Sex Trope #3- Robosexual

"Where did you learn this?"
"It's a set routine based on pornographic videos..."

"Be Right Back", the first episode of a new series of Charlie Brooker's dystopian satire Black Mirror, saw the latest entry into the television sex trope club that is 'Robosexual'; ie, any sentient machine, whether robot, computer, or something else, having romantic or sexual relations with an organic lifeform. The Mechanical Lifeforms version of Interspecies Romance. Most writers address the big white elephant in the room by somehow mentioning that the robot is anatomically correct. Such a plot, as in this case, often involves a Robotic Spouse and is a Super Trope to Sex Bot, which is a sentient machine is specifically built for sex.

Things began in mundanity, a young couple – Martha (Hayley Atwell) and Ash (Domhnall Gleeson) – teasing each other affectionately as they drive through the night. He's a little distracted by his mobile phone and she's clearly getting a little tired of coming off second. "Glovebox," she says in an admonitory voice, a cue for him to put the device into purdah for a while. As soon as they get home, though, he's staring down the electronic well again. She throws a tea-towel at him: "Just checking you're still solid," she says. "You keep vanishing down that thing." The writing's departure from idiom here is a clue – or a premonition. As is Ash's memory of how his mother reacted when there was a death in the family – sweeping away every photograph of the dead person and confining them to the attic.

It won't come as a huge surprise to any viewer that Ash doesn't have long to live. When he fails to return from an errand the next day, Martha's curiosity turns to anxiety and then, with the arrival of flashing blue lights outside the kitchen window, to grief. And it's at this point that Ash's obsession with social media comes into its own. At the funeral, a friend of Martha makes a suggestion: "I can sign you up to something that helps," she says. What she has in mind is an iAsh. Somebody has married artificial intelligence software with the dense crop of personal detail we leave behind us on the web to create a virtual loved one. Give it permission to access private information and the simulation will be even better: "The more it has, the more it's him."


Martha is initially appalled but then, in her grief, can't resist trying it. And the software it seems not only has a sense of humour. It has Ash's sense of humour. After she upgrades and uploads some home videos it has his voice too. And then she goes the final step. Two delivery men arrive with a very heavy crate. Inside it is Ash 2.0. All she has to do is add electrolytes, wait a little and he – or a fair replica – will be back. Ash 2.0 isn't perfect. He can't do sexual response because that isn't on the public record anywhere. But he has a degree of hydraulic control that flesh-and-blood men might envy and which clearly proves satisfactory when Martha succumbs to loneliness and sleeps with him.

It won't have come as a great surprise to any viewer either that this was a futuristic version of "The Monkey's Paw", that terrible short story about the dangers of getting what you wish for. Oddly, though, it was a tender, more wistful account of the fable, neither of those adjectives you would have associated with Charlie Brooker even a few years ago. Here they included the counter-intuitive truth that it's not always the sweetness and the give that you miss about someone you love but the sourness and the resistance, too. The show touched on important ideas – the false way we sometimes present ourselves online, and our growing addiction to virtual lives – but it was also a touching exploration of grief. "You look like him... on a good day," Martha told Ashbot, but what was missing was what made Ash human: his unpredictability, his flaws. "You're just a few ripples of you... there's no history to you... you're just a performance of stuff."

Television Series: Black Mirror (S02E01)
Release Date: February 2013
Actress: Hayley Atwell
Video Clips Credit: Deep at Sea

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Black Mirror Will Be Right Back

Charlie Brooker’s dark drama Black Mirror is returning to Channel 4 in 2013 for a second series, which will consist of three disarming, suspenseful and satirical films. Described by Brooker as a series in which "each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality", Black Mirror is concerned with examining the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes' time if we're clumsy. "Like the last series we've done three stories that are three different genres," he states. "We've also got all sorts of unpleasant things and also one of them is very sad."

The first of the new Black Mirror films, Be Right Back, stars Hayley Atwell as Martha and Domhnall Gleeson as a social media addict named Ash. Set in the near future it is, in tone, closer to the third episode of the previous series, looking how technology affects relationships – and how relationships could affect technology. And no nasty business with a pig to scare away the Daily Mail. The man finds himself distracted by social networking to the mild annoyance of the woman. She is no Luddite, her wooden easel with its curved touch screen is a valuable tool, as is the safedrive option on the car, but there is a time and place and Ash is tapping away on his phone just a bit too much. Martha doesn’t really mind though, she loves him and thoughts of their new life together are enough to override the nagging sensation that she might be losing him.

