BORN EQUAL

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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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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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

RAMSAY'S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES - LA PARRA DE BURRIANA

Multi Michelin-starred chef Gordon Ramsay is sharpening his knives - and his tongue - for another assault on some of the country's scariest restaurant kitchens in a new series of BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

Tonight, for the first time ever on Kitchen Nightmares , Gordon takes on a restaurant abroad. La Parra de Burriana is an ex-pat restaurant in Nerja on Spain's Costa del Sol. Nestling among the cafes lining the seafront offering all-day English breakfast and chips, La Parra is the brainchild of 26-year-old ex-nightclub manager Laurence.

He set himself up in business 18 months ago with a loan from his dad and, although he's not an experienced chef, mans the kitchen on his own, determined to offer something better than chips to his largely British clientele. Laurence's menu boasts 72 options, including his unforgettable signature dish, prawns in garlic with chocolate sauce.

Running front-of-house is Laurence's mate Alex, and sous-chef Norman is on the barbecue serving up a haphazard combination of kebabs and steaks cooked by torchlight. But the kebabs are raw, Alex has over-booked the place (and failed to clear up the dog mess that litters the dining room) and the punters that are still turning up face an interminable wait for their food.

Unsurprisingly Laurence lost £22,000 last year but still resists Gordon's attempts to introduce a simple menu that will bring customers back. Will Laurence survive the summer and Gordon's efforts to get him to learn bullfighting? Can La Parra be saved, or will the sun set forever on Laurence's Mediterranean dream?

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THE RETURN OF MR MEN

A new series of the children's television programme Mr Men, based on the range of children's books by Roger Hargreaves, is to be relaunched.

The new series, which is to be made by Chorion, will feature a number of new Mr Men characters including Mr Rude and Little Miss Daredevil.

Hargreave's series of books were first launched in the 1970's with the Little Miss series first being published in 1981.

According to The Scotsman, some of the original characters are also receiving makeovers for the new show.

The first Mr Men Show is scheduled to be aired on channel Five in the UK at 07:30 on 25 February.

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HUGH FEARNLEY WHITTINGSTALL

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: crazy name, crazy guy! With his wildly unkempt hair, plummy voice, and deeply unconventional lifestyle choices, he would doubtless have ended up in Bedlam or been burned at the stake had be been born in a different age. What kind of a man turns his back on a promising career in London to go and pursue a self-sufficient lifestyle in Dorset?

And yet Fearnley-Whittingstall has not only found complete contentment in his bucolic venture, he's also made it a commercial success, with a corresponding career in broadcasting, writing and catering. Now, in his latest series for Channel 4, he's made it his mission to transform the diets of some of the worst eaters in the country, by introducing them all to The River Cottage Treatment.

On meeting him, it becomes clear that he's not only not off his rocker, he's also passionate, erudite, and perhaps the sanest person on television (which the happily un-media Fearnley-Whittingstall would probably consider being damned with faint praise). In the distinctly urban surroundings of a fashionable boutique hotel in London's Clerkenwell, the gloriously hairy gastronome discusses The Good Life, our responsibility towards farm animals, and a disastrous limpet lasagne.

You're a writer, broadcaster, chef, farmer, gardener and journalist. What do you say when someone asks you what you do for a living?
I usually say I write about food. That's what I started doing, and when the telly shelf-life expires, which one day it will, that's what I'll go back to. Not that I've ever stopped doing it.

Do you enjoy writing more than making TV programmes?
I like doing both. The writing allows me to cover a lot of ground that I could never cover on the TV programme. Doing the TV allows me to work with a team in a way that the solitary business of writing doesn't permit, so in that sense they're complimentary. Having said that, I also have the great experience of working with a team at River Cottage HQ.

It must be incredibly hard work, keeping everything going. Are you permanently exhausted?
I am putting in quite a few hours at the moment. I have been working fairly hard through the year. At the same time, I don't mind getting up early in the morning, but I never work really late into the evening, and I don't usually work at weekends, unless it's a filming commitment. So I do have family time, and over the summer, when we're filming and weekends start to become a casualty of the filming schedule, I try and make up for that by making sure we get a good summer family holiday.

