Star Trek: Discovery's Sonequa Martin-Green says "door is open" for her return
After five seasons and 64 episodes over seven years – making it, chronologically speaking, the longest-running Star Trek series ever – Star Trek: Discovery has come to an end. The series finale Life, Itself saw a final confrontation between Starfleet and the Breen, and followed Michael Burnham as she solved the mystery of the Progenitors – before flashing forward in time to reveal that Burnham would go on to become an admiral and start a family with partner Cleveland Booker. Of course, just because the series has ended doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the last time we’ll see any of these characters – yes, we know that Burnham becomes an admiral, and that Tilly becomes the longest-tenured instructor Starfleet Academy ever has, but there are a lot of stories in those intervening years. Might we one day see Sonequa Martin-Green return to the captain’s chair and fill in some of those stories? After all, Patrick Stewart returned to the role of Captain Picard in Star Trek: Picard, decades after the end of The Next Generation, for example, while Kate Mulgrew similarly reprised the part of Captain Janeway in Star Trek: Prodigy in 2021, long after the end of Star Trek: Voyager. According to the actor herself, who spoke to RadioTimes.com ahead of the premiere of Discovery’s fifth season, it’s certainly possible. "Well, the door is definitely open," Martin-Green smiles, obviously fond of playing Michael Burnham. "Right? You know, there's no real goodbyes in Trek. So, I would definitely be willing – I think we all would, you know, it's in a special place in our hearts." Whether we’ll see Martin-Green return to the bridge of a starship in decades to come (Star Trek: Burnham in 2045, perhaps?) or see the crew of the Discovery lead a guest lecture or two in the upcoming Star Trek: Starfleet Academy spin-off is anyone’s guess for the moment. Still, even if it’s too early to say whether we’ll see these characters again, it’s easier for Martin-Green to say what she hopes viewers will take from Discovery’s finale. "I hope that they're left with hope at the end. I hope that they see themselves, that they see examples of their potential. "I hope that they find ways in their own lives to implement these truths – to implement the unconditional love that's really at the at the root of the story, reaching out, cross-connecting, and also reaching up for yourself, thinking bigger, thinking outside the box, stretching your vision and your imagination all the way up to the divine." Star Trek: Discovery is available to stream on Paramount Plus. Get a seven-day free Paramount Plus trial at Amazon Prime Video. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Star Trek: Discovery season 5 ending explained - What happened to Burnham?
Warning: Full spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery season 5 episode 10. The Star Trek: Discovery finale Life, Itself opens in the midst of battle. As the USS Discovery and her crew take on the Breen, Michael Burnham wakes up in a strange and unfamiliar environment. She’s unable to get in touch with anyone from Discovery, or make sense of any of her tricorder data – she’s in a vast, seemingly infinite corridor, the walls made up of a series of a windows. The windows, Burnham speculates, are portals of some kind: possibly viewing stations for the Progenitors to monitor the progress of different planets, or maybe the mechanism they used to seed life through the galaxy in the first place. It’s an extended sequence that follows Burnham alone, a reminder as the series comes to a close of how important Sonequa Martin-Green’s expressive performance has been as an anchor for Star Trek: Discovery over the years. Read on for our spoiler-filled summary of the Star Trek: Discovery finale, with a full breakdown of what happened to Michael Burnham, the answer to the mystery of the Progenitors’ tech, and where the crew of the USS Discovery eventually find themselves. What happened to the Breen in Star Trek: Discovery? Outside the Progenitors’ realm, the crew of Discovery and the rest of Starfleet are taking steps to find Burnham. Things are looking increasingly tense because of the imminent arrival of Tahal, a brutal Breen primarch – as Commander Rayner prepares the Discovery for battle, Saru argues with Admiral Vance that he should be allowed to attempt a diplomatic approach. Both are risky ventures, but everyone is running out of options – the Progenitors’ tech can’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Book resolves to fly directly towards the Progenitors’ portal – Doctor Culber insists on joining him, believing that this is the answer to the spiritual absence he’s felt since the zhiantara ritual on Trill. Meanwhile, Saru – accompanied by Commander Nhan – engages with Tahal, and though the Breen primarch is quick to shut down discussions, they glean some important information about her motivations. Elsewhere, Saru and Nahn confront Tahal – steely and determined, Saru intimidates the Breen primarch into backing away from the fight. It solves one of their Breen problems, but not the other, with Discovery still under attack from the original group. Rayner has an idea to deal with the Breen, but it’s unorthodox: using the spore drive to jump something that isn’t the Discovery. After some back and forth with Tilly and Stamets – can they really reverse the polarity of the quantum entanglement? – they action one of the riskiest black alert procedures has ever attempted. Discovery’s hull and saucer section separate, and position themselves on either side of the Breen dreadnought – and manage to warp it to the other side of the galaxy. What was the Progenitors' tech in Star Trek: Discovery? Burnham steps through one such portal, finding herself on a wet and windy gravel planet – for a moment, it seems like she’s gone to a Welsh quarry for a Doctor Who crossover – before being confronted by the Breen. A brief struggle follows, and Michael escapes back to the central hub of the Progenitors – where she’s confronted by Moll, in pursuit of the same Progenitor technology, hoping to bring her partner L’Ak back to life. The ensuing fight sees Burnham and Moll find themselves falling through different planets, a montage of bright pink forests and scalding lava pits. Burnham appeals to Moll directly, promising that she personally will do whatever she can to help L’Ak – and the pair tentatively agree to work together. Burnham and Moll find the source of the Progenitors’ power, seemingly in a field of yellow shrubbery. There’s one last riddle to solve: using a series of triangular tiles, they must "make the shape out of the one between the many". They argue about what this could mean, whether it might have been a mistranslation, before a garbled hail attempt from Book – distracting Michael enough for Moll to attack her, knocking her unconscious. Moll attempts to use the technology, making one big triangle with nine of the smaller tiles – but she’s misunderstood the riddle, and is zapped unconscious herself. From the outside, the portal to the Progenitors’ realm begins to fluctuate and appear to move. Book and Culber attempt to steady the portal, using a subspace frequency that Culber remembers from the zhiantara ritual. Michael regains consciousness and attempts her own solution – not making the shape with the tiles, but arranging them such that the larger triangle is constructed from the negative space between the tiles, a more literal interpretation of "the one between the many". Her idea works – and summons a Progenitor, swathed in white, calm, almost holy in appearance and mannerisms. The Progenitor reveals the extent of the technology: they didn’t create it themselves, but rather found it, speculating that it was left behind by whatever ancient race once created them. (It’s tribbles all the way down.) The limitations of the technology also become clear, though – there’s no way for Moll to bring back L’Ak, not really, not how he was. View oEmbed on the source website As the Progenitor shares more with Burnham about the history of their technology, it gradually becomes clear what they’re really asking her to do – to decide what should happen with it. Burnham is invited to become its steward, to protect it and to use it as she sees fit, but she doubts her own readiness – though after considering the things that are most important to her, science and duty and love and beauty and change, she returns to Discovery convinced of what should happen to the technology. Reuniting with the crew of the Discovery, Burnham explains her decision: rather than study the technology as Stamets would, or weaponise it as Rayner believes Starfleet might, Burnham insists they need to let it go. They push the Progenitors’ technology into the twin black holes it orbits – a neat parallel to the binary stars where Discovery’s voyage began – trusting that if it’s ever truly needed, its original creators would return for it. Who is Dr Kovich in Star Trek: Discovery? When Discovery returns to Federation HQ, Burnham meets with Dr Kovich to debrief. All information about the Progenitors’ tech has been deemed classified, never to be discussed again – much like the USS Discovery and the experimental spore drive once was. Kovich reveals he’s taken Moll into his care too, with the hope that she’ll put her courier skills to work for the Federation. Turning to leave, Burnham takes a look around Dr Kovich’s office, noting artefacts from different eras – a bottle of Chateau Picard wine, a visor, a baseball that might once have belonged to Benjamin Sisko. She realises that "Kovich" is likely a code name (another red directive level secret, in fact) and asks him who he really is. Kovich reintroduces himself to Burnham – revealing that his real name is Agent Daniels, a character last seen on Star Trek: Enterprise (then played by Matt Winston), where he was a key player in the Temporal Cold War and orchestrated the early adventures of Captain Archer. Did Saru and T'Rina get married in Star Trek: Discovery? Life, Itself comes to a close with Saru and T’Rina’s wedding, a celebration attended by the crew of Discovery and many more senior Starfleet officials. After the ceremony, Burnham circles the room, checking in with the various assembled guests – Tilly tells her that, after watching Burnham and Rayner push each other in command situations, she’s going to institute a mentorship programme at Starfleet Academy. Book arrives – late, but looking smart – and goes to speak with Michael. The pair step outside the ceremony hall, taking a walk on the beach, and discuss their relationship. Though for both of them "future is still a scary word", their experiences with the Breen and the Progenitor tech has made them realise what’s important – each other. What happened to Michael Burnham and the crew of the Discovery? Star Trek: Discovery ends with a time skip, its final scenes taking place decades after Saru’s wedding. An older Michael Burnham wakes up in a stylish house on an alien planet, passing Georgiou’s telescope as she goes downstairs – where she’s joined by Book, waiting for her with a coffee in their shared kitchen. Burnham – now an admiral – has one last mission to complete. A Starfleet captain beams down to join her: he’s not just any captain, though, but Book and Burnham’s son, accompanying her to the USS Discovery for the last time. For classified reasons Michael doesn’t entirely understand (but viewers who remember the Short Trek Calypso might), she’s piloting the USS Discovery into deep space, where the ship needs to wait for a thousand years. After looking round the bridge one final time, remembering the crew that made her time there so special, Burnham issues the last command of the series: "Let’s fly." Star Trek: Discovery is available to stream on Paramount Plus. Get a seven-day free Paramount Plus trial at Amazon Prime Video. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Star Trek: Discovery star is "at peace" with series ending with season 5
"We've had a lot of time to process it," says Sonequa Martin-Green, discussing the end of Star Trek: Discovery ahead of the debut of its fifth and final season. "We found that after the fact, right – we had shot all of season 5, and thought it was just another season, and then found out a few months later, after we had wrapped [that it would be the final season]." "Then we went back to do a shoot, and really wrap up the series," continues Martin-Green, who has played Michael Burnham since Discovery began in 2017. "And yes, it was bittersweet, but I always felt a great sense of peace about it. TV has changed, and we're in the streaming era, and so I feel that five seasons is solid. I think we had a good run, you know? So I always felt peace." It's a sentiment shared by the rest of the cast, according to Martin-Green: "I've been saying three words, especially, that I feel have really settled in me is a sense of achievement, ownership and gratitude. I think all of us feel that way." <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2024/04/DISCO503MGG07266612-1RTCredit-Marni-Grossman-Paramount-2cb3dc0.jpeg" width="6000" height="4000" alt="David Ajala as Book, Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham and Wilson Cruz as Culber in Star Trek: Discovery, season 5 standing by rocks holding weapons" title="David Ajala as Book, Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham and Wilson Cruz as Culber in Star Trek: Discovery, season 5," /> Of course, Star Trek: Discovery is ending in a very different place to where it began. When we were first introduced to Michael Burnham in 2017, Discovery was the first new Star Trek series to debut in nearly 15 years – now, it’s one of several series running concurrently, having ushered in a whole new Star Trek universe. How did that change their experience of making the series, going from the Star Trek show to a Star Trek show? "I think the first time we heard about the very first – I won't say spin-off but, well, I guess technically speaking [laughs] – but when we heard about it, we went, 'Oh my goodness, this is so great, we're sort of leading the way now at this point.' "I don't think we ever felt comfortable enough, at that time, to feel like leaders, right? We had been given the baton, and we would look at the older iterations as our leaders – and of course they are and they were – but then to be in that position in our own way, in this new day and time, it was encouraging. "It was encouraging to us, especially because things were so challenging for us there in the beginning." It’s not just the wider Star Trek universe that has changed around Discovery, though, with the show itself having reinvented itself a number of times across its run – more so, arguably, than any other Star Trek series before it. What’s it like for Martin-Green to look back on the series now in hindsight, taking in the show as a whole? "This is something that we've been discussing quite a bit, being able to define what the legacy of Star Trek: Discovery specifically is – which, of course, you can't do necessarily in the present moment. "Or maybe I should say [you can’t do it] authentically in the present moment – legacy, I feel like, is something that you have to look back on and decide, because it can't be predicted or forced." "But I think one of our central themes that makes us who we are is change – that sense of upward mobility and character evolution," says Martin-Green, venturing some thoughts on a throughline that’s remained consistent through the show even as it’s reinvented itself. "Star Trek: Discovery is a show that transformed, season to season - but each and every character did as well. "That was one of our main selling points in the very beginning: you're gonna have people who are not fully baked, and you're gonna get to watch them become who they're destined to be. You're gonna get to watch them make mistakes, and confront them, and grow because of them." "Wilson Cruz [who plays Discovery’s chief medical officer Dr Hugh Culber] – I love this – he said to me recently that it's a story of second chances. Each and every person gets a second chance. "I think that evolution, being able to see the fight that it takes to become who you're supposed to be, it's been a gift to us to be able to bring that theme to life.” View Green Video on the source website If the long-term legacy of the show is still difficult to consider, then it's easier, a little, to say what Martin-Green hopes viewers take from Discovery in the more immediate term. "I hope that they're left with hope at the end. I hope that they see themselves, that they see examples of their potential. "And I hope that they find ways in their own lives to implement these truths – to implement the unconditional love that's really at the at the root of the story, reaching out, cross-connecting, and also reaching up for yourself, thinking bigger, thinking outside the box, stretching your vision and your imagination all the way up to the divine." Star Trek: Discovery season 5 begins on Paramount Plus on 4th April. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10 – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Best Star Trek captains ranked - from Kirk to Picard
