Lost Treasure Discovered

"I do NOT see anything attractive in the agonies and ecstasies of a pervert, especially in close-up in my sitting room..."

Possibly the earliest surviving British gay television drama, a powerful and compelling tale of intense emotions between soldiers serving in the American Civil War, has just been unearthed, reports the BFI. Broadcast live on 24 November 1959, in ITV’s Play of the Week slot, period drama South centres on exiled Polish officer Lt Jan Wicziewsky (Peter Wyngarde), staying on a wealthy family’s Deep South plantation prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War. As war clouds gather, Wicziewsky’s initial arrogance gives way to emotional disintegration when the arrival of Eric MacClure (Graydon Gould) forces him to face up to his darkest secret: his love for another man.

The lost treasure was directed by Mario Prizek, who died last year. He enjoyed an illustrious career with the CBC in Canada, was openly gay and championed equal rights. He worked on several television plays in the UK, directing Roger Livesey in Governor Wall and Maggie Smith in Penelope for Granada (both 1960); and also produced and directed an entry in the BBC’s Wednesday Play strand, First Love (1964). Large swathes of TV output from the 1950s and early 60s no longer exist, as it was often broadcast live and not recorded for posterity, or was later wiped. Prizek’s British work was among the casualties, but fortunately South is preserved in the BFI National Archive.


Film historian Stephen Bourne identifies South as the earliest surviving gay-themed British television drama. In 1957 the Wolfenden Report recommended that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence", but the law would not see concrete change for another decade. In 1959 the subject was still all but verboten on the small screen, though British cinema would take a leap of faith with Victim in 1961.

Wyngarde’s performance as the tortured Jan is extraordinary, by turns theatrical and reflective. Though producers were unable to mention homosexuality explicitly, the bravery involved in accepting such a role cannot be overstated. The wonderful supporting cast includes Hollywood veteran Bessie Love as a worldly Southern matriarch, and pioneering black British actor Johnny Sekka (South has much to say on race as well as sexuality).

Writing in 1959, a reporter for the Daily Sketch wrote: "I do NOT see anything attractive in the agonies and ecstasies of a pervert, especially in close-up in my sitting room. This is not prudishness. There are some indecencies in life that are best left covered up."

It will be available in BFI Mediatheques around the UK from April 2013.
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Strike A Lightfields

Something's happened here, something that's been buried for a long time...

Gather ye rosebuds and clench ye bumcheeks, for here we be on the 1940s Suffolk coast, where there be dark rumblings in the cornfield. "Where's thaart Lucy gone?" gurgles Mrs Felwood (Jill Halfpenny), ruddy-cheeked matriarch of Lightfields Farm. It's a cheery place, populated by turnip-faced yokels, well-meaning dray horses and tittering mimsies in diaphanous tea dresses doing their bit for the war effort by letting rectangle-skulled US servicemen air-bum them in the woods. Answer, pivotally, comes there none, snarks The Guardian's Sarah Dempster...



A primetime supernatural drama, Lightfields (tonight, 9pm, ITV) is a five-part follow-up to 2011 primetime supernatural drama Marchlands, in which the residents of a house in rural Yorkshire were haunted by the ghost of Alex Kingston's dungarees. If you recall, that story neatly wrapped up all the loose ends when it concluded, thus inconveniently presenting something of a dilemma in terms of continuing the action. However, the producers have found a clever way to carry on the series; copy the format, but use different characters, setting and time periods. This time, the supernatural hokum emanates from the mysterious death of poor naive Lucy (Antonia Clarke), the fallout from which weaves itself through the lives of the farm's future residents.


Like its predecessor, the drama flits between three different families in three different eras, each of which is stuffed with instantly recognisable period details: 1940s (aforementioned tea dresses, yokelry), 1970s (cheesecloth blouses and the words "JETHRO TULL" written on a poster), and modern day (digital radio and Kris Marshall swearing in a leather blouson). In 1944 the harvest is looming and the Felwood family are hard at work on the farm when 19 year-old Eve (Dakota Blue Richards) arrives. She has been evacuated from London and wants to help out and do her bit for the war effort. A friendship blossoms between her new family’s daughter and Eve but this is put in jeopardy when Dwight (Neil Jackson), a dashing American airman, comes into their lives. It is Eve who meets him first but then a chance meeting between him and Lucy triggers lies and deceptions between the two girls. Then, one fateful night, the hay barn catches alight. The fire rages and it is too late when they realise that there is someone in the barn. As the family and local community struggle to come to terms with thaart Lucy’s death, Eve believes it wasn’t just a tragic accident. She knows Lucy must have been meeting someone at the hay barn and having established it wasn’t Harry she knows who it must have been. Motivated by this niggling suspicion she searches in the smoldering wreckage of the barn and finds Dwight’s petrol lighter. With this proof she confronts Dwight but outsmarted by him she is left once again with nothing but her own suspicion.

By 1975 Lightfields has stood empty for many years when Vivien (Lucy Cohu) and her teenage daughter Clare (Karla Crome) arrive from London to stay for the summer. Vivien stayed in the area when she was evacuated there during the war but struggles to remember anything about that time. As they settle into their holiday Vivien’s distant behaviour starts to concern her daughter. Unbeknown to Clare something has started to stir in Vivien’s repressed memory since their arrival at the farm, something unsettling. But that is not all; their arrival has triggered something else, something has woken in the house. The two women are not alone. Clare remains worried about Vivien and is relieved when her dad arrives for the weekend. He believes Vivien is on the verge of a breakdown, something that has happened before, and wants her to go home and get treatment. But Clare wants her mother to be given a chance to work things out her way so he returns to London alone. A discovery that Vivien visited Lightfields as a girl unsettles her. Her memory remains just out of reach but as information drips in and the ghostly presence becomes more prevalent she starts to fear that her memory holds a terrible secret.

In 2012 a new generation of Felwoods have recently bought Lightfields. Barry and Lorna live there with their grandson, Luke, and Barry’s elderly and infirm father, Pip, has just moved in. Pip lived at Lightfields when he was a boy and this is the first time he has returned. He is disturbed to be back after all these years and won’t talk about his childhood on the farm. Pip knows his return has awakened something in the house but he refuses to acknowledge it. What he doesn’t know is that there is someone else who is only too willing to see and communicate with this ghostly presence. A moment when Luke goes missing and is found sitting by a grave in the churchyard makes Pip realise that the ghost is communicating with his great grandson. The grave belonged to Lucy Felwood and it is getting harder and harder for Pip to keep up his pretense that she never existed. They are then distracted when Paul turns up with shocking news; he is going to fight for custody of Luke. Barry and Lorna have looked after Luke since he was a baby and the thought of losing him now is unimaginable.