Then, after the young couple have just move to their remote cottage idyll, she really does lose him, in a very terminal fashion, when Ash is killed returning the hired van. At the funeral, Martha’s friend Sarah (Sinead Matthews) tells her about a new way to stay in touch with the deceased and reveals that, by using all his previous online communications, status updates and the like, Martha could create a new, alarmingly ‘real’ Ash to help alleviate her grief. Martha is disgusted by the concept and wants nothing to do with it as she decides to stay in the cottage, despite her sister, Naomi (Claire Keelen), being worried about her isolation.

Then one morning Martha receives an email from 'Ash'. Sarah has signed her up. Martha is furious and deletes the message but then discovers she is pregnant and, in a confused and lonely state, decides to talk to 'him'. Invariably, what she has discovered is a service that will replicate him as an instant messenger, based on his public social messaging record. Paying more for his private messaging to be taken into account. Then all his videos and recordings to create an audio version of him. And then, the final step, to physicality… "Martha knows the well-named Ash is dead, and this replacement is fake", notes Richard Johnston, who went to the BFI of this first episode. "But she can’t resist the temptation to treat him as if he were her one true love restored from the grave. But it’s not him, it is the social networking him, the public – and private face – that he exhibited, There is no room for surprise, there is no room for the revelations that were only ever made face to face. And things have to come to a head."


Of course, there are many ways to handle grief. "It is not uncommon at all for people to create some kind of surrogate form to comfort them, in a variety of ways," writes Johnston. "I’ve come across these 'real life' dolls, it is very common to talk to the deceased person as if they are still there. And for them to answer back. As the Q&A has pointed out people have often gone to mediums as part of their way of coping, all this is, is a different… medium. The first part of this show, at least, will happen in the short term. Are we as a society ready for it? And the more that we live out lives virtually, instead of physically, the more there will be to replace us when we are gone. Already Facebook pages have become shrines to their past owners, at what point will they start to talk back to us?"

Next up in the series is The Waldo Moment, about a failed comedian who voices a blue bear on a children’s educational show that teaches youngsters about reality by interviewing politicians and establishment figures. Daniel Rigby stars as bitter comic Jamie Salter, the voice behind Waldo the bear who, far from being a cute mascot for a kids’ show, is actually a character on a late-night topical comedy programme that delights in ridiculing its unknowing interviewees. The bear proves popular enough for the channel to give him his own pilot and the production company, which is run by Jason Flemyng as a character named Jack Napier, comes up with the idea of having Waldo stand against one of his victims, Conservative Liam Monroe (Tobias Menzies), who has been parachuted in to win a safe Tory seat in an up-and-coming By-Election.

On the campaign trail Jamie meets and falls for Gwendolyn Harris (Chloe Pirrie), the Labour candidate who is a rising star in the Labour party. When Gwendolyn backs away, warned off Jamie by her campaign manager, Jamie struggles to contain his disdain for career politicians. At a 'Meet the Politicians’ election hustings, when taunted by Monroe, Jamie lashes out at all the politicians present and accuses them of being more artificial than Waldo. The clip seems to hit a nerve with a disengaged mistrusting public; his rant proving something of a YouTube hit, and generating a lot of commentary in the newspapers about the state of modern politics. Could the blue bear actually end up winning a By-Election?… Or is there even more to play for?

The last film in this series of Black Mirror will be White Bear (which, despite the title, has nothing to do with The Waldo Moment). It stars Being Human’s Lenora Crichlow as a woman called Toni who wakes up suffering from amnesia in a house she doesn’t know. There are photos of her with a man and another photo of a young girl on the mantelpiece – neither of whom she recognises. The TV is on and is playing a symbol that means nothing to her. Confused, she leaves the house and stumbles onto a deserted street where no-one answers their doors. She finally senses some movement behind a curtain and is surprised to see a man filming her on his smartphone.

A car pulls into the road and a man gets out (Michael Smiley). Toni starts to approach him until she sees he is a carrying a gun and pointing it at her. As she flees, she’s pursued by a mob of people from their houses who run out of their houses to film her. Running round the corner she stumbles into Damien (Ian Bonar) and Jem (Tuppence Middleton), who together with Toni seek refuge in a petrol station. The man with the gun tries to break his way in. A group of people have gathered outside and are filming this on their phones. As the glass shatters the man with the gun enters the petrol station and Damian tries to grapple with him. The girls make a run for it. They see Damien try to escape but he is shot and dies. Toni and Jem manage to escape.

Jem explains to Toni that this has been going on for months – a mysterious signal started being transmitted that has caused most of the population to become mindless voyeurs. This apathy has allowed those strong enough to resist the signal's influence to do what they want and they have essentially become what Jem calls "Hunters" – out to get people like her and Toni. During Jem’s explanation, Toni is plagued by various flashbacks – they are becoming more and more regular and involve her in a car with the man and the girl, her assumed daughter, from the photos. Jem and Toni set out to find and destroy the transmitter, to stop its signal. It is their only hope of finding a safe way out. Reaching the transmitter they try to set fire to it just as the "hunters" arrive. Will they manage it and is this the end of their torment?

