Civil war drama a first for television

Aug 31 2008 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

A PASSIONATE saga set during the English Civil War is to hit our TV screens, thanks to North writer Peter Flannery.

The Gateshead-born author — who penned Our Friends in the North — has teamed up with Channel 4 to bring us The Devil’s Whore, a four-part drama centred around the fight for power between the republican Roundheads and the royalist Cavaliers.

Yet, while the events took place on English soil, for the purposes of TV, they have been filmed in South Africa.

Head of Channel 4 drama, Liza Marshall defended the decision to film abroad, saying: “It’s more affordable to film there and we found a region where the countryside just looked similar to England.”

The serial tells the story of the Civil War through the eyes of Angelica Fanshawe, played by Andrea Riseborough, who was brought up in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, and recently played Margaret Thatcher in The Long Walk to Finchley.

She stars opposite Dominic West, from US series The Wire, as Oliver Cromwell, and the cast is rounded off by John Simm and Tim Goodman-Hill, who was raised in Newcastle.

Peter Flannery told how he relished the opportunity to bring this period in time to life. He said: “It is absolutely extraordinary how the English have forgotten their revolution, and how under-dramatised it has been.

“There has been nothing on television that actually tells it as it happened. We killed a monarch, after all, and ours was the first revolution in Europe.

“This movement went on to inspire the French and Soviet revolutions, and we might have had an early Soviet-style government ourselves.”

Although Angelica Fanshawe is at the centre of the story, Flannery said he did not want it to revolve around one figure.

He said: “I almost consciously modelled it on Our Friends in the North.

“I didn’t want it to be told from a single perspective. I wanted a group of characters to help explain a period of history, but we needed one character to take us through it.

“Both politically and emotionally, Angelica becomes attached to the other side, and this completely changes and radicalises her life. One of the important things about the revolution is that it gave women a voice.”

:: The Devil’s Whore will be shown on Channel 4 in November.