This is not, it is safe to say, demanding stuff notes Dempster. Doors slam, mysteriously. Lights go out, inexplicably. There is the line, "You look worried. Have you been here before?" over the sound of a lorry backing into the living room and dumping another pile of exposition next to the 1975 sofa. Meanwhile, characters arriving at Lightfields Farm for the first time stand at the front gate and, looking up, say "Lightfields Farm" in the firm but slightly wistful tone one might adopt when introducing a deaf labrador to a clergyman. "Odd," you might think. "We've already seen Lightfields Farm and thus are fully aware that this is Lightfields Farm and not, say, a granary loaf or the Tardis." So why do people keep telling us it's Lightfields Farm? Could it be that the producers are unsure we've been paying attention? Possibly. Or could it be that they think we're a bit thick? (Cue ghostly children's laughter, and a crash zoom on AN Viewer going "boh"…) Yes. But then, this is the problem with approximately 93% of all modern "horror" fare: it assumes the viewer is a spanner. All the dots have already been joined. There's nothing for us to do other than sit back and wince at the cheesecloth and the glare of the daylight in which most of the drama is shot. In fact, never has such a creeping sense of unease been so effectively communicated in bright sunlight, thinks The Guardian's Julia Raeside.

The recent revival of the TV ghost story gathered pace with The Secret of Crickley Hall last year, but oh for a genuine chill in these days of intrusive underscores and suppurating prosthetic torsos and whatnot. Something like the 1968 MR James adaptation Whistle And I'll Come To You, say, in which Michael Hordern is terrorised by a flapping bed sheet making slowed-down cow noises. Or the 1986 Bergerac Christmas Special (yes, the 1986 Bergerac Christmas Special) where the final shot of a hooded monk standing motionless in a graveyard was accompanied by the sound of eight million belts being unbuckled as the nation darted, screaming, to the nearest bog, its buttocks clapping like castanets. This was properly terrifying, unshowy stuff that relied on atmosphere and brainwork, not panicky strings and half of this generation's answer to the Gold Blend couple swearing in a leather blouson.

Here, though, the only real jolt that viewers are ever likely to experience is the realisation, circa the bit where a massive barn goes on mysterious CGI fire, that they haven't tuned into a conceptual edition of A Place In The Country. Now, nobody turns up to ITV on a Wednesday evening expecting Cannibal Holocaust. But, really, is it too much to ask for a supernatural drama that doesn't treat viewers like gurgling yokel dunderskulls? Our bumcheeks can 'andle it, honest.

Lightfields was written by Simon Tyrrell and, like Marchlands, is based on a US pilot The Oaks by David Schulner for Twentieth Century Fox Television. Cherry Gould was the producer and ITV Studios’ Kate Lewis was the executive producer. The five hour-long episodes were directed by Damon Thomas and were filmed in August in Hertfordshire and West Sussex. Lightfields was commissioned for ITV by drama commissioning team Laura Mackie and Sally Haynes. "We’re delighted to build on the success of Marchlands with another highly original take on the format," said Haynes in an ITV press release. "It’s a very distinctive addition to our slate."
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My Prostitution Phase

Disappointingly, an introduction to Ellen Love, the saucy turn-of-the-century courtesan captivating Sunday night television audiences in Mr Selfridge, does not take place behind an ostrich feather-draped screen in her dressing room. There is no corsetry cinching her tiny waist, no champagne coupe dangling from her fingers in a studied gesture of lassitude – just a bog-standard Starbucks at her publicist’s. This is probably because Miss Love, music hall darling, gentleman’s muse and the newly-crowned Spirit of Selfridges (circa 1909) tends to arrive as her modern-day alter ego, actress Zoe Tapper. But happily, as Mr Selfridge has just been commissioned for a second series, she makes for equally charming, if less relentlessly coquettish company, notes the Telegraph's Judith Woods...

Tapper, 31, who is married to fellow actor Oliver Dinsdale and has a 21-month-old daughter, Ava, is poised yet quirky in an Olivia Rubin frock, teamed with battered bronze brogues. She describes herself as “a jobbing actress”, but the expression does her something of a disservice. Dark-haired, full-lipped – think Rachel Weisz shrunk-to-fit – she’s such a slip of a size eight it’s hard to believe she launched her career in 2003 playing self-styled “protestant whore” Nell Gwyn to Rupert Everett’s debauched Charles II in the film Stage Beauty.

"That was my prostitute phase, and I was a bit more buxom back then," she says with an infectious giggle. "After I appeared in that, I kept getting cast as bawdy wenches and harlots, and being asked, persuaded, and in one instance bullied into doing nude scenes. Honestly, I can’t tell you the number of scripts I read where my character enters and, for some unfathomable reason, immediately removes her top. When you are fresh from drama school and eager to please, you will do those sorts of scenes just to appear obliging, but I've learned that I’m actually a bit of a prude and now I put my foot down and am much more discerning."


After her red light days (A Harlot’s Progress, 20,000 Streets Under the Sky, The Private Life of Samuel Pepys, with Steve Coogan) came a slew of “mad psychic” roles. This kicked was kicked off with the Andrew Davies drama Affinity and eventually graduated to the conversation-stopping part of a half-blood vampire in the Philip Glenister vehicle Demons, that "probably wisely" never made it past the first series. In recent months she has filmed Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, a period version of Four Weddings and a Funeral, starring Elizabeth McGovern, which had its gala performance this week. The plot revolves round McGovern’s bride-to-be daughter who frets about whether she is about to marry the wrong man; Tapper plays her best friend. There is also a soon-to-be-released Britflick thriller, Blood, starring Brian Cox, more of which later.

But Tapper found herself inexorably drawn to the wrong side of the bedsheets once more by the complex characterization of Ellen Love, who wins the heart (albeit briefly) of Harry Selfridge, the eponymous founder of the department store, played by a dashing, bearded Jeremy Piven, star of the US cult series Entourage, who is hotter than a tamale across the Atlantic. "Ellen is quite a complex individual and there’s more to her than initially meets the eye, which makes her great fun to play. She starts out as a relatively frothy good time girl, who loves the high life and adores being plied with furs and jewels by Harry, but she also has a Holly Golighty side to her nature and there’s a lot of tension lurking beneath the surface." Her comeuppance is heralded when she makes the fatal mistake of genuinely falling for Harry Selfridge, a serial womanizer with a magpie’s eye for shiny new baubles and prizes. "Harry is reckless with Ellen’s heart, but you’ll see later in the series that things are quite as straightforward as he hoped they would be."