As each new Star Trek ship starts its ongoing mission – whether it’s to seek out new life and new civilisations, or to simply complete the long voyage home – there’s always one presence at the heart of the show. Star Trek is usually more of an ensemble drama than anything else, but often you can’t help but focus on the captains at least a little bit (even in series like Discovery or Lower Decks, where attention is deliberately placed elsewhere). After nearly 60 years of sequels and spin-offs, comparisons eventually start to spring up – which Star Trek captain is the best one? Or, if you like, it’s the only question a Star Trek fan ever thought was hard: do they like Kirk, or do they like Picard? Best Star Trek captains ranked 10. Gabriel Lorca (Discovery) At face value, Lorca is one of the most interesting captains we’ve seen in Star Trek. There’s something a little darker about him, something troubled, and he regularly seems to come into conflict with his more conventional crew, but beneath all that there’s an apparently sincere investment in trying to return to the ideals of science and exploration Starfleet has had to move away from. It’s eventually revealed, though, that his troubled side wasn’t a piece of clever character writing, but a clue that he was a cackling villain from the Mirror Universe. Oh. (Maybe Jason Isaacs could return as Prime Lorca in a future episode of Strange New Worlds?) 9. Philippa Georgiou (Discovery) We don’t spend much time with Captain Georgiou of the Prime Universe – over the course of Star Trek: Discovery, it’s her mirror universe counterpart who takes centre stage. But you get the sense in Discovery’s two-part premiere (and in occasional flashback sequences) that Georgiou was very much the Captain Picard of her era, perhaps a character meriting further exploration – maybe that long-developing Section 31 movie with Michelle Yeoh should be a Star Trek: Shenzhou prequel instead? 8. Jonathan Archer (Enterprise) Scott Bakula takes to the role well enough – he’s anchored series like this before and since – but the character of Jonathan Archer never quite coheres around him properly. Is he a pioneering test pilot frustrated by the diplomatic responsibilities suddenly thrust upon him? Is he one of the greatest explorers in Starfleet history? Is he George Washington or Jack Bauer? Is he Future Guy? He’s all of them and none of them. Maybe the character would’ve become a more complex and well-rounded figure had Enterprise not been cancelled – but it’s never a great sign if you have to say that about a show that did still manage four seasons in the first place. 7. Carol Freeman (Lower Decks) One of the best threads running through Lower Decks is the relationship between Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and her mother Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis). It elevates what might otherwise have been a much simpler dynamic between an authority figure and a combative ensign into something far more compelling – a neat new spin on the parent/child relationships we’ve already seen in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Plus – which is as important as anything else for a show like Lower Decks – Dawnn Lewis has great comic timing and delivery. 6. Christopher Pike (Strange New Worlds) View Green Video on the source website There’s something very assured about Anson Mount’s performance as Christopher Pike – warm and authoritative, every bit the hero of a 1960s sci-fi brought into the modern day. Sometimes, it feels like Strange New Worlds could push the character a little further – their take that he’s effectively the only character aware he’s starring in a prequel is clever, but surely there’s more you could do with the dramatic potential Star Trek’s first captain – but Mount’s leading man charisma means Pike is always very watchable. 5. Kathryn Janeway (Voyager) Janeway is a captain in a situation unlike any of the others – stranded in the Delta Quadrant, cut off from the rest of the Federation, tens of thousands of lightyears from home – and as a result she faced challenges completely unlike any of the others. How does she lead a divided crew on the most dangerous journey they’d ever face? How does she decide when to keep to Federation ideals, and when to abandon them? And what does she do if there’s coffee in a nearby nebula? It's always a fun thought experiment to ask what one captain would’ve done in another’s shoes – how would Picard handle a Tuvix situation? – and the thing about Janeway is that you can almost always guarantee she was the one facing the strangest of these scenarios. 4. Michael Burnham (Discovery) Before he left the series, one of Bryan Fuller’s big ideas for Star Trek: Discovery was that its ensemble wouldn’t be built around a captain the way The Next Generation or Voyager was – or, at least, not at first. Instead, the show would follow a more junior officer across her complicated journey towards command – a great central conceit for a more character-focused iteration of Star Trek, and one that Sonequa Martin-Green has brilliantly brought to life across Discovery’s four seasons and counting. (Even if, admittedly, you do sometimes wonder if the show’s eventual final scene could ever be as impactful as if it had ended with Burnham’s promotion to the captain’s chair.) 3. James T Kirk (The Original Series) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2024/01/GettyImages-81871673-Cropped-c4377da.jpg" width="3000" height="2000" alt="Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series crouching by a tree and some shrubs" title="Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series" /> Kirk is a relatively simple character – a big, broad archetype, albeit one every subsequent captain exists in the shadow of – but he’s brought to life with a deceptively complex performance from William Shatner. Decades of parodies and homages and recreations – we’re onto our third actor to play Kirk now, after Chris Pine took the role in JJ Abrams’s film series and Paul Wesley joined Strange New Worlds as a younger version of the character – have obscured exactly how good Shatner was in The Original Series. In a world of wobbly sets and recycled costumes, it’s Shatner as Kirk that brings it to life, treating it with the seriousness – and the scale – that it demands. As Walter Koenig once put it, William Shatner’s work is undeniable. 2. Jean-Luc Picard (The Next Generation) On paper, Picard is the perfect Star Trek captain - an assured commander, a skilled diplomat and a resourceful tactician. More importantly, though, Picard is played by Sir Patrick Stewart, bringing every ounce of his not inconsiderable acting talent to the role - elevating what Stewart famously thought would be a hastily cancelled sci-fi reboot into one of the defining roles of his career, and one of television’s most iconic characters, too. (Although, the less said about Star Trek: Picard the better; nice as it is to know that Patrick Stewart enjoyed returning to the captain’s chair again, the sequel show adds little to our understanding of Picard, mostly serving to demonstrate the difficulties in trying to fit a 1980s syndicated television character into the mould demanded by 2010s era streaming television.) 1. Benjamin Sisko (Deep Space Nine) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2024/01/GettyImages-162770332-Cropped-1663ef7.jpg" width="2448" height="1632" alt="Armin Shimerman as Quark and Avery Brooks as Commander Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine standing next to each other looking concerned" title="Armin Shimerman as Quark and Avery Brooks as Commander Benjamin Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" /> Sisko is the best captain because Deep Space Nine is the best show. It’s the most compelling long-term character arc - taking Sisko from grieving widower and reluctant messiah to wartime leader, exploring his increasingly complex relationship to Starfleet and the Federation, not to mention his son and his crew, in more depth than any of other series - brought to life brilliantly by an absolutely magnetic Avery Brooks. With episodes like In the Pale Moonlight, Far Beyond the Stars and The Visitor all focused on Sisko, he’s one of the most well-realised characters in Star Trek history - and in turn the best captain, too. View Affiliate Playlist on the source website Star Trek: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space Nine are available to stream on Netflix. Star Trek: Picard is exclusive to Prime Video. Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Prime Video and pay £8.99 a month after that. Star Trek: Discovery and Strange New Worlds can be found on Paramount Plus. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on tonight.
Star Trek series ranked from worst to best
From The Original Series to Lower Decks.
Star Trek began nearly 60 years ago and, in that time, it’s grown from a sci-fi Western that was almost always on the verge of cancellation to a vast franchise encompassing thousands of hours of television, with countless spin-offs and sequels and prequels and reinventions along the way. Of course, that raises the question: which of them is the best? Does Voyager win out over Enterprise? Is Strange New Worlds’ modern take on the Star Trek pilot stronger than The Original Series? Could Picard ever really compare to The Next Generation? So, without further ado, here's our ranking of Star Trek series from worst to best… Every Star Trek series ranked 9. Star Trek: Picard Must a Star Trek series be 'good'? Isn’t it enough for Patrick Stewart just to have a fun time on set? If it is enough (and, honestly, it might be) then Star Trek: Picard is an obvious success. If not, then Star Trek: Picard’s awkward first season, meandering second, and overly nostalgic third – not to mention the regular behind-the-scenes shake-ups that left each new instalment feeling like it had little interest in following coherently on from what came before it – adds up to what can only be considered the most disappointing Star Trek series in the galaxy. View Affiliate Playlist on the source website 8. Star Trek: Enterprise Coming at the end of a near-unprecedented production run, you can forgive Enterprise for feeling a little bit tired at times. Every so often it’d throw out a new idea, from the prequel setting it began with to its experiments with more serialised storytelling in its third and fourth season - but for the most part, Enterprise feels like it demonstrates the natural endpoint of a particular style of Star Trek on TV. Still, though, it has its charms (including – genuinely – the theme song). 7. Star Trek: Voyager <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2024/01/GettyImages-906870-Cropped-d520cdc.jpg" width="2263" height="1508" alt="Cast of Star Trek: Voyager: Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Ethan Phillips, Roxann Dawson And Tim Russ (Back Row, L To R) Garrett Wang, Robert Picardo, Robert Beltran And Robert Duncan Mcneill in Star Trek attire looking into camera" title="Cast of Star Trek: Voyager: Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Ethan Phillips, Roxann Dawson And Tim Russ (Back Row, L To R) Garrett Wang, Robert Picardo, Robert Beltran And Robert Duncan Mcneill" /> In a lot of ways, Star Trek: Voyager is perfect for dipping in and out of – catching an episode here and there on different channels, in the middle of the third season one day, towards the end of the sixth the next, right back to the beginning again after that. Any given episode is always going to be basically solid and reliable, whether the crew are looking for coffee in a nearby nebula or debating the ethics of separating Tuvix. But if you’re trying to watch the series in order, it’s hard not to be distracted by how little Voyager lives up to its own premise, and wish for a show that committed more fully to the idea of a patchwork crew making a long journey home. (The solution, of course, is for Paramount Plus to add a shuffle button.) 6. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Strange New Worlds always feels like a programme that could maybe be doing something a little more interesting at any given moment, but that focusing too much on that feeling always risks distracting from all the things it does so well week on week. It’s got a charming cast, great production design, and its embrace of something-of-the-week episodic storytelling is a genuine breath of fresh air in a TV landscape defined by formless, binge-watch sludge. 5. Star Trek: Lower Decks Easily the most surprising of the recent Star Trek series – who would’ve thought that a vaguely Rick and Morty-esque riff on The Next Generation would work this well? It manages to be genuinely very funny, often quite inventive (the season 2 finale, with the Cerritos stripped of its outer hull, is one of the best moments of the current Star Trek era), and has a fantastic cast in Jack Quaid, Tawny Newsome, Noël Wells and Eugene Cordero. More than any of the other Star Trek spin-offs, Lower Decks feels like it proves the creative value of having multiple Star Trek series running concurrently (beyond keeping Paramount Plus afloat, anyway). 4. Star Trek: Discovery Discovery is not – and it’s never really been – a perfect series. It’s at times overstuffed and underbaked, and the number of behind-the-scenes creative shake-ups can leave it feeling disjointed from episode to episode, never mind season to season. But it’s also a show that’s not afraid of taking a big swing, and always feels like it’s trying to make a case for what Star Trek is and can be in the 2010s, anchored by a genuinely fantastic lead performance from Sonequa Martin-Green (arguably Star Trek’s first true lead performance). Put another way, of Star Trek’s modern era, Discovery is the series that still feels like it’s boldly going somewhere (even if it doesn’t always know exactly where). 3. Star Trek: The Original Series The one that started it all – and, revisiting it, you can always see exactly why it’s lasted as long as it has. It’s a show full of big ideas, and for every episode that hasn’t aged particularly well – and there are certainly some – there are two more that are obvious classics. Deciding which, of course, is part of the fun of watching any show that’s nearly 60 years old – getting to come at it from a new angle, setting aside all the homages and the parodies and the recreations, and realising that a fan favourite episode is rubbish, the famously awful one is better than anyone ever admits, and actually William Shatner really is a great actor. 2. Star Trek: The Next Generation The platonic ideal of what Star Trek is and can be. Everything that works about The Original Series has been refined and perfected, and (most) of what comes after The Next Generation is an attempt to recreate what worked so well here. So many of the best episodes across the whole 60 years come from The Next Generation, from The Inner Light to Darmok to The Offspring, and so many of the best characters and performances, too – not just the best of Star Trek, in fact, but the best of science fiction as a genre. 1. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine It’s the obvious answer – but sometimes these things are obvious for a reason. Coming after The Original Series and The Next Generation, so much about Deep Space Nine feels like it simply shouldn’t work – even the most basic part of its premise, the fact it’s set on a space station in a fixed orbit rather than following a ship from one planet to the next, seems to miss the basic appeal of the show. (They’re not trekking anywhere!) But it quickly turned out to be a stroke of genius: staying in one place meant Deep Space Nine became Star Trek’s most effective piece of drama, thoughtful and nuanced in its depiction first of post-occupation Bajor and then later of the Federation drawn into war. Its character moments are never really matched, before or since (it’s the only Star Trek spin-off to avoid a nostalgic sequel – which feels apt, in a way, leaving Deep Space Nine in its own little corner of the galaxy). Star Trek: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Voyager and Deep Space Nine are available to stream on Netflix. Star Trek: Picard is exclusive to Prime Video. Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Prime Video and pay £8.99 a month after that. Star Trek: Discovery and Strange New Worlds can be found on Paramount Plus. Check out more of our Sci-Fi coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on tonight.
