Having followed the fallout of a local murder that reignited buried tensions dating back to the miners’ strike of the 1980s, James Graham led the second series of his drama into gang related territory, to both critical and viewer acclaim.
“This second series may look, at first glance, like your typical crime drama,” wrote Chris Bennion in The Telegraph, “but its exceptional grasp of people and place sets it apart.”
I leave Corfu airport (a week’s holiday sailing around the coast with pals) for Düsseldorf and England’s opening match in the Euros against Serbia. James Graham and I are guests of the FA, all part of the research for Dear England 2.0, a four-part BBC series adapted from his hit play, which we will shoot in 2025 with Rupert Goold directing and Joe Fiennes reprising his alter ego England manager Gareth Southgate.
Across three parts, Graham has written an "emotional and darkly humorous" story that taps into the social and political chaos of today by imagining a civil uprising that ripples out from a small industrial town.
Following the uprising, a local family, the Driscolls, are forced to flee their home country and abandon the certainties of their old lives. But, the synopsis asks, "will they be overwhelmed by their memories of the past, or will they lay their ghosts to rest and take the risk of an unknown future?"
The Wales-based producer Red Seam has just begun filming the three-part series in Port Talbot, Wales. Graham wrote the story, which follows an ordinary family, The Driscolls, caught up in a civil uprising that ripples out from their small, industrial hometown of Port Talbot.
Co-created by Michael Sheen (Good Omens), James Graham (Sherwood) and Adam Curtis (HyperNormalisation), the drama follows the journey of one ordinary Welsh family – the Driscolls – dealing with authentic, impossible choices in a turbulent civil landscape.
When a chain of events sparks unrest across the nation, the family are forced to flee the country, leaving behind the lives they have built. Director of BBC Drama Lindsay Salt said the show is “both deeply grounded in its authenticity yet packed with imaginative spirit”.
The first series, which concluded yesterday, launched to over six million viewers.
It followed two shocking murder investigations which shatter the community of Sherwood, a Nottinghamshire village still divided by a Miners’ Strike that took place three decades before.
It is writer Graham’s most personal work, having been inspired by real events that occurred in his own home Nottinghamshire mining village.
The six-part drama is inspired by real-life events and takes place in the Nottinghamshire mining village where Graham grew up.
An already fractured community is completely torn apart when two tragic and unexpected killings lead to a massive manhunt to find the person responsible.
Suspicion and antipathy begin to seep into the town, straining relationships between lifelong neighbours and towards the police forces.
The killings threaten to reignite historic divisions sparked during the miners strike three decades before.
Set in the mining village where Graham grew up, the contemporary series will follow a fractured community rocked by two shocking murders.
Inspired by real events, the rife suspicion around the tragic murders threatens to aggravate historic divisions that have existed between families since the Miners’ Strike in the 80s.
The series, adapted from Graham’s play of the same name, explores the story of the ‘coughing major’, which saw Charles (Matthew Macfadyen), Diana Ingram (Sian Clifford) and Tecwen Whittock (Michael Jibson) cheat their way to a million pounds on the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
The “audacious heist” took place in 2001, when Major Ingram was a contestant on the show and with the help of his wife Diana and accomplice Whittock, navigated the notoriously difficult quiz to win the top price.
James Graham was an undergraduate at Hull University when he became fascinated by daily press reports of the trial of a respectable home counties couple accused of cheating their way to the top prize in ITV’s Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? At the time, Millionaire was one of the biggest shows on TV, achieving audiences of more than 8 million; at its peak, an incredible 19 million tuned into the programme.