Where the springboard of her current show will catapult her remains to be seen, but given Piven’s "god-like" status in America, the success of Mr Selfridge there is virtually guaranteed. Tapper and her husband and daughter will shortly be joining the annual actors’ exodus to Los Angeles for pilot season, when there is a flurry of auditions (known, confusingly, as 'meetings’). "I did pilot season about nine years ago and it’s terrifying," says Tapper. "You arrive at a holding area full of actresses who all look like you, only better, then you are ushered into a room and you get a single shot at reading lines, which lasts maybe two minutes, then you’re out of there."

This time however, the excitement surrounding Mr Selfridge means her stock will be considerably higher. But it would take a pretty plum role to convince her to leave British shores on a permanent basis. Not least because she’d miss the theatre- and the shopping. "As an impoverished student I used to spend days out in Selfridges, nibbling on samples of free cheese and dousing myself with scent in the perfume department," she recalls with a nostalgic sigh. "Would I like to be the 21st century Spirit of Selfridges? Absolutely!"
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Call The Gynaecologist

The vogue for period medical drama is continuing with the commission of a six-part ITV series set among gynaecologists working in London in the early 1960s, just before the introduction of the pill and the legalisation of abortion. The ITV drama, Breathless, has been co-created by Paul Unwin, one of the creators of BBC1 drama Casualty in the mid 1980s.

Made with the former Channel 4 and Channel 5 executive Peter Grimsdale, the as-yet-uncast drama will focus on five gynaecologists working in the NHS. It is also understood to have a thriller element as well as a strong social history thread, according to sources, and Unwin has confirmed on his website that he will write four of the scripts, direct episode one and storyline the series. A source told MediaGuardian: "There were some women working in this area and they will be in the series, but gynaecology was a mainly male world at this time. This was before the pill and the legalisation of abortion and the 1960s hit the country and it was a totally different world. It was also before Profumo and there was a lot of covering up going on within the establishment which at the time was relatively immune from scrutiny."


It is understood that ITV wants to start filming soon and the drama may air early next year. Breathless is likely to draw comparisons with the hit BBC1 drama Call the Midwife, which is also about health workers and set a decade earlier in London's East End. Critically lauded 1960s advertising drama Mad Men is also understood to have been an inspiration, although an ITV source said the show would be much more mainstream in its appeal.

Breathless is being made by ITV Studios in association with Unwin's So Far Productions. Unwin will executive produce with Kate Bartlett.
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Carry On Censoring

"I'm making a mental note of all the equipment they've got"

As fans of the old Carry On films and Carry On Camping being a particular old favourite, the people over at Melon Farmers were shocked to discover recently that ITV has taken to deleting the old nude scene involving naturists being shown at a cinema at the beginning of the film. In the past they recall it was never censored even when it was shown early in the afternoon and well before the 9.00pm watershed; and it was never censored when we first saw Carry On Camping back in the 1970s. All of a sudden, in the last few months, ITV have decided to censor the nude scene. What a let down.

It appears that ITV have also cut the famous Barbara Windsor bra flying off scene too; something any child in the 70s could recall watching in their front room in the company of their parents. Who'd think, asks Melon Farmers, that in more enlightened times, when people are generally exposed to more nudity, ITV would actually become more prudish?





All of which is not to suggest that shocked censors were amused when the Carry On films were first released. Although they are generaly seen today as harmless slapstick comedies, newly revealed files show that the films, made mostly in the Sixties and Seventies, were considered too ribald for the tastes of the time – with censors demanding extensive cuts and prepared to give many of them X-certificates. Of the 1971 romp Carry On Henry, censors said: 'Every joke has a sexual meaning', and ordered 17 changes. In Carry On Cleo, they demanded the cutting of a shot where Mark Antony, played by Sid James, falls on top of Cleopatra, played by Amanda Barrie, 'so we don’t see him wriggling his legs'. Many of the scenes which ended up on the cutting-room floor were restored into the video versions of the films.

The censors’ concerns are revealed at the British Board of Film Classification, which has allowed access to its archives as part of celebrations to mark its centenary. Made at Pinewood Studios until 1978, the films established the careers of some of Britain's best-loved comedy actors, including Kenneth Williams, Barbara Windsor, Sid James and Hattie Jacques. Between 1958 and 1978, 29 Carry On films were produced. The saga started at a time when Britain finally emerged from the grey post-war gloom.
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The Making Of A Lady

"I don't like the girl and I'm not going to marry her!" huffs Lord Walderhurst, puffing his privileged cheeks and dismissing another crestfallen flibbertigibbet with a swish of his widower's handkerchief. Aunt Maria is aghast. "Who cares which girl you marry," she snaps, bustle crackling with indignation. "You are an unattached marquess. It is your duty to marry again and get an heir!" So begins the Making of a Lady, which comes to our screens this Sunday as an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s unorthodox romance The Making of a Marchioness and its sequel The Methods of Lady Walderhurst (both 1901).

In this one-off special, Lydia Wilson stars as our heroine, wispy and genteel Emily Fox-Seton, a well educated but penniless woman who grew up hoping she would marry for love, but has come to realise that her priority must be survival. Fine featured but at pains never to look pretty or attract attention, Emily works for Lady Maria Byrne (Joanna Lumley), a domineering, acerbic older woman who lives in a very smart house on the other side of town. During her daily duties as a lady’s companion, Emily comes into contact with her employer’s wealthy widower nephew, Lord James Walderhurst (Linus Roache). Weary of Lady Maria’s relentless match making, Walderhurst cuts a rather distant figure, but he treats Emily with a great deal more respect and kindness than his aunt.

When Walderhurst realises that a favour he asked of her has lost Emily her position he is mortified. It occurs to him that the two of them could come to a practical if unromantic agreement – marriage. He admires the fact she is dedicated and hard-working and appreciates her undemanding nature which he imagines would not impact too much on the life he has chosen. He realises that he can offer her a secure home and a true independence born out of his wealth. He and Emily aren’t in love, but he clearly hopes that one day affection may blossom. Emily is shocked and sad to give up her hopes of marrying for love but without other means of support her situation is such that she has little option and she finds herself accepting.


Like the book, the drama begins as a Victorian fairytale, duping us into a false sense of familiarity. There are costumes. There is a stately country house. There is a grapefruit-faced housekeeper and a butler who looks like the wrong answer in a game of Guess Who? There are overly accented scullery maids a-titterin' an' a-gossipin' under marshmallowy bonnets. There is a string-heavy score that becomes aroused at times of narrative stress and positively tumescent at the sight of a poorly secured cravat. There is sexual repression and an over-buffed blunderbuss. Life in the marital mansion passes in a series of stifled yawns and half-hearted gropes by gaslight. There are dinner table longuers and lingering shots of Emily looking pained at a writing desk. It's all unervingly reminiscent of one of those Catherine Cookson miniseries in which some rustic mimsy in a Great Uncle Bulgaria shawl blithers on about "duty" and "a woman's place" before banging a blacksmith on a tor. It's not exactly a bouncing jalopy of woo-hoo, notes Sarah Dempster.

