By Mark Braxton
The six-part BBC2 thriller Edge of Darkness caught the public imagination so successfully on its first broadcast in 1985 that within ten days of its conclusion, the series was shown again on BBC1, doubling its audience to eight million. And now, with its release on Blu-ray, a whole new generation can admire it – we have five copies to give away (for how to enter, see below).
“Bob Peck has a hell of a lot to do with it, he really does,” says director Martin Campbell, one of many cast and crew whose career skyrocketed as a result. “He’s wonderful in it, and he also has a very dry sense of humour.”
Not that the leading man was well known at the time. “I wanted the common man, I didn’t want any sort of star… I think it was Jonathan Powell [the then head of BBC drama] who said you need someone who’s going to stand out on screen, and suggested Bob Peck, who had not done much TV.” It proved to be a masterstroke.
Peck plays Ronnie Craven, a Yorkshire detective whose search for the killer of his daughter Emma (Joanne Whalley) leads him into the dark heart of the nuclear state. He quickly teams up with rogue CIA operative Darius Jedburgh, played by Joe Don Baker, whose casting was Campbell’s idea. “In episode two when Darius and Craven meet for the first time in a restaurant, and they’re kind of singing to each other – which was not in the script, we just sort of improvised – that was absolutely my favourite scene. Anything between Craven and Darius I thought worked extremely well.”
A “tough, intense” shoot took the crew from London to Yorkshire and Scotland (for a Nato conference scene at Gleneagles, Campbell was told he could only use 100 extras, but he went ahead and shot with the 150 he had already assembled). Also to some slate mines in Wales — the backdrop for one action-packed episode — where Peck had a lucky escape for a scene in which Craven was running from his enemies. “Land Rovers were thundering up behind him and he fell. But there were stunt guys in the Land Rovers so they stopped. It could have been dangerous, but it was all fine.”
Campbell chuckles as he recalls working with scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, who started in TV with Z Cars but branched out into films (The Italian Job, Kelly’s Heroes). “He was a frustratingly slow but brilliant writer. A lovely man, and sort of slightly eccentric and out of left field… He wrote 15 endings! The humour he got into that series was fantastic.”
Edge of Darkness got Campbell noticed in Hollywood (“I think Spielberg really loved it”) and he was soon directing Bond (Golden-Eye and Casino Royale) and Zorro films. He’s still working at 76, with films starring Michael Keaton and Liam Neeson in the pipeline.
So why does he think Edge still chimes with people, 34 years on? “Whether the politics of the time still echo today… they probably do given the terrible things that are going on now.”
WARNING This image may only be used for publicity purposes in connection with the broadcast of the programme as licensed by BBC Worldwide Ltd & must carry the shown copyright legend. It may not be used for any commercial purpose without a licence from the BBC.
© BBC 1985
To be in with a chance of winning a Blu-Ray of Edge of Darkness, answer this question:
from Radio Times https://ift.tt/2Nk9VPx