"Black Mirror is hard science fiction given a softly softly media face, it is about big problematic ideas about the way we live, given fleshy form," concludes Johnston. "Tonally, it also fits in rather well with Channel 4′s current series Utopia, full of twists, technology, just out of our reach but oh so believeable. However, the first episode- at least- of the second series of Black Mirror does not seek to shock as the first series did. This is a very mainstream, middle class, emotional drama approach which may well welcome in a wider audience before hitting them with some very difficult ideas indeed. Black Mirror asks lots of questions. It doesn’t really give anything close to a satisfying answer. That’s what mirrors do, reflect our questions back at ourselves. Answers, I guess is for us to come up with."

The first series of Black Mirror, broadcast in December 2011, won a Golden Rose at the prestigious Rose d’Or Television Festival in May 2012 and scooped Best TV movie/mini-series at the International Emmys last November. While Black Mirror’s second series doesn’t yet have an airdate, Brooker recently revealed on Twitter that it would be coming to Channel 4 "soonish".
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The Art Of Erotic Suggestion

I can never get a zipper to close. Maybe that stands for something, what do you think?

"Fuck! The gloves! Sexy or what?" Hayley Atwell is in the middle of a thoughtful disquisition on the nature of cinematic sexy — what to show, what not to show and what to do when you eventually choose to show. Atwell, it transpires, is a firm advocate of erotic suggestion rather than explicit display, and turns to Rita Hayworth in the 1946 classic Gilda for her template for movie raunch.

Of course, you would expect the 30-year-old actress and vivacious screen beauty to be something of a minx in real life. A highly intelligent one, of course, but a minx nonetheless. There's something about her sense of sexual power on screen that makes this charismatic actress riveting to watch as she unfurls her tantalising half-smile. If you want an alluring but complex heroine, all honeyed skin and chestnut-hair, almond-eyed Hayley is your woman.

Unsurprisingly, given her current chain of thought, Atwell thinks it is a good thing she didn't have a sex scene with Chris Evans in 'Captain America: The First Avenger'. The brunette beauty says she found it "refreshing" and "innocent" that her character Peggy Carter did not go all the way with the 30-year-old star's superhero alter-ego in the 1940s-based film because it was more appropriate. "I really liked it that there was no sex scene in the script because I thought, 'That was very refreshing and innocent and how traditional.' I think it was more in-keeping with the time. I've got a romantic notion that in the 40s there were classy ladies who had built up their relationships with men and subtle flirtation would go on for weeks before the final deal was sealed. And I think that's more exciting because you're not giving as much away. I wanted the audience to come away and think, 'I think that couple did actually really love each other.'"


Which is not to say she didn't feel it was her duty to have a "bit of a grope" when Evans revealed his rock hard chest for the first time. Filming a scene whereby Peggy Carter has to brush her hand across his nipple - Atwell explains she literally just had an impulse to touch it to make sure it was real. "And let me tell you, it was real and pert and covered in oil and it looked extraordinary in person," she giggles. "I just instinctively grabbed his man boob, and Joe loved it, he was like, do that again! They kept it in the film. So we did a couple of takes of me being really inappropriate with my hand on his pec for the duration of the scene just to see how far we could go, and then it got a little bit over the top." Atwell says she is actually attracted to physiques that seem to be appropriate to what that person does. "So if you’re an athlete or a dancer or swimmer, than amazing, but if you’re huge and beefy, for me it becomes a real off-putting vanity that I find unattractive," she insists. "It’s an energy thing really – it’s how comfortable people are in their bodies and how they carry it and I find that overrides any kind of physical thing really."

Being at ease in her own skin is not something that has always come naturally to Hayley. "My real self, the self I have always been from a child, is a loner and nerd, slightly overweight, with a very heavy fringe," she told the Guardian. "That is who I was as a kid. I don't think I will ever be anything other than that. It is sheer delight when I see pictures of myself now because I think: that's not me. I was 'Hayley Fatwell' at school. I had the only-child syndrome of loving my independence to the point of being a bit socially retarded. I was on only child, very quiet and very shy, I was surrounded in primary school by skinny girls in crop tops, when I had puppy fat. I wasn't cool. I developed really early and couldn't quite fit into girls' clothes and felt crap. I think that served me well – I had to develop different parts of my personality."