Until this point, our full attention rests on the demure petty concerns of social rivalry, but things become more complicated when Emily befriends Walderhurst’s wildly handsome young relative Alec Osborne (James d’Arcy) and his exotic Indian wife (Hasina Haque), who turn out to be very dark characters. They seem very much in love, which is the converse of Emily and Walderhurst’s still unformed relationship, and Emily is fascinated by their passion. Significantly, Walderhurst intensely dislikes his nephew and his frequent requests for money. Osborn is Walderhurst’s sole heir as long as he and Emily remain childless and Emily realises belatedly that Walderhurst’s sudden proposal was hastened by the family’s concerns about Alec’s marriage to Hester.

When Walderhust joins his regiment in India, Emily is left alone, unaware of the bitter dangers and social implications that came with defending a huge fortune. Things start to Happen. There is malaria and an imperilled dray horse. Joanna Lumley glides on, realises she's too likable to convince as a bitchy matriarch, and glides off again. The suspense mounts. There is an abandoned cottage and the line "There's going to be a storm", followed by a storm. And there is, unfortunately, an elderly Indian servant, Ameerah, whose every appearance is accompanied by a "mysterious" Indian flute motif, presumably to ensure we don't suddenly mistake her for a strippergram or member of Union J. Cue an uncomfortable "beware the exotics" subtext which, when combined with references to unpleasant rumblings in the colonies, threatens to turn the whole thing into It Ain't Half Hot Ma'am. But never mind. The past is a foreign country; they do things racistly there.

Screenwriter Katie Brooke explains: "Emily Fox-Seton and Lord Walderhurst marry each other for the wrong reasons. It is a business arrangement, not a love match, although they both feel more for each other than they let on. They are insecure in their relationship and this is a weakness to be exploited. Enter two wonderful villains, Alec and Hester Osborn. On one level they have what Emily and Walderhurst don’t have: unbounded confidence in each others’ love, and outspoken passion for each other. But they don’t have one thing: money. As Walderhurst’s heir, Alec decides it is time to step into his cousin’s shoes."

Ultimately, Burnett asks, must fame and fortune come at the expense of the purity and kindness that our heroine embodies? As the big hand creeps towards denouement o'clock, you start to realise that not only is what you think couldn't possibly happen because it's too silly happening, it is happening with a face so straight it's almost heroic. All of which makes for an unapologetically old-fashioned, beautifully shot, thunderingly unsubtle melodrama that falls somewhere between diverting twaddle and humourless hoopla. Etiquette decrees that we call it Frownton Abbey before apologising profusely and leaving in the nearest barouche.

The Making of a Lady represents a resurrection of the author’s now little-known adult fiction, so frequently overshadowed by the cosy works of Victorian moralism- The Secret Garden- for which she has become synonymous. Getting this story onto the screen has been something of a personal journey for executive producer Stevie Lee, the driving force behind the novel’s revivification. After a new edition of the book was put out by Persephone, the publishers of neglected fiction, Lee was given it to read by a friend while she was undergoing chemotherapy in hospital. "It was a fantastically good distracting read," she says. "It’s so rare to find a story where you genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen next. At base it is a tale about money and greed. It’s just gripping, and I loved it from the heart."

Director Richard Curson Smith says what he particularly likes about the story is the way it gradually shape-shifts. "It’s not a Wilkie Collins gothic horror, or a romance," he explains. "The strange smashing together of these two worlds is what creates the tension, the dread." The drama was filmed on a modest budget of £1.2 million in just four weeks. Filming took the production to three stately homes; including Jacobean Cheshire mansion Dorfold Hall, which represents the Walderhurst’s country pile. It comes as no surprise when d’Arcy – fresh from filming lavish Hollywood blockbuster Cloud Atlas with Tom Hanks, and a Hitchcock biopic with Antony Hopkins – reveals that there has been something of a "Dunkirk spirit" on the set.

According to Curson Smith, though, managing the tight budget has been nothing compared to the challenge of blending costume drama and psychological horror. He calls his hybrid "a cross between Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, and Rosemary’s Baby". How did he achieve it? With careful manipulation of the camera so that, as in the novel, we only see the world through Emily’s eyes and "never quite know what’s real and what she’s imagining. It is about a girl being immersed in a world she doesn’t understand, and we go on that journey with her."

The fact that two plot threads, one a romance, the other a thriller, are woven together through the film, resulted in the creation of a strange dichotomy on set. D’Arcy channelled childhood trauma to get inside the head of villainous Alec, whom he describes as "a sick puppy… but quite good at badminton". In the other camp, Roache says playing the part of Victorian gentleman Walderhurst had been "delicate, like fine lace work". He says he accepted the job because he loved the romance. "For me, it’s about two people who are getting married for different pragmatic reasons," he says. "It’s so unusual, so human, and so delicately written."

When interviewed by the Telegraph earlier in the year, Roache had just finished filming the "awkward" first lovemaking scene with Lydia Wilson, which both actors think is a pivotal moment for their characters. "Women have changed their relationship to their bodies since then," says Wilson, who spoke to a movement coach to help her create Emily. "She encouraged me to think about Emily’s sexuality as this absolute mystery to her. All her movement flows out of her guardedness. When she does have sex with her new husband, it’s this huge game-changing thing."

Both Wilson and Curson Smith agree that Emily, Burnett’s rather pale heroine, may be the reason the story dropped out of fashion. "Jane Austen’s heroines are witty and concerned with image," thinks Wilson. "Emily doesn’t have any of the commodities that make someone successful in the modern world. She’s not exactly a little sex bomb [in the book]. She’s more like a lovely kind cow with big eyes." In this respect, at least, she is the antithesis of Wilson herself. The 28-year-old, who studied at Queens' College, sleepily padded into the consciousness of the television watching world as William Boyd's Monday, the tousled teen temptress with a penchant for nude fridge raids, in the 2010 adaption of Any Human Heart. It turned out her character was 16 and had run away from home on the West Coast to live in Greenwich Village and jump on the beatnik bandwagon. "My mum's from Greenwich Village and grew up at the same time, so it was a delicious part to research," says Wilson. "She told me about living in this almost childlike state of bohemianism, walking around the house naked."

Raised in Queen’s Park, in Kilburn, north-west London by her advertising exec father and American mum (an ex-model turned philosophy teacher), Wilson decided she wanted to be an actress at the age of five. "I still wonder why – and it lay dormant for a long time because I was a quiet kid." Eventually she secured a minor role in the highly-regarded adaptation of Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about human clones bred to be organ donors. "I have one line," she giggles of her scene as an ill-fated replica being looked after by Carey Mulligan on her deathbed. 'Dude, I’ve got one eye and no stomach! It’s funny because they say act with your gut or, on film, use your eyes, and I have neither! Carey sniffed out straight away that it was my first job – she was super-cool. I guess it’s kind of funny to die as your first job, it’s like a fucked-up kind of birth."