You've been down in Dorset for nearly ten years. When you made the move from London, did you know you'd end up being there permanently, or was it more of an experiment?
It was a genuine experiment, but I think I was relatively optimistic that the outcome would be that I'd end up living there. But it had to work on two levels. There was the TV experiment, my life at River Cottage, which was presented as being a fairly solo affair, but actually, if I was going to make the move long-term, that obviously was a matter I had to agree with my partner and family.

On the TV side of it, did you ever think you'd get so much mileage out of the River Cottage idea?
No, not at all. This is the sixth series of completely new River Cottage stuff, and if you include the Best Of... shows, it's the eighth. I would never, ever have imagined it would all still be going on.

How did the locals take to a broadcaster with an Eton and Oxford education moving down from London?
People in West Dorset are very laid-back, and there are all sorts of people who have arrived there from all sorts of places, so there's no closed rural community that's not open to strangers. West Dorset's always attracted slightly maverick types over the years anyway. Back in the 60s and 70s there was a wave of not exactly self-sufficiency types, but people who were looking for a kind of alternative life. It's one of the places along with parts of Wales and Norfolk, which has always attracted people who want to get away from it all but still might have a bit of an artistic temperament. It's culturally a very broad-minded place anyway, it's not a deep, dark, straw-chewing, smock-wearing rural community.

Your cooking is pretty experimental, you take risks and do things that others wouldn't. How often have you made something only to find it completely inedible?
Almost never, actually. My cooking is grounded in quite well-worn traditional ideas. Some of it goes back to old ways of doing things. I'm absolutely not afraid to go out on a limb and try an unusual dish, but often I'm making dishes that people have been doing for a while, or aren't common currency at the moment. So we make our own haggis, and we do it in quite a quirky River Cottage way, but based on some sound principles. It's not the recipes that are quirky, it's the approach to not wasting anything and making good use of ingredients like pigs' trotters and chickens' feet and that kind of thing. People have been doing that for years, they just haven't done it much recently.

Come on, there must have been the odd disaster?
There have been a few food experiments that haven't been great. We made a classic old-fashioned limpet and potato dish that I'd dug out of an old recipe book, where you grate potatoes and you squeeze the water from the potatoes and you cook the limpets and then put the juice of the limpets back into the potatoes and then you layer it up like a sort of potato and limpet lasagne. It was a lot of effort for somewhat mediocre results, but in the end the frustration about that dish was it didn't really get a fair outing, because I actually burnt it quite badly.

Did you watch The Good Life as a kid?
Yeah I did watch it, and I was charmed by it.

So do you think there's some subliminal Felicity Kendall fantasy going on here?
If there is, it's definitely subliminal. Funnily enough, The Good Life was never much to the fore in my mind when we were doing The River Cottage shows, but then I think sometime after that they started repeating them, and I definitely had a sort of memory of that stuff, so it must have made an impression, definitely.

What's the concept behind River Cottage Treatment?
I've always felt that something of the River Cottage approach is relevant to everybody. And at the same time I'm aware of this sense in some quarters that an organic approach to food or a hands-on approach to food is regarded by some as a slightly elitist thing, that it's all right if you've got a bit of money or you've got a bit of land. Well, River Cottage isn't about saying everybody should become a smallholder, but it is about saying everyone should know more about where their food comes from. That's the underlying message, and I wanted to address that message more directly in the new series. And it seemed to me that the best way to do that was not to preach to the converted, but to go after not just the unconverted but the apparently unconvertible. So we've got people who do things a certain way, and got them down to River Cottage for a week to see if it changes their approach. Underpinning it is a passionate belief for me that anybody who has a bit of time with this approach to food will take something from that that will last. I hope it will make people think a lot more about the food they eat and where it comes from.

So you take people with appalling food habits, and try and change their whole approach to food in just one week. How successful has it been?
I think, in the end, real success can't be measured in the short-term. But there's no question that everyone who comes on these shows ends up in a very different place at the end of the week from where they started. How that will affect them long-term plays out over the next few months.

How is each programme different?
We get a different type of group in for each episode. So there are people who eat almost nothing but chicken, mostly battery-farmed and pre-packaged - then there's an episode with people who live off ready meals, and one for people who eat fast food all the time. It's the convenience obsession that we have as a rather grim part of our food culture. I think it's quite a British thing, we're obsessed with convenience and price. And for me, food is the wrong area to be saving time and money. Of course, for some people food budgets are really tight, and they can't all go to farmers' markets and buy organic everything. But at the same time there's a huge section of society who are not by any means on the breadline, yet they are irresistibly drawn to these two-for-one, BOGOF great piles of chicken portions or ready meals. It is a very, very pervasive thing. There's this idea that cooking is a chore, but actually cooking is, for many people, quality time. To anyone who starts to get a feel for it, it turns into quality time. Besides, what are people trying to save all this time for? So they can watch another half hour of dodgy telly?