In the eager openness of her face, it is easy to find the little girl that Atwell once was. She was an only child whose parents were motivational speakers who had met and fallen in love at a London workshop of Dale Carnegie’s self-help bible How to Win Friends and Influence People in the mid-1970s. By the time she was two, they had separated. Her father, Grant – 'a Tom Selleck lookalike’, and a photographer-turned-shaman who also goes by his Native American name, Star Touches Earth – returned to America, leaving his daughter and her mother, Alison, living like sisters in their bohemian enclave off Ladbroke Grove in west London.

It was no ordinary childhood. Aged eight, after seeing Loyd Grossman put a live lobster into boiling water, Atwell became a committed vegetarian. Aged nine, she walked over hot coals at a 'Power Into Action’ workshop her mother had taken her to. As a teenager, while her friends were out experimenting with alcohol and cigarettes, she was on anti-vivisection and Free the Dolphins marches. At the rare parties that she did go to, she was happiest in the corner – preferably with someone’s parent – having a long discussion about life, love and the universe.

At Sion-Manning, her comprehensive secondary school, Atwell rebelled against rebellion, taking the bookish route and excelling academically. It was not always easy, and she often found herself being bullied by fellow students for her New Age ways. 'I’d see kids fighting in the playground and say things like, "I’m sensing a lot of anger here",’ she laughs. After her GCSEs she moved to the fee-paying London Oratory, and then on to Guildhall, a happy outcome for the girl who had only ever wanted to be an actress.

Named after Hayley Mills, Atwell was exposed to film and theatre from a young age. "Mum wasn’t at all religious but she thought that going to the theatre was as important a ceremonial, communal experience that a person could have," she says. "She was always very moved by the power that it had to open your mind. I found it genuinely thrilling." A trip, aged 11, to see Ralph Fiennes – with whom she would later work on The Duchess – playing Hamlet was a particularly formative moment. A shy child, Atwell found that the only time she wasn’t terrified of speaking was when she was saying somebody else’s words, reading aloud in class or performing in a play. "From a very young age, stories fuelled my imagination in the most wonderful way," she says. She remembers spending many hours alone in her room recreating her favourite fairy stories. "Sometimes I would steal characters’ names from other stories and put them into mine. I felt very safe and very happy in those little worlds of my own."

She recognises that the woman she has grown into is a product of the child who could navigate any social situations she found herself in by putting on a mask. "When I was with my mother’s friends, I could talk fluently about Descartes. When I was with my father, I could do the New Age thing and immerse myself in ceremonies for dead spirits I had never met. When I was with my posh friends, I could be posh. When I was with my rougher friends, I could be totally street."

"Hayley is a real chameleon," says Saul Dibb, who cast her in her first television role as Catherine Fedden, the bipolar daughter of a corrupt Tory MP in the BBC adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Line of Beauty. "She can adapt to any situation with the most extraordinary ease. She is also a strong character who has the added bonus of being one of those magnetic characters that people just want to be near." Playing a manic-depressive who makes a habit of asking the socially unaskable questions, she managed to shock even that irrepressibly racy screenwriter Andrew Davies with her own direct approach. "He came on set and asked us if we had any questions about his script, so I asked if Catherine had ever had an orgasm, and I think it threw him – I'm a bit straight up," she laughs.

So impressed was Woody Allen by her performance as Catherine that he made her his new muse in his 2007 film Cassandra's Dream alongside Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell and gushed to the press about her beauty. "I wish I felt like his muse but I hardly felt he ever talked to me", comments Atwell, adding that when they did speak, his advice was minimal – her description of his working method shedding some light on the strangely anonymous nature of Allen's late-career output. "I'd say 'what am I doing here? Who is this girl?' and Woody was like 'Oh, you know, she's just a girl…' and I'd go 'right… OK'. It was an odd time, I was incredibly grateful for the experience and the doors that it opened to me and meeting someone like Woody. But I felt very rabbit-in-the-headlights."

Yet from that moment her career has taken on an unstoppable momentum. As a bewitching Julia Flyte in the Julian Jarrold's big-screen version of Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel of class friction and forbidden love in interwar Britain, she had to compete with people's cherished memories of the multi-award-winning 1981 TV version. "I didn't watch the TV version as I didn't want to appear to be imitating anyone, but a man came over to me in a pub [during filming] and said I reminded him of his friend, Diana Quick, even though he didn't know what I did for a living," says Atwell. Evidently made for the role, the Londoner readily admits that "the director said I wasn't an immediate choice for Julia. It was partly because I really went for it in the audition and slapped Matthew [Goode, who plays Julia's lover Charles Ryder] really hard. The shock created that little bit of frisson between us that got me the part."