As a Cambridge English graduate Wilson says she "wolfed down' Burnett’s novel before tackling arguably the biggest role of career. She wanted to be as faithful as possible to Burnett’s Emily. Although the script has admittedly taken some licence with her character, the production has at least been faithful to Burnett’s writing in at least one vital arena: the wardrobe. The author, said to have been disappointed with her first husband, once complained to her friend, "he does not know the vital importance of the difference between white satin and tulle, and cream-coloured brocade'. In the books, her descriptions of clothes, sometimes pages long, are bordering on the fetishistic. So it seems only right that Wilson should have had a staggering 42 costume changes for 100 minutes of drama. She talks extensively about her "top 10 outfits" including "a cream suit that has a gorgeous little cravat around her neck, a huge hat, and a garnet-coloured rope that does it up at the front…" So, ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself for a new entry in a distinctive genre, the obsessively detailed costume horror.
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The Sopranos Of Sex And Shopping

"You've been creating quite a stir, haven't you?"

A group of women and men dressed in turn-of-20th century outfits are standing inside a carpet warehouse in Northwest London. They talk to each other while standing - waiting for a signal - in a fake marble-floor hall that looks very much like an old, high-end shopping store. A big staircase leads down to a floor full of hats for women, top hats for men, handkerchiefs, gloves, umbrellas, walking sticks and perfumes and many other goodies on offer. And on a table, books from a famous author are stacked up - ready to be signed. Suddenly another group of people in shorts and T shirts shout instructions. A minute later everyone is ready. And action! One of the men in early 20th century garb is introduced as the famous author, whose books are being sold, but whose identity is kept secret for now. The other, wearing one of the smartest early 1900s suits in the room, turns out to be Harry Gordon Selfridge, founder of London's famous Selfridges Department Store. Someone misses a line, and the production staff in shorts returns. The TV shoot takes a small break...

Hot on the heels of Downton Abbey, 2013 sees the arrival of a new period drama on ITV. Set in Selfridges department store at the start of the 20th Century, the new biopic captures a time of decadence, female empowerment and shopping. Sound familiar? That’s because it is reports the Radio Times. Cast your mind back a couple of months and you’ll recall the BBC introducing us to a similar format with The Paradise, a northern equivalent following the fictional progress of the first British department store under the entrepreneurial eye of John Moray.


When ITV originally announced plans to dramatise the story of Harry Gordon Selfridge, the flamboyant founder of the Oxford Street retail emporium, it seemed to have an autumn ratings winner on its hands. But that was before the BBC stole a march on its rival. Furious ITV executives were given little choice but to push back the launch of their series, Mr Selfridge. Publicly, the broadcaster says it had not set a transmission date and would not be drawn into a row over scheduling. Privately, there has been muttering about dirty tricks – not least because the BBC, humbled by its trouncing in the ratings when it pitched its new version of Upstairs Downstairs against ITV’s Downton Abbey, rushed out its drama before filming had even been completed. For its part, the BBC insists that its series – written by Bill Gallagher, who wrote the recent adaptation of Lark Rise to Candleford – was commissioned first and that all resemblances to ITV’s offering are coincidental. Yes, The Paradise is based on an Emile Zola novel (Au Bonheur des Dames) and set in 1875, four decades before Harry Selfridge’s adventures in retailing. But the similarities are striking, nevertheless.

The Paradise starred Emun Elliott as a handsome, moustachioed businessman with a reckless streak, an ability to make women swoon at his feet, and a dream: to build a gleaming department store that will revolutionise the way people shop. Mr Selfridge stars Jeremy Piven as a handsome, moustachioed businessman with a reckless streak and… you get the picture. The Entourage actor takes the title role as the maverick American businessman who founded the landmark Oxford Street store in 1909. After shipping his wife Rose (Frances O’Connor) and children over to British shores while he runs his store, Harry crosses paths with glamorous stage entertainer Ellen Love (Zoe Tapper) whose alluring looks make her the chosen face of Selfridges.

While The Paradise began with the arrival in the big city of Denise Lovett (Joanna Vanderham), a young and ambitious country girl who is lucky enough to land a job at the newly opened store, viewers on ITV will follow the fortunes of Agnes Towler (Aisling Loftus), a "spirited working-class shop girl who gets a lucky break to work in the accessories department at Selfridges". While the Paradise had a female boss who was a stickler for discipline (Sarah Lancashire as Miss Audrey), Selfridges has confident head of accessories Miss Mardle (Amanda Abbington). Each drama has gorgeous costumes, behind-the-scenes intrigue and love interests aplenty.

The main difference is tone: though its producer, Simon Lewis, described The Paradise as "sort of Sex and the City in the 19th century", the north-east of England setting and gloomy production make it seem like a Catherine Cookson adaptation. Mr Selfridge is more fun-filled – unsurprising, as it is scripted by Andrew Davies, king of the rollicking costume drama and the man who put Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy in that see-through white shirt. Set in a similar period to the original series of Downton, Mr Selfridge focuses on the racier side of Edwardian life, Davies promises as much nudity "as you can get within the limits of prime-time viewing" in his stated quest to make "shopping as thrilling as sex."

To that end, ITV has thrown the cheque book at Mr Selfridge, painstakingly recreating in minute detail the story of the American 'showman of shopping'. Pioneering and reckless, with an almost manic energy, he created a theatre of retail where any topic or trend that was new, exciting, entertaining - or sometimes just eccentric - was showcased. Making the show look old and real is key. Selfridge's office on set features such items as an old lamp, a big desk and a fireplace. A Selfridges sign and such mottos as 'Each day counts in building a business' can also be found. Art director Jo Riddell says she left the general principles of Selfridges and its look at the time in tact. "But the lifts are enhanced and the revolving doors sexed up a bit" to look like they would later in time to make the look more appealing and timely and possibly allow further seasons to be shot without the need for major changes, she says. Rob Harris, production designer on the show, said that Downton Abbey had the advantage of an existing building. "We can't film at Selfridges, so, we had to create a major player in the show from scratch. And our decision was to make things a tad modern." For example, the show uses early cars instead of horses, which were still common at the time. "That helps to convey his modern thinking" about shopping, Harris said about the Selfridge character. Even the working replica of the plane in which Louis Bleriot first flew the English Channel is used for one of Selfridge’s promotions.