How we made The Sarah Jane Adventures: 'We were like a family, and it was beautiful'
To mark the 15th anniversary of the first episode, the cast and crew of the Doctor Who spinoff reflect on their favourite moments, how to tell stories for children, and working with Elisabeth Sladen
Today marks fifteen years since The Sarah Jane Adventures began, with the hour-long special Invasion of the Bane first broadcast on New Year’s Day 2007. To celebrate, writer/producer Phil Ford and stars Anjli Mohindra (Rani Chandra), Daniel Anthony (Clyde Langer) and Sinead Michael (Sky Smith), as well as Porsha Lawrence-Mavour (Kelsey Hooper) from that very first episode, look back on the series, and explain how The Sarah Jane Adventures was made, tell us their favourite episodes, and remember what it was like to work with Elisabeth Sladen. After the success of Doctor Who on BBC One, and with Torchwood in development at BBC Three, CBBC approached Russell T Davies about a Doctor Who spinoff of their own. Originally pitching him an idea about the Doctor’s childhood adventures on Gallifrey, Davies instead suggested a show called Sarah Jane Investigates; his plan was to build the series around Elisabeth Sladen, who had recently reprised her role as Sarah Jane Smith alongside David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor. Over five series and fifty-three episodes, Sarah Jane and the Bannerman Road gang faced Sontarans and Slitheen, Gorgons and Graske, Mrs Wormwood and General Kudlak, Androvax the Veil and Oddbob the Clown, and of course the Trickster too. But what were each of their personal highlights of their experience on The Sarah Jane Adventures? “The great thing about the show was that it was a huge team effort,” says Phil Ford, who wrote twenty-two episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures. “I didn't find that many shows are quite as collectively supportive as everybody was on Sarah Jane, because I think we all loved what we were doing. I mean, the writers, we were all huge fans of Classic Doctor Who, we'd all been brought up on it – simply the fact that we were writing for Sarah Jane was a massive buzz for all of us. We’d all fallen in love with her as a kid.” “I was a huge fan of The Sarah Jane Adventures growing up,” says Sinead Michael, echoing the same sentiment experienced decades later, before joining the fifth and final series as Sky Smith, an alien child adopted by Sarah Jane. “It was one of my favourite CBBC shows – I remember the call from my Mum telling me I’d got the part; I was standing in the school playground screaming – so working alongside Lis and the gang in the Attic was surreal alone! Not forgetting K9 and amazing set designs. “I remember feeling welcomed by everyone. Anj, Danny and Tommy [Knight, who played Sarah Jane’s son Luke] were all a lot older but still had loads of fun on set. I remember Danny got his hands on some water guns one of the days; hair and makeup were not impressed!” “We had an absolute blast, to be honest,” says Daniel Anthony, who played Clyde Langer. “I'm a bit of a big kid anyway so it was the perfect match for all of us!” “Truthfully every episode was an absolute blast – every set designed by Arwel Wyn Jones was incredible, you could get lost in the stunning detail,” says Anjli Mohindra, who played Rani Chandra, an aspiring reporter. “I loved the night-shoots on The Nightmare Man, the late nights were fun and slightly mad. I loved getting to wear Victorian garb in Lost in Time and that we all had our own little missions to go on. I adored working with both Matt Smith and David Tennant. “The show enticed some incredible actors: Samantha Bond, Donald Sumpter, Suranne Jones and Julie Graham, to name just a few. Working with them was just a joy,” she continues. “One of my most profound memories is going down on to set [when] Bradley Walsh was playing Oddbob, this evil clown,” says Phil Ford. “I met him in full makeup, with a mouthful of jagged teeth, and he goes ‘Hi, I'm Brad!’” “And of course getting covered in slime when we blasted the Slitheens was an experience I’ll never forget!” laughs Mohindra. “All the monsters [in Invasion of the Bane] were computer edited in,” remembers Porsha Lawrence-Mavour, who before appearing as Maria’s friend Kelsey in The Sarah Jane Adventures had primarily done theatre and stage work. “Only when I saw it on television did I realise what was really going on. I was used to being involved in [complicated] productions, but to be honest this was a breath of fresh air and a real change of pace for me.” “Episodes that stand out for me in particular are when we had David Tennant and Matt Smith involved in the show,” says Anthony. “To be working with the Doctor, and on two separate occasions, will always be a personal highlight.” “Another highlight for me is The Curse of Clyde Langer episode,” continues Anthony, referring to an episode that saw Clyde become briefly homeless. “It was nice to see another side of Clyde, and I'm really grateful to the writers for giving me the opportunity to explore that side of him.” “For me, that was one of the most moving stories that we did,” agrees Phil Ford, who wrote the series five episodes in question. “When you have Clyde in the rain on that night, when he's lost his home, he's crouching in a doorway and it's chucking it down with rain, and he's in tears? I challenge anybody not to feel touched by that.” The Curse of Clyde Langer was one of a number of times when The Sarah Jane Adventures touched on more mature themes, and the series was often praised for never talking down to its child audience. “Russell always was of the opinion there was really no story that you couldn't tell kids, as long as you told it in the in the correct way,” explains Ford. “We never really pulled our punches so much on The Sarah Jane Adventures, and I think that's one of the things that made it such a big hit with kids and with their parents as well. “In The Eye of the Gorgon [Ford’s first script for the series], a lot of it is about a woman who has dementia. I remember, very early on, Russell talking about the responsibility that we had, because there would be kids who would have grandparents who were going through the same thing. “We didn't want to magically take that away from her through the sci-fi story: it was important to Russell and to us that we were true to the condition,” he continues. “We didn't want to tell kids ‘it's okay, because your grandparents who are suffering awful conditions could be magically made well again’. Telling mature stories and finding the truth was something that we tried to do all the way through.” “Children’s television needs to be able to cover a variety of topics and issues,” says Anthony. “Something I think the writers for The Sarah Jane Adventures managed to do so well.” “I think that with a relatable character, a good storyline, and a bit of education you can’t go wrong,” agrees Lawrence-Mavour. “What I loved about Phil Ford’s writing in [The Day of the Clown, Rani’s first episode, which was about children going missing] and in fact the tone that Russell T Davies had set from the very first pilot, was that it didn’t shy away from the darkness of the subject topic,” says Mohindra. “The spotlight was thrown onto how we teens felt about it and onto how younger members of society don’t necessarily want to forget the darker side of reality and distract themselves with other stuff.” “I did often lean into the drama and the reality more than was fit for children’s television, and the directors had to remind me not to go ‘full-harrowing’ so much,” admits Mohindra. “To be fair, it felt like my mum Gita went missing almost every series!” “Children don't need to be told that dragons exist,” says Phil Ford, quoting the writer GK Chesterton. “Children already know that dragons exist. What the fairy tale does is teach them that dragons can be defeated. That was something that was very strong through all of The Sarah Jane Adventures: those monsters are out there, but you can survive them. “And I suppose if The Sarah Jane Adventures is any kind of metaphor, that’s what its message is – that there are all kinds of obstacles that we all face through life, but they can be overcome. “One of the one of the great things about writing for children is that you can inspire them to go on to do other things,” Ford continues. “Maybe one of those things they want to go and do is actually write themselves. I mean, that's what happened to me: I became a writer because I was inspired by old style Doctor Who, by episodes with Jon Pertwee and Sarah Jane.” Elisabeth Sladen (who passed away in 2011) appeared in nearly one hundred episodes of Doctor Who as Sarah Jane Smith, playing the character for almost forty years; she was absolutely and entirely beloved by multiple generations alike. And as much as Sarah Jane was at the centre of the Doctor Who universe, everyone remembers Elisabeth Sladen as the heart of the spin-off's production. “Lis would laugh so hard she snorted,” says Mohindra. “And then we’d all laugh even harder. Sometimes we couldn’t breathe for laughter. And when even the unflappable crew started looking at their watches because we were getting so behind, we’d struggle so hard by the sudden seriousness that we AND the crew would burst once more into uncontrollable hysterics. And then we’d take a breath and dive back into the scene and everyone would smash it! “All of our eyes glowing with that mix of repressed laughter, gratitude and mischief. If it looked like we loved each other and were having a good time, it’s because we really did.” “Lis would support me on set, giving me massive encouragement,” remembers Michael. “She was such a kind-hearted and beautiful soul. We had lots of laughs, hugs and I feel privileged to have known her, even for the short amount of time.” “Elisabeth Sladen was amazing to work with,” says Lawrence-Mavour. “Lovely soul, and down to earth. I have a memory of her making me laugh a number of times on set, and sharing a moment with my mum also.” “Lis was such a dream to work with,” agrees Anthony. “So humble and genuine. We all learned so much from her, and I'm so glad we all got to make so many memories together. She truly was a remarkable person, and a remarkable actress.” “She was a fabulous actress,” says Ford. “Some of the stuff that she did on Sarah Jane should've won her awards, she was that good. “She was always so professional,” he continues. “In the table read, she would put her all into it - a readthrough can be a funny beast, because sometimes people just see it as something they've got to do, and they don't necessarily act properly all the way through. But when you've got somebody like Lis at the head of the table, leading the cast, which she very much did do, she led the cast, everybody else upped their game.” “And at the wrap parties, she would always come around with a lottery ticket for everybody: ‘Here's a little bit of luck for you’” says Ford. “She was more than thoughtful. She was just absolutely gorgeous.” “She took us all under her wing,” remembers Mohindra. “She was kind and loving. She had the wildest sense of humour and the bravest heart. And she was insistent we all ran slower than her, so we always let her be up ahead! I loved her so much.” View oEmbed on the source website During lockdown last year, Russell T Davies wrote Farewell, Sarah Jane, a special mini-episode that checked in on The Sarah Jane Adventures characters again. It was written, filmed, and edited over the course of a single weekend, with everyone involved participating from home. “I was organising tweetalongs of old episodes and alongside each tweetalong, I was producing new little webcast minisodes which acted as prequels, sequels or codas to the episodes we were revisiting,” explains producer Emily Cook, whose series of Doctor Who community tweetalongs often involved actors and writers from the show. “The [The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End] tweetalong was taking place on the anniversary of Elisabeth Sladen's death, and as Sarah Jane featured in the episodes, we thought it might be nice to do something in memory of her,” continues Cook. “Russell then said he'd write the final Sarah Jane Adventure - the farewell that never happened on screen.” “I was so excited to receive Russell’s email,” remembers Mohindra. “He said he was putting together a little tribute. I read the script and cried. It was perfect. Such a beautiful way of thinking of Lis, and of Sarah Jane, both working magic in the stars. “And then I felt terrified. What if I couldn’t find Rani again?! But my wonderful boyfriend grabbed my phone, stuck it on a tripod, and pressed record. She came back to me straight away and I was so moved by Russell’s magical way with words that there were two realities playing at once, me missing dear Lis and Rani missing dear Sarah- Jane. Pretty special, huh?” “The show has such a special place in my heart, and any opportunity to reprise my role I'd immediately snap up,” says Daniel Anthony. “It was an emotional moment, but I think it was the perfect tribute to our Lis, and I know that she would've been proud.” “The response when it was released was overwhelming. When you're paying tribute to such a beloved character, you don't want to get that wrong. But I think we got it right. The project was made which a deep love and respect for Lis Sladen and Sarah Jane,” says Cook. “We knew we were creating something special so I'm glad it touched people in the way it did. Farewell, Sarah Jane is something fans often talk to me about now. I'm really proud of it.” How do they each feel about their time on the show, looking back on it now? “I wish we could do it all again!” says Anjli Mohindra. “Rani was just so much fun to breathe life into and so not a wallflower. I hadn’t played a lead in anything before, so I had lots to learn, and I felt that the show was my training ground. “That can be quite a strange thing. Knowing that my earliest work, where I was definitely still in the early-discovery stages, is immortalised for people to see. But the angst of that is trumped by the feeling of being so proud to be part of something so boundary-pushing and iconic, and feeling so lucky to have had so much fun.” “[It gave me a lot of] confidence!” says Sinead Michael. “Everyone battles with self-doubt: to have the honour of being cast for such a successful show gave me immense gratitude and self-belief. Also, independence! [I was] twelve years old running around Cardiff without my parents (chaperone in tow, of course)! “It lives with me every day,” she continues. “I love chatting with the fans of the show. It was unbelievable to be part of the Doctor Who Universe, and definitely left me with great stories to share. Always makes me laugh when friends of similar ages figure out I was in The Sarah Jane Adventures as they never put two and two together!” “It is and always will be a part of me,” says Porsha Lawrence-Mavour. “I was fourteen years old, a growing teen that was given an amazing opportunity that I will never forget. I met some nice people, and got a better understanding of how television and film works – which I believe is priceless.” “Clyde is one of the most enjoyable characters I've had the pleasure of playing,” says Daniel Anthony. “To be given the opportunity to flesh a character out over such a long period of time, and to truly make them ours, is something I'll always be grateful for. We all really were the guardians of our characters. “I'll look back on The Sarah Jane Adventures with nothing but fond memories,” he continues. “I had the opportunity to work with such a talented cast and crew, and I truly believe that we created something so special. Something that is still enjoyed to this day.” “As a writer, we seldom get to write for our childhood heroes,” says Phil Ford. “I did that with Sarah Jane. I've been lucky three times, I did Doctor Who and Captain Scarlet as well – but the one that stands out the most is The Sarah Jane Adventures, just because it was such a joy to work with Lis and the rest of the cast. We were like a family back then, and it was just beautiful.” The Sarah Jane Adventures is available to stream on BritBox. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.
Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù speaks out on James Bond rumours: 'It's the pinnacle of action roles'
The Mothering Sunday and Gangs of London star has been rising up the bookies' odds.
With the release of No Time to Die, Daniel Craig has played James Bond for the last time – and now everyone is wondering who his successor as 007 might be. Asked whether he’d be interested in the role, Gangs of London star Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù smiles – it’s clearly not the first time the idea has been put to him. (At time of writing, Dìrísù is currently 16/1 odds to star as the secret agent next.) "That question is going around a lot more recently, because No Time to Die has just come out," he told RadioTimes.com while promoting new film Mothering Sunday. "[It] is an excellent film, I was really fortunate to get to go to the premiere of it, it was such a grand occasion. "I really enjoy the rough and tumble of action sequences, and I try to do all of my own stunts. I think that the role of James Bond – wow – is the pinnacle of those things, you know?" "I think Barbara [Broccoli, series producer] and everybody at EON are constantly striving to keep [Bond] at the forefront of that genre,” he continued. "I have no idea if they'll come to me with that, but I want to continue to put myself in a position and do the work that would make them consider me – but also work that I'm proud of, that engages me and engages audiences. If it was Bond… then we'll see when we get there." Bond isn’t the only character the actor has expressed an interest in – earlier this year, in an interview with Esquire, Dìrísù said he wants to “create what is ostensibly a Black Indiana Jones, and sprinkle in some real lost African history into those films.” Are there any other characters he’d be interested in playing, or genres he’d be interested in working in? "I love discovering new things," he said. "I did The Huntsman: Winter’s War. That was quite fantasy, and I enjoyed the taste of that – I'd love to do more fantasy stuff. I suppose the closest I’ve come to sci-fi would be Humans or Black Mirror – but neither of those were in space! “There are loads of films that I saw growing up that I'd love to taste the world of. I loved Lord of the Rings growing up, that'd be great fun. There's this really excellent anime series that my friend introduced me to called Attack on Titan – that is quite grounded in Earth, but there's a hyperrealistic aspect to it with these like giant humanoid creatures called Titans. “I would love to do sci fi stories, romance stories, fantasy stories, you know, I want to tell all the stories under the sun – stories that make me smile like this are the ones I want to tell. I'm sure there are thousands of them out there. I’m looking forward to finding more!” Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù reveals why Mothering Sunday was an opportunity to "flex a different muscle" Gangs of London's Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù on filming season 2 in a pandemic, season 3 plans Mothering Sunday is out in UK cinemas on 12th November – visit our Movies hub for more news and features, or find something to watch with our TV Guide.