Atwell thinks the fact she, herself, went to church and attended a Catholic school growing up gives her "a sense of the Catholic guilt that's ingrained, especially within Julia at that time." Entering a bygone of waistcoats, white linen suits, and sybaritic afternoons spent punting at Oxford, she states, "I think the easiest thing for me was, I was walking into Castle Howard, which was being Brideshead, and also the clothes and the - even the hair. Everything was very grand, but also quite oppressive, quite daunting, very haunting. And so it was - it was just up to me to breathe into that world, and to inhabit that world." Breathing can be quite restricted when your generously proportioned breasts are oppressed by the tyranny of a 20s fashion which did not celebrate women's curves at all. "We had to tape down my bosom for Brideshead," she says with a wince, before announcing she loves the womanly curves she acquired at 17, when doctors advised her to put on weight to be fit enough to play her beloved full-contact rugby. "I felt imprisoned in those difficult costumes. It was the complete opposite, of course, for The Duchess," she grins.

Ah, Atwell and Keira Knightley sharing a Regency bed with Ralph Fiennes in the film adaptation of Amanda Foreman's biography of Princess Diana's 18th-century ancestor; the witty and attractive but hopelessly naive aristocrat, Georgiana Spencer. Set up and then trapped in an emotionally-distant, arranged marriage with callous but regal and powerful Duke of Devonshire William Cavendish, Hayley plays the duchess's best friend, a skilful power broker with mixed motives in a ménage à trois. She is also the duchess's sexual awakener in a scene that suggests a Sapphic attraction between the two. "I wouldn't be surprised if they had a lesbian relationship," says Hayley, "but we wanted to be delicate enough with it to just show an aspect of their relationship that wasn’t sexual. This was a time when homosexuals didn’t have a label, and I think marriage then – especially in the aristocracy – was based on more of a business deal than it was on love and passion. So, you were able to have your love affairs elsewhere, with women teaching women how to enjoy themselves and their bodies, sexually. It [the scene] was something that showed how beautiful their relationship was. But you could also say that it was partly Bess having a sexual power over Georgiana as well as other forms of power."

As for the Pavlovian comparisons with Keira, the hype-wary Hayley dismisses them in her direct way. "Keira and I are very different actors and very different human beings," she says. "She has this childlike, girly quality but also the incredibly tough skin of someone who has had an awful lot of press, whereas I can be quite geeky." It was, though, fascinating to be around her and to watch her work ethic, and how professional she is, thinks Atwell. "We spent a bit of time living together at a country house, and had hot country dinners together. And we were able to just get on as two young girls in their early 20s, and just hang out. And that was great, because that helped relieve some of the tension that was going on within the story, of what we were doing."

Next up were two Channel 4 adaptations of novels: William Boyd's Any Human Heart and Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. She is the love interest in each – though the characters are centuries apart. In The Pillars of the Earth, a quasi-religious 12th-century epic, she plays the dispossessed Aliena, determined to reclaim her father’s Earldom for her brother. Her father is arrested and hanged for treason, leaving her penniless. She’s then raped by William Hamleigh and his groom once they find out where she and her brother are hiding. But even though she struggles with the psychological aftermath, she never rests from pursuing her goal of restoring her brother to her father’s title. In five months, filming in Budapest, she had to see Aliena through 20 years from "princess to peasant to wool merchant to love interest to wife and mother". It was a "stretching exercise", she says, in which she had to "grow at speed".

Any Human Heart is epic too, though confined to the 20th century. Boyd described it as an "emotional, dramatic and rackety journey" through the "long and tumultuous life" of a writer, Logan Mountstuart. Hayley plays Freya, his second wife and the love of his life. "But he was the problem," she says. "Logan Mountstuart is a pathetic womaniser. How could I justify that? I needed Freya not to look like an idiot for going out with the wrong kind of man." That said, Hayley is unashamedly a man's woman. "I absolutely adore the company of men. I'd rather spend a weekend with guys than with girls – I'm more masculine that way," she admits. "Hayley is a star in the old-fashioned sense of the word,’ says author Boyd, "whose bombshell 1940s glamour is mesmerising."

Discussing the comparisons with old time movie stars, she nods: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the square jaw. Stars in the old days used to be more angular. I think my face works on screen because there's a lot of angles to it." Atwell, as we have discovered, has been playing period beauties fairly solidly since graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. As well as Aliana, Freya, Julia, Bess and Peggy there was Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park and The Ruby in the Smoke's Rosa Garland. "Please God, no more red lipstick!" Hayley says, dropping her head into her hands in mock despair. When she looks up again, the beautiful mouth that is the source of so much frustration has split her face into a dimply grin. It is easy to see why it has generated so much attention; it is a megawatt sort of a mouth. Lauren Bacall had one, Hedy Lamarr had one, Cate Blanchett has one.