Intended to be screened over two series of five episodes, TV insiders are confident that, like Downton, it will run and run. Although the show taps into renewed interest in UK period drama, it is actually international in tone and feel, says ITV Studios Global Entertainment MD, Maria Kyriacou. "Mr Selfridge is not defined by being British, it’s actually a quintessentially American story about a guy who came from nowhere, and it is not a class-based piece of British history," she states. "There’s a huge openness in places including the US at the moment for high-end UK drama, but this is not defined by the territory it comes from." The story arc follows Harry and his family, staff, business partners and adversaries from the opening of his huge London store. London provides the backdrop and the series captures London life in that era, from the boardroom to the theatres and the back streets. "The period element is secondary to Mr Selfridge being an engaging tale", Kyriacou adds. "It’s not about it being a period piece, it’s just a good story from a great writer and it has much higher production values than other shows out of the UK. That and the cast elevate it above most of the other drama out there."

So, while Mr Selfridge has the same glossy feel as Downton, Davies insists that it is certainly not "Downton in a shop". They are, he says, totally different, with Downton concentrating on preserving an era, while Mr Selfridge captures the excitement, fun and wickedness of the master showman who created a brave new liberating world for women by putting the sex into shopping with his paint and powder. Through the innovations and spectacular events Harry staged within the store, the stories will shine a light on hidden moments of the history of women, be it fashion, cosmetics, technology or domestic affairs. Davies says: "We have different values to Downton. We are about glamour, modernity and are also anti-aristocracy."

Davies' source material is Lindy Woodhead’s 2007 biography Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge. Upon its first publication in 2007, Evening Standard called Woodhead’s book 'an enthralling description of fashion,' the Sunday Telegraph said it 'conveys the excitement of changes in fashion and technology in the late Edwardian era' with Vogue attesting it 'will change your view of shopping forever'. On why he undertook the task of bringing the 'showman of shopping' to television, he says: "Selfridge liked to live on the edge, he was addicted to risk and enjoyed being in debt. And despite being a dedicated family man, deeply in love with his wife and devoted to his four children, he was fatally drawn to other women – and the women he chose tended to be wildly attractive, high-maintenance and unstable. A rich mix indeed."

All of which makes it surprising that Piven suffered the indignity of having his first sex scene in the opener cut. It showed Selfridge getting rid of his current mistress after learning that his wife and children were arriving. "We thought it might put people off him, that he was being unfaithful to his wife before we’d even got to know him," Davies explains. But Piven took it in his stride. "It’s not an ego blow," he insists. "From decades of auditioning, you grow a very thick skin."

A mistress who fairs slightly better, at least initially, is sultry star of London’s West End, Ellen Love. She's brought to the screen by Zoe Tapper, who was so determined to win the role she travelled to the audition in a faux-fur coat, a bright red dress, fake diamond earrings and siren red lips. "I got some funny looks but I didn’t care because I felt very Ellen Love-ish," she smiles. "And I got the part, so it was worth it." Although a potential marriage wrecker, Tapper says she had so much sympathy for her. "Harry lusts after her," she explains. "He sets her up in an apartment and makes her the face of Selfridges. But once he owns her she’s like a trinket that’s lost its lustre. He discards her and she spirals out of control." Likening her to Marilyn Monroe or Holly Golightly, Tapper thinks Love is "a social butterfly, blowing kisses to the crowds, but she has gossamer wings."

As Andrew Davies likes to "inject a bit of naughtiness" to give his scripts a modern feel, Tapper says his actresses have to be up for anything. "I do a dance number in pink pyjamas while hurling teddy bears into the audience from the stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane," she laughs. "There’s also a scene where Ellen poses as the face of Selfridges, on the wing of Blériot’s historic, Channel-crossing plane. [They managed to get a replica inside the Neasden set, just as Harry had managed to get the real thing into the store in 1909.] She’s draped in scarves like Isadora Duncan." The cocaine-snorting scenes were also a hoot. "Opium was possibly more the drug of choice in those days, but cocaine is Ellen’s poison. Before putting it up my nose, I made the props department tell me what was in it – mostly flour and lactose powder. I made them take a bit themselves, though – just to be on the safe side."

As mother to a 17-month-old daughter, Ava, it will be clear to anyone tuning in to Mr Selfridge that the shapely Tapper has lost the baby weight quite quickly. "But it’s annoying when women say, ‘Oh, I’m lucky. I’m just naturally skinny,’" she grumbles. "In my case, I walked everywhere with the buggy after Ava was born and ate sensibly. I thought I might go to the gym, but it never happened. Now, I do a bit of yoga or pilates at home while Ava sleeps." Which means she wouldn’t be ashamed to show her post-baby body on screen? "Women’s bodies change – mine has – and we should celebrate it," she says. "I’ve always admired Kate Winslet. She has a lovely body, but it’s not a perfect Hollywood size zero. It’s the body of a woman who’s had children." As an actress, though, she says she is careful about nudity. "There’s a danger in our industry for women to feel pressurised to take their clothes off," she says. "I’ve certainly done it, but only, I hope, where the script and the character required it. In Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky I took off my clothes because I was playing a prostitute. What else would you expect? But I can’t bear it when you’re looking at breasts on screen for no particular reason. At this stage, I think I know the difference."

Harry Selfridge, of course, is smitten from the first time he sees her. "Ellen underestimates Harry at first," thinks Tapper. "She’s quite used to the attention of men and perhaps uses them for their spoils. But Harry comes along and is quite similar to Ellen in a way. He also shines too brightly and they’re both massively drawn to one another. It takes her by surprise that she actually ends up falling in love with him. Her barriers go down. She loves and relishes the jewels, the glamour and the fame that is attached to him. But she underestimates the fact that she has actually fallen for him as well. Harry is very good at playing the family man as well as the lover. He enjoys spoiling Ellen and giving her this platform for more fame and glamour, as well as jewels and an apartment. Ellen is very much the other woman, a sexy red-lipped showgirl. But at the same time there’s almost an innocence to her in that she believes her own hype. She’s enjoying herself, living her moment and doesn’t necessarily realise the reality of the situation at all. Harry thinks that when he’s finished with her that will be it and he can go on to the next woman. But Ellen has other ideas. He can’t get rid of her that easily."

Meanwhile Harry is busy making important connections to increase his standing in British society – namely in the form of Coronation Street actress Katherine Kelly. She glides elegantly on to the shop floor as Lady Mae Loxley – one of Edwardian London’s most powerful socialites whose connections prove vital in building the Selfridges empire. It’s her first TV role for a year ago and she explodes back on to the screen as an immaculate brunette with a cut-glass accent and a penchant for very young lovers. Lady Mae is a former Gaiety Girl who begins a new life after marrying Lord Loxley (clearly for money). We never see him because, happily for her, he prefers the country while she lives it up in town. "Watch out for the hats – they can cause an eclipse," Kelly warns. "She has to have the biggest and the best. Sometimes they had to completely change the camera angles to shoot around my hats." Lady Mae bails out Harry, who runs up huge debts transforming the high street shopping experience. "It’s not until you know her a bit more that you find out she’s a suffragette and wants Harry to endorse the cause and actively support it," she reveals.