Gangs of London's Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù on filming season 2 in a pandemic, season 3 plans
New episodes of the no-holds-barred thriller starring Dìrísù as an undercover cop are on the horizon.
Production on Gangs of London season two – the follow-up to Sky Atlantic’s biggest ever original drama launch – is currently underway, with the crime drama due to return in 2022. Filming the ambitious second series has proven logistically complicated, however, because of the safety precautions needed to film during the ongoing pandemic. (Earlier this year, production halted on the Sky drama for 10 days after a crew member tested positive for coronavirus.) How has star Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù found it, making the series under such challenging circumstances? "It was fantastic to be back at work," Dìrísù told RadioTimes.com while promoting new film Mothering Sunday. "And also to have the attitude that we were going to overcome this and create something beautiful." "I don't think we would have been able to start the second season of Gangs of London when we were shooting Mothering Sunday," he explained. "There was too much that we needed to do in terms of distancing that we couldn't have a massive [production].” "Gangs of London is so expansive – the other day, we were shooting, and I think we had 60 or 70 supporting artists in the room. It was ventilated, we were wearing masks when we were shooting, we're still adhering to the guidelines as much as possible, but that would not have run this time last year. "It's good that there's been a relaxation of the rules, whilst still being as safe as possible, to allow us to continue to make those large-scale productions – but we wouldn't have been able to shoot Gangs of London had we not had projects like Mothering Sunday last year to show that it was possible, step by step." Gangs of London co-creator, writer/director Gareth Evans, explained to RadioTimes.com last year that “it took us three years to get [season one] designed and done and out”, noting that the “weird, unprecedented times at the moment” would likely impact production on season two. Nonetheless, the first season of the drama starring Dìrísù as undercover cop Elliot Finch was a hit, and the second is already much anticipated – does he think there’s scope for Gangs of London to continue for a third year or more? "I’m not in the room to think that far ahead unfortunately!” he laughs. “I really hope it will be a series that is really popular and successful and that everyone can connect with. Hopefully, with that success and popularity, there is a demand for more. "But take it a step at a time. Let's finish the season, see how people respond to it and wait for the green light for third – if there will be one?" he teased, a knowing smile on his face. For the moment though, whether there’s a third season or not, it’s clear enough that Dìrísù is hugely enjoying the whole Gangs of London experience. "I grew up watching action films with my dad and sharing that with him," he remembers. "I think young boys and teenage boys enjoy that rough and tumble, so Gangs of London is a dream come true. Being paid to do something like that is joyful." Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù reveals why Mothering Sunday was an opportunity to "flex a different muscle" Mothering Sunday is out in UK cinemas on 12th November – visit our Movies hub for more news and features, or find something to watch with our TV Guide.
Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù reveals why Mothering Sunday was an opportunity to "flex a different muscle"
Playing Donald in Eva Husson's drama was Gangs of London star Dìrísù's first post-pandemic role.
"Mothering Sunday was an opportunity to flex a different muscle and explore a different part of my craft," says Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, explaining what drew him to his latest film, a 1920s-set period romance co-starring Odessa Young and Josh O’Connor. "It requires a different sort of discipline or a different sensibility: I think lots of things are like muscles where if you don't use them, you'll lose them." "I think it's interesting to see how far we've come from times, and also how far we haven't come as well,” continues Dìrísù, talking about why he enjoys period drama. "Part of the magic of performance is being transported, and you get that a bit more viscerally when you're doing a period drama than when you’re doing a modern-day piece." Key to this is Dìrísù’s interest in "the lived experience, and either documenting that or interrogating it." "A big one that I can't escape is race, and race relations, racial politics. Donald [Dìrísù’s Mothering Sunday character], in the time 1920s-1940s, had a very specific experience and interrogating how he had to navigate that compared to how I navigate it today is creatively interesting." Mothering Sunday is set in March 1924 and charts maid Jane Fairchild (Young)'s secret relationship with Paul (O'Connor), while Dìrísù plays Donald, a man who plays a significant role in Jane's later life. The film was Dìrísù’s first post-pandemic role, coming at a point when the creative industries were still adjusting to COVID-19, and when he wasn’t sure if there would be any roles available. "When the pandemic hit, I was very conscious that I may not work for the rest of the calendar year," he remembers. "In late May/June time, some auditions started coming. Normally I would be in London and [audition] there. "But because that wasn't an option, I was [recording self-tapes] in my childhood bedroom, basically, with my sister. But it was a wonderful thing to do with her, it really brought us closer together. I think actually that would be one of my fondest memories of this job." "I was really concerned that we would get to the set and it would be a really sterile environment," he continues. "But that wasn't the case. I think it's a testament to the UK film industry, the adaptability that we had to the global pandemic. "There was an attitude [that] we want to get back to normal as fast as possible. We want to continue doing our jobs and telling these stories. I was worried that had been taken away from all of us for longer than it had been." View oEmbed on the source website It’s clear that Dìrísù enjoyed making Mothering Sunday, with the actor full of warm words for his collaborators on the film. "We want to work with people who inspire us, we want to work on stories that we're really excited to tell," explains Dìrísù. "Working with Odessa [Young] was a dream – I think we support each other and push each other in equal measure." "It was very easy to do work that I'm proud of with her," he continues. "I'm grateful to her for that and grateful to Eva [Husson, Mothering Sunday’s director] for putting us together." Mothering Sunday is out in UK cinemas on 12th November – visit our Movies hub for more news and features, or find something to watch with our TV Guide.
How we made Class: team behind Doctor Who spin-off reflect on cancellation and series 2 plans
The cast and crew of Class on making a Doctor Who spin-off, their untimely cancellation, and series two plans for a Weeping Angel civil war.
“I loved every minute of it,” says Patrick Ness of his Doctor Who spin-off Class. “I’d be doing it now if they’d let me.” Following a group of students at Coal Hill school, Class was Doctor Who’s third spin-off since its 2005 revival. With a celebrated young adult author at the helm, Class was a series in the same vein as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, always bursting with ideas and deeply invested in its characters. After the success of The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood, Class seemed set to reach similar heights – until it didn’t. Five years since the show was first released on October 22nd 2016, creator Patrick Ness, director Ed Bazalgette, and stars Greg Austin, Sophie Hopkins, and Jordan Renzo look back on Class – reflecting on its complicated relationship with Doctor Who, their experiences making the show, its untimely cancellation, and the series two episodes we never saw. Class began life when Patrick Ness was asked to write for Doctor Who. “It was a bit unexpected,” he remembers. “[The BBC] approached me to see if I’d be interested in writing episodes of Doctor Who, but I declined, feeling like I really wanted to work on my own creations at that point. To my surprise, they said, ‘Well, we’ve got this other idea…’” “They had been inspired by The Caretaker, where the Doctor was undercover at Coal Hill. Their first idea was to have another caretaker-type character,” Ness continues. “I remember they’d mentioned Frank Skinner as a possible idea – but I said, with the greatest respect to Frank Skinner, if you do that in a show for teens, what you’ve got is a bunch of teens waiting around for an adult to take action.” “I argued that you’d have to get it away from what Sarah Jane Adventures did so beautifully and make it for older teens, who are all about having their own agency and making their own choices. In other words, they’re the centre of the show, not the authority character.” “They liked that idea, and my pitch for the show came together really fast” says Ness. “It’s how I knew it was working, ideas came fast and furious. Which they don’t always.” Ed Bazalgette – who had recently directed Doctor Who series nine episodes The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived – soon joined the series as lead director. “On [Doctor Who] I was working with [Class producer] Derek Ritchie. We had a good rapport and I really enjoyed working with Derek: he has great instincts, insightful and supportive,” explains Bazalgette. “Later in the year there was a call from [executive producer] Brian Minchin and we started talking Class. Over Christmas I read the first script and also A Monster Calls and More Than This to get more of a sense of Patrick’s writing.” Bazalgette directed the first three episodes of Class – For Tonight We Might Die, The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo, and Nightvisiting – and was heavily involved in the initial stages of production. “As lead director you come in and become an integral part of setting up the series,” he explains. “Tone, style, locations, feeding back on scripts, casting – you’re immersed in the process.” “Casting is always such an important process,” continues Bazalgette. “First and foremost, you’re deciding who will play your characters but there’s so much more to it. You’re hearing scenes out loud often for the first time, you’re getting all these nuances in the way scenes are performed, and it’s exciting seeing the script start coming off the page. Then there’s the chemistry between the characters to be considered. Sophie, Vivian, Greg and Fady all really shone out and worked well together.” “I was sent initially one scene to audition with,” explains Sophie Hopkins, who played April O’Neill, an ordinary student thrown into an extraordinary world. “There had been a lot of hush-hush around the project so at that time they weren’t giving much away!” “The scene they sent me was from the first episode, where April wants to ask Charlie to the prom and is too shy to ask directly,” she continues. “Both characters are so sweet and unaware, and simultaneously manage to be encouraging and caring for each other without having a clue what’s going on! I fell in love with the two of them immediately.” “What drew me to the script initially was the wonderful relationship between Quill and Charlie,” says Jordan Renzo, who played Matteusz Andrzejewski, very much the moral centre of the group. “I auditioned three times. First for Matteusz, then Charlie, and then finally in the room with everyone for Matteusz again.” “I remember thinking ‘if this is the last time you speak these lines, go in and enjoy yourself’,” he continues. “It passed in a blur and next thing I know my agent called me with the offer.” “I was out in Los Angeles for pilot season when the final recall for Class came through,” remembers Greg Austin, who played alien prince in exile Charlie Smith, “so I had to make a wager (at a time when I had very little money to play with) and buy an expensive, last-minute flight back to London.” “I almost didn’t go, but ultimately took the risk because of how interesting the role was,” he continues. “The allure of working with Patrick Ness and forever holding a place within the Whoniverse was enough for me to gamble on the flight, and boy, did it pay off.” How did they each feel, stepping into a Doctor Who spin-off? “It was just a tremendous privilege,” says Renzo. “Of course, there is pressure there, but also pride. It all seemed so overwhelming at first that I didn’t have a chance for any expectations, just excitement.” “I was really excited to be part of a Doctor Who show,” agrees Hopkins. “I’d watched it for years and always had fond memories of watching the show with family and friends – we love a Christmas special! However [it was] only when we started filming and groups of supportive Whovians started showing up outside the studio did I realise the enormity of it all!” “I’d seen every bit of the post-2005 Doctor Who,” says Ness. “I was a huge fan, and a slightly different fan in that – being raised in America – I had no childhood connection with the original series, I came to that part later. I got to see it without memories or nostalgia fighting with the reboot (as all Americans do when we watch Star Trek).” “I always said that with Doctor Who, you’re not actually engaging with the older series,” he continues “you’re engaging with people’s memories of the older series, which is a different thing, a more challenging thing. But it’s also what makes it such a great creative puzzle. And the reboot is so rich and deep and full of challenges and contradictions, it’s an enormously rewarding place to set stories with real moral questions and grey areas. I loved it.” “Everything revolved around Doctor Who,” says Austin. “The show’s legacy was looming over us the entire time. We literally had Peter Capaldi filming season 10 next door to us, not to mention getting to work with him briefly in episode one. It honestly felt quite imposing having the show’s magnitude following us everywhere. It was both a blessing, and a curse.” Of course, Class was influenced by much more than just Doctor Who, as Bazalgette explains. “We viewed constantly through prep and built up a set of references. Some of the ones that stand out are Donnie Darko, The Thing, Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, Super 8, and contemporary horror movies such as The Babadook [and] It Follows. “While [Class] came from the Doctor Who world, we all wanted it to have its own identity. I worked closely with the late and very wonderful designer Michael Pickwoad to establish that look. Michael had such a huge design influence on Doctor Who while he was on the show and it was such a pleasure working with him on Class.” “The key for us was that although set in London and shot in Cardiff, we didn’t want to tie it down to one specific geographical location,” continues Bazalgette. “The exterior school was glass, steel, very modern, could be found in any number of cities [while] the interior school was influenced by that US High School look from innumerable movies and TV shows.” Given some of those influences, it’s notable perhaps that Class was more popular in America. “I’ve always wondered if that’s because most American shows set in schools are about finding yourself and having relationships and figuring out who you’re going to turn into,” says Ness, “whereas most British shows set in schools are basically about, ‘Isn’t school s***?’” “The British remember their school days with horror and misery, which I get,” he continues. “But maybe we forget it’s also the place where you make the most important first friendships and decisions and choices in your life. It’s why it’s such a compelling place.” For the younger cast, Class represented a big step up in terms of their career – and, appropriately, something of a learning experience too. “It was totally new to me to work with the SFX and green screen,” says Hopkins, “which wasn’t without its challenges. I remember trying to pull myself together and remain looking horribly frightened of a fearsome monster [that was actually] a tennis ball on a stick, or alternatively a person in an ill-fitting, skintight in the wrong places Kermit-the-Frog-greenscreen suit… actually, the latter does sound pretty terrifying, doesn’t it?” “Detained was a unique filming experience that I haven’t encountered before or since,” remembers Austin. “It was a bottle episode, and took place entirely in one location. We were in that blacked-out classroom for almost three weeks, doing high intensity, emotionally charged stuff; screaming, crying, fearing for our lives – you know how it goes. It was in that experience that I finally arrived at the realisation that I can do this. I can be an actor. It was a pretty big shift for me.” “Our relationships were so important,” says Hopkins. “I think it shows on screen how much we all loved each other! They’re a great group of people, we balance each other out in the right ways and at the time we were all a really tight-knit group. Totally inseparable and it was a very happy set.” “Most of my [scenes were] with Fady, who was a delight to spend time with. Honestly, he looks upon the world and each person he meets with a kindness, humour and excitement that’s so very endearing.” “Being the oldest of the five of us, I think I was the serious one in the group,” she continues. “If I were to go back in time, I’d have let go a bit more and stopped caring so much about what people thought. But then, maybe I’d taken a little bit of April home with me!" “Through Class I gained some friends for life,” says Renzo. “We were a wonderfully tight-knit group. Every night after shooting we would grab dinner, shoot