Back to the Edge: The inside story, with rare RT photos, of one of the greatest TV dramas of them all

During the peak paranoia of the Cold War, 40 years ago on 4 November, viewers tuned in to what they thought was another detective drama. But Edge of Darkness was a TV game-changer, its private tale of a grieving CID officer opening out into a big, multilayered conspiracy.

No one had seen anything like this six-parter by Z Cars creator Troy Kennedy Martin. In many ways, that still holds true – and at a time when the UK and US now prepare to “enter a golden age of nuclear”, Edge of Darkness has lost none of its criticality...

“Absolutely. It was right on key, it really was,” says Ian McNeice, who played government agent Harcourt. “I was offered another job at the same time, but I remember reading that and then Edge of Darkness and thinking, ‘There’s no contest here’ because the script was so good, so interesting and so well written. I was gripped from the start.”

For McNeice there was also the bonus of joining with his friend and housemate Bob Peck, taking the lead as Detective Inspector Ronald Craven. “That really was a huge plus. We have to thank Michael Wearing the producer because both myself and Bob were brought onto the production after he’d seen us in shows with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Neither of us had done much TV…

"We turned up to meet [director] Martin Campbell and, really, he had nothing to go on! I think I just had one tiny bit on Warship [BBC, 1973–7] and that was that. But he took a hunch and went with it, which was amazing.”

Was television work a problem after doing so much theatre? "I remember very early on I said to Martin, 'Look I haven't done much of this, you’ve really got to tell me if I'm doing too much or if you want me to take it down or whatever.' And he said, 'No I’ve already got that note from Bob, I'll be looking at both of you, don't worry!' So that was really nice."

Most of the opening episode deals with the shocking murder of scientist Emma Craven (Joanne Whalley) and its impact on her detective father, Ronald. From the outset the photography is stunning, with the protagonist's grief captured in huge, unsparing detail. It sets the template for the show as a whole; even a chase into a London Tube station in episode two is filmed with the participants large in the frame.

Watch out, too, for a logistically jaw-dropping, and far-from necessary, sequence in the finale at Gleneagles Hotel, which tracks one car leaving, another arriving and a helicopter departing all in one sweeping move. It's miraculously well planned.

But then the work of cameraman Andrew Dunn was recognised at the Baftas. It was one of six gongs picked up by the programme, along with best drama series, music (Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton), editor, sound and, of course, for its leading man. And McNeice credits Peck for much of the series’ success: “He was a consummate actor; his performance is outstanding – it deserved the Bafta. Spielberg saw him in it and took him off to do Jurassic Park, which was amazing.”

Sadly, Peck died from cancer in 1999, aged 53. "It was so very tragic and sad, and I don't like to have to recollect these things, but he was such a brilliant actor.

"His father was a very dour Yorkshireman and he came down to see his son as Iago in Othello at the RSC, so I'd said, ‘Why doesn't he have tea in our little house?’ I got some scones, some jam and cream and I put them out on the table, made a pot of tea and I said, 'Would you like some cream?' and he said, 'No, cream’s fattening!' And he watched his son as Iago and, I kid you not, the only thing his father said after watching the show was, 'Seats were a bit hard.' That’s all he got!"

In Edge of Darkness McNeice is paired for long spells with Charles Kay as Pendleton; he and Harcourt assist Craven in his investigation into Emma's death – while seeming to know far more than they let on. Their teaming reveals another reason McNeice is grateful to the producer. “Michael Wearing was tough on Troy Kennedy Martin, who had this trait of creating characters as he went along and enjoying doing so. It was Michael who said, ‘No, you have to stay with these two characters [Harcourt and Pendleton] all the way through. So thanks to Michael, Charlie Kay and I stayed with it.”

I remind McNeice that the script describes Harcourt as a man who, "when he isn’t looking cross, seems permanently pleased with himself". "Yes I think that's very good. I didn’t realise at the time – I was only told this later – that when we were doing various takes, apparently Martin Campbell just couldn't help laughing at what I was coming up with, which was really sweet." It turns out McNeice contributed ad-libs to the script, including asking what was for pudding, plus the line “I thought I ordered oatcakes?” He adds, "They were little nuances that I was able to put in the script."

McNeice had great chemistry with Charles Kay, who died in January aged 94. “He was just such a delight. He was another theatre person so we had a lot to talk about. My fondest memory of Charlie was when we were in Scotland on a bridge overlooking a loch and as we were talking quietly to each other, a helicopter flew over us and lifted Charlie Kay’s toupee and he went, ‘Woooh!’ [shoots hands up to his head]. It was the funniest moment from that sort of stern situation. I think they even managed to keep it as a sort of outtake because it was such a joy."

Another Kay moment that stands out in McNeice's mind involved a long tracking shot that put pressure on Kay not to spoil. "It was in the early days of Steadicam and Martin Campbell was very fond of using it. They were in the Hilton Hotel [in London] and there's a scene where Bob Peck comes out of his room, goes through the hotel and into the lift, down below to the car park where Charlie Kay is meeting him and he has a line.

"Charlie was absolutely terrified because this shot went on for some time, so he was left waiting for Bob to come out of a lift before he could say his line, and he knew that if he f****d up it, they’d have to go all the way back and do it again. I always remember that moment very well. He just said, 'I’ve had a hell of a morning,' and I said 'Why?' and he told me about this."

