Press Pack 1 Contents ITV Encore trailer 3 ITV Encore release 4 Interview with Broadchurch 5 Producer - Richard Stokes Interview with ITV Director of 9 Television - Peter Fincham Drama highlights 11 2 ITV Encore trailer http://itv.co/1g2TJ20 3 Other highlights from the opening weeks of the Notes to Editors: launch schedule include: ITV Encore will be on air from 12 noon daily. The Bafta award-winning Mrs Biggs starring Sheridan Smith in the title role of Charmain Biggs and Danny For further information on ITV Encore please contact: Mays as Charmain’s infamous ex husband Ronnie Jenny Cummins Biggs. Mrs Biggs chronicles Charmain’s life from [email protected] the fateful moment that, as a teenager on a train, 0207 157 3017 she first met and fell in love with the flirtatious and worldly Biggs. Gary Smith [email protected] The Ice Cream Girls is based on the international best- 0207 157 3016 selling novel of the same name, and stars Lorraine Burroughs and Jodhi May in the lead roles of Serena For further information on ITV Encore images please Gorringe and Poppy Carisle. contact: James Hilder David Suchet recently celebrated 25 years playing [email protected] the world famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot 0207 157 3052 in all the Agatha Christie adaptions for ITV. Poirot The triple Bafta award-winning will screen on ITV Encore starting with the final four Broadchurch, the most celebrated stories that aired on ITV last year. new drama of 2013, will be the Lucan is a thrilling two-part drama based on the centre piece of ITV Encore’s launch life of flamboyant aristocrat, Lord Lucan, written by award-winning writer, Jeff Pope. Rory Kinnear, week schedule, airing again for Christopher Eccleston and Catherine McCormack star. the first time since its original Also airing from the very beginning of their runs are transmission in March/April last Whitechapel and DCI Banks. Rupert Penry-Jones, year. Phil Davis and Steve Pemberton lead the cast in the darkly atmospheric thriller Whitechapel whilst Stephen Tompkinson heads up the cast in DCI Banks. The eight part drama will air in double bill slots across ITV’s Director of Television, Peter Fincham said, Monday to Thursday during the opening week of ITV Encore, which launches on 9th June on Sky Channel “Drama is a genre that we know audiences love, and we 123. have worked with some fantastic talent, both on and off screen, to build a really strong stable of series and The new ITV subscription channel will be dedicated serials over the years. ITV Encore will give viewers the to celebrating the best of contemporary British opportunity to revisit or indeed to discover, a wealth of ITV drama, and will be home to some of ITV’s most ITV drama from recent times.” successful series of recent years. 4 Q: Was it always intended that the series would be a Mare, cliffs closer to Bristol. But the problem is none Interview with Broadchurch fresh take on the TV detective drama? of them have that unique look of the Jurassic coast Producer - Richard Stokes on the Dorset coastline and the quality of the light Chris said from the very start that he wanted to do is slightly different. And Chris was really determined something different from other detective dramas to capture that on screen. Once we witnessed it Q: Broadchurch is an award-winning TV drama on television at the time. We were probably all ourselves we thought, ‘Well, yes, you’re not going to phenomenon and a town millions feel they know. influenced by director David Fincher’s movie Seven, be able to mock that up somewhere else. You need to How was that brought to the screen? plus for years now - and Scandi drama has certainly be there on the location.’ helped this - gritty detective dramas have been based Broadchurch creator and lead writer Chris Chibnall in urban places and they’ve been quite dark. If you can We used Clevedon just outside of Bristol to shoot and I have known each other since we worked get rain that’s really good and a lot happens at night. the main centre of Broadchurch, the domestic together for the first time on Torchwood series one, houses, the church, the main high street, so we could which was screened in 2006. What Chris wanted to do was say, ‘This isn’t a base ourselves in Bristol and have a larger area to traditional detective drama.’ He wanted the audience accommodate the big crew. But whenever we wanted Chris lives near the Jurassic coastline in Dorset and to fall in love with the area as much as he had, to see to do the big exterior scenes, we would go down to he would take walks along the cliffs for inspiration. how beautiful it was and how bright it can feel. Dorset and shoot on location there. When I joined the project I stayed with him so we could walk the locations he had in his mind for the That whole idea that you can have these very script. powerful, moving, dark stories in bright, beautiful sunshine was something really important to Chris. I then had the town, the people in it, where it was, He wanted that sense of the extraordinary, the tragic all of those images in my mind that Chris had used and the terrible to happen in a rather beautiful and as inspiration to write the first script. That was an moving environment. incredibly useful 48 hours to spend with him and a fairly unusual thing to do with a writer. Q: The beach and cliff scenes were filmed at West That’s a whole additional level of research and Bay in Dorset. Were any other locations considered? knowledge for me going into the project about what the tone and feel of it should be. Those intangible We talked very briefly about whether there was a things that actually are very difficult to pin down but part of the coast closer to London that we could clearly a writer has in their mind when they’re writing use, just in terms of the infrastructure of a film and the story. TV unit being pretty large. Very basic things like you don’t want to spend a huge amount on petrol You can’t always put those into a line of dialogue or because you don’t want to take that money off a line of stage direction. But you want the people screen. making the show to be aware of the same sources of inspiration. So to be able to walk the cliffs and the You don’t want to be spending huge amounts of beach, visit the coffee shops, all those places he had money on hotel rooms in places that don’t have in his mind when he was writing that script, was a enough hotel rooms for a full crew. So you do tend huge advantage. to look to these large conurbations to try and film, simply because it’s easier for the infrastructure. We discussed Hastings, Essex, even Weston-super- 5 Q: How do you feel now that the long single shot be lovely.’ So she’d just make the production team episode. Chris wrote it, it fitted in the script, we shot of Mark Latimer (Andrew Buchan) walking down cups of tea and we’d make her a cup of tea. It really it, it was very nicely done and beautifully performed Broadchurch High Street in episode one is now seen genuinely felt like we were all part of the same gang. by Will and Arthur. But when it came to putting it as a part of TV history? There was no sense of hierarchy. in the episode, it felt like we were literally putting a brake on the story. You’re following the momentum People remember that Steadicam shot as the In some ways that’s what stands out. The fact that of the story and then it was almost like this pause to opening, although it’s actually a couple of minutes going to work with these people was a genuine watch this beautiful scene and then it was back into into the first episode. I think we did around 11 takes. joy each day because you always got something the story. It’s a great scene. It really sets the mood and tone of extraordinary on screen, and you always filmed the town, and the community, with the actors in it. something rather amazing from them. And they That’s sometimes why scenes get deleted. In the When you see it in the rushes and then cut into the were lovely to organise, to move from one place to rhythm of the episode it just feels like something episode and you say, ‘It absolutely worked.’ another, to talk to you about scripts and stories and has gone slightly askew. It just didn’t quite fit the character and all the rest of it. They are the nicest pace of the rest of that episode. It felt like we were cast I have ever worked with and also phenomenally taking a big pause in the story to watch this beautiful Q: Was there a lot of public and press attention professional and talented people. Every single one of performance and then carry on with the story. And during filming? them. that never quite works in television. You’ve got to keep the momentum going. We did get some. But we moved quite a lot.