the breeze. I have nothing but love and respect for everyone who worked on Class.” “I’ve never had the kind of relationships on set as I had with Class,” says Austin. “For us ‘kids’ it was our first time having the weight of a show entirely on us, and we very much looked up to Katherine Kelly as an experienced and respected actor. Having worked with her before on Mr. Selfridge, it was a real moment of growth getting to reframe our relationship on a new set, and I’m genuinely so grateful for all her guidance and insight, she’s truly wonderful.” After months of production, it was time for Class to begin – launching with a special premiere event in Cardiff. “It was a joy getting to present all our hard work and have it so readily appreciated by everyone at the premiere,” remembers Austin. “It was a moment of real hope, excitement and payoff.” Class concluded its BBC Three run with The Lost, which saw a final confrontation between the Coal Hill students and the Shadowkin – and featured the cliffhanger appearance of a Weeping Angel. After that, the series remained in limbo: its BBC One airing scheduled the following January and given a Monday night graveyard slot, its BBC America airing held to coincide with Doctor Who series 10 in April. Though the series was critically acclaimed, news of a return never arrived. When did they first start to realise that Class hadn’t taken off as they might’ve hoped? View oEmbed on the source website “There were alarm bells ringing for me fairly early on,” says Hopkins. “I remember being in Toronto and there being big Class billboards and Class bus stops, regular ads on TV for the show as well, but there was none of that here that I saw.” “We were certain a season two was inevitable,” admits Austin. “When it didn’t happen, I was honestly devastated. I can’t remember exactly when it became apparent, but we were all a bit blindsided. We all dearly loved the show, and would have given anything to have it continue.” “Obviously it was disappointing we didn’t get a second series,” says Renzo. “It felt like we just started to find our feet as a show and firing on all cylinders, but such is life.” In June 2017, Patrick Ness tweeted to announce his own departure from the show, noting they’d need to be filming already to return before 2019. Did he know at that point that a second series wouldn’t happen? “Oh, it was obvious [before the American broadcast],” says Ness. “Plus, you just can’t wait that long with a young cast who are supposed to look like high school students. I mean, Greg Austin is now playing a Nazi assassin on Hunters, so it’s not like he was going to be plausibly 17 for much longer.” News finally came in September 2017. Speaking at a press event, BBC Three Controller Damien Kavanagh said “[Class] just didn't really land for us,” confirming the series wouldn’t return. “I do wish it was handled with more grace,” Hopkins says. “It’s a shame there was no official announcement or that the cast and Patrick weren’t told about the cancellation prior. It turned out the ‘announcement of cancellation’ was just a passing comment from someone at the BBC at some Q&A event: we then all found out via Twitter. It wasn’t my favourite.” View oEmbed on the source website Hopkins, Ness, and Austin each highlight BBC Three’s move online (a choice since overturned, with the channel set to return to linear television in January 2022) as what ultimately doomed the show. “I think a lot of people thought BBC Three had disappeared altogether,” says Hopkins. “By the time it aired on terrestrial TV, the episodes were shown as a double bill really late in the evening, therefore missing our target young adult audience completely. It was really weird.” “I think the BBC expected and relied on the magnitude of the parent show to carry the promotion of Class,” adds Austin as well, noting that the BBC “didn’t really understand” how to package Class or BBC Three itself. “It was frustrating, but hey, that’s business.” “I can see what they tried to do: use Class to help launch what turned out to be an ill-fated and abortive decision to put BBC Three entirely streaming on iPlayer,” says Ness. “They did some amazing things, but iPlayer isn’t maybe your sexiest destination for a teenager looking for a show to call their own.” “Still,” he says, “I can’t blame them for trying. Everyone’s a genius in hindsight.” What might a second series have looked like, had things unfolded differently? “The theme of series two was going to be ‘deals with the devil’. What does it cost you to save what you love if you have to do something extremely compromising to your morals?” explains Ness. “I was really looking forward to that. I had a storyline where current day Charlie met a future Charlie who’d essentially lost his soul to save Matteusz. Could that timeline be changed? Would you do it all over again if you saw the cost?” In the final episode, April seemingly died, before waking up in the body of a Shadowkin. The solution to that cliffhanger tied into the same themes, explains Hopkins. “April [would] get her body back but at a price. A deal is made with The Governors who step in to switch my body back.” A second series would’ve introduced new writers too, says Ness, revealing he asked authors Juno Dawson (Meat Market), Derek Landy (Skulduggery Pleasant), and Kim Curran (Slay) to contribute episodes. “I ended up pitching ten [ideas],” remembers Kim Curran. “Of those ten, we were all most excited by one called Time Capsule. It would have seen the whole gang blasted back in time to the 90s by the Weeping Angels, their only hope of getting [home] a time capsule they knew would be dug up at Coal Hill 30 years later. It was going to be, in the immortal words of the Doctor, timey-wimey.” “My episode was going to revolve around fame, the Internet, and the backlash that’s sure to follow,” explains Landy. “In a way, it was about so-called ‘fan entitlement’ — that curious sense of ownership some people develop with regards to entertainment they love. I had a vague plan on how best to execute the idea, but never got the chance to nail anything down.” “Patrick and I first talked, as we often do, over burgers in London,” writes Juno Dawson. “He was keen to get YA writers into the show. TV is really hard to break into and he wanted to knock down some walls for us. My episode was centred on Vivian's character [Tanya] and had a Ferris Bueller vibe in that it saw her taking a day out of her life to try being someone else. We'd talked about her being pansexual or bi too.” When Ness announced his departure, he offered a few details about his future plans – teasing a visit to the Weeping Angel home planet, and the suggestion of a Weeping Angel civil war brewing. Can he elaborate on that now? “What I love about the Weeping Angels is what I love about certain kinds of sci-fi: they’re aliens who are really alien, as in not at all like us, not even sharing the same frames of reference,” explains Ness. “I mean, I played with the idea a little bit in the first season with the flower petal invasion: what if aliens were something we couldn’t even argue with, what if they and their motives were entirely inexplicable?” “I’d envisioned the civil war and the planet like that,” Ness continues. “Something only comprehensible in a small way, with so much of it remaining a mystery, reminding us that there are paths we’re just never going to understand.” Unfortunately, none of that was to be. While it enjoyed a brief revival at Big Finish (“Feels like my characters get more chances to breathe and live. What a great thing,” says Ness), Class on television exists as eight episodes only. How do they each feel about it now? “I’m really proud of the show,” says Bazalgette. “It was a great one off, the characters were great, the look and feel continued to grow throughout the series and it was a joy to work with such a talented cast and crew. It’s so good to see how all the cast have continued to develop and work on so many great shows.” “I’m really proud of this show in general. It stands as a unique little island of an experiment, and I think it stands firm on its own two feet, outside of the magnitude of Doctor Who,” says Austin. “If I had to pick something specific though, I’m really proud of our handling of homosexuality on screen,” he continues. “Getting to explore that with Charlie in a grounded and truthful way, in amongst all the other craziness happening on screen, was awesome.” “[Matteusz] made me a better person without a doubt,” declares Renzo. “Matteusz had this valour and honesty to him that was so refreshing – he never made a selfish or thoughtless decision.” “[I’m most proud of] Matteusz and Charlie’s relationship. We spent many hours discussing it to make it as truthful as possible in the midst of all hell breaking loose every episode.” “I’m very proud of the relationship of Charlie and Matteusz, its matter-of-factness, its sincerity, its hotness,” agrees Ness. “I’m proud of putting a Sikh teenager on British sci-fi TV, too! There’s a whole online community of Sikhs who watch out for Sikh representation, and they were just brilliant." "In my opinion, Patrick Ness’s scripts and ambition for the show was ahead of its time and bursting with young, diverse talent,” said Katherine Kelly via email, reflecting on her time as alien revolutionary/teacher Miss Quill. “I continue to be extremely proud to have been a part of it and saddened that it was never given the chance to fulfil its obvious potential.” “I proved to myself this is what I want to do,” says Hopkins. “Nothing makes me happier than being on set and working – being there was so very rewarding, and I adored every member of cast and crew. They made that experience really special, and I’ll always hold our time filming the show close to my heart.” “Mainly I’m proud of my actors, who are great, talented people,” continues Ness. “They did such a great job. I mean, who wouldn’t want to write for [them] forever? I’d do it.” All eight episodes of Class are streaming on BBC iPlayer, while Doctor Who returns on 31st October. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.
How we made Robin Hood: the cast and crew of the BBC series look back 15 years later
The cast and crew of Robin Hood on getting the BBC onboard, filming in Hungary, and living up to the legend.
“It's what you dream of as a kid,” says Jonas Armstrong of Robin Hood, “practicing how to fire bow and arrows, riding horses, doing stunts. Getting to play Robin Hood and the band of outlaws!” Today – 5th October, 2021 – marks 15 years since the premiere of Robin Hood. The series, which aired on BBC One from 2006 to 2009, reinvented the legend of Robin Hood for a whole new era: it presented a much younger, more dynamic version than audiences had seen before. Lead actors Jonas Armstrong (Robin Hood), Lucy Griffiths (Marian) and Keith Allen (the Sheriff of Nottingham), as well as executive producers and co-creators Foz Allan and Dominic Minghella, look back on the series – explaining how they found their own distinct take on the myth, what it was like to film the show in Hungary, and more. The series began life when Doctor Who first went into production. “I said to Greg Brenman, then Head of Drama at [production company] Tiger Aspect, if Doctor Who works they're going to want more of these family dramas,” remembers Foz Allan. “Foz had been into the BBC and said – there was big excitement around Doctor Who on Saturday night – there should be room in the schedule for another show like it as well. They weren't hugely interested!” says Dominic Minghella. “But then Peter Fincham joined as controller of BBC One. He had young kids at the time, as did Foz and I, and arrived asking why isn't there a Robin Hood on Saturday nights? That was where all the creative energy was focused, Saturday night,” continues Minghella. “They said to him ‘oh we’ve been talking about that actually’, and quickly called Foz.” “I was in the middle of Doc Martin when Foz asked if I could do Robin Hood. It sounded like a great opportunity: it came at a time in my career where I realised I wanted to be a producer as well as a writer,” says Minghella, explaining what drew him to the show. “I didn’t have a burning ambition to retell the tale of Robin Hood, but Foz was somebody who was secure enough in his own production role to be willing to share it.” “Dom was a very experienced writer, I was a very experienced producer, it felt like exactly the right meeting of minds to tell a well-known story in an exciting way,” says Allan. “When it was go, it was really go really quick,” says Minghella. “I'd written one script, as a ‘here's how I would do Robin Hood’. Everybody loved that, it was greenlit, and suddenly we were producing 13 episodes on a tight budget. It's stressful, but the kind of stress you want.” At this point, the casting process started – though not without some initial back-and-forth. “Often we were putting people forward who were over 30 and the BBC came back saying ‘it's a show for young people, a lads and dads show, we want fresh young faces’. The average audience of BBC One was about 75 – ‘we need to bring it down to 69, can you please put some young people in your show?’” Minghella jokes. “I did a first audition with Dominic, Foz, and Michelle Guish. I liked the scenes, I felt they could suit me,” remembers Lucy Griffiths, who played Marian in the first two series of Robin Hood. “That was the first of four auditions I did over two or three months. It was the longest audition process I've ever had! I think there was some concern about my age, because I was only 19, but in the end, they trusted me.” “It was a good opportunity to find great people who were new, though. That cast was brilliant,” says Minghella. “Sam Troughton, my hero. Jonas, obviously, a proper cheeky chappy. Lovely Lucy, such poise for a 19-year-old. Will Beck, who's the star of Casualty now. Harry Lloyd, Gordon Kennedy, Joe Armstrong, who is a class act, we had a fantastic cast.” “I think Richard Armitage lied and said he was under 30, or maybe we lied, because I desperately wanted him. We had a little bit of a fight [with the BBC], and I'm really happy to have won that battle,” says Minghella, before doing an impression of Armitage in the first episode. “I've looked after your land, Locksley. Who do you think you are, Lord of the Dance?” “My agent phoned to say you’ve been offered the part of the Sheriff,” recalls Keith Allen. “No audition, no interview, nothing: you fly out to Budapest in four days. Obviously, the person who had been cast pulled out at the last moment and nobody else was available…” “I didn’t have time to do any research, there wasn’t time to worry about past comparisons – it literally was off the plane, onto a horse, be entertaining." “Everyone was hearing about Robin Hood,” says Jonas Armstrong. “I was keen to get a meeting, maybe for Will Scarlet or Alan-a-Dale. I was 25! When my agent called to say ‘Jonas, you've got an audition for Robin Hood’, I thought okay cracking, who's it for? My agent said "Robin Hood" – I laughed and said 'no, who's it for?'. “Because I didn't think I had a hope in it, I didn't feel nervous. I wasn't intimidated. I just went for it – and the next day, I flew off to India for six weeks to do [2006 series] Losing Gemma for ITV,” Armstrong added. “The BBC wanted to fly me back for screen tests, but ITV, understandably, wouldn't allow me to mess around with their schedule. So that was my only audition – I was very fortunate I had such a good agent backing me, but the fact it was just the one is crazy when you think about it.” “[When I first auditioned], I was working in a hotel as a waitress,” says Griffiths. “After series one, I was invited back to that hotel to be part of an evening celebrating current BBC shows while different companies come down and try to sell their new shows for next year.” “I recognised the convention,” she continues, “and it turned out that I had been working at the hotel the year before when Dominic and Foz had been pitching the show with Tiger Aspect to the BBC. It was the same convention! That was a nice little full circle moment.” Of course, the Robin Hood tradition dates back to the 1400s – the myth has been defined and redefined for hundreds of years, from the early ballads to Errol Flynn. How did this team make their version distinct? “I'd always wanted to do Robin Hood,” Foz Allan says. “The great thing about legends full stop is that they are completely adaptable to their time. That's why they remain legends: you bring them back and back because they say something for you.” “Errol Flynn's Robin Hood represents the triumph of the individual over the Nazi horde,” Allan suggests. “An aging Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, tired and stuck in the woods asking what they're doing – that's America coming out of Vietnam. The 1980s one of my youth [ITV's Robin of Sherwood] was devoutly and dedicatedly spiritual in the middle of Thatcherism, which was overtly profoundly materialistic. Today, you might do a kind of Brexit-fractured England – or you might do some plague stories.” “I don't think we had much of a conversation about any of the other ones, though," says Allan. “We were very aware that a youth world was arriving, it was properly the end of the old world. We got into the sense of the team – when you're young, your friendship group is the most important thing in your life.” “Our ambition was to move away from men in tights, the slightly silly in a costume [Robin]. Not that we took ourselves too seriously: we wanted it to be more energised, more dynamic, but I always saw it as a comedy,” says Minghella. “I'm not sure other people necessarily did – people wanted it to be a little bit more serious, a little bit more earnest than I ever did – but I think when you've got Keith Allen as your Sheriff of Nottingham, obviously it's a comedy!” “I thought he should be cruel and occasionally funny,” agrees Allen. “I think what I’m most pleased