Madame Blanc Mysteries' Sally Lindsay talks female-centric writing and industry progress
As we celebrate International Women's Day, the actress tells us: "With male writers, the women are up for it all the time or their purpose will be solidified when they find their man. That's not my bag."
In the Channel 5 series The Madame Blanc Mysteries, which aired its season 3 finale last month, Sally Lindsay plays Cheshire antiques dealer and amateur sleuth Jean White.
She helps solve deaths in the fictional village of Sainte Victoire in the South of France with help from local taxi driver Dom Hayes (Steve Edge), chateau owners Judith and Jeremy Lloyd James (Sue Holderness and Robin Askwith) and the local Chief of Police, Major André Caron (Alex Gaumond).
As well as starring in The Madame Blanc Mysteries, Lindsay writes and produces it, heavily taking inspiration from the character of Miss Marple for her cosy crime caper.
"She's a woman of a certain age, so people patronise her and think she's just this little old lady – that she's invisible," she tells us. "They don't for one minute think she's got this extraordinary mind and extraordinary level of deduction. That also applies to Jean."
This year's International Women's Day theme is "Inspire Inclusion", so we asked Lindsay why female representation is important and how the industry has changed since she first started.
"Women are represented a little bit more on screen, and diversity with people of colour is happening, but we're quite close-minded in England about casting," she says. "Everybody on my show is a friend of mine, so I would have used them anyway, but I do what I call Tube casting. If you get on the Tube, and you look right and you look left, there's people of all different colours, so I don't understand why that's not on television."
She also mentions featuring gay couple Charlie Brodeur (Sanchia McCormack) and her wife Simone (Djinda Kane), who co-own the local antiques business in the series. "We've never mentioned they're gay. We just mentioned that they're married. It gets on my nerves when people have to explain themselves – it's the least interesting thing about them."
When The Madame Blanc Mysteries was released in October 2021, it became one of the most popular new shows on Channel 5, with 2.5 million viewers tuning in for each episode.
The 50-year-old actor, who's from Manchester, is also best known for her roles as Shelley Unwin in ITV's soap Coronation Street, Lisa Johnson in the Sky comedy Mount Pleasant and Kath Agnew in the BBC sitcom Still Open All Hours.
It was actually while filming Still Open All Hours at Pinewood Studios that she wrote The Madame Blanc Mysteries during her down time. She explains that she had the idea after meeting a lady called Jan on holiday in Majorca about seven or eight years ago. She is a third-generation antiques dealer and a pundit for antiques shows. "She's this really normal, funny down-to-earth person with an almost Sherlockian knowledge of antiques. The idea for the series was flopping around in my head for ages after I met her," says Lindsay.
She also developed the idea for ITV detective series Scott & Bailey with Suranne Jones, which aired in 2011. "Female-centric writers tell a different story," she says.
"I'll read a script from a bloke, and oh god... a woman spends the night and she's got the bloke's shirt on and their ass out, which never happens. Or, somebody walks in on someone having a shower, which never happens, because you lock the door. It's just a male fantasy – it's bollocks. With male writers, the women are up for it all the time or their purpose will be solidified when they find their man. That's not my bag… even though Dom and Jean did get back together."
She's referring to the end of season 3 of The Madame Blanc Mysteries, which has always hinted at the characters being more than just friends. "It was just complete people pressure," she adds, "but Jean's very much in charge. It's also something that's grown properly as opposed to, 'Oh I need to get myself a fella.' Dom and Jean being together is not anything to do with her worth. We've established what her worth is."
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The Madame Blanc Mysteries season 3 is available to stream on My5. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.
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