How do you get people who, say, eat nothing but ready meals to change their habits?
The first thing is to give them some confidence, find ways to get them to find their feet in the kitchen, so that they don't have this thing of "I'm useless anyway, so why bother?" Secondly to get them feeling that the time they spend in the kitchen is actually quality time. I spend a lot of time thinking about food, writing about food and cooking it, yet still when I get home in the evening, for me the best way to unwind is to knock up a simple supper, from ingredients in the garden or what comes to hand. I wanted people to get a taste of that, to liberate them to change their ways a bit.

It sounds like you're tackling more political material this time.
River Cottage has always had a political, or certainly a philosophical agenda, and anybody who wanted to extract that from the show could. But at the same time, as an entertainment package, you could sit back and let the bucolic lifestyle wash over you and probably then go and pull a microwave dinner out of the freezer without feeling too bad about it. I hope in the new River Cottage show, that sort of mild hypocrisy will become harder to sustain for people at home, and that they will identify with some of these characters who have come down.

Were you surprised by the dietary habits of some of the people involved? For example the guy who would never eat anything except chicken and potatoes?
Yeah, that was a shocker, that really was a shocker. I don't think Tony would think of himself as having an eating disorder, but actually he is borderline phobic about fruit and vegetables. The fact that we got him to try two new vegetables for the first time in 29 years was great. Okay, they were root vegetables, and we fried them and they ended up looking like crisps. But we had to meet him on his own territory or we'd have achieved nothing. No doubt some people will look at that and think 'Oh big deal, he ate a couple of crisps that weren't made from potatoes', but for Tony that was two new vegetables in his diet for the first time in nearly 30 years. That opens him up to other future experiences.

Did you get exasperated by some of your guests at River Cottage when you were filming?
In a word, yes. I did get exasperated by some of them, but at the same time there was nobody who I didn't like. In all three cases they were a great bunch, and the people who frustrated me and baffled me a little bit, I could always still just about see their point of view. For instance Lisa in the chicken show was a tough nut to crack, but at the same time I liked her from the moment she arrived. She was a warm, sunny person with bags of attitude, which she wasn't going to be shy about expressing. That was great, because this has to be a two-way street. I wouldn't get anywhere with these guys if I couldn't understand why they had the eating habits they did.

Did you find any of your own attitudes challenged?
I think I started to understand something about the power of that fast food culture. I used to think it was all about just taking advantage of people's laziness, but actually there is a huge amount of money and clout being put into pressurising people into a certain approach to food, which suits the supermarkets very well. Ready meals, for example, are pushed by the supermarkets because the profit margins on those products are so high. They're using some very cheap ingredients with some dodgy additives and mushing them all up in these packages to go in the microwave. If they can get people buying those products rather than buying a whole chicken or some fresh vegetables, their margins are fantastic. So they really want to create a ready meal culture, hence the power of packaging, marketing, three-for-two offers, that sort of thing.

You're now relatively used to seeing your animals slaughtered now, but it wasn't always the case, was it?
At the end of the very first River Cottage series, when I took my pigs to slaughter, I tried to be very open about my emotions. It was an emotional moment, taking those pigs that I'd reared over the summer and become quite attached to, and that was the first time I'd reared animals for slaughter. But at the same time I'm very glad that I did that. It's that sort of emotionally intense experience that I wanted my guests to have in the new series, because that affected me profoundly. Even though I was already interested in organic food and the provenance of food, up until that point I would probably have occasionally casually eaten a ham sandwich without knowing where the ham came from. But from that moment on, no!

So you tried to pass on a similar experience to your guests?
Yeah. In show two, the ready meals guys, they were given an opportunity to come with me when I took two of my lambs to the local slaughterhouse. To their immense credit, they all decided to take me up on that. Nobody had to do it, and even when they got there, I told them they could leave any time they wanted. But they decided they wanted to go through with it. And of all the things in the three shows, that was probably the thing that had the most lasting affect on any of the guests. Those guys said, and I believe it'll stick with them, that they'll never take meat for granted again. If you can get people to focus for a while on the fact that meat really is a matter of life and death - there isn't any meat unless you go and kill an animal - hopefully after that it makes them think a little harder about the quality of those animals' lives while they are alive. The fact that we have to kill animals for meat means that I think we're morally obliged to really look after those animals very well while they're alive.