BBC Four are marking the 40th anniversary with a repeat run introduced by McNeice, but 2025 has been a sad year for the cast, crew and fans of the show. In addition to Kay, it has also seen the passing of Joe Don Baker as CIA man Darius Jedburgh in May, and only last month John Woodvine, who played Craven's boss DCS Ross.

McNeice shared many scenes with the larger-than-life, Texan-born Baker. “The thing about Joe was that he couldn’t really cope with the schedule, as British television is so swift. He was used to doing maybe one or two pages [of script] a day; here we were doing four or five and he was struggling to keep up. One particular evening he said, ‘Look, I have to have a break and you have to get me a hamburger!’

"So they stopped and they went to McDonald’s or somewhere like that, got him a hamburger, brought it back, he had the hamburger and went on with the rest of the shoot. But he was pretty much, you know, your American star coming over here, so you had to take him at face value. And I think we all felt a bit in awe in his wake really."

Troy Kennedy Martin's murder mystery is so fascinating that it works on multiple levels, taking in trade unions, nuclear power, the ecology movement, the "Star Wars" defence initiative and even a touch of the supernatural, with Craven's grief apparently manifesting itself in visions of Emma.

But the script was far from finished when McNeice came on board: "We all had pretty much a nightmare relationship with Troy because it was actually rewritten on the day, so you’d be handed dialogue that you didn't even have a chance to learn!

"You would be turning up, you’d get to your trailer and on the desk would be new pages and you’d go, 'Why couldn't we have this last night?!' So it was always a bit sort of hit-and-miss… But the other thing is that, because it was so well written, you forgave him everything."

The actors all raised their game for the project. Does director Martin Campbell deserve credit for that? "Oh I think so," replies McNeice. "Martin was known as Zebedee, the character from The Magic Roundabout, because he was bouncing up and down and absolutely frenetic. He would have no sleep, he would turn up at the location at about four or five in the morning to work out what he was going to do.

"There was one particular day where he turned up and worked it out. He had a list that included an ambulance and a Rolls-Royce, various cars and extras... They weren’t on the call sheet and the assistants had to get them by a certain time in the morning. He worked it out on the day. He would go every morning and be there two hours before everybody else, working out how he was actually going to shoot it – and to me that was extraordinary."

One small but mesmerising scene in episode three with characters milling about in the Commons prior to an inquiry highlights another Campbell trademark. "During that sequence – and I'd never seen it before – Martin would put his hand in front of the camera and that basically meant that someone was crossing. He did it so much, you know, just a hand across the camera, I mean outrageous stuff like that. For a long time I think the show was known as Edge of Frame as opposed to Edge of Darkness!"

Radio Times spoke to Martin Campbell about his memories of the show when it was released on Blu-ray in 2019.

McNeice can pinpoint the moment he realised he'd been involved in something ground-breaking. "I know exactly when that happened, because it went out over six weeks and I heard there was a rumour that they wanted to repeat it, so I rang the office and I said, “We’ve just seen the final episode of Edge of Darkness and I hear that there's going to be a repeat. Could you tell me when it’s going to be?"

It turned out that after its broadcast on BBC Two it was repeated on BBC One just ten days later, thereby doubling its audience. "It was extraordinary and I knew at that moment that we had something very special by the fact that they repeated it so instantly. It had just taken off. And I was stopped in the street. It was so unusual for me to have this but people would recognise me and would want to talk about the show, it was amazing."

McNeice adds, "Since then the amount of compliments I've had over the years from people who, for them, it's been one of their special shows, or they love it. It's been remarkable really."

Unavoidably, there are aspects that anchor the drama in the 80s: its dial telephones and line-by-line computers, its largely male and white casting. But fears and attitudes remain, especially about nuclear power, its green agenda is more relevant than ever and the word "masterpiece" is still liberally applied to the series.

“It was ahead of its time," concurs McNeice, "certainly the way it was shot, Joanne Whalley extraordinary, Joe Don Baker, all these wonderful performances... the best script you could ever want from Troy Kennedy Martin... everything was right about it.”

McNeice, now 75, is still working – in recent years he's appeared as Winston Churchill in both Doctor Who and on stage in The King's Speech, as Louis XVIII in the Ridley Scott film Napoleon and as Alfred Hitchcock in the play Double Feature. And he describes Edge of Darkness as his big break. "It was my key to getting further along the line really. I have so much to thank it for.

"Martin and Troy were very much 'out there' and mavericks of their genre. I was hugely lucky to work with Martin again. I went to do a film in Australia called No Escape with Stuart Wilson – there was this wonderful sequence where he had to run up a staircase with a machete or something like this. He did it two or three times, he was exhausted and on about the fourth time he sat down in his chair and said, 'No more, that’s it.'

"So Martin Campbell threw down his headset and said, 'All right, get his stunt double!' So they brought his stunt double over and at the point where he was about to do it, from the chair came this voice, 'I think I've got one more in me.' And the next day all the actors on set, no matter what they had to do, were all saying, 'I think I've got one more in me, Martin.' They just had to walk across the set or something like that! So it was a very very funny thing."

But back to Edge of Darkness, and as Harcourt, McNeice is honoured with the poignant closing speech of the story, pondering whether “the good in all of us will prevail”. Does McNeice think that it will? “It’s so hard to tell isn’t it? You’ve almost got to leave it up in the air... That’s where you leave it: up in the air.”

Ian McNeice Remembers Edge of Darkness is on Saturday 1 November at 9.00pm on BBC Four, followed at 9.15pm by the first two episodes.