In her relatively short career, she has played her hand well; choosing the interesting roles and, most crucially, making the most of her porcelain good looks without ever cashing in on them. Much has been made of her voluptuous sensuality, and yet Atwell has never gratuitously revealed an inch of flesh. "In Cassandra's Dream I had a love scene with Ewan, so I said to myself, "I'm going to take myself seriously and wear a body stocking out of respect for Ewan's wife," she explains, "because my body was not going to be seen. And I wore control pants in Brideshead for the love scene with Matthew. Oh," she adds teasingly with – yes – a minxy grin, "I'm giving away all my secrets!" Well, maybe not all. In The Pillars of the Earth, for example, there was also the judicious employment of some rather anachronistic nipple pasties and a Middle Ages body-double for that nude pond swim; such are the technical logistics of the art of erotic suggestion. In terms of actresses working today, there can be no curvier body that promises so much but explicitly delivers so little.

Despite employing every trick of the trade, Atwell insists nude scenes can still be very liberating. "I feel very human," she says. "This is me, with all my little imperfections." If anything she seems even more acutely aware of others' feelings while filming sex scenes, rather than her own. She is, for example, protective for the wives and girlfriends of the actors with whom she is simulating love-making. "It's people's worst fantasy to see their partner kissing someone else, even though it's a job and it's not real," she says. "Often I also get very protective of the guys I'm with, especially if you feel there's an insecurity there… they've really been working out or you know they've only agreed to show a left bum cheek or something."

Perhaps that is why Atwell insists Ray Winstone is the "sexiest" leading man she's ever starred alongside despite his wearing baggy, yellow underpants and offering more than a hint of a paunch. The brunette beauty shares the screen with Ray in her latest movie The Sweeney, Nick Love's big-screen remake of the cult 1970s TV series, and says: "One thing I love about Ray is he's so charismatic and full of charm. I play a flying officer who is having an affair with his character. Out of all my leading men he's definitely the sexiest. He's got these animalistic, primal, and alpha male qualities about him. You can tell he's got such a strong family bond, they mean everything to him and that is very attractive. Someone who can take care of his own. He's like a lion, so I really enjoyed being around him. He's one of the good guys."

The makers of the movie clearly think he has the Sex-Factor too: why else would they pair him with an extremely captivating woman young enough to be his daughter? "If people think I’m a sex symbol, then fine," says Winstone, who is reprising the role first played by John Thaw in ITV’s original version almost 40 years ago. "In fact it’s more than that — it’s fantastic! I’m a fat 55-year-old, so how do you expect me to feel at being cast as a bloke who has a girlfriend 25 years his junior? Importantly, though, I think it is plausible. It illustrates — quite rightly, in my opinion — that women don’t just go for young slim guys with six-packs. I’m old fashioned enough to believe that what women find attractive is being treated well, and Jack Regan does treat the woman in his life well and looks after her. You have to be a bit of a rogue, as well, I think, but you have to be a gentleman and a protector. That’s maybe what turns women on, although, of course, you’d need to ask a woman for some kind of confirmation of that."

At which point co-star Atwell piped in: "Charisma, presence, good manners, and a great sense of humour goes a long way, certainly more than six pack abs. I find men that can carry themselves with confidence are far more attractive. It’s not based on trying to impress anyone or insecurity, or trying to be something you’re not." Winstone admits he had a few qualms about playing a man enjoying a passionate affair with a woman a quarter of a century his junior. "Originally I thought it might be better if Regan had a girlfriend who was in her 40s," he says. "I’ve got daughters of 30 and 26 and there was slight discomfort at the thought of kissing someone of their age. But Hayley was fine about it — she saw no problem with the idea of our characters having a relationship, so we went with it." The pair do more than kiss, of course.

Although she says she finds those particular scenes too embarrassing to watch, Atwell thinks Winstone's "gentlemanly" nature made things "a lot less awkward". "Filming the sex scenes was in reality fun and silly," she adds. "It looks a lot more brutal than it was and being thrown up against a public toilet adds a little bit more danger to it," before admitting she had warned her parents the film might not be for them. More than anything Atwell generally finds filming such scenes to be "funny"; admitting it can also be "weird" being naked in front of a male production team who seem to be "enjoying it". She added: "Sex scenes are so funny to shoot, you are naked in them and both wearing nappies or covers. It's often a bit cold on set and you're in a warehouse or a studio and you're surrounded by guys who feel very uncomfortable and they are all trying to be respectful but they seem to be enjoying it at the same time. So there is a lot of weird stuff going on."