By Benjie Goodhart

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SURANNE JONES ON STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

Suranne Jones talks about her role in the saucy ITV1 drama Strictly Confidential.

Tell us about the show?

It’s called Strictly Confidential and it’s about Sex Therapists. My character is a Sex Therapist along with her brother-in-law Greg and they deal with all sorts of problems ranging from Vaginismus to cyber sex addicts. Kay’s writing is very real and there are so many different levels to the drama. It’s an emotional rollercoaster and is absolutely thrilling.


What is your character, Linda, like?

She’s an ex-cop who used to be in a relationship with a woman. She left the force because every time she saw a dead body it made her queasy and emotionally upset her so she retrained as a sex therapist. She met a guy called Greg, who is also a Sex Therapist, and quite fancied him but he was married. So she ended up marrying his brother, Richard, who’s the complete opposite to Greg. Richard does a lot of outdoorsy sort of sports and they travel around together, but she still quite fancies his brother really. She’s desperate for a child and is devastated when she discovers Richard is infertile. They look into other areas and decide on a sperm donor. She and her husband ask his brother, Greg, to be the donor which causes all kinds of problems.


Did you research the role of a Sex Therapist?

I met up with Kay who had spoken to a lot of Sex Therapists and I watched some DVDs of real therapy sessions with real problems, showing how the therapists spoke to people.


How does it feel to be appearing in a drama written by Kay Mellor?

Kay’s writing is so great on so many different levels in that it’s funny and sad all at the same time. There’s stuff going on that’s quite tragic and some people work things out, other people don’t…for example there’s a guy who wants to go and swing and his wife doesn’t want to do that…It really just opens up a whole can of worms I think, and it’s dealt with in a fantastic way. I went out for dinner with Kay recently and I was reminded of the Band Of Gold characters and the scene with the rubber gloves and the boiling water, and the actress Cathy Tyson, and it just struck me as I sat opposite her ‘God, this is great’. I’ve loved her work for a long time and to be the lead in this show with such a great cast and brilliant writing and it’s such a strong part for a woman as well, it’s fantastic!


Is this darker than some of Kay’s other dramas?

It’s darker yes, but it has lightness within it. There’s lots of sex, lots of sex talk, dead bodies, there’s a murder, there’s nakedness…So I’d say it was slightly darker than say Fat Friends I suppose.


What’s it like being at the centre of a love triangle?

Both Tristan Gemmill and Cristian Solimeno are big and beautiful and very, very good. It’s quite easy for me to be in the middle of those two so it’s great.


How does this role compare to other character’s you have played?

This is a very professional role and deals with a lot of subjects so I’ve learnt a lot and will walk away with knowledge of sexual therapy. It’s my own series so my character is involved in every aspect. It’s really fulfilling to see it all put together.


It’s a very sexy show. How did you find filming sex scenes?

We sang songs in between takes to take our mind off it! If people were walking past they would have heard heavy breathing and then us bursting into song!


Have there been any amusing moments on set?

We have been making our own DVD behind the scenes to hand out at the wrap party. I think it shows how well we have all got on and that we have got a similar sense of humour.

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AGATHA CHRISTIE'S MARPLE - SEASON TWO OVERVIEW

As in the acclaimed first season of the series, McEwan is joined by an A-list of guest actors, including Anthony Andrews (“Brideshead Revisited”), Claire Bloom (Shadowlands), Geraldine Chaplin (Doctor Zhivago), Timothy Dalton (aka James Bond), Charles Dance (MASTERPIECE THEATRE “Bleak House”), Phil Davis (“Bleak House”), Aidan McArdle (NOVA “Einstein’s Big Idea”), Sophia Myles (Underworld) and Greta Scacchi (White Mischief).

When McEwan took on the role of Miss Marple — played previously by such luminaries as Margaret Rutherford, Angela Lansbury and Joan Hickson — the series drew millions of viewers and critical praise: “Geraldine McEwan is irresistible” raved TV Guide; “Great fun,” said USA Today; and “Not your mother’s Miss Marple,” observed the Associated Press about the latest incarnation of Christie’s beloved sleuth.

