A different kind of Doctor:
Broadchurch’s David Tennant returns in a new British crime thriller.
Tom Kendrick seems like an ordinary Scottish doctor with a happy family life. But all that changes when his wife and children die in a house fire. Is there more to this doctor than first appears? David Tennant discusses his lead role in the thriller Deadwater Fell. James Rampton reports.
David Tennant, who is most famous as the 10th Time Lord, returns as another doctor in Deadwater Fell, a gripping new four-part British thriller.
The twist is that, unlike Doctor Who, it is far from clear that the medic he is portraying this time is a goodie.
In Daisy Coulam’s dark drama, Tennant takes the role of Tom Kendrick, the local doctor in the Scottish village of Kirkdarroch.
His wife, Kate (Anