that quickly descends into violence.
Guincho
Proof that style and substance can coexist
While Adolescence has style in spades, it is also full to bursting with substance. Graham and Thorne have taken the tragic circumstances of the show’s conceit and approached them in an engaging and heartbreaking way.
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BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, YOU MIGHT HAVE ALREADY WATCHED NETFLIX’S FOUR-PART SERIES ADOLESCENCE, WHICH DEBUTED IN MARCH. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?
The series follows how a family’s world is turned upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) is arrested and charged with the murder of a teenage girl who goes to his school. Stephen Graham plays Jamie’s father and ‘appropriate adult,’ Eddie Miller, while Ashley Walters is Detective Inspector Bascombe and Erin Doherty is Briony Ariston, the clinical psychologist assigned to Jamie’s case.
When it was first announced, this crime drama instantly stood out for being pitched as an “ambitious real-time, oneshot” project where each episode would be filmed in one continuous take. The mind immediately boggled. Is it possible? Can they do this? How will it be achieved? And on a TV budget?
Then when you note the auspices involved, it became clear that yes, it is possible, and yes, they could do it – and on a TV budget (albeit a likely supersized Netflix one).
Director Philip Barantini has form in this most specific of genres, having previously orchestrated the one-take short film Boiling Point in 2019 and its extended feature film follow-up of the same name in 2021. Set over the course of a hectic dinner service at a top London restaurant, they both also starred Graham (A Thousand Blows, Time), who again takes a leading role in Adolescence. Here he appears alongside a cast that also includes Faye Marsay, Christine Tremarco, Mark Stanley, Jo Hartley, Hannah Walters and newcomers Cooper and Amélie Pease.
Behind-the-scenes, Graham stepped into a writing role alongside Jack Thorne (Help, His Dark Materials), a long-time collaborator who invited the actor to help him write the scripts and build on Graham’s initial idea to delve into the murky world of teenage knife crime.
The only question remained how they would do it. As charted in DQ’s three-part special about the making of the series, which is now available to read online, it began with an idea to tell this story through four separate moments in time – the moment Jamie is arrested in a chaotic dawn raid at his family home; at his school where friends, classmates and teachers are grieving
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for the victim and rumours swirl as to Jamie’s fate; a remarkable two-hander between Jamie and his psychologist; and a day with the Millers as, several months later, they continue to be confronted by the impact of what happened.
Graham and Thorne worked out the nuances of the script, with Thorne in particular having to wrestle for the first time with how each episode could keep Barantini’s unflinching camera moving continuously from start to finish, between numerous characters and locations as close as neighbouring classrooms and as distant as half-a-mile away. Spoiler: The camera flies!
Then when it came to filming, Barantini and the cast came to experience making television as close as it might ever come to being on stage. Each actor was well drilled in both their lines and their cues as they waited for the camera to arrive and depart, often multiple times, on its well-mapped route through each episode.
More dramatic still was the fact that there were just a limited number of takes available to capture the perfect episode.
When this much noise is made about how a television series is made and the techniques involved, it can often detract from the story itself – and maybe even serve to cover up glaring plot holes or hide its passing acknowledgement of the timely and topical themes it claims to care about and investigate. More style over substance. But while Adolescence has style in spades, it is also full to bursting with substance. Graham and Thorne have taken the tragic circumstances of the show’s conceit and approached them in an engaging and heartbreaking way, with peaks of lightness and humour that only serve to deepen the valleys of despair – not least in the fourth and final episode, which confronts the devastation Jamie’s actions have brought upon his own family.
Graham and his castmates also serve up some incredibly powerful and poignant performances that mean the technical achievements behind this one-take series only serve to heighten the power and emotion of the story it tells. When you combine its style and substance, Adolescence is one for the ages.
Michael Pickard Editor, Drama Quarterly
EDITORIAL: Editorial director Ed Waller Editor of C21Media.net Jonathan Webdale Chief sub-editor Gary Smitherman DQ chief sub-editor & head of design John
Winfield Senior sub-editor Steve Warrington News editor Clive Whittingham, Channel21 International editor Nico Franks DQ editor Michael Pickard Research editor Gün Akyuz, North American editor Jordan Pinto, C21Kids editor Karolina Kaminska, Senior reporter Neil Batey, Special projects editor Louise Bateman
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Editor-in-chief & managing director David Jenkinson
