You know you’ve made it as an actor when you inspire someone to write a whole television series around you. And that’s happened for Hattie Morahan: scriptwriter Barry Devlin created new BBC One drama My Mother and Other Strangers with her in mind. Continue reading “Hattie Morahan on new BBC Drama My Mother and Other Strangers”
Tag: BBC
Life in Squares: does the Bloomsbury group drama go far enough?
Within the first five minutes of Life in Squares, the BBC’s major new drama about the Bloomsbury Group, two corsets are ripped off – and summarily chucked out of a window with a cry of “freedom!” It’s a statement of intent from sisters Vanessa and Virginia Stephens, a literal throwing off of restrictive Victorian convention, before they became the beating heart of the bohemian social circle of artists and thinkers named after the London neighbourhood in which they lived in the early 20th century. Continue reading “Life in Squares: does the Bloomsbury group drama go far enough?”
Bertie Carvel on playing a Greek King – and his own mother
Bertie Carvel keeps finding himself torn — locked in a battle between the rational and the irrational. Currently, it’s because he’s in rehearsals for Bakkhai, a fresh, modern translation of Euripides’ tragedy by poet Anne Carson, part of the Almeida Theatre’s Greeks season. Carvel plays Pentheus, ruler of Thebes, who refuses to acknowledge the god Dionysos — played by Ben Whishaw — who has inspired the women of the city to go “off to have a rave on a mountain,” as Carvel puts it. Driven out of his wits by Dionysos, the uptight Pentheus goes spy on them, dressing up as a lady himself. But the god’s followers, the female Bakkhai, find him and literally tear him apart. Continue reading “Bertie Carvel on playing a Greek King – and his own mother”
Jessica Raine interview: Call the Midwife star on doing Agatha Christie – and feeble roles for women
Jessica Raine may have locked up her bicycle and folded away her nurse’s uniform, but it seems the Call the Midwife star can’t escape the 1950s. She’s back on the BBC this summer in Partners in Crime, a six-part adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence spy novels. The Beeb is hoping the slightly hapless husband-and-wife crime-fighting team will prove as popular as Poirot or Miss Marple. Continue reading “Jessica Raine interview: Call the Midwife star on doing Agatha Christie – and feeble roles for women”