This holiday moment stayed with me and seemed to be emblematic of what it’s like to be alive at the moment. Trying to have a good time while we know bad things are close by and getting closer all the time. I knew I wanted to write about it and initially considered it as a film. A family have a long, elaborate lunch while a small boat carrying unknown strangers arrives on the beach in the background. I was particularly inspired by the work of Ruben Ostlund -hisincredible film Force Majeure captured the tone I was looking for perfectly, – always truthful, anxious, sad and so funny.

The story I was ruminating on then developed into a group holiday with multiple families and friends. I thought this would provide even more opportunities for interesting dynamics and conflicts between the characters as well as from the outside world. Having been on many group holidays myself, I knew this would be rich ground for looking at the characters in real depth and creating drama. How does status work within the group? What are the disparities between them? Who is the most successful? Whose marriage is the happiest? How do you parent your kids? Friends are never in the same place financially. Someone is usually worried that they can’t afford the holiday. How much should everyone pay into the communal kitty? Who will get the best bedroom? I love all those details. I find it interesting that money is often removed from TV drama and yet it is such a relentless concern for most people. I wanted it in there, putting pressure on them, creating division. After a big emotional scene, someone has to pay the bill. In a group setting, characters are forced to perform versions of themselves, often unable to admit to issues or insecurities even with those closest to them and this is both funny and tragic. On holiday, things we want to escape from end up having bright sunlight shone upon them.

I pitched the idea to BBC drama commissioner Jo McLellan over a cup of tea in South London and she encouraged me to write it up for TV and matched me with the production company Various Artists Limited where she felt the project would find a good home, which indeed it did. I developed the series and scripts with exec producers Roberto Troni and Kat Reynolds who really got the show from the off. The writing was always interesting, fun and very, very hard work. All of the characters had big journeys and all of their stories intersected. It was like 3D chess. I always knew where I wanted to get to but navigating there across eight forty-five-minute episodes was, appropriately, an odyssey filled with many and varied challenges before a passage home could be earned.

The mythological element to the show emerged seemingly almost of its own volition. My father was very interested in and connected to the Greek myths. On those Greek holidays, the gods were ever present. Dad would say things like “can you see the god Pan hiding behind that olive tree?” So, for me, they have always kind of existed in the world imaginatively. He was open to mystery, things which you can’t necessarily understand, and I love this aspect to the show. The presence of Greek gods in the story is I think really resonant and powerful. They don’t have literal meanings, they are archetypal, elemental, representative of big things – death, love, desire, rage. They are part of stories which don’t have an easy moral message. That moral ambiguity is something I really wanted for the show. The characters all do bad things, but how bad are they really? No one is sure how to feel or judge things or how worried they should be about anything. Hopefully we have compassion for them as humans trying their best to be good, love and be loved. I like how the gods work in the story as representations of the character’s unconscious. Zoe sees the Fates as she psychologically unravels, they are telling her something, but what? In a show which is very much about what the characters are repressing, the stories they are telling themselves versus the truth of what’s underneath. The Greek myths are in our unconscious, fragments and memories from primary school or cartoons and films…They also tap us into something ancient which connects us with people from thousands of years ago. And also remind us that great civilisations can come and go…

The green light from the BBC was elating and then followed another few years to set the project up. ITV studios came in with the financing and support which we needed to get us into production.

I felt strongly that the directors (we had two over two blocks) should have a comedy as well as a drama background and was thrilled that we found that in both Tom George (This Country, See How They Run) and Matthew Moore (The Great, Colin From Accounts) I knew there was an earnest version of the show which wouldn’t be right and wanted the director to be have an ear for the funny moments as well as the dramatic. So often in TV and film, I think there’s a bogus distinction between ‘drama’ and ‘comedy’ and actually, they are intrinsically linked. When something is truthful it will be both funny and sad. Tom and Matthew, I felt really got this and I loved working with them. The show is directed with incredible aplomb and nuance, focused on detailed and beautiful performances from the actors as well as being stunningly shot. Our Directors of Photography, Nick Cooke and Ashley Rowe brought so much cinematic artistry to the project and elevated it enormously.

Once the casting process had begun, I realised I had a strong sense of the characters in my mind. They existed. But they were figments of my imagination and not actually actors! Now real actors were reading the lines and coming on board, and I had to re-calibrate. As with the directors, I really felt the actors should be funny as well as dramatic actors and was so delighted that they were all just that. Jess Raine, Damien Molony, Antonia Thomas, Nicholas Pinnock, Hugh Skinner, Leila Farzad, Dolly Wells and Tom Goodman-Hill, are all actors I’ve admired massively who can also find the comedy in something, in the awkwardness, in the darkness or sadness.

The Greek actors who came on board were also fantastic, Panos Konstantopoulos, Penelope Markopolou among others, brought a Greek chorus to the drama which never felt stereotypical or like the butt of the joke. In many ways they are the PoV on our British characters, watching sphynx-like as they dig holds for themselves.

Some of the longer, larger group scenes, the theatrical set pieces with ten or more characters in them, of which there were many were challenging to realise but also some of my favourite in the show. We rehearsed and choreographed them like a play and cast and crew I think enjoyed the collective focus and ambition they required. Tom and Matthew made something domestic and funny but also epic and filmic. I loved being on set and collaborating with them, being responsive to the actors, the set, what happened on the day, when lines didn’t feel right or there were new ideas in the moment.

We shot the show on Malta for Greece for five months. The island provided fantastic locations, beautiful, beaches and landscapes drenched in that distinctive mediterranean light. Our fantastic production designer Jon Henson created a visual world that was also edgy, strange, with just enough of an edge to feel dangerous. Charlie Jones (costume) and Catherine Scobel (makeup) created looks for the characters which were real, grounded and perfectly pitched.

Jon Creamer

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