Colin Firth, Anne-Marie Duff, David Oyelowo with Robert Carlyle head an all-star cast in BBC One's Born Equal, a major new drama from Bafta Award-winning writer and director Dominic Savage.
Savage's gritty films - including When I Was Twelve, Love + Hate, Out Of Control and Nice Girl - have all tackled contemporary social issues.
In Born Equal, he addresses social inequality in Britain today through the interweaving stories of several characters whose paths collide in and around a B&B temporarily housing the homeless and dispossessed.
Mark (Colin Firth) is a wealthy City worker whose conscience and guilt about his luxurious lifestyle prompt him to try to help those less fortunate, but it results in turmoil for himself and others.
Staying at the B&B are: Michelle (Anne-Marie Duff), a pregnant mother with a young child, who has escaped an abusive husband; Yemi (David Oyelowo), his wife Itshe (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and their young daughter, Adanna, who have fled the threat of violence in their native Nigeria; and Robert (Robert Carlyle), newly released from prison and embarking on a search for his mother.
The stellar cast also includes Emilia Fox, Julia Davis, Megan Dodds, Nichola Burley, Emily Woof and Pearce Quigley.
All of the characters are struggling with personal crises – even Mark who, on the surface, has everything, explains Savage.
"They are people in desperate circumstances and the film captures their intertwining, different lives. It's ultimately about people's relationships and the difficulties, dilemmas and moral issues they face."
Born Equal started life as a film about homelessness but, as Savage embarked upon his research, a markedly different film began to take shape.
"When I began to look into the problem of homelessness, my sense was that there was a really big issue around people living in temporary accommodation for long periods of time.
"They're known as the ‘hidden homeless' because, although they've got a roof over their heads, it's far from being a home," says the director.
Savage visited a number of these hostels and met many different people who generously shared their stories with him – stories he says he will never forget.
"I was struck by the diverse reasons why people end up in those places: a fall from grace, a relationship break-up, coming out of prison, leaving the Army, being a refugee.
"All of those different stories come together in this one place and, for me, that was the starting-point of the film."
One of the hostels Savage visited was located in London's Swiss Cottage, literally around the corner from a row of multi-million-pound homes.
"I knew then that one of the issues I really wanted to deal with was the extremes of difference in people's lives – and, in a place like London, those extremes can be experienced within just a few streets. People can be in hugely different worlds but sharing the same space.
"The film shows huge contrasts between people and how they live, their ideas, what they've got and what they haven't got," says Savage, who points out that although the film is set in London, the same contrasts can be seen all over Britain.
Produced by Ruth Caleb (Out Of Control, Care, Bullet Boy) and Lucy Hillman (Derailed, Whistleblower, Panorama), the drama was completely improvised and filmed without rehearsal.
It was a process described by David Oyelowo, who plays Yemi, as "the acting equivalent of extreme sports".
Savage says: "It's the most organic way of making a film but also the most risky way because film-making is about delivering something people have an expectation about."
He shot two alternative endings to the drama and did not decide upon the final scenes until the very last moment.
"Working like this is more like a journey – the film keeps developing and changing as you shoot. It's exciting not quite knowing what you're going to get.
"You have a sense of it and you can talk about it with the actors in detail but then it's open to change and that's what I like. You're completely thinking on your feet."
With the cast having so much input – not a single line of dialogue was scripted in advance – making the film became a very democratic process, he adds.
"I think it was an incredibly liberating process for the actors and I was really interested in what their life experiences brought to it. It was vital that they didn't mind exposing certain elements of themselves," he says.
"For me, there was something about all of them that connected with the role they were playing. There was an element of reality in it for them and that was really important. They empathised and understood it, but also felt that they could give something quite personal to it."
For Savage, the film taps into the way a lot of people today are beginning to think about society, wealth and poverty, and the way we live now.
"If you're fairly well-off, fairly comfortable, and you see people who aren't – who have nothing – living at the end of your road, you do start to think about it. It makes you think about these vast differences between our lives and that's what the film is about," he says.
"I want people to go on a journey with the characters. If we, as an audience, care about them, irrespective of our preconceptions, that's what matters.
"In the end, what the film aspires to achieve is to encourage people to think more about others, care about the less fortunate and be more aware of what's going on around them."
Born Equal is a BBC production with BBC Films.
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BORN EQUAL
BLUE MURDER In Deep
In In Deep, the final episode of the current series of Blue Murder, a diver finds human remains in a lake and a hip flask engraved with the name Paul Cochran is found nearby. Janine and DI Mayne visit Paul Cochran’s house and discover he is not dead but in a rehabilitation institution, trying to address his drug problems.
The dead man is identified as Mickey Day, who went missing 3 years ago. Paul Cochran is suspected as the killer, until he too is found dead. Both Day and Cochran are revealed to have been part of a fishing group so could the deaths be linked? And if it is a series of killings, who is the next victim?
Meanwhile Janine has problems to deal with at home when her son Tom is being bullied at school and her new nanny takes matters into his own hands.
Blue Murder stars Caroline Quentin as DCI Janine Lewis, Ian Kelsey as DI Richard Mayne, Paul Loughran as DS Butchers and Nicholas Murchie as DS Shap.