Christie remains the most popular novelist in history, with over two billion of her books sold to date in more than 100 languages. As well as the renowned Poirot and Miss Marple series, Christie also wrote the detective series Tommy and Tuppence and a wealth of other murder mysteries and thrillers between 1920 and 1977.

Set again in or near Marple’s picturesque English village of St Mary Meade, the season kicked off with “The Sleeping Murder” starring Sophia Myles as Gwenda, a beautiful young woman visiting England for the first time. While searching for a home for her future husband and herself, Gwenda is instinctively drawn to a particular house in the seaside village of Dilmouth. It turns out that her “perfect” house has a terrible past, which Gwenda is forced to confront when she suffers a disturbing case of déjà vu. Just when Gwenda’s flashbacks turn to recollections of murder, she meets Miss Marple at a performance of The Duchess of Malfi.

In a new take on the classic “By the Pricking of My Thumbs” Miss Marple joins fellow Agatha Christie supersleuths Tommy and Tuppence Beresford (Anthony Andrews and Greta Schacci) to investigate the disappearances of two nursing home residents and the unsolved mystery of a murdered child. Charles Dance guest stars as a cynical clergyman who shares Tuppence’s taste for sherry — wherever they can find it.

In “The Moving Finger”, the dashing Jerry Burton (James D’Arcy, Master and Commander) survives a serious motorcycle accident and comes to the sleepy village of Lymstock with his sister Joanna (Emilia Fox,) to recuperate. Their expectations of peace and quiet are quickly dashed when they discover that a poison pen-writer is at large in the village. Fortunately, Miss Marple happens to be in town, ready to unravel the mystery. The film features a special guest appearance by director Ken Russell (Women in Love).

In the series closer, “The Sittaford Mystery, Miss Marple waits out a blizzard at Sittaford House, a remote mansion on the moors owned by eminent politician Clive Trevelyan (Timothy Dalton). The long, snowy night turns deadly when Trevelyan is found with a knife in his chest and a mysterious smile on his face. The cast includes James Wilby) and Rita Tushingham (A Taste of Honey).

Again a very enjoyable series, lavishly filmed and all star of cast.

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ASHES TO ASHES - COVENTRY EVENING TELEGRAPH

RIGHT, fire up the Quattro and enjoy a trip back to the 80s with politically incorrect cop Gene Hunt behind the driving wheel.

The Sheriff of Manchester and his sidekicks have uprooted to London, but it's business as usual on the crime-busting front in BBC1's new Life on Mars follow-up Ashes to Ashes.

Sam Tyler found them in the 70s, but modern-day top cop Alex Drake ended up in the perm-loving 80s after being kidnapped and shot on her way to taking daughter Molly to school.

Alex knows Sam's story and believes she has a grip on what is happening to her, but the 80s is becoming more and more real and then there's a certain spark with Hunt ... even if he did think she was a happy hooker when they first met. "If that skirt wasany higher I could see what you had for breakfast," he smoothly told her.

The joy of Ashes to Ashes, though, is the same as Life on Mars with its glimpse of bygone days.

The sight of a can of Tab, one of the early Walkmans and even a glimpse of an early video recorder added to the nostalgia factor along with the shoulder pads, perms galore and masses of eye make- up.

The only drawback is I can't get the David Bowie song out of my head today. Could this be the start of an 80s revival?

Yikes, not sure I can face a perm.

Coventry Evening Telegraph | 9 February 2008

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LIFE AFTER MARS - ASHLEY PHAROAH INTERVIEW

From Life On Mars to Ashes To Ashes, Nailsea-born writer Ashley Pharoah tells David Clensy why he's unleashed the Gene Genie on a new era of policing Whoever said nostalgia isn't what it used to be? With Life On Mars, West Country writers Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham brought 1973 back to life.

And it went down a storm with TV audiences, who lapped up every moment of political incorrectness, revelled in a few good old-fashioned police chases and stepped gleefully back to the decade of brown wallpaper and patterned carpets.

Then, of course, there was DCI Gene Hunt, played by Philip Glenister, who became the real star of the show with his unbridled sexism, snappy one-liners and old school detective work straight from The Sweeney.

