ITV’s upcoming spy thriller, Betrayal, starring Shaun Evans and Romola Garai and produced by Mammoth Screen, is set against the backdrop of MI5, and explores the fragile, tangled web of human relationships, where loyalty and deception collide.
Betrayal will TX on Sunday, February 8 at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.
Executive Producer Tom Leggett explains the genesis of the drama and how it was brought to life
Beneath the Glamour, Suspense and Excitement, I’ve always thought that the audience’s enduring fascination with the spy genre is because it’s built upon a very human anxiety. An anxiety about hidden forces at play beneath our day to day lives; forces that imperceptibly shape, alter and control our lives, and only those who inhabit the secret world know truly what those forces are.
My love of the spy genre reached fever pitch when I was a teenager – two books and a TV series left an indelible impression on me – they were John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Graham Greene’s The Human Factor and the BBC’s adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy starring Alec Guinness. Like everyone my generation, I’d grown up watching James Bond movies on ITV with my parents. But what really captured my imagination in my teens from these less escapist spy stories was that they seemed very close to the psychological reality of what it is like to be a spy. They are of course dated now because they are firmly set in the Cold War era, but they started a train of thought that brought me to develop and finally make the TV series Betrayal for ITV.
I took this train of thought and various articles I’d read about ‘the third direction’ (MI5’s secret policy of allowing agents to participate in serious crimes) into a cup of tea with the actor Shaun Evans in late 2019. Shaun had been starring for many years in Mammoth Screen’s series Endeavour for ITV. I’d been tasked by my colleagues at Mammoth to find a new project with him that he could do when Endeavour came to an end. We discussed various things we were mutually interested in – writers, directors, ideas, milieus. I boldly suggested what about a spy story with Shaun as the lead character. Not James Bond escapism, but a spy story that cleaves close to the reality of what it is like to be a spy. After reading several recently published articles about ‘the third direction’ and agent steak knife, our initial starting point was a series that explores the moral and psychological effects on a MI5 Officer of having to kill someone in the defence of the realm.
But who could write the series was the next question? I had seen David Eldridge’s stunning play Beginning in 2017. I was really struck watching Beginning how the play was written with such honesty and wit about a very slight moment of two people in their late 30s meeting at a house party and choosing to ‘begin’ something with each other after everyone has gone home. It felt incredibly poignant and truthful, as well as being incredibly funny. Shaun and I approached David with the idea, wondering whether he’d ever wanted to write a spy drama? To our surprise, David had just met John Le Carre who had anointed him to adapt The Spy who Came in From the Cold for the stage, and David shared my nerdy obsession with every aspect of the secret life. It seemed like David’s combination of piercing insight into human relationships fused with his love of the spy genre could perhaps make for something special.
The next question was – how do we do a story about the modern reality of being a spy and make it as authentic as possible? Unlike policing, there’s not a huge amount available on the reality of being a modern spy in the public domain.
I had read Gordon Corera’s brilliant book MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service. We approached Gordon, who then was a security correspondent for the BBC, to see if he might consult on the series. Thankfully he said yes, and over the course of 4 years of development, he educated Shaun, David and I on the reality of modern espionage down to the micro details of what is served in MI5’s canteen.
Development can be a long and winding road – the hope is that you end up in a better place than where you started at the beginning of that journey. I can happily say we did with Betrayal. David’s vision for the series grew from the initial seed of a story about a MI5 officer grappling with having killed someone in the defence of the realm into an even more rich and complex story of a marriage in crisis, a shifting work culture at MI5 and the very real threat that the Iranian regime poses to the UK. At the heart of the show is John Hughes, a Liverpudlian middle aged spy wrestling with haemorrhoids, a broken marriage and feeling increasingly irrelevant at work. With much gratitude, Polly and Huw at ITV connected with David’s script and they green lit the show.
We then got down to the business of writing the rest of the episodes and starting to assemble the rest of the team. As with every TV show, who the director is can make or break a show, but particularly with Betrayal we needed someone who was going to capture all the shades of David’s writing – the humour, the pathos, the high-octane action sequences and the intrigue. We all were big fans of Julian Jarrold’s work. Julian has made some of the most seminal dramas and films over the last 30 years – from The Crown to Red Riding to Appropriate Adult to Kinky Boots. An incredibly varied and accomplished body of work. Mammoth had also previously worked with him on Witness for the Prosecution. Julian similarly shared our fascination with the spy genre and all its contradictions.
