Neil Cross on Luther, Doctor Who and The Iris Affair – The Radio Times Writers' Room

Welcome back to The Radio Times Writers' Room!

This time around we're welcoming Neil Cross, the writer best known for creating hugely popular BBC crime drama Luther, starring Idris Elba.

Having started out in novels, Cross made the leap over to TV as a writer on Spooks. Cross explained he learned "everything" while writing on the crime series, particularly around budgeting. One of his initial drafts, he revealed, would have seen the team spending "£100,000 on 12 seconds of television".

Then came Luther, the show he is still most closely associated with. The first season of the gritty crime drama debuted in 2010, and was an instant hit with viewers and critics alike. Since that first season debuted, four more have followed, plus a 2023 Netflix film, The Fallen Sun. And it certainly sounds like there's more on the way.

Meanwhile, Cross has also been behind two episodes of Doctor Who, The Rings of Akhaten and Hide. The former includes a speech which has gone down in the history books for the long-running show – but Cross has admitted that the initial response from some quarters threw him "into a spiral of misery".

Beyond that, he has created shows such as Hard Sun and The Sister, and most recently he's brought us The Iris Affair, a new thriller series starring Niamh Algar and Tom Hollander that has just finished airing on Sky.

The series follows Algar's character, the titular Iris, a genius who is hired by Hollander's Cameron, an entrepreneur, to wake up a powerful machine.

However, when she realises what it could be capable of, she steals the activation codes and goes on the run across Italy – with Cameron hot on her tail trying to get them back.

Throughout our chat, Cross spoke about how he "stole Columbo's format" for Luther, his first memory of watching Doctor Who and why he's still sad about the early cancellation of Hard Sun.

He also revealed his favourite scene he's ever written, and the ones he thinks he'll be remembered for, and explained just how long he has been planning to write The Iris Affair.

"Ages and ages and ages," he said. "I mean, a long time. Iris, one way or another, has been around in my head for years now, six, seven years, I suppose.

"And again, she kind of started like Luther, in that the idea of the character came to me first – the idea of a woman anti-hero. It's an essentially algebraic concept, I hadn't seen one of those before. And if there were to be a woman anti-hero, who would it be? Not even what's she doing, but what's she like?

"And the idea of that steeliness with the mischief, and the ability to manipulate people with the power of ideas, I found quite interesting. Like, can you use maths to talk a teenager out of suicide? And it turns out you can, on telly anyway.

"So she was a kind of challenge, and the show kind of agglomerated around the idea of Iris. She's the centre of that particular galaxy."

You can watch the full video at the top of this article right now, and look out for more trips to The Radio Times Writers' Room soon.

In the meantime, you can also catch up with our previous chats with Mark Gatiss, who spoke all about his work on Doctor Who, Sherlock and his new show Bookish, Harry and Jack Williams, who spoke about their shows The Missing, The Tourist and new Prime Video thriller The Assassin, and Noah Hawley, who spoke about crafting Fargo, Legion and Alien: Earth.

The Iris Affair is available to watch now on Sky and NOW. Find out more about how to sign up for Sky TV.

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