But by the time the series reached its climax - with central character Sam Tyler leaping from a Manchester roof - it seemed like all prospects of another series was lost. The question was left hanging on everyone's lips: was Sam dead? "Well, yes he was," says Ashley Pharoah - and he should know, as the character brought to life on the screen by John Simm was born in his imagination.

"He died and we thought that was an end to it. But the BBC kept coming back and saying 'isn't there anything you can do to keep it going?' - the series had been such a hit, and they were desperate for us to come up with some way of maintaining it," he explains.

"Matthew and I thought about it and said no - it just wasn't possible - Sam Tyler was dead, and you couldn't get much more final than that.

After all, the whole world of Life On Mars had existed only within Sam Tyler's sub-consciousness as he lay in a coma."

But in a last ditch attempt to maintain the magic of the DCI Gene Hunt Genie, the Beeb sent Ashley and Matthew away to spend one more afternoon trying to come up with a way to take the show forward.

"Somehow, we got talking about Miami Vice and Moonlighting, and before we knew it we were reminiscing about the Eighties - what it was like being a New Romantic and how the world felt back when we were in our early 20s.

It was an amazing time in 1981 - Britain was at the height of Thatcherism, everyone was talking about the royal wedding of Diana and Charles, there was a sense that everything was changing.

"We soon got talking about how Gene Hunt would have coped with the changes that the Eighties posed. What would he make of Yuppies and cocktails? "And it was also a time of real change in the police with the publication of Lord Scarman's report following the Brixton Riots. It was the beginning of the end for Gene Hunt's style of policing. The more we talked about it, the more excited we became. We soon realised there was scope for continuing Gene Hunt's story. It was just a case of working out how we could do it."

Ashley and Matthew managed to slip a scene into the final episode of Life On Mars in which Sam Tyler records the details of his Seventies' coma experience for the "psychiatric evaluation division", where "there's this officer collecting stuff from colleagues who've suffered trauma".

The sequel finally reached our screens this week. In Ashes To Ashes, the tape is received by a police psychiatrist - Alex Drake, played by Keeley Hawes.

"She becomes a bit obsessed with Sam's recordings and the characters he met in the Seventies," Ashley says. "Then when a terrible incident befalls her in 2008, she wakes up in a city and year - London, 1981 - that was pivotal to her childhood. And she finds the world is populated by the characters from Sam's tape."

In reality, the Eighties marked the end of Ashley's childhood in Nailsea and the exciting first sparks of his writing career.

"I'd had a wonderful time as a pupil at QEH in Bristol - I used to love English lessons, and the teachers there encouraged me into writing from an early age," he says. "Then in the early Eighties, I went off to the University of Brighton and later to the National Film and Television School at Beaconsfield."

Ashley showed early promise - his graduation film was nominated for a BAFTA. For the next 14 years, Ashley lived in London, working his way up to become one of the country's most prolific screenwriters, with credits including everything from Casualty to Silent Witness.

But it was in teaming up with fellow screenwriter Matthew Graham that Life On Mars was created.

"We had both moved back to the West Country 12 years ago," Ashley says. "I bought a place in Bath, and Matthew moved to a village near Frome. I'd reached a point where I'd had enough of London life, and I wanted to get back to the south west and settle down with my family in a calmer part of the world.

"London had never felt like home for me, and I'd reached a point in my career where I didn't need to be in the capital anymore in order to get work.

"I'd worked with Matthew on a few projects in the past, but because there aren't too many screenwriters around in the West Country, we started to work together quite a bit, and Life On Mars soon started to develop.

"We've always just bounced off each other well," he explains. "We have a similar sense of humour, and a similar writing style.

"We tend to get together to map out the broader plot lines, but then we each go off and work alone on our individual episodes. So we're not really looking over each other's shoulders all the time."

Ashley is currently in the middle of co-producing the latest series to come out of the writing partnership - Bone Kickers.

"It follows a group of archaeologists in Bath," Ashley explains. "Imagine Time Team meets CSI, and you're pretty much there. We decided to set it in Bath because we knew we'd have to film through the winter, and I think Bath is one of the few places in this country that looks just as beautiful all year round. But it certainly helped that it's now my home city.

"The plan is to make archaeology sexy. It should be a fairly fast-paced series. Each episode looks at a different time period, and we have some fun with it. In the first episode they discover what might be a piece of the true cross right in the middle of Bath.