Guest stars include Jeremy Sheffield and Jason Watkins.
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THE CHANGELING
UK / BBC-1 for the Play of the Month strand / 1x105 minutes / Broadcast Sunday 20 January 1974 @ 8.15pm
Play: Thomas Middleton, William Rowley / Costume Design: Betty Aldiss / Production Design: Fanny Taylor / Producer: Cedric Messina / Director: Anthony Page
The Changeling is a well remembered version of the Thomas Middleton and William Rowley bloodthirsty Jacobean tale of a woman who falls in love with a sea captain and then plots the murder of her fiancee to get him out of the way only for things to take an inevitable tragic turn.
cast
HELEN MIRREN as Beatrice-Joanna
STANLEY BAKER as De Flores
T.P. McKENNA as Tomazo de Piracquo
ALAN WEBB as Vermandero
BRIAN COX as Alsemero
TONY SELBY as Jasperino
FRANCES TOMELTY as Diaphanta
SUSAN PENHALIGON as Isabella
NORMAN ROSSINGTON as Lollio
KENNETH CRANHAM as Antonio
GEORGE CAMILLER as Pedro
LIONEL GUYUETT as Servant
MARIKA RIVERA as Madwoman
JOYCE GRAEME as Madwoman
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CRIME AND MYSTERY
Here you can find listed all our crime and mystery shows, from the one off drama to the long running series.
T
A Touch of Frost Endangered Species
A TOUCH OF FROST: Endangered Species
Broadcast: ITV1 Network | Sunday 5 November 2006 | 9.00pm
In Endangered Species Detective Inspector Jack Frost (David Jason) and Superintendent Mullet (Bruce Alexander) have lost their case against Kevin Flanagan (Gary Sefton). Having gloated to the two men outside the court, Flanagan finds that he now desperately needs Frost’s help.
Frost is reluctant to respond to Flanagan’s pleading phone call and at first fails to believe he is in trouble. When he hears the cries of a tortured man in the background, Frost realises this is serious and heads to Flanagan’s farm with his new assistant Detective Constable Presley (Blake Ritson).
Arriving at the farm, Frost and Presley encounter not a mastermind criminal but an intimidating crocodile. Flanagan is nowhere to be seen. Whilst searching the farm, Frost finds an old cellar containing an array of exotic animals and, searching the grounds of the farm, Presley finds an amputated leg – presumed to be Flanagan’s. The rest of the body is thought to be in the lake - or in the crocodile.
Later, Frost and Presley are trying to come to some sort of arrangement to indicate to the other when they have company. However, secret codes and symbols won’t work for Frost when his latest love interest, Julie Brown (Claire Cox), is brushed aside in favour of work.
Elsewhere, the Harris family return from a camping holiday only to find a naked male body in their bedroom. Jumping to conclusions, Gerald (Tim Treloar) suspects his wife, Carol (Ruth Gemmell) is involved, assuming the man was her lover.
The next day there is shock when Flanagan turns up at the Police Station. He is taken into custody as the star witness to the murder of his oriental friend - the remains of whom were found in the lake, and the crocodile… Flanagan is released on surveillance – hoping he will lead them to the leader of the smuggling ring, Kenneth Shaw (David Calder)...
Screenplay by Tony Charles and Christopher Blake
THE OLYMPIAN WAY
UK / BBC1 / 6x45 minute episodes / Broadcast 1 July - 12 August 1981
Comedy drama series set inside a health club run by Terry and Stella Wilson. Terry's dad, millionaire Stan Wilson, had invested heavily in the club and wanted to see it become a success.
cast
LOIS DANE as Stella Wilson
HUGH FRASER as Terry Wilson
ALFRED MARKS as Stan Wilson
IAN BRIMBLE as Roy
ADRIENNE POSTA as Eva
TONY BARTON as Clem Attard
PAUL BROOKE as Trevor Watt
MERDELLE JORDINE as Julie
DEIRDRE COSTELLO as Tania
STEPHEN BILL as Derek
MILES FOTHERGILL as Lou
SHARMAN MACDONALD as Marcia
BERNARD SPEAR as Charlie
JEAN WARREN as Lottie
TREVOR BUTLER as Andrew
FELICITY STEEL as Wendy
MIKE BERRY as Phil Hewlett
MEG JOHNSON as Violet
CLARE CLIFFORD as Lesley
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SECRETS OF THE BELLS
UK / ITV Network (for the Celebrity Playhouse strand) / 1x25 minute episode / Broadcast Wednesday 1 August 1956 @ 7.05pm
Writer: Frederic Bracy / Original Material: Phyllis Lee Patterson / Producer: William Sackheim / Director: Arnold Laven
The big selling point for the drama Secrets of the Bells, broadcast in the early days of the ITV Network was an appearance by Hollywood star Louis Jordan.
cast
LOUIS JORDAN as Andre
PETER VOTRIAN as Paul
DIANE FOSTER as Jean Paquette
CARROLL McCOMAS as Madame Senecal
JAMES F. STONE as Mayor
BELLE MITCHELL as Madame Bolduc
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