Mr. Selfridge is set at a time of great change for women. "The suffragette movement was beginning to get into its stride and certainly in Andrew Davies’ adaptation Harry Selfridge is in favour of this and actively supports it," adds Tapper. "It was a great time for the emancipation of women. And in a funny sort of way the whole shopping experience that Harry Selfridge created almost aided that. It suddenly became a respectable pastime for women to go shopping, it allowed them to go out without a chaperone. He opened his store to any class of woman with something for everyone from bargain basement to high end luxury goods. Andrew has written some fabulous, really strong female roles for this drama. At the time things were really happening for women and it’s exciting to film that."

Mr Selfridge instinctively understood a lot about women while Piven – often pictured with a pretty girl on his arm – claims to be the opposite. "I know very little," he sighs. "This is a character who is devoted to his wife and kids but strays. I don’t judge him, but try to give him as much integrity as possible. It’s a bit like a Greek tragedy. You need to celebrate his whole life, which was incredible." Davies, creator of the BBC’s highly-acclaimed Pride And Prejudice, says he was also drawn to Selfridge’s personality. "He’s a charismatic hero with self-destructive tendencies at the centre of a drama that explores the world of business and the joys and traumas of family life," he says. "I began to see parallels to my favourite TV show The Sopranos."

Davies says his very rich central character made his job easy. You can say that again. Harry Gordon Selfridge has the ultimate rags-to-riches-to-rags story. The only surprise is no one has thought to tell his tale before. He went from an upbringing in a single-parent home to the man who became known as the Earl of Oxford Street. But he died a pauper. "The fascinating thing is that the fruit of his labour is still here today – we can all go to Selfridges – and it’s in the same building," says Davies. "The present company has been enormously enthusiastic about the whole thing – well, it will be terrific publicity for them. 'They’ve shown us around and given us access to their archives. The only thing they haven’t done is allowed us to go around the shop and choose something for free. But you can’t have everything!"

A showman and marketing genius from a young age, Harry worked his way up the ladder at Chicago department store Field Leiter and Company, where he’s credited with coining the phrases 'The customer is always right' and 'Only so many shopping days until Christmas'. He became wealthy and married Rosalie Buckingham of a prominent Chicago family. While on holiday in London he spotted an opportunity and returned a few months later with £400,000 (around £23 million in today’s money) to set up Selfridges on Oxford Street.

The first ten-part series of Mr Selfridge – there will hopefully be four series to cover Harry’s eventful life – focuses on 1909, when he opened the store. We see him arriving from Chicago with his wife and four children. She never settled down awfully well and kept going back to America. "It didn’t help that he also had his mother living with them – she was a formidable old lady who’d been very strict with him. But when they got to London even she wasn’t able to keep him on the straight and narrow," continues Davies, laughing at the rules Harry made for his store. "They emphatically said there should be no hanky-panky between staff but there was a lot going on and Harry himself was the main culprit."

He was an unashamed womaniser – having affairs with dancers Isadora Duncan and Anna Pavlova, and French singer Gaby Deslys. Once Rosalie died, his sexual proclivities knew no bounds. His love of women was to be the main reason for his eventual ruin – dancing twins Jenny and Rosie Dolly gambled away more than £5 million of his fortune. Although the first series focuses on Harry’s happier early days, Andrew says, ‘You have a sense of the tragedy to come. He’s quite a problematic character from the start. He has his demons and by the end of the series his marriage is on the rocks. There’s quite a bit of darkness there.’

While Harry is obviously the main character, Andrew has created a vast supporting cast. It’s a mixture of real people and invented characters. "It feels like a big ocean liner – there’s a sense of a huge enterprise moving forward with Selfridge at the helm. We’ve used a lot of the real things Harry got up to to publicise his store. If someone was in the news he’d get them in. Anna Pavlova came in and did a private dance. He got Blériot – the first person to fly the Channel – in with his plane and thousands of people came to see it. But we’ve invented other characters our audience will hopefully love. We have a lovely young working-class girl called Agnes Towler, played by Aisling Loftus, who’s like our little heroine, and Zoë Tapper plays a girl we’ve called Ellen Love, Harry’s first mistress. There are lots of tremulous moments that are beautifully played. They’ll twang a few heartstrings."

Davies saya he was thrilled to get Piven, best known for playing the explosive Ari Gold in Entourage, as his Mr Selfridge. "I love his character in Entourage – he’s somebody who could get away with more than most people, just as Selfridge does," he says. "In the flesh he’s also very charismatic and cheeky and he has a playful manner that I’ve written into the script. Like Harry, he grew up in Chicago. But Jeremy’s a bit of a man of mystery too. You never quite know where he is, what he’s doing or what he’s thinking. It’s surprising." Davies tends to meet the show’s actors during read-throughs of the script. "I try to not go on set much," he says drily. "There’s never much for me to do apart from telling the actors how wonderful they are – they like that. I do most of my work in my study but I do try to go to read-throughs. Because the cast have got to know each other they’ve become like jolly get-togethers."

Often the actors will sneak up to me with good ideas for things their characters might do next. Ways in which their parts can be expanded and so on. Sometimes they work their way into the script. "We have this wonderful French actor called Grégory Fitoussi, who plays the head of design," he explains. "In that clichéd way I was thinking his character would be gay but when Grégory arrived he said, 'I don’t see many women for me in this story. Usually I have many women.' And I thought, 'Yes, you probably do need some women.' I love it when the actors make you change your opinion about a character."

Former university lecturer Andrew is best known for his adaptations for the BBC – this is his first ITV commission since Dr Zhivago a decade ago. But he had a little fall-out with the channel when it cancelled two of the shows he was working on and announced it would be doing fewer corset dramas. Now he’s working in direct competition with the BBC, which, as we know, was determined its own show about a department store, The Paradise, would beat Mr Selfridge in the ratings and changed transmission dates so it aired first. The Paradise attracted ratings of around five million – half of what Downton and Call The Midwife pick up. "As soon as it became known we were doing Mr Selfridge they dusted down this idea they’d had on the back burner for ten years and decided to do it. It was a surprise they got it on air before us, but I did enjoy it. I’m confident, though, that we have a terrific show and hopefully even more people will watch us."