"As the series goes on, the team uncovers the bones of an 18th-century slave in the Bristol Channel mud, then we have another episode based around Bath's Roman history and another that ties in to World War I. I find all history exciting - after all, it's always about things that happened to real people."

But for Ashley, the greatest surprise is what's happened to him since his days as a Bristol schoolboy.

"When you're a lad growing up in Nailsea you don't think anything like this could ever happen to you," he says. "It would have been hard to imagine that I could have become a writer - that I could be here now being paid to do the one thing I love doing. I still find that exciting."

And what of the future? Could Hollywood beckon for Ashley? "I don't feel any draw towards Hollywood," he says. "I love my life here in Bath with my family and friends. And I like writing for television too much to think about giving it up to write movies.

"You get treated with more respect as a TV screenwriter.

"If you're writing a Hollywood movie, you're just a cog in a much bigger machine.

"You don't get to write to any depth for films. Television is a writer's medium. Film is a director's medium.

"TV is very sophisticated these days. You're allowed to experiment a bit. I get the impression that television is for adults now, while films these days are for kids. They're very formulaic and predictable. I'm happy doing what I'm doing - so why change anything?" l Ashes To Ashes continues on Thursday, at 9pm on BBC1

Bristol Evening Post | 9 Feb 2008

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RAY CARLING INTERVIEW

An interview with Ray Carling from The Sunday People | 10 Feb 2008

AS DS Ray Carling in Ashes To Ashes, he's sexist, stroppy and stubborn.

But Dean Andrews, who plays the 1980s permed copper, says today's world has gone over the top with political correctness.

Here the 44-year-old actor also reveals the secrets behind sex scenes as Brenda Blethyn's toyboy, fate leading him to acting and his wife and why he never touched a drop of booze till he was 38.

Q ASHES To Ashes is set in the 1980s as a follow-up to Life On Mars. How does today compare in terms of political correctness?

A Red tape and legislation have gone mad over the past few years.

All the do gooders interfere and we can't do this and we can't do that.

Q WHAT kind of punishment should be in place at school?

A In my first week at secondary school I got six of the best. It taught me not to be stupid and I never got it again. I have two children, Sharni, 23 and Alice, 16. If a teacher asked if she could punish either of my daughters I would agree.

I'm quite in favour of discipline. I know my kids wouldn't mess around but if they did they certainly wouldn't do it again after that.

Q ASHES To Ashes is set in the Metropolitan Police of 1981. Is it an accurate portrayal?

A My golf club has a lot of expoliceman and they thought Life On Marswasthe only ever accurate portrayal of a working police station in 1973. That's from hundreds of them not just the odd one. They say: 'We can't watch The Bill or Heartbeat. The only one we can watch is Life On Mars because someone is tellingourstory for once.' I think the same is true for Ashes, but we will have to wait and see how people take to it.

Q THIS time you are working opposite Keeley Hawes as Alex Drake as well as Phil Glenister as Gene Hunt. How has that been?

A It's a whole new dynamic with Keeley. She has some really big shoes to fill and she's amazing. She's a brilliant actress and she's better looking than John Simm, which is definitely a bonus. She and Phil have perfect chemistry.

Q RAY is like a mini Gene Hunt. Do you compete over who has the most outrageous lines?

A Phil always gets the best lines and delivers them brilliantly. He's amazing. Nobody could have played Gene Hunt like Phil does. He's the funniest bloke on set.

Q YOU were a cabaret and club singer from the age of 17 and didn't land your first acting role till you were 38. How was it coming to the business so late?

A I wouldn't have dealt with it as well at all when I was younger. I would have probably blown out. I was full of youth and arrogance. Now I love it when people come up and talk to me.

Q YOUR first acting role was in 2001 Ken Loach film The Navigators. That's amazing.

How did it come about?

A It was a one-in-amillion chance.

I had gone out a couple of times as an extra as a way of getting a few extra quid. I saw an advert for an internet casting agency which was pounds 80 to join. I didn't hear anything for four months then a woman called with a casting for a film. My cynical side thought it would be some bloke with a camcorder and some sex scenes. I didn't know who Ken Loach was.

Q AND your first ever sex scene was with Brenda Blethyn in Between The Sheets?

A What an amazing woman to have to do it with. I don't usually get parts with much romance to them, I'm usually beating someone up.

I never felt uncomfortable because she made it really pleasurable. I was 40 and she was 57 and we had to have sex in a bath and up against a tree.

I was very wary about getting my clothes off in front of a load of people.

It was made very nice with some beautiful lighting that hid a lot.

Q YOU didn't touch any booze until your first acting job.

How come?

A I was brought up in a pub in Rotherham. I don't know why I never drank. I never really felt the need.

Then at the Ken Loach film everyone told me to have a drink. I had a glass of red wine and I really enjoyed it.

I did end up sh*tfaced but I quite enjoyed that feeling. It was liberating.

Q AND didn't you meet your wife Denise in your parents' pub?

A It was another piece of fate. She'd never been in the pub before and it was New Year's Eve. My mum asked meto take these two girls home because they didn't have a taxi and one ended up being my wife.

Ashes To Ashes, Thursdays, 9pm on BBC1

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KEELEY WOWS THE MEN FROM MARS

BACK to a time when Walkmans were cutting edge and perms were cool...on men. Ashes To Ashes perfectly combines nostalgia with drama.

With ice-skating and fat loss shows watering down the schedules like a Gillian McKeith superjuice, the Life On Mars follow-up shines.

This is what telly should be about. Clever scripts. Excellent acting. And Keeley Hawes as DI Alex Drake flashing her perfect pins in suspenders and red stilettoes.

"I'd like to get out of red before Chris de Burgh writes a song about me," she says.

Spandau Ballet already did - Gold. She's pure Gold.

Just as with Life On Mars, Drake is transported back in time to join the formidable Gene Hunt and his gang. This time it's July 1981 and Drake turns up there after taking a bullet in the head from a deranged drug dealer.

Sounds as whacky as a Britney Spears management row? It is and that's the genius.

Writers Mathew Graham and Ashley Pharaoh have created some of the strongest telly characters since Corrie's Vera Duckworth, and John Thaw in The Sweeney.

As Drake sums it up: "Hunt's the bullish one, Ray's the misogynist and you're Chris the nervous one." It's back when Joe Public hated the police, coppers were as dodgy as Ray's curly hairdo(n't), and sexism in the workplace was rifer than at a Benny Hill convention.

Drake's arrival causes ructions among Hunt's small force. "You can't give a person who gets periods that much responsibility," blasts Ray. "Women DIs should look like a cross between Betty Turpin and the HMS Ark Royal. They should not look shagworthy."

Which Drake clearly is. Where John Simm as Sam Tyler provided testosterone-fuelled banter in Life On Mars, Keeley adds a new dimension.

She's a strong, feisty woman stuck in a world of pig-headed men. Perfect to whip up a storm.

Hunt is again brilliantly played by Phil Glenister: "Don't upset him, love.

This is one bloke you don't want letting his load off," he told Drake as she was held hostage by a criminal.

His suave manner, cool arrogance and outrageously non-PC tongue make Hunt unforgettable.

Telly has become entertainment crazy with channels relying on bighitting shows and their multimillion pound phone-in revenue.

With the BBC producing rubbish like The One And Only, Ashes To Ashes is the one and only show worth tuning in for.

The Sunday People | 10 Feb 2008

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ASHES TO ASHES

Groovy sequel to the already legendary Life on Mars, here you can find all our articles pertaining to the series.

Daily Telegraph Reaction (9 Feb 08)
Life After Mars - Ashley Pharoah Interview Bristol Evening Post 9 Feb 2008
Press Reaction - Coventry Evening Telegraph
Keeley Wows the Men From Mars (Sunday People | 10 Feb)
Ray Carling Interview Sunday People

ASHES TO ASHES - DAILY TELEGRAPH REACTION

Ashes to Ashes (BBC1, Thurs) was not believable in the way that its predecessor, Life on Mars, somehow was. The first time that a member of the police force travelled back in time after a traumatic injury to observe the policing methods of a previous era, it was so bizarre that we willingly suspended every ounce of disbelief. When this happened a second time, it felt like a formula being milked.

On this occasion a police psychologist travelled back to the 1980s where, as before, the period detail was lovingly reconstructed and Hunt was still a splendid, roaring, chauvinist monster - but he felt out of place. There was also a sense that everybody was enjoying themselves a bit too much. It was still a jolly romp, however.

Daily Telegraph | 9 Feb 2008

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