Silverprint Pictures have adapted other Ann Cleeves novels, Vera, Shetland and now The Long Call. What makes this author’s work so special?
“Ann is a great storyteller whose books are bursting with atmosphere and with characters who you feel compelled to spend time with. Her sense of place, across all the books, is astonishing as she writes about places she knows intimately. She lives in Northumberland, where Vera is set, met her husband in Shetland and subsequently lived there for a while, and she grew up in North Devon, which is the backdrop for The Long Call.
“Her protagonists, too, whether it’s the eponymous Vera, or Jimmy Perez in Shetland or DI Matthew Venn in The Long Call, are all extraordinary in their own way – flawed, brilliant, intriguing. When optioning books for adaptation, one of the deciding factors has to be a magnetic lead character who will transfer brilliantly to screen. When we read The Long Call, Matthew just leapt off the page again and again.
“We’re extremely fortunate that Ann has always trusted us to get on with adapting her work and understands that sometimes the demands of storytelling on screen differ to those of novel writing. There is no, ‘You can’t do this, and you can’t change that.’ So, it’s a really lovely working relationship.”
In what ways does this feel different to previous Ann Cleeves adaptations?
“The book itself felt like an evolution of Ann’s work but we were also extremely keen that this series felt very different in flavour to both Vera and Shetland and gave the audience something distinct. We wanted to make a four part ‘event drama’ that was underpinned by a murder mystery, but which was, actually, more about the emotional and psychological journey that both Matthew and so many of the other characters are on.
“There are many big themes beyond the thriller element too. The Long Call is about belonging, community, family, religion, and finding a place that you can call home. It’s about dealing with the pain and rejection of your past and finding redemption in the present.”
Is this the first time that a British thriller has featured a lead detective who happens to be gay?
“Well, I certainly can’t think of others and yet why shouldn’t the protagonist be gay? Still, what we wanted to avoid saying was ‘Matthew Venn; GAY detective.’ It’s more about presenting a character who has come back to Devon – the place where he was rejected for his sexuality by his mother and by the religious community he grew up in and how he deals with the fallout from that rejection.”
“So being gay is important to his experience, but it’s not the absolute defining thing about him. He is married to Jonathan and I love the fact that we are showing a happily functioning couple in a very normal relationship that happens to be gay.
“Ben Aldridge who plays Matthew is gay and Lee Haven Jones, the director, is also gay and that was a conscious decision for this show. Both of them were our absolute first choice for many reasons, including the fact that they were able to bring so much honesty, understanding, knowledge and emotion to everything that we did. But what mattered most, I think, to them and to us, was to take the opportunity to represent a gay relationship in a primetime TV drama which was stable, grounded and loving but didn’t deny some of the difficulties that Matthew and Jonathan had had to overcome.”
Ben Aldridge had other connections to the role too.
“Yes, not only did he also grow up in Devon, his parents had been members of the Plymouth Brethren when he was a child, although they left when he was still young. I must stress that our story is not about the Plymouth Brethren – it’s about the fictitious Barum Brethren. But let’s just say that his insights into the closed world of the Brethren – and those of his parents who I know he talked to a lot – were invaluable. In so many ways Ben was the perfect Matthew.”
What makes the Brethren such a good subject for drama?
“The fact that that the viewer almost certainly won’t have seen it before makes it pretty alluring. Closed societies are always fascinating subjects and so little is known about the Brethren. What we were mindful of, though, was not saying, “They are bad, and that’s the end of it.” It’s much more nuanced than that because, actually, this is also a world where there is a strong sense of community and support and belonging. For a lot of people, their religion is huge and in those communities it’s your life. So, as with the representation of any community, we wanted to show the good as well as the more difficult aspects and to do it with balance and respect.”
How did you show the stark contrast between the Brethren and what they term ‘The Worldly’ folk outside?
“Lee, our director, shared our ambition to present those two worlds in very different ways visually. Aside from the obvious costumes and look of the Brethren women – the long hair, the modest clothing, the socks and sandals, the headscarves – the world they inhabit was very pulled back, sparse, minimalistic, partly because they reject so many of life’s modern conveniences. The Worldly, on the other hand, live in a colourful and much more chaotic kind of environment with 21st century life around them. The visuals and colour palette in The Long Call very clearly show that.”
Was it important that every character in the story had an arc?
“Yes, absolutely. We wanted a proper emotional journey for ALL the characters. So, we spent a lot of time asking what their back stories were and how that would impact their forward stories, especially when you have a cast of this calibre coming on board. All of them definitely have their own arc within the story and that was one of the things that was so tremendous about Kelly Jones’s scripts.”
You must have been delighted to land this particular cast?
“I was thrilled. It’s a phenomenal cast. Aside from having Ben Aldridge in the lead role, it was beyond our expectations that actors like Juliet Stevenson, Martin Shaw, Anita Dobson and Neil Morrissey would come and do what are essentially guest roles or that the cast would include Pearl Mackie, Alan Williams and Sarah Gordy. Sometimes you make a show and it just comes together on the casting and I feel that this is one of those shows where we could not have asked for a more perfect cast.”
Sarah Gordy plays Lucy – who has Downs Syndrome. How important is it to represent characters with disabilities in modern drama?
“It is incredibly important that we reflect the whole of society on screen. Why should anyone be excluded? In this case, Lucy comes straight from the pages of Ann’s book, she is very much a character in The Long Call, and we were thrilled when Sarah Gordy came on board to play her because she is absolutely brilliant. For me, some of the best scenes in the drama are between Lucy and her father (played by Alan Williams) where you can see that, basically, here is a father, like any other, who is worried about his daughter and her future. At the read through, there was a final scene between them where he says, ‘When I’m gone, who’ll look after you?’ And her reply is “Me. Dad. Me. It was intensely moving and even more so in the finished drama. It’s all about parents and children again – a theme that runs right though the drama.”
Could DI Matthew Venn come back for another four-part ‘event drama’?
“Yes, I’d love to make more as Matthew Venn is such a compelling and relatable character with so much more to explore. Not only will he lead us into new crime stories but his personal journey is so intriguing and sympathetic. The complicated relationship between him and his mother will continue and the struggle between them over his sexuality has so much further to go. Additionally, his story reflects so many other rich universal themes and emotions that we cannot wait to take Matthew further on his journey.”