about regarding Robin Hood is being remembered as a baddy who could make you laugh.” “I never felt that we needed our political philosophy of taking from the rich to give to the poor,” continues Minghella. “I think if you were doing it now, you might have a really different attitude to the social story that is quintessentially Robin Hood. But I just wanted to have fun.” Even as they forged their own path, though, Armstrong found the legend difficult to live up to at first. “I had a picture in my head of what Robin Hood looked like: six foot two, muscular, all these images came to my head,” explains Armstrong. “I felt a bit underconfident, because people have an idea of what Robin Hood should look like, or I had anyway. I think I was very self-conscious about that.” “At the table read, in the Sheriff's Great Hall – with all the executives from the BBC and BBC Worldwide, there were over 100 people – I convinced myself I was gonna get replaced. I was that nervous! But once the cameras started rolling, and I was surrounded by my fellow cast members, and especially the stunt team as well, I felt safe. “After the first episode some critics were quite cruel, saying physically, I didn't look like how Robin Hood ‘should’ look like. But that's their opinion, so excuse my language but f**k them,” says Armstrong, explaining how “in the break between series, I worked with a trainer and put on about a stone and a half of muscle. I came back looking physically different, and I felt more at ease with myself.” Though Robin Hood is famous for living in Sherwood Forest, the series didn’t shoot there. “I did a tour of Europe – Bucharest, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Ireland and England – looking for the right [location],” explains Foz Allan. “We knew that it'd be a big show – horses, fights, CGI, castles – so you’re looking for some studio space and some interesting woodlands. We built most of the houses and the castle interior. Frankly, it was cheaper to do it in Hungary.” When the cast arrived in Hungary, production began with a rigorous training process to teach them how to be an outlaw. “It was very intense,” says Armstrong, “because we had to learn new skills – even though I'd had training at drama school with fighting and swordplay, this was different. It was unarmed combat, using a bow and arrow, different types of swords, horse riding, different stunts.” “We had more flexibility with the stunt team than I think you would necessarily get in England,” says Griffiths. “Rules and regulations are there for a reason, but they are often a bit stifling as well.” “The stunt team put us through our paces – in Hungary they don't mess about,” agrees Armstrong. “There was no ‘oh we have to protect our actors’, they just said, look, this is what you have to do. We're gonna make you do it. They were brilliant.” “I never went to the Hood Camp,” says Allen, “as nearly all my scenes were shot in the castle – or occasionally on location overseeing the ransacking of villages.” “It's a big deal to take people away for that length of time, but still keep the enthusiasm up,” says Minghella. “It's quite hard to be away from home, particularly for young people. You'll know about the theft of our rushes that extended our stay, which was highly stressful.” In August 2006, it was reported that four tapes of footage from the series had been stolen from the studio in Hungary – throwing schedules into disarray, risking missed production deadlines. (It was rumoured, though never confirmed, that a ransom had been issued for their return.) Ultimately, local police recovered the tapes by early September. “The tapes were stolen. The tapes were returned. I think one guy went to prison for it,” says Foz Allan, still speaking carefully about what happened. “The tapes were buried in black plastic bags covered in cinnamon – the bad guys apparently believed that dogs couldn't smell tape if cinnamon disguised the scent.” “It wasn't a publicity stunt, which was reported a lot of the time,” continues Allan. “It was very emotionally harrowing. Because we were the first High Definition show filmed outside of the UK for British television, we only had one High Definition machine – when the tapes disappeared, we hadn't copied and duplicated as you normally would.” “We were looking at getting everybody to reshoot significant amounts of what they'd done. It would’ve been difficult, and we wouldn't have been able to deliver the show [in time]. It was a hit before it arrived, in the sense that BBC Worldwide had already sold it to quite a lot of territories – so not being able to meet those deadlines would have been emotionally distressing.” Nonetheless, Armstrong remembers the production fondly. “There weren't any fallouts between the cast, which is rare over a three-year period, filming that intensely. The friendships that were forged – without sounding cliché – became like a family. Because you are family, when you're away from home over seven months at a time.” At the end of the second series, Guy of Gisbourne kills Marian – was it Lucy Griffiths’ decision to leave the show? “It was an idea the writers had, and we spoke about together – they always wanted to be quite bold with the choices that they made, and it was a bold thing to kill your heroine!” says Griffiths of her departure. “Killing Marian was breaking that ‘they want to be together, but they can't be together’ love jam,” explains Minghella, who wrote the series two finale. “For me, the triangle of Gisbourne, Marian and Robin was what I loved about the show, but I found myself writing its logical conclusion.” “One of the reasons I knew the show was a big success – I think it sold to 140 or 150 territories, it did extraordinarily well worldwide – was I'd get emails out of the blue. ‘Dear Mr. Allen, why’d you kill Marian? Love, watcher from Chile’ – which is very satisfying!” says Foz Allen, laughing. “I felt like – especially in the second series – I had given my all, and I had done what I went there to do, if that makes sense,” Griffiths says. “I felt ready and happy to leave. It wasn't that I didn't want to be there! It's just that I was happy and ready to do something else.” Having killed Marian, Dominic Minghella began to consider leaving as well. “I was really proud of the end of season two – but I felt as though I'd done everything I could with the show.” “I read once there had been some big fallout, but in fact Foz and I remain best mates, always trying to work together,” says Minghella. “I just didn't know how to come out of the gates in season three with something new and exciting. If you can't be brilliant, let someone else have a go at being brilliant, basically.” Is there a danger a show like Robin Hood might start to feel repetitive? “If you look at something like CSI, for instance, the story each week is different, but the structure is the same,” suggests Foz Allan. “The reward for the audience is about character – if you're enjoying Gisbourne and Robin’s banter, you look forward to that, and if you don't get that there is a little bit of disappointment there.” “You have to find a way to reward the right bit of the audience expectation,” he continues. “You look at something like Doc Martin, Silent Witness, or Doctor Who, people enjoy them for their familiarity. Always looking for episode 39 to be fresh is a mistake – looking for episode 39 to be enjoyable and emotionally rich is where we should be.” Going into series three, Robin Hood introduced a number of new characters – new outlaws Tuck (David Harewood), Kate (Joanne Froggatt), and Archer (Clive Standen), as well as new villain Isabella (Lara Pulver) – as part of an effort to reinvent the show for its third year. There were even conversations about a potential fourth series, meaning its stars had to decide how much longer he wanted to stay in the part. “This was halfway through the third series, because obviously the writers would have to come to a finale,” remembers Armstrong. “I had long conversations with my agent: after three years, when Will Scarlett had gone, Djaq had gone, Marian had gone, and we knew that Keith and Richard were leaving, where’s it going to go? "I'm sure that the writers would have managed to carry it on. But I just felt it was the right time for me to leave.” “Sally [Wainwright, writer of Happy Valley and Gentleman Jack] was brought in to have a look at setting up a fourth series,” reveals Foz Allan. “If you change your Robin, you have to have a pretty radical solution to that, and that's what Sally was working on.” Several of the new characters introduced that year were considered potential leads for a fourth series. Ultimately, the BBC decided not to renew Robin Hood for a fourth series. Armstrong’s Robin Hood died in an emotional finale, protecting the people of Nottingham from Sheriff Vaisey one last time – seeing a final vision of Marian as he drew his last breath. How do they all feel about it now, looking back? “I'm immensely proud of it now,” says Minghella. “It's never a good idea to look online and see what people are saying about where you've been, but I stumbled across several groups who follow Robin Hood and for a good chunk of people it's still alive.” “As Foz and I used to say, it's for this generation, we want them to remember it and love it and own it as theirs,” he continues. “The love we put into it seems to be appreciated, which – having given years of your life to something, not seeing your family and your kids because you really wanted to create something that resonated – is just really, really gratifying.” “The fact that we're having this conversation 15 years on is very rewarding: television is and should be a disposable medium,” agrees Allan. “Getting something that’s remembered 15 years later is pretty good. [I’m also] proud of putting together a production model in Hungary – nowadays it's quite regular to go abroad and shoot big shows, but then it was very much early days.” “I love Budapest, it's beautiful,” says Griffiths. “Because I'm not really a traveller, I would probably never have left Brighton – I'm very lucky that I was forced to! I was quite privileged to have that experience, to have learned [what I did] in a way that that I know not everyone else has.” “[I’m pleased that] a lot of adults have fond memories of the show” says Keith Allen. “It was great family viewing. It was, for a lot of people, a shared experience with family, and that can be very comforting.” “I'm proud that our stories are part of the legend of Robin Hood, and that we got to live that for three years," says Armstrong. "And we did live it! And it was a beautiful thing." Robin Hood is available to watch on BritBox. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our TV Guide or visit our dedicated Drama hub for the latest news.
Primeval's cast and crew on unanswered cliffhangers, Doctor Who rivalry and dinosaur co-stars
As the ITV sci-fi series comes to BritBox, we delve deep into the behind-the-scenes ups and downs of Primeval with the cast and creatives.
“I've always been obsessed by dinosaurs and monsters, all that kind of stuff, since I was a boy,” says Douglas Henshall, explaining what drew him to a certain ITV drama, the first two series of which are available on BritBox today. “Primeval was kind of a hang-over from childhood, a way of vicariously satisfying the old childhood memories.” It was also a series that almost always seemed on the brink of extinction. Following a team of scientists investigating the appearance of temporal "anomalies" which delivers both prehistoric creatures and future predators to the present, Primeval began life at the BBC, under a very different title. “I'd made a [documentary-style series] called Walking with Dinosaurs for the BBC back in 2000,” recalls co-creator Tim Haines, previously a science journalist with a background in zoology, “and it struck me that all that technology [could be] used for a drama. Because the BBC wanted a recognisable piece of IP, we made Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World first. I then came up with the idea of Cutter's Bestiary, and developed a script with another writer, which didn't go anywhere.” It's at this point that Adrian Hodges – who had recently won a BAFTA for Charles II: The Power and Passion – came on board. “One day I went into [BBC Head of Drama] Laura Mackie’s office, and she asked me what I wanted to do next. She suggested Bleak House – I’d already done David Copperfield, so I said no, I don't want to do another Dickens, thank you. I want to do something that's fun, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'd just watched all of Buffy, I thought it was a brilliant show. I wanted to do something with the same vibe, the same feel to it.” “She then suggested something called Cutter's Bestiary - a terrible title, but that's what it was at the time,” continues Hodges. “I spoke to Tim, and he said, ‘I want to do dinosaurs in the modern day’, which is brilliant. I'd also just been to the Natural History Museum and I'd thought, why on earth isn't anybody doing dinosaurs?” Several scripts were written for the BBC, as Primeval went through various different iterations (“first it was made into a 90-minute drama, and then they asked whether we could make it post nine o'clock” says Haines) before eventually finding a home at ITV. “When we started, there was no Doctor Who, and we thought it was time for something like Doctor Who. But then Russell T Davies started Doctor Who, and we were deemed to be too [similar], so after what must have been about four or five years, the BBC finally turned it down,” explains Haines, charting the complex evolution of the first series. “Nick Elliott, the commissioner at ITV, had seen the success of Doctor Who and Robin Hood too and thought, well, maybe ITV has to try this out. Here he had a script with Adrian's talents behind it, so that's why they decided to go for it.” It was at this point that the show started to find its cast. “The audition came through like any other, but when I read the script, I realised it was something very different. I’d never seen anything like it,” says Andrew Lee Potts, who played Connor Temple in all five series of Primeval. “My first audition was the morning after a night shoot on another job. I was so over tired I think I became a little euphoric, which seemed to work for the manic mind of Connor.” “When I finished S Club there were quite a few things that came through that I wasn't really ready for. I just needed a break, to escape the limelight in any way, shape, or form. Primeval came at a time when I was ready to come back into TV,” remembers Hannah Spearritt, who played Abby Maitland in all five series of Primeval. “In my audition, we did an up-on-your-feet type thing, imagining Rex [her character’s pet dinosaur], because Rex was going to be a massive part of Abby's character. That audition was a little bit different to a normal audition!” “I didn't do any auditions for Primeval,” says Douglas Henshall, who played Nick Cutter in the first, second, and part of the third series of Primeval. “It was an offer. I went and met Tim and Adrian and had a natter with them, and that was it really. I liked the premise. I thought the idea that you could make a show that was smart and educational and fun, aimed at a family audience was a nice idea. I thought it – especially the first three episodes of the first series – was very well-written.” “I had a choice between going to do Primeval or going to do another show, which was a particularly hard-hitting kind of... You guys would describe it as gritty drama, I suppose. I'd been doing that for so long that I thought it might be nice to go and chase dinosaurs for a while.” “I had a lot of fun,” says Spearritt. “It was cool to play a swashbuckling female role, for the younger girls [in the audience]. I loved that element to it, playing a strong female character. And the special effects were pretty high standard. I think they’ll stand the test of time - the budget was quite high, I think a million pounds per episode? – so I think it will have aged well.” “Merging the live action drama and the CGI threw up challenges everyday, like a giant jigsaw, but when it all came together the end product was something very special,” says Potts. “Certain times as an actor you get lucky enough to have the opportunity to play a role that seems to fit like a glove (albeit a fingerless one), I’m happy to say Connor Temple was one of those roles for me.” Primeval touched on ideas of ecological disaster and environmental preservation; looking back, though, there’s a sense that it wasn’t just ahead of its time thematically, but commercially as well. “I think we were we were born for Netflix, frankly,” says Adrian Hodges. “No disrespect to ITV, who were very good to us in their way. But I think I think it would’ve been nice to have a bigger budget. Tim did miracles on a relatively small budget at the time.” “I think if we'd waited even another five years!” agrees Henshall. “When all the streaming networks started out, I think absolutely it would have done a lot better, yeah.” At the time, argues Haines, “British television’s approach to genre was appalling. There was definitely a cultural snobbery towards it – we were lucky to get Primeval away. After Primeval, I ended up making Sinbad and Beowulf, but I have to say in retrospect, it was a bit sad to have to make [those] just because the audience recognised the name, rather than making something original like Primeval.” The series often seemed like it was itself an endangered species, and that uncertainty wasn’t without its challenges. “We always got good ratings, but we fell victim to changing hierarchies at ITV, from memory. I don't know exactly what was going on in the background, but Tim did a remarkable job of keeping it on the air,” says Hodges. “[Commissioner] Peter Fincham had the oddest relationship with us: he turned it down at the BBC. When he came to ITV, he cancelled