The BBC's latest conspiracy thriller is set against a backdrop of riots, economic turmoil and an unpopular PM
What's the name of that massive dildo?" Philip Glenister, serially grizzly in Life On Mars, Mad Dogs and those Gordon's Gin ads respectively, is taking a minute to consider London architecture. "It's the big one in Lambeth that's on telly all the time now." The Lipstick? "Yes, the dildo." Or, as it's officially known, the Strata tower, south London's 43-storey eyesore which is getting right on Glenister's wick.
It's a perfectly crap British summer morning: grey, moody, no-nonsense gritty TV weather. The Guardian is on location watching filming of the BBC's big autumn conspiracy thriller, Hidden. Or as it's less glamorously known: hanging around King's Cross St Pancras station, counting fleeces (three) on production crew, while Glenister takes a droll pop at the business of making TV programmes.
"You know that [building] is only used so much these days because no one can afford to film anywhere else in London ? unless you've got Hollywood big bucks." Six feet of comic surliness, Glenister is properly irked: "Our TV is sold all over the world and yet London councils charge an unaffordable fortune for showing off the city. It's not logical."
Glenister and the rest of the show's cast, which includes David Suchet and In Bruges' Thekla Reuten, have just spent several weeks filming in Belfast ? the show's impressively make-do, fake London. Asked what the shoot was like, Glenister gruffly says "intense". How so?
"My first day, I had to do the penultimate scene of the last episode without even having acted this character yet." Judging by how annoyed he sounds by it, we ask what he did in his downtime instead. "Oh, I'm too old to go out caning it until three in the morning, get up at six and do a 12-hour day," he says. "But, me and David did have some lovely dinners. It was funny to go into a restaurant and see the punters clock Poirot coming through the door and then, two seconds later, be followed by Gene Hunt. It was like, 'The telly decs are here!'"
A four-part drama written by Ronan Bennett (the man behind Face, Public Enemies, and The Hamburg Cell), Hidden comes straight off the BBC's conveyor belt of marquee shows, following in the dramatically paranoid footsteps of The Shadow Line, Exile and Page Eight. Given the historic tendency for conspiracy theories to flourish when public confidence in political and economic institutions is at its lowest, it makes sense for writers to be tapping into the present mass distrust of government and big business; in a year where Wikileaks has helped expose, embarrass and topple entire regimes, and the western economy is wobbling towards mad, unimaginable collapse, it's no surprise popular culture has taken a swerve for the suspicious. Hidden is staged as a classic genre piece: all murky intrigue, elusive plot detail and chase scenes. It stands to reason then, that we're next invited to stand and watch a terrifically dull scene of a woman taking a phone call on an empty train platform.
'We were written and wrapped up weeks before the riots happened. It's just one of those very spooky coincidences'
"She's wonderful," says executive producer David Thompson of his female lead on the phone. Playing a mysterious blonde at a railway station, trenchcoat, chignon and anxious expression in check, can't be much of a stretch for Reuten, but I agree anyway. (Hey, you say cliche, we say narrative trope.) Either way, she seems to be doing all right; prodded and powdered by the makeup ladies, Reuten's wrapped up the scene in a couple of takes and comes over to talk about her character, Gina Hawkes.
"Gina is supposed to be this high-profile lawyer, representing this career criminal who walks into a police station and confesses to a murder." So far, so standard. Reuten plays Gina with crisp efficiency on the screen. The delivery can go a bit 40s film noir, but it serves her well: Hawkes's secretive sense of urgency is what drags high-street solicitor, Harry Venn, off his arse and knee-deep into a thick, shady conspiracy as he's forced to try and to locate the alibi who will get Gina's client off. The mystery of Venn's long-murdered brother and his criminal ex-mates inevitably get dragged into proceedings.
This being a primetime TV thriller, there is, of course, a politically-charged undercurrent. In an eerily prescient case of life imitating art, the programme shows riots on the streets of Britain as the economy takes a major nosedive. Meanwhile, an already unpopular prime minister stands accused of funnelling money off into secret offshore accounts.
"We were written and wrapped up weeks before the [real-life rioting] happened," says Glenister. "It's just one of those very spooky coincidences. Unless Ronan knows a lot more about the corridors of power than he's letting on."
Glenister plays a great dirty Harry. The part was written for him in mind and Bennett and the director, Niall MacCormick, took it to the BBC with Glenister's name already attached. "That's always a worry," he says, "what if they'd said no?"
The opening scenes unravel a flashback sequence, but this coke-y, blokey Harry is introduced to the audience in the present day. In the middle of breaking up with his girlfriend, he sits quietly on a stool as she shrieks and then attempts to seduce him with a striptease. Harry's response is to tug her shirt closed and mumble apologetically, "Don't do that, you'll catch a cold." Laconic and funny in a way that Glenister owns on screen, Harry is a bit of a mess but also, I suggest, a cool bastard.
'The difference with this protagonist to the usual conspiracy thrillers is that he's an ordinary bloke'
"Oh no, no ? I don't know if he is," Glenister insists defensively. "With the ex-wife, he's the one who wants to stay; he doesn't want to finish it. But after a certain point of putting up with his not being there, always being forgetful, she kicks him out." I tell him I mean his take on the character: Harry's brooding, stubbly, slow-burning sex appeal and finely-tuned bullshit detector is one of the show's main draws.
Deflecting the attention, Glenister plays his usual modest trick and puts all credit in the hands of the writer: "It's all there in the script with Ronan, you don't need to do anything around it. The difference with this protagonist to the usual conspiracy thrillers where you have a journalist or a detective solving the riddle, is that he's an ordinary bloke." In as much as an ordinary bloke spends time sleuthing and skulking around the edges of a mad, sinister plot.
Where the first episode gently builds up a level of detail and background, the second ? shot partly in Paris, hence the hanging around at St Pancras ? speedily ramps up the action as Harry tries to work out who Gina is. It's an entertaining, classy affair. Despite the furore over the threatened closure of BBC4 earlier in the summer, the Beeb's drama department seem to be pulling a blinder of late.
"It's a sign they're getting the right people in," says Glenister. "I've always maintained, I would like the BBC to make quality rather than quantity ? make fewer dramas and invest them with a decent budget." Tricky perhaps, in a broadcasting climate that has to compete with the cheap, go-to primetime splurge of reality TV shows.
"I don't buy into all that shit. They should up the ante a bit, give us something intelligent, more bold and innovative drama. The X Factor is a Victorian freakshow. It's fucking cruel to take the piss out of delusional people, suffering and made to do embarrassing stuff." Fair point, Phil. Now, to wait for the BBC's Original British Drama campaign to rescue "event TV" from the clutches of Cowell, the Towies and Embarrassing Bodies.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/oct/01/philp-glenister-thekla-reuten-hidden
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