Sue Perkins travels the US-Mexican border to discover the realities of living on either side, which Trump famously wanted to divide with a wall.
‘It’s a false sense of entitlement that we have to get rid of, because it can have catastrophic results. This is a story that recommends modesty. I think arrogance was the main problem and it’s big a problem today in the way things have been handled recently in this country.”
Screenwriter Christopher Hampton, who has adapted The Singapore Grip for the small screen, clearly sees recent parallels to the tale told in JG Farrell’s last novel.
The period drama is set during the Second World War and follows a British family in Singapore during the Japanese invasion in 1942.
Ruthless rubber merchant Walter Blackett (David Morrissey) fears for the future of his firm when his business partner Webb (Charles Dance) falls ill, and concocts a scheme to wed his spoilt daughter Joan (Georgia Blizzard) to Webb’s kind hearted son Matthew (Luke Treadaway).
The plan is far from straight-forward, as Matthew falls under the spell of Vera Chiang (Elizabeth Tan), a Chinese adventurer with a mysterious past.