it. And then he recommissioned it, and then he cancelled it again. He had four goes at the series!” laughs Haines. “It wasn't ideal. But that was because of the 2008 crash: ITV was two weeks away from going bankrupt, and so they were slashing left, right, and centre. Our show unfortunately suffered because of that, after series three.” It was difficult, as well, to be up against Doctor Who. “There was no way that we could compete with Doctor Who, you know? Any time that we ever got matched up anywhere near them, we were completely squashed by them,” remembers Henshall. “[Doctor Who] was a juggernaut at the time, it was a behemoth. We were competitive, of course we were, but I just wanted to do well,” says Hodges. “If we could've beaten them that would've been great, but that was never really our goal particularly. It was too big a show at that point, it had too much publicity. And Russell T Davies was doing really well with that show at the time, it was brilliantly written. I felt it was a great show at the time - I think we'd have a better chance today, let's put it that way.” Andrew Lee Potts, meanwhile, thinks Primeval found the right home. “I think the time we hit the UK screens was just right, judging by its success. I think it’s the nature of the beast (no pun intended) of being an actor or involved in a show like this [that there’s some uncertainty]. The show was very expensive and prime time, so there was always a risk of it ending prematurely. I think most actors are just happy if it gets past series one!” Following the second series, Douglas Henshall opted to leave Primeval, and his character was written out at the start of the third. “I thought it had become a little simplified in its ambitions,” he explains. “It was becoming a slightly different show, more of a monster-of-the-week type thing. The first season, I thought was very exciting, but it became more standard by the end of the second season, and I thought they'd probably be better served with someone else.” “Of course, Jason Flemyng came in and then Ciarán McMenamin after him. I know Jason and I know Ciarán, I trusted that they would both do a great job, but [I never watched them in it]. I didn't want to do that thing of watching somebody who will go and be better than you were – I don't want to go and troll myself!” “I learned a lot of lessons as to how to lead a show better. It helped me a lot going in to [BBC drama] Shetland, just for myself,” continues Henshall. “But I thought we made a pretty good show [with Primeval], we took something that could have gone very badly wrong, and it didn't. I think we did the writers proud.” “Dougie leaving was, of course, really disappointing – he's one of the best actors in Britain – but you have to adapt and move on,” says Spearritt. “He was the heartbeat of the show, and it was very different after, but the show evolved. We lost quite a lot of people, but new energy comes in and sometimes that's what's needed.” In another timeline, the series might’ve unfolded differently. “Adrian did have a three series arc for Dougie. At the end, he was meant to be stuck with his wife in the past, but we had to change that,” says Haines. That ending would’ve tied into one of Primeval’s biggest unanswered cliffhangers: who was Jenny Lewis, and how had she replaced Claudia Brown? At the close of series one, Cutter returned from a trip to the past to find that his almost-love interest Claudia Brown (Lucy Brown) had disappeared, and no-one else remembered her. Series two introduced a new character, Jenny Lewis – again played by Lucy Brown – and it was only Cutter who noticed they were seemingly the same person. “Jenny and Claudia were the same person, having evolved in a different way. Gradually, we were going to reveal that there were people all over the world with a similar situation,” explains Hodges. “We only ever showed her at the time, but there were [going to be] lots of people in that same situation, and lots of prehistoric animals developing differently. Gradually Cutter would've noticed small differences in evolution, and go to change things back.” “I liked that idea, and certainly Lucy went with it very well,” says Hodges, thinking back. “But unfortunately, we never really got a chance to resolve it, it was too closely tied in with Dougie and [that plotline] was never the same again as well.” “It was a real shame. We didn't want to lose Dougie, but he felt he wanted to go and we couldn't hold him. Which is fair enough! I absolutely respected his decision making, he's a good guy, but I was very disappointed when he went,” continues Hodges. “I think he did really well on the show, and I'd like to speak very highly of him. He brought a real gravity to the role.” With the first two series of Primeval arriving on BritBox today, how do the cast and creatives feel about audiences getting the chance to revisit the show? “Primeval opened a door to the past in the present day and where that is concerned, in my opinion, that’s timeless,” enthuses Potts. “One of the things I feel Primeval did so well was mix drama, adventure and humour for the whole family to enjoy and I think that’s why people remember it so fondly – it’s lovely to think it’s living on.” “It was always a programme to escape reality, to enable the family to sit down and enjoy something together – it has those layers [that] young children and adults could enjoy it,” says Spearritt. “It's dinosaurs, isn't it? They never age.” “I saw it not long ago, I think it's very good – well, some of the haircuts aren't!” says Hodges. “But I think it aged really well. I'm very proud of that show, immensely proud. I think episode three of series one is one of the best things I've ever written, funnily enough, the one where they find that Juliet Aubrey's character [Cutter's wife Helen] is still alive.” “It made me a better writer I think; it was the first real money show I'd done, so the pressure was unbelievable. I realised how hard it is to write clever dialogue and a good plot in such a short space of time,” he continues. “I'd do [another series] tomorrow, I'd do it in a heartbeat if I could.” “I think it would be very hard for me to say no to revisiting Connor if asked,” agrees Potts. “I will always have a soft spot for him and I owe a lot to the people who trusted me with the role.” “It would be interesting to play her again someday, to see the mature version of Abby,” says Spearritt. “That was the funny thing about it – we were all we were so young, it was almost unbelievable that we would be employed to [hunt dinosaurs]!” “It feels a little bit sad now for me, because it was a lovely show to work on, but it's been and gone,” says Haines. “But the Primeval fans, the groups of them – it's a lovely thing about the internet, the way these people and enthusiasts can find each other – whether they write stories off the back of the series, or whether they are creating new images for it, writing and talking about the characters, it's immensely flattering to get to see such enthusiasm still.” For the latest news and expert tips on getting the best deals this year, take a look at our Black Friday 2021 and Cyber Monday 2021 Is there anything in particular they’d like people to take away from watching the show? “That you're right to be absolutely still fascinated by dinosaurs, and science, and climate and all of those things that were in that show,” says Henshall. “One of the best nights of filming that I've had in a long time was when we did the night shoot at the British museum. We were in there all night by ourselves and we could wander around the museum in the dark, looking at the sarcophagi of mummified Egyptians. “It was quite a magical thing to do, and I think very in keeping with what we were trying to do in that show. The possibility of all those things having been real once was very, very present. I think kids who were excited about things like that will still get a lot of pleasure out of the show.” Primeval series 1 & 2 are available on BritBox – you can sign up for a 7-day free BritBox trial here. Check out our Sci-fi hub for more news and features, or see what else is on with our TV Guide.
Sophie Rundle on 'loyalty' to Peaky Blinders and 'liberating' production venture in thriller Rose: A Love Story
Alex Moreland talks to Sophie Rundle as her new film Rose: A Love Story is released.
“I was looking for a while to make another step from just being an actor,” explains Sophie Rundle, “to producing and having a seat at the table and starting to have more autonomy in the decisions I make.” Rose: A Love Story, she says, ended up being “the perfect project” to take that step. Not only does Rundle star in the film, she also produced it, and was involved in the film since the start of its development. It’s a story about a young couple, isolated in the woods, living under the shadow of a mysterious condition that causes violent, feral outbursts – as the film progresses, their relationship is strained by the burden of that illness and threatened by the rapid intrusion of the outside world. “Matt [Stokoe, Rundle’s partner] wrote it, just for the exercise of writing and wanting to explore that genre,” she continues. “He very flippantly said ‘oh, do you want to be in it?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ thinking, ‘Oh God. I hope it’s good!’ “But then when he sent it to me, I just loved it. It’s such a clever take on a genre and a style that we're so familiar with, the vampire story – you sort of think ‘well, I don’t know how you could put a fresh spin on that’, but then when I read his script, I just thought it was so smart.” “It was so clever to frame it as this couple, one of them dealing with this life-changing illness that's all consuming. I hadn't thought about that before, and I thought it was so tenderly drawn and it was such a beautiful musing on a relationship and what the burden of illness can do to a couple. I just loved it. So, he sent it to me and then I said, ‘Well, no, actually I'd really like to be in it’” From there, the next step was finding a director: Jennifer Sheridan. Introduced by Rob Taylor (who also eventually acted as an executive producer on the film himself), Rundle explained: “We really liked her vibe, so then she came on board. For a first-time project, I think it's a very bold step to write something and be in it and produce it and direct it, so we wanted someone at helm to oversee it”. As production continued, Sophie added: “I learned so much about what goes in to getting something up and running and the decisions that have to be made months before you get on set. It was one of the most formative professional experiences that I've had, definitely. “It took, I think, about 50 people to make it – and I loved that feeling, when people are up against it, when you're in the middle of Wales and you've got no money and there's no back-up. That was really humbling and exciting, because it’s easy to become complacent when you’re moving from job to job, and then you go back to grassroots and it just reminds you everyone's there because they're geeky and they love storytelling,” Rundle continues, the genuine enthusiasm obvious in her voice. The film ended up having an unexpected resonance, though, one no-one could’ve predicted while shooting the film in that Welsh forest. “Making a film about a couple in lockdown, one of whom has to wear a mask every time she goes outside? You could never have planned it,” Rundle laughs, before continuing “that's the beautiful thing about filmmaking, about art, isn't it? It has a relevance that can change depending on the world it's received into.” “God, we all wish that the past year had never happened, but it’s fascinating to see how Rose fit into this new world, now that we're all much more familiar with and literate with the idea of the claustrophobia, of being stuck inside, even with your loved ones, and having to wear a mask and feeling sort of trapped. It has been an amazing evolution of the film in a way.” Rose: A Love Story is the first project from Rundle and Stokoe’s production company Bone Garden Films, but they’ve already started developing a television series and another film. “I really love the process of it,” Rundle explains, describing her role as a producer. “It's been so liberating to start a new branch of my career in a way, where you get to have autonomy and you get to have a voice and you get to create original content. I mean, I love acting, I've been able to work with some amazing people, but you have to keep yourself creatively inspired.” Eventually, she’d like to direct too. “I have so much respect for directors. I wouldn't have the arrogance to say, ‘Oh yeah. I'll walk in and direct something right now’. I think I'd have a lot to learn, but definitely on the horizon. I really enjoy having more of a say creatively and being more in the bones of a project, I'm really enjoying the producorial side, being the creative voice in the process, seeing how that works. “After that,” Rundle continues, “it's not an immediate burning desire to do anything. It's more sort of the seed that's growing. But I think in the future, especially as I get older, and I think especially as a woman in this industry, your relationship with the industry, the industry's relationship with you, can change very quickly as you move from being a twenty-something into the later part of your career.” View oEmbed on the source website “I would wait and see what my identity might look like as a director, I think, before I jumped in, but I'm totally open to it. I think you have to evolve and change and grow in this industry to stay interesting and stay relevant and stay inspired. I don't think I would want to just be an actor forever,” she finishes. It's no surprise, though, that Rundle is starting to reflect on the next stage of her career – particularly with the last series of Peaky Blinders on the horizon, marking her final appearance as Ada Shelby, a role she first played when her acting career was just beginning. “It has been a constant for me, which is quite unusual. It feels like it's been forever that I've been part of it,” she muses. “I feel incredibly loyal to the show and I feel it has definitely occupied this special place for me. I grew up on it. That sounds really w***y, but I did. I learned so much. I was such a kid when I started and I didn't have a clue what I was doing – and I still don’t!” she jokes, laughing. “I feel like I've changed, and it's been one of the characters I've enjoyed most, because Ada has changed so much from the first series to who she is now, and I love that. I love that I've been able to keep going back to it, each series adding another layer, these characters becoming fully realised, because they've got history, and the audience knows your history. So, I do feel really fond of it, but you can't do something forever, can you? You've got to let a story come to its natural conclusion and who knows if there's life after it, but I feel very proud to have been a part of it from the beginning and see it through.” If nothing else, it’s left her with a strong sense of the sort of acting roles she’d like to pursue going forward (alongside producing and directing, that is). “It was such a rare opportunity to get to play someone like [Ada Shelby]. The fun and the swagger that Steven Knight puts in his scripts, that's really rare to come across, especially as a woman, especially in my casting bracket. “As I grow up, I want the characters that I play to be more grown up as well,” Rundle elaborates. “I've done a lot of quite vulnerable, tender parts, which I've loved doing, but as I get older and I just get a bit more opinionated and a bit more experienced and feel stronger in myself as a woman, they're the kind of characters that I want to play. They're the ones I want to see reflected on TV, in films that we watch.” “I'm just interested in, I don't know, toughening up a bit and playing some...” she trails off and then laughs. “I just want to be in an Italian crime drama! That would be it. During lockdown I've gotten really weirdly obsessed with crime dramas, I've discovered this bizarre blood lust that I have for really violent gang land dramas, so I've watched all of The Sopranos, I've been watching Gomorrah, ZeroZeroZero. I really love that genre.” It’s not surprising from an actor who, looking back across her career, always really throws herself into different genres. Comparing the more supernatural aspects of Rose: A Love Story with the period dramas she’s starred in, she explains “I love that distance that you get in a period drama and I love the world of it. [But] the real pleasure in Rose – doing something modern, in my own accent – I was surprised by how I was still able to keep that distance. It never feels like me, do you know what I mean? It always felt to me like it's a sort of fable, it's a fairy-tale.” For the latest news and expert tips on getting the best deals this year, take a look at our Black Friday 2021 and Cyber Monday 2021 guides. That distance, as Rundle explains, is one of the most important things to her as a performer. “If you can be kind of anonymous in your work, you as the actor slip out of it, then that's the best thing.” “If you're watching someone and recognise something in that performance or that character, even just for a moment, that's so elusive and so rare. If people have even a moment of that with anything I've been in, I'd be delighted – the absence of me would be my preference.” Rose: A Love Story will be available on digital platforms from 5th April. Visit our TV Guide to find something to watch tonight. If you loved this chat, check out all of our Big RT Interview articles. The Radio Times Easter issue is out now.
It's A Sin's Omari Douglas on why Russell T Davies' new drama is timeless: 'People might pick up on moments that ring true of what we're living through now'
Alex Moreland talks to Omari Douglas about his breakout role in new Channel 4 drama, It's A Sin.
