Hard Sun is a new six part thriller airing soon on BBC One. Here are five good reasons you won’t want to miss it.
It’s a PRE apocalyptic thriller
Hard Sun is a pre-apocalyptic crime show set in contemporary London. Charlie Hicks and Elaine Renko are detectives who, while investigating a murder in the inner city, stumble upon proof that the world faces certain destruction – in five years.
It’s a terrifying reality that the British government is urgently trying to suppress. Hicks and Renko find themselves pursued by ruthless Security Service operatives, who are trying to kill them in order to keep secret the truth about the mysterious cosmic event. The pair must use every bit of their ingenuity to protect themselves and those they love.
When the classified dossier is made public the government quickly discredits the story as a hoax and fear largely subsides. But the story never entirely goes away. Hard Sun is still out there – in a thousand online forums, supported by conspiracy theorists and the dispossessed on the fringes of society and the internet. And as the murderers, the abusers, the serial killers, the cult leaders start to come out of the woodwork, it’s up to Hicks and Renko to take them down. But what does justice mean in the face of Armageddon?
It’s from the guy who created Luther
The series is a six-hour drama written by internationally-acclaimed, Bafta and Emmy-nominated Neil Cross, the creator of Luther.
There is scientific genius involved
Professor Brian Cox is the series’ specialist advisor. He says of his involvement in the series: “I got involved through the BBC. They put me in touch with Neil, who wanted to have a chat about different apocalyptic scenarios. He wanted to get an idea of the probability of such a scenario, and establish whether a five-year timescale was conceivable and whether you would get that kind of notice.”
It stars the excellent Jim Sturgess
Jim Sturgess plays Charlie Hicks, he says of script: “It has one of the most interesting, unique, brilliant introductions to a character I’ve ever read. Hicks, the character I play, goes from A to Z in five seconds. You start thinking he is one thing, and then immediately you’re led in the totally different direction. I was instantly drawn in by the possibility of what this could be and where this could go.” He also says of his character “The only way to describe him is how he would describe himself. He accepts that occasionally he’ll do bad things for the benefit of the greater good. But all the same he believes 100 percent that he is a good guy who is pursuing the greater good. He’s a natural with people and would consider himself an excellent family man with strong values. He’s an amazing dad and husband and leader and team player.”
Model turned actress Agyness Deyn also stars
Agyness Deyn, who was a model before moving into acting with roles in Clash of the Titans and Heil Caesar, plays Hick’s partner Elaine Renko. She says of the partnership: “It’s a cat and mouse relationship. They’re on parallel roads, but are forced together. Then they reach a crossroads and have to make a decision. It’s like a dark ballet where they’re dancing around each other.” It was also a very physically role too, something she really enjoyed “It’s very hard physically, but it’s amazing to be able to do all that myself. They didn’t let me do a couple of stunts. They wouldn’t let me fall through a glass table because even the stunt guy gets hurt when he does that. And they wouldn’t let me crash a car. But otherwise I did everything myself.”
Hard Sun premieres soon on BBC One