We knew that the production had to be regional, so we set our sights on Liverpool as our production base. Liverpool offered us so many possibilities – the interior of MI5 was built there, John’s South London home was there, many great parks and buildings that could double for London. The Northwest also offers up world class crews, and we were able to assemble the most exceptional team of HODs and their crews from the area. From Adam Tomlinson our Production Designer, who’d just come off Adolescence, Orla Mill, the RTS winning costume Designer for The Responder, Sam Marshall who’d worked on countless brilliant shows like The ABC Murders, Protection and Dan Connolly our Location Manager, who’d just come off House of Guinness to name but a few!
We had a best-in-class team up in Liverpool, but now to assemble the best cast! We were incredibly lucky that the combination of Julian, Shaun, David and our utterly brilliant casting director Susie Parriss opened so many brilliant casting opportunities for this show. We were completely bowled over that the extraordinary Romola Garai responded to the scripts so fulsomely. Her performance is incredible and the seemingly effortless ease in which she became the character of Claire was just a privilege to witness on set. After a lengthy search, we met the amazing Zahra Ahmadi for the role of the mercurial Mehreen. Zahra perfectly embodies all the shades of Mehreen – bringing to life an incredibly complicated character with such ease and charisma. In addition, we were blessed that the superb Nikki Amuka-Bird joined us to play John’s boss Simone, as well as so many other brilliant actors: Gamba Cole, Omid Djalili, Matthew Tennyson, Anthony Flanagan amongst many others.
We shot for 47 days in Liverpool with a few days in Stockport and Rusholme in Greater Manchester – a daunting schedule with multiple set pieces and complicated scenes (even a day when we had fifteen cameras running simultaneously!). We even managed to cram in a day of filming outside the real MI5 in Millbank (thanks in no small part to Mr Corera) – a first for any TV and Film production. As we had at every stage of the show, we had the most exceptional team in post-production – Mark Davis & Tom Henson-Webb editing, Adrian Johnston scoring and Scott Jones mixing with post done at Outpost Facilities in Pinewood.
Reflecting on Betrayal’s journey to the screen now that we’re at the end and it’s about to be shown to the world. What remains at the heart of the show is the thing that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece – is John the hero of his story at the end of the series? Or has he simply finally realised he’s caught between forces beyond his control and faces the unavoidable truth that everything around him could be an illusion? You’ll have to watch to find out…
Betrayal is produced by Irma Inniss (Mr Loverman, The Bay), Betrayal stars Gamba Cole (The Outlaws, Three Little Birds), Omid Djalili (The Letter for the King, His Dark Materials), Matthew Tennyson (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Grantchester), Hayley Tamaddon (Unforgotten, Coronation Street), Anthony Flanagan (Protection, House of the Dragon), Paddy Rowan (G’wed, Four Lives), Waj Ali (Out There, Dead & Buried), Karim Kadjar (Wolf Hall), Emma Cunniffe (Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, The Long Shadow), Georgina Rylance (Benediction, Sherlock), Ben Lambert (Outlander, The Crown), Julia Watson (Doctor Who, Doctors), Julian Wadham (Black Doves, The Crown) Raphael Zari (The Hunger Games: Ballad of the Songbirds and Snakes), alongside newcomers Elham Karimpour, Aidan Rivers, Corin Silva, and Eliza Agrosoaie.
The series is produced by Mammoth Screen, the ITV Studios label behind Code of Silence, in association with Navarino Pictures. Executive producers are David Eldridge, Shaun Evans, Julian Jarrold, Tom Leggett and Damien Timmer, with development led by Mammoth’s Creative Director Rebecca Keane. ITV’s Director of Drama, Polly Hill, and Drama Commissioner Huw Kennair Jones oversee the production on behalf of the broadcaster.
Betrayal is produced in association with and distributed by ITV Studios.
Jon Creamer
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