“I don't think I ever would have expected to jump straight into something of this magnitude,” says Omari Douglas. “I feel really lucky to have had this opportunity.” We’re discussing It’s A Sin – Russell T Davies’ new five-part drama for Channel 4, and Omari Douglas’ first television role. Douglas plays Roscoe Babatunde, described by Channel 4 as “a wild, brittle party boy, always on the run”; Roscoe is one of six friends in London, the series tracing their lives across a decade alongside the AIDS crisis. One thing that’s clear about Douglas is how much he values collaboration, how important that is to his creative process. Asked about his biggest influences, he doesn’t highlight a particular childhood inspiration as many actors often do, but instead talks about how much he’s learned from the people he worked with on It's A Sin. “I was learning as I went on. I was surrounded by so many brilliant people – I was inspired every day just seeing the work of my friends, the people I was acting alongside.” “But then wider than that,” he elaborates, “just the craftsmanship that goes into putting a piece of this scale together, so many different departments coming together. There are hundreds more people working on a television production than you'd find in theatre, but it was [just as] collaborative. And I was really grateful for that, I felt supported. I felt invigorated and inspired every day.” He emphasises that again later in our conversation as we discuss what he’d like to do next in his career; he’s enjoyed a lot of early success so far in the theatre, with rave reviews for his performances in Wise Children and Rush in particular, but It’s A Sin nonetheless represents a big personal and professional step. In fact, Douglas has already started appearing on rising star lists, and deservedly so, raising the question of what he’ll do with the increased profile that his first major television role will bring. “I don't really like to put goalposts on anything – I feel like it's restrictive – I would just hope that I can just keep flourishing, finding my way and working with great people” he explains. “I'm just keen to learn,” he says. “I think it's always amazing to feel like you can come away from something having learnt and feel like they've gifted you with that – because that's what it felt like! Working with all these people was like being gifted their talents, in being able to admire what they do and allowing that to inform and improve what you do.” It’s really no wonder then that the cast of It’s A Sin have become so close. Describing his co-stars as “friends for life”, Douglas explains that “there was so much laughter and joy on the set. Most mornings we'd be dancing to '80s songs in the trailer. It was the best way to gear ourselves up for a rollercoaster of emotions in one day, just making ourselves feel comfortable and ready to dive in.” What is a surprise, though, is when Douglas reveals that “in the casting process none of us read with each other” – watching the It's A Sin cast, you'd be forgiven for thinking they'd known each other for years, rather than only meeting once their auditions had been successful. “I've said to most of them, it's bizarre how close we've been able to become. I think it's almost a miracle, in a way,” Douglas laughs, before going on to highlight casting director Andy Pryor’s keen eye for chemistry. Douglas is also full of effusive praise for Russell T Davies, who wrote all five episodes of It’s A Sin. A fan of Davies for years (“I was still at drama school, actually, when Cucumber came out, and I remember it being a weekly event that we'd all sit together and watch”), Douglas reflects on when he first read the scripts for It’s A Sin. “I was just completely transfixed by it all, by how vibrant and brilliant the characters were. I felt an immediate honour to be involved with such a prolific writer's work, on something so profound, [in terms of] the community that we're engaging with. “That sort of engagement that we were having just made it all the more significant to be a part of,” Douglas continues. “We were really lucky to do some work with the George House Trust, who are a HIV and AIDS charity. I only knew so much before I started, and – not that the series is scientific or medical in that sense, but I think it’s a good opportunity for people to zone in and really reflect on what happened. “I hope that it means that people will really engage with what was happening then, because I don't think we've seen it from a British perspective before, how HIV and AIDS and the management of it unfolded in this country.” Douglas made an effort to lose himself in the period – something that, he explains, is always a key part of his process. “With any project really, I just go immerse myself – when approaching [It’s A Sin] there was so much content and story and culture to be immersed in. I love being able to drop yourself into a period of time. There's just something magical about that for me, that chance to escape into another period of time. I like to inform myself as much as I can.” View oEmbed on the source website He started building a playlist (featuring Grace Jones' Slave to the Rhythm, Neneh Cherry's Manchild, Sheena Easton's The Lover in Me, and more) “from the day that [he] got the role”, and is now facing a return to the present day in 2021. “I'm still in the thick of it! I feel like it's going to be really hard to almost let go of it because we spent maybe four, five months... and actually I'd say six or seven because of the time before, leading up to it. I formed a relationship with all of that stuff and I really love it. “Now that the show's out” – or, almost, anyway – “you realise it's like, ‘Oh my gosh. It's done’. There's an actual finished product from that now. I sort of wish I could just be waking up and doing it again every day,” he says, though because of his continued closeness with the rest of the cast, “it feels like we’re going through it together. We've been FaceTiming each other every day, getting excited and nervous and experiencing all of those feelings together. It's good to have that support.” “The past year for a lot of people has been [about] spending time on their own,” he continues, explaining what it’s like to make such a big career-step in a very changed world. (It’s A Sin was filmed between October 2019 and January 2020.) “That was a really brilliant opportunity for me to reflect on the experience that I've had: I’m really grateful for that moment of solitude now, [because it] just allowed me to settle.” He’s aware, too, that this means It’s A Sin, a drama in part about a pandemic, will take on another layer of meaning they didn’t anticipate during production (“I'm sure people might pick up on lines and moments that really ring true of what we're living through right now”) but notes that the drama would’ve been resonant no matter what. “There's just always a cultural relevance in [Russell T Davies’ writing], and I think that is so amazing to have that skill. I mean, you almost can't teach that kind of thing – it's a testament to his craft and his brilliance that across the whole body of his work there is always this relevance.” It’s what Douglas loves about Davies’ work, and what he’s hoping people take from his own, too. “I hope that there’s always something people can identify with, and feel that I am taking them somewhere – and I hope that people can see a glimmer of something that they identify with in my work. An embrace of individuality and an enthusiasm for telling stories." It’s A Sin starts Friday 22nd Jan, 9pm on Channel 4. All episodes will be available on All4 after the first episode has broadcast. If you're looking for more to watch, check out our TV Guide. A special production of Rush, with Omari Douglas reprising his role from the play’s earlier run, was staged by the BBC as part of its Culture in Quarantine series, and is available on iPlayer until May.
Doctor Who's Mandip Gill on challenges in new interactive film Five Dates and what the future holds next
Alex Moreland chats to Mandip Gill about her new interactive rom-com in this week's The Big RT Interview.
Understandably, Mandip Gill wasn’t expecting to film anything new during lockdown. Work had finished on Doctor Who for the year, and when production shut down on Suspicion – an upcoming Apple+ thriller starring Uma Thurman, in which Gill has a supporting role – she’d already completed most of her scenes. Then came Five Dates. It’s an interactive romcom – think Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch, but with romance, and also comedy – styled as a series of video calls between Vinny (Taheen Modak) and his five different dating app matches (one of whom is played by Gill). “Obviously, I saw the word interactive, but didn't really think too much on it,” explains Gill. “I just was like, ‘Yeah, cool. I like this. I'd like to get involved if I can’ – it just naturally happened that way.” It proved to be a surprisingly straightforward filming experience, despite the complexities of the format. “I didn't know how you’d film it, because it was massive – the script was massive, apparently 700 different endings. I was like, ‘How, what? I don't get it. How am I going to remember this?’ But Paul [Raschid, director] had scheduled it in such a way that so many of the outcomes just flowed naturally.” “My fear was that, because there's so many lines, I don't know how I'm going to remember the reaction to it - because you do two versions as well! You don't want to go on a date with him, do want to go on a date with him, don't drink, do drink. How am I going to remember all that? But it was scheduled and written so well, that that actually wasn't [a problem]. After the first day and a half, I was like, ‘I could do this for another day and a half. I've got another day and a half of flow charts in me.’” Five Dates is something of a departure for Gill in other ways, too, not just because of its unique format and filming conditions. First, there’s the comedy. “I've always said I'm not very good at improvisation, I don't like trying to be funny, but with Five Dates, there was proper space for it, and I had to fill the gaps. I had no choice but to fill them. Then I was like, "Oh, maybe I'm actually all right at this," – but I'd never actively say, ‘Oh, I can improvise’.” “I think if I was going to ever challenge myself, it'd be in doing comedy,” she continues, “where I don't find it as easy or I actually would have to really work on it. Whereas I watch a lot of drama, so I find it easier to do [those roles].” She’s attached to another comedy project at the moment, Count Abdulla, (by “a brilliant young writer. When we did the rehearsal read-through, which was before lockdown, the cast were absolutely brilliant in that”) which is still in early development. There’s also the fact that, because Five Dates is a film, it’s standalone – unlike the television roles she’s most famous for, such as Hollyoaks and Doctor Who, where her characters “build up and bubble slowly” over the course of several years, with input from lots of different writers and directors. “I do like the change in working with different directors, because everyone has their own distinctive style. When you're doing a long-running thing, it keeps you on your toes, keeps it exciting.” “I do think, though, after I've finished [Doctor Who], would I prefer to go on to standalone things? Or things that are three, four episodes long, really work on a character, really build that character arc in those four episodes and then leave?” she ponders. “I think it would be challenging and really exciting to do even just an episode on something, but have a beginning, and a middle and an end to work on.” “Three, four-part dramas [are also] the stuff that I watch,” Gill continues, and her enthusiasm for television becomes clear very quickly. She’s been watching recent ITV dramas like Des and The Sister (“My friend Amrita Acharia is in it, but they do such an amazing job that you stop going ‘Oh Amrita's in this show’”), and points to actors like Olivia Colman, Keeley Hawes and Jodie Comer (“the nuances and the attention to detail in her work is amazing”) as particular inspirations. “I'm watching and learning stuff from them, because sometimes they'll say a line and I'm like, ‘I would never have said it like that’. Then I practise the way that they've said it, just to see how they got to that intonation”. It’s clear, talking to Gill, how thoughtful of an actress she is, and how much attention she pays to small details – she spends a lot of time talking about accents, for example, or her character’s posture in Five Dates. Beyond that, though, how much of her performance comes down to choices she makes in the moment? “I do my work, and I know all the stuff that I was taught and studied and I've picked up from people, but there is also a place where I leave it. I always think, ‘Why did you write so much on that script? Because that script's at home.’ It might not work for everyone, but I do a lot of stuff instinctively. I couldn't say ‘on that line, I'm going to do that’ or ‘I’m going to cry on that line’.” “I probably am sometimes a bit of a nightmare because it's like, ‘But your tear didn't come out then’. Well, I didn't feel it on that second time! I felt it in a different place,” she explains, laughing. “A lot of this stuff is based on my instincts, after I've written where I've come from and what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Then you go to set, and it changes anyway, because the director has their versions, and then another actor is giving you something too. Most of acting, if not all of it, is reacting.” She puts a lot of emphasis on collaborating with her co-stars (“we're supposed to be dancing with each other!”) and learning from them, too. “Working with people like Brad [Bradley Walsh, on Doctor Who] and all the really young, amazing people that were on Five Dates - like Taheen, for instance, I learned so much from Taheen. I don't know really what it was but I just think he was so giving and really free.” “I'm so used to doing things that are really scripted and you must stick to the words – I was there with my script, ready to go, kind of rigid, whereas he was really free and flowing,” Gill continued, explaining what she’ll take from Five Dates going forward. I was like, ‘I think I'm going to steal that’. When I'm working now, I'm like, ‘Just because that's your mark, doesn't mean that you can't also do all this other stuff’ – if that's part of your character, you can do it all.” Gill’s been acting for ten years now – and she’s starting to look ahead to the future, too, a couple of years down the line. “I think when I leave Doctor Who, it would be a case of me being really choosy with what I do, so that I'm fulfilled as an actor. I think I’d have to ask, ‘but is that remotely similar to the characters that you'd been playing for the last 10 years?’ Because I also need to stretch myself and actually be a bit scared about going to work a little bit.” View oEmbed on the source website “On Suspicion, that was the first time that I was able to go, ‘Right, do something a little bit different’” she elaborates. “I hope, fingers crossed, that it is really different to the characters that I've played. I did really work on it, I had to work on my accent [a lot]. So fingers crossed, it plays out that way – but also if it doesn't, then that to me is just a learning curve where I go, ‘Well, next time you really have to just work that bit harder for it to be further away from anything you've played before.’ [For the next few years] it's choosing things and saying yes or no to things that allow me to change.” Gill wants to try and stretch herself in other ways too. “I wrote a script and was like, ‘This is just not you. It's not for you, love.’ I sent it to my friend Amir, and he was like, ‘Yeah, this is great.’ I was like, ‘No, it's not, I actually know it's not!’” she laughed. “There was a time when I really tried to force things – I moved to London in 2015 and everyone was so savvy, creating their own work. I felt like I really needed to up my game because right now I'm a little fish in a big pond and all you do is acting. So, I did try to dabble, and I have ideas, I just don't know... I think people who write have studied for years and I know it's an art in itself.” “That's years of experience, and I'm not in that place yet,” Gill continued, explaining that she’d tried returning to writing during lockdown. “I have this really cool idea – it's not cool at all, it's really gritty obviously – that I keep thinking about and I keep sitting on and you know what? I will absolutely hate myself if someone ends up doing it, because it's not an idea that they've explored on British television.” Looking back on the last 10 years, then – and forward to the next 10 years, too – what’s the most important thing she’d want someone to take away from her work? “I think more than my actual work, it would be if you could take away something from my career: that you can do and be anything. I know me being South Asian in Doctor Who is such a big deal for people in a positive way. If you can look, even if it's not in this field, in any field, you can be anything you want to be. We're brought up with so many restrictions [and] stereotypes – I hope that little people are looking at me going, ‘I can be anything I want.’” Still, though, that’s enough about the future for the moment. There’s still the here and now to think about. Five Dates was made during lockdown, of course, but recently Gill has started to get back to in-person production. On the whole, it’s going OK. “Apart from everyone wearing masks and staying two metres apart, it honestly feels... It feels weirdly really normal and fine? But I probably got used to people wearing masks in everyday life. Scenes are probably written differently, but I didn't see the other versions, pre-lockdown version. So, they're smaller, but they're working.” The Doctor Who Christmas special comes to BBC One in late 2020/early 2021 Five Dates is released worldwide for digital download on Windows & Mac via Steam, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and IOS/Android 2021 on 17 November.