Indeed, ITV are so confident Davies is already working on the second series. "I’ve really had fun writing this," he says. "I’ve even managed to get interested in fashion. Undergarments principally. Corsets have always been an interest of mine." And with a cheeky laugh he’s off to imagine more shenanigans for Mr Selfridge and his staff.
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Sins Of The Past

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

You may not yet be familiar with the name MyAnna Buring, but chances are you’ll recognise her face. With more than 30 film and television roles under her belt – including The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, White Heat and Blackout – the Swedish-born actress is hardly a stranger in our living rooms. She was also nominated for a best actress British Independent Film Award for playing Shel in 2011's Kill List, a role that also earned her a best actress award at the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival. She played Scooti Manista in the 2006 Doctor Who episode "The Impossible Planet" and was Lotte in the 2009 film Lesbian Vampire Killers.

Now the time has come for the 28-year-old to really make a name for herself with three of her biggest parts to date. In fact, she might just be the busiest actress on TV right now. "I tend not to get recognised," admits MyAnna, who stars in new ITV1 drama The Poison Tree starting tomorrow night, as well as Downton Abbey’s Christmas special and BBC1’s upcoming Victorian chiller Ripper Street. "But I’ve been so busy for the last two years and now everything is coming out at once. I hope people don’t get bored of me – I’m sorry I’m in everything!"


Based on the novel by Erin Kelly (itself named after one of Blake’s Songs of Experience), the two-part The Poison Tree has been adapted by Emilia di Girolamo (Law & Order: UK). The story follows MyAnna’s character, translator Karen Clarke, and her troubled relationships with her ex-convict boyfriend Rex (Matthew Goode), and his hedonistic sister Biba (Ophelia Lovibond) as buried secrets are gradually forced to the surface. Karen and her teenage daughter, Alice (Hebe Johnson), greet Rex on his release from prison after he's done 12 years inside. She's looking forward to starting a new family life with her partner, determined that they should keep from Alice the secret of their past and the events leading to Rex's imprisonment.

Settling down to a normality, life in their new home starts to be disrupted by silent phone calls and anonymous text messages. Someone knows the truth about what happened back in 1999 when Karen and Rex lived with Biba in a crumbling mansion. With hints of incest and a hedonistic lifestyle, through a series of flashbacks we get clues to the momentous, secret events that forged Karen and Rex's relationship. Karen actually met Rex's damaged sister Biba first, when she and Rex were living a sybaritic existence in their own grand house. At the time Karen was a mousey languages student, while Biba was a flamboyant art student. However, behind the partying and drugs lay an unhappy childhood for the siblings, with their rich businessman dad, Max, being unfaithful to his wife, who was suicidal over his antics. As Karen comes on the scene, events come to a murderous climax, though as episode one finishes we are still not sure how Rex ends up in jail. What is clear, is that his release is not the new start Karen hopes for.

"Essentially, Karen's a normal, somewhat plain girl who has her whole life in front of her until a tragic incident changes her life forever," says Buring. "This incident is the beginning of a web of lies, and the Karen we meet in the present day is still coming to terms with having to cover these lies in order to protect what matters most, her family." So, is playing a younger and older version of the same person almost like two different roles? "Well, what is great is that the younger Karen sort of informs how you play her when she’s older," she explains. "She’s an entirely different human being in many respects. But the core things that made her tick when she was younger are still the things that make her tick when she’s older. It’s a bit like having part of your research done for you."

While the part called for MyAnna – who grew up in the Middle East but spent her teenage summers in Scotland before moving to England aged 16 – to master a northern accent, she admits it was the intimate scenes with her co-star that proved the most challenging. "My relationship with Matthew is a matey one – he is married with kids – so it was weird filming scenes where I was in bed with him," she grins. "We wanted to get them over with quickly and then laugh about it afterwards. It would be really awkward if you had a crush on whoever you kissed on-screen and then had to go home and explain it to your other half. I’m always really happy when I don’t fancy the people I’m working with."

When talking of kissing on screen, it is hard not to let your mind wander back to those Lotte smooching scenes on cult horror flick Lesbian Vampire Killers. "It’s always a bit weird and I always feel a slight bit of embarrassment because you’re being asked to snog someone you barely know," she admits. "Actually, to be fair, I knew Vera [Filatova] from drama school, so that was interesting. But when it comes to doing a scene like that, you just get on with it. It’s got to be done, so you try and do everything you can to make it as un-awkward as possible. Vera is divine and so sexy, but absolutely without a doubt it does help being able to be mates beforehand. It means you can have a laugh. In fact, when Vera and I did our scene, her husband and my boyfriend were on-set making sure we didn’t get carried away and enjoy it too much [laughs]. But he needn’t have worried, I’m still happy with my boyfriend."

While MyAnna refuses to discuss her love life ("my private life is my private life"), she will admit that when the racier scenes air, she expects to be interrogated – by her parents. "My family find it weird watching my love scenes and they call me saying: ‘We don’t think you should do those any more,’" she laughs. "The phone gets passed round and I have to explain why I took the role. Everyone gets flustered. My whole family has a say in what parts I take."
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Getting Dirty For Chocolate And Crisps

It's safe to say love scenes are not most actors' favourite part of the job. Getting naked with a relative stranger can be nerve-wracking enough so having a whole TV crew watching must make it extra hard. But Andrew Scott, best known to fans of Sherlock as consulting criminal Jim Moriarty, has a secret weapon for ensuring a solid performance – chocolate. In his latest TV project, ITV1 series The Town (airing early next month), Scott plays a young man returning to his home town after a decade away. There he rekindles a romance with his first love, played by Charlotte Riley – and the actor admitted things get a little steamy between the pair.

Speaking in the Radio Times, Scott admitted: "There is an element of roooomance – yes, there is. I do get my kit off. I do." What, everything? "Well, no, I don’t think the audience need to see that! I don’t think they’d want to see that. But there’s definitely a bit of that." Scott revealed that he and Riley gave themselves a reward for completing the scene in question: "I had a Double-Decker Duo and a packet of giant buttons after it. Charlotte had a packet of Monster Munch."


Picking up the thread, Riley explains we're first introduced to her character when Mark is trying to just kind of drink his way through something that has happened. happened. "He’s gone to the pub and then suddenly you just see her in the background and it’s kind of strange for him because you assume that he hasn’t been back to this town for years; he’s assumed she moved away, but his childhood sweetheart is just suddenly still there and still very much present and part of the town and his memories," she tells TV Choice. "So you just see a tiny glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye so to speak, and then she goes off and he runs after her and she disappears into the night. And then he goes round to her house hammered because she’s the only person he still feels he might have a connection with. She’s now married and has a child, but he doesn’t know this and turns up really drunk to try and talk to her. She’s not really in a place to be taking on his personal problems, but there’s still a spark between them. Of course there is, or there wouldn’t be a drama!"

So, when you watch that particular scene in question and see the passion in the two actors' eyes, just remember it's not each other they're lusting after – its chocolate and crisps.
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