Drama

How to get into editing: Emma Lysaght: “I left school at 16. My father was a film editor so I grew up watching my dad cut film. It was something I’d always wanted to do.

“It was quite a male environment, I was very nervous and very shy. I didn’t get into the cutting room until I was 19. My dad knew of one female editor.

“She needed an assistant so I stepped in and became her assistant. Within the first few months I was cutting news for Channel 4, which was very pressurised but you know exactly what you’ve got to do in those three minutes.

“It all started in sixth form college,” recalled Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan. “We were already friends, having grown up in the same area, and we discovered we were very much into movies; not just watching them but actually wanting to make them – and, specifically, to write them.

“We would write scripts on notepads… and I would exchange my pages with Marlon and we discovered we were ripping off… the same film-makers and doing really bad versions of their movies.” 

The North Water is set during the late 1850s and follows a disgraced army surgeon, Patrick Sumner (O’Connell), who attempts to flee from his past by joining a whaling expedition in the Arctic.

Led by Captain Brownlee (Graham) and the ship’s owner Baxter (Courtenay), Sumner serves on the Volunteer as the ship’s medic.

Sumner’s quest for redemption takes a brutal turn when he encounters cruel harpooner Henry Drax (Colin Farrell), whose indifference towards killing reflects the harshness of the Arctic wasteland they’re sailing towards.

The drama follows strange young misfit Kim (Williams), who was just a child when her father passed away in mysterious circumstances.

Following the tragedy, Kim was whisked off to a secluded setting by her mother Tina (Sian Clifford) and raised with a bizarre set of survival skills.

Now an adult, Kim journeys out into the real world to fulfil a secret mission to honour her father’s memory.

But the makers of Sky Atlantic’s Britannia starring David Morrissey, Mackenzie Crook and Zoe Wanamaker took a more imaginative and freewheeling approach to their costume creation. 

The series is set approximately 2000 years ago when the Romans are attempting to stamp their bloody authority on a tribal land made up of Celts and Druids.

The four-part series will follow the aftermath of the shocking murder of a seemingly perfect family at the hands of one of their trusted friends. The small Scottish town of Kirkdarroch is rocked by the incident, as mistrust and suspicion begin to run rife.

David Tennant (Broadchurch) plays Tom, a local GP and respected member of the community, who is married to local primary school teacher Kate, played by Anna Madeley (The Crown). Both lovingly care for their three young daughters.

The series takes place during a rapidly changing Britain that faces a failing financial climate and the rise of political agendas against royalism.

The new trailer opens with The Queen reflecting on her reign and the inner tensions within the Royal family as they endure personal struggles in service of their subjects.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Jeff Pope was obsessed by the macabre. Why else would he be drawn to such odious topics as the Moors murders, serial killer Fred West or Britain’s last hangman, Albert Pierrepoint?

He puts it like this: “If drama is about conflict, which it is, you’re looking for the extremes of conflict. Those areas are love, fate and, I would argue, crime.

“I am not a depressive person or ghoulish but it’s the old journalist in me: there’s a good story in it.”

The four-part series will follow Mark Bonnar (Catastrophe) and Jamie Sives (Chernobyl) as brothers Max and Jake, who unintentionally run over and kill an old man called Walter.

As Jake is uninsured and under the influence, his successful and seemingly more responsible brother Max convinces him to cover-up the accident.

However, when relatives and neighbours begin to suspect that Walter hasn’t passed away through natural causes, the consequences of their actions come back to haunt them in ways that neither could have imagined.