Returning finally to her chosen theme, Atwell reiterates: "I’ve always been a big believer in what you don’t see being much sexier than what you do see," she says. "Do you know what? I don’t think I’m curvaceous. It’s simply that most other actresses are really, stupidly tiny. When I meet some of them, I can’t believe it. I know I’ve got curves and big boobs and I’m never, ever going to complain about that. Plus I love how expressive my body is. The other day, I was looking back over footage of Any Human Heart, which was made before I started training for Captain America, and I looked at myself as Freya and thought, 'I like her and I believe in her. And I really believe that she loves Logan.' And there’s nothing sexier than that, is there?"
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We All Have Secrets

She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. There is nothing easier in this world, this woman had claimed, than getting a man to kiss you. Oh really? Eva had said, so how do you do that? Just stand close to a man, the woman has said, very close, as close as you can without touching - he will kiss you in one minute or two. It's inevitable. For them it's like an instinct - they can't resist. Infaillible...

It is no accident that Sundance Channel will premiere the first segment of its two-part World War II female espionage miniseries Restless on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack Dec. 7, with the conclusion debuting Dec. 14, both airing at 9 p.m. Based on the novel by acclaimed British novelist William Boyd, who also wrote the teleplay, Restless is based on a little-known chapter of espionage history when prior to the Japanese attack in 1941, most Americans were sturdy isolationists with no inclination to be drawn into the war raging in Europe. The British government assigned a secret intelligence cell to manipulate U.S. news media and opinion leaders with disinformation suggesting Germany planned to attack America. The miniseries was filmed in South Africa and the U.K. and boasts a trio of amazing leading ladies in the shape of Hayley Atwell, Michelle Dockery and Charlotte Rampling; as well as Rufus Sewell and Michael Gambon.

Restless starts off like a pleasant British travelogue, with a pretty graduate student motoring along country roads to her mother’s cottage outside a quaint village. The year is 1976. Ruth, now studying for her Ph.D., has been a free spirit without much contact with her mother, getting pregnant out of wedlock in Germany and keeping that little secret for years. Turns out everybody in Restless has a pretty big secret. The camera, riding in the car and then soaring above it, captures the leafy splendor of the rural scene but also conveys a sense of menace and isolation, slightly skewing the horizon and showing us the lonely house dwarfed by towering trees.

Having deftly established its Penny Lane world in just a few shots, the film stands it on its head. The atmosphere of minor-key dread continues as the younger woman arrives to find her mother is not waiting in the kitchen with a tray of scones; she’s out back, in an agitated state, scanning the tree line for intruders with an antique telescope. Her greeting is anything but maternal: "Did anybody follow you?" So begins a delicious excursion into paranoia and surrealism. Ruth Gilmartin (Dockery) is about to learn that her mother, Sally (Rampling), is no dotty old gardener but a gone-to-ground spy whose real name is Eva Delectorskaya, still hiding out after walking a trail of treachery and murder three decades earlier. Now, Eva fears, the chickens hatched during her days in the secret service have come home to roost in those trees. People are watching her, she says. Ruth, of course, thinks her mother is imagining things. But on a whim she picks up the telescope and looks into the woods when her mother is away and sees the shadow of a man. And, inexorably, Ruth is drawn into her footsteps.


A joint production with the BBC and Sundance, Restless reveals Sally’s history to Ruth and the audience on a need-to-know basis, bouncing back and forth between 1939 and 1976. Introducing Eva’s wartime collaborators amid Europe’s politics during the first years of the war could have muddled the project quickly, but the script, directed by Edward Hall (Spooks) succeeds — as long as proper attention is paid. So it is we are introduced to Hayley Atwell, fresh from playing a superhuman soldier confounding the Nazis in “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Here she once again puts on the smart, World War II-era wardrobe that suits her so well, as the young Eva beginning her journey as a Russian emigré in Paris. When her brother is murdered by fascists, a British agent recruits her, sweeping her into a fascinating whirlwind of intense schooling. When she asks her mentor Lucas Romer (Sewell) what to do without a firearm in dangerous situations, he tells her, "Use your intuition. Use your animal instincts."

It’s also a romance, with Lucas seducing his recruit in the calculated, reticent manner that only the British can get away with. Despite the distractions of her affair, Eva sharpens her skills as an operative during this often-overlooked period. Flashbacks show her in spy mode, working for her boss alongside a cadre of colleagues; including Morris Devereux (Adrian Scarborough), who cautions Eva, "When it looks like a Grade A, incontestable, unmistakable suicide, it probably isn't." Before the United States joined the Allied forces, a desperate Britain was playing every card in the deck to try to sway public opinion in isolationist America. Eva plants international news reports for a while, but parts of her training — call them trash cans, not dust bins — make it obvious she’s headed stateside.

When she arrives in the fall of 1941, as far as the FDR’s America is concerned, she is the enemy, an invader on U.S. soil who must dodge the FBI as well as agents from other countries. None of them know that the Japanese will soon save the British a lot of trouble. What was billed as a routine courier job in New Mexico puts Eva’s life on the line, and her immediate suspicions reveal a true talent for the game. Restless doesn’t cheapen her adventure with extended shootouts or explosions, let alone James Bond-style car chases and nifty gadgets. Eva has no one she can turn to. Her wits are her only weapon.

With or without guns, we know Eva survives the war, because we’ve already met her as a recent widow living in a countryside cottage straight out of Howards End. But her days have none of the afternoon teas or petty class concerns of an E.M. Forster novel. She’s been looking over her shoulder, living for decades with her identity successfully hidden, but now someone is watching her. The forceful Sally is not about to play defence with the shadowy figures skulking in her woods. She makes the decision to confide in her grown daughter, who is understandably incredulous. “Suddenly I’m half-Russian?” Ruth says, before her mother shocks her further by speaking her native language over coffee. After a few scary encounters of her own, Ruth quickly realizes that Mum might be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean no one’s after her.

Ever since a photo ran with her late husband's memorial announcement in the paper, she has been especially fearful for her life, constantly looking over her shoulder and into the distance through a spyglass. She purchases a shotgun for protection. What's a good daughter to do? Help Mum, of course. Ruth and Sally put their heads together to track down the one man who can end her anxious waiting and watching: Eva's former lover and spymaster, who now goes by the alias Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve (Gambon).

Thus Restless weaves back and forth on two story tracks: The tale of Eva’s espionage career in the 1930s, and her conviction that her spy days have returned to haunt her in the 1970s. Her daughter finally accepts the truth of the former, but is skeptical of the latter. "The war’s been over for 30 years, for God’s sake," Ruth chides her mother. "Why are you carrying on with all this cloak and dagger stuff?" Soon, though, she realizes her mother has become her spymaster, running her as an agent against enemies who may be daffily imaginary or lethally genuine. Ruth, a self-sufficient single mother in her own right, eventually puts herself in harm’s way to help Sally solve her final puzzle. But at the end, she can only watch as her mother manages her own affairs, shotgun in hand. After years of cryptic exchanges in hotel lobbies, gunfire in the dark woods and pillows used as silencers, Eva has learned her lessons, and she passes them on to her daughter: Trust no one else. Trust only your instincts.

Ultimately, the uncommon acuity of Boyd’s script is immeasurably bolstered by the outstanding female cast. Restless might be the rare TV show that wins acting awards for two women playing the same role. Atwell is a marvel of nuance as the reluctant Mata Hari with a romantic core who- nonetheless- kills effortlessly and (almost) remorselessly; shedding character skins — innocent schoolgirl, ruthless spy, befuddled dupe — as naturally as a snake. At first wide-eyed, Eva blossoms with her training. She’s a natural. Atwell gives her an earnestness that’s fresh for a spy story, but she’s also able to convince the audience that Eva’s cunning and determination are what separate her from the pack- not some badass attitude. Besides, Eva is in a part of the agency that disseminates information to manipulate the press- and thus the Germans and Russians, so it’s not like she’s Jason Bourne.

Restless deftly switches between the early '40s and 1976, and much of that has to do with Rampling’s superb performance as Sally. Returning to the World War II epoch that made her a star in The Damned and The Night Porter, Rampling imbues the older Eva/Sally with the manipulative skills and paranoia that accumulate over a lifetime of spying. Once the veil of country widower is lifted and we know she’s a former spy, it only hammers home the fact that she was a damned good one and - for reasons viewers must wait on - is still in danger at her advanced age. Dockery also is impressive in her convincing portrayal of a woman whose world is turned upside down. Liberated from the Edwardian costumery and soap-opera theatricality of her role as the shrill Lady Mary in Downton Abbey, she turns out to be both subtle and shapely as Ruth, buffeted by a dawning awareness that her mother is a complete stranger. "We all have secrets," Eva comforts her. "Everyone. No one even knows half the truth about anybody else."

In Ruthless, make that a tenth.
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Any Human Heart S01E02

Do you think we've got time for a five minute quickie?

There are plenty of female fans who dreamily think of Matthew Macfadyen when he was in Spooks and still fantasize about rumpling his duvet, but the reality may be more prosaic. At least with his on-screen erotic encounters, according to actress Hayley Atwell, who is seen tossing and turning with Macfadyen in episode two of the TV adaptation of William Boyd’s moving novel Any Human Heart.

She chirrups: "We had to strip but for our love scenes Matthew wore a sort of skin-coloured cloth to protect his modesty and I wore nipple pads which I painted smiley faces on."


Television Series: Any Human Heart (S01E02)
Release Date: November 2010
Actress: Hayley Atwell
Video Clips Credit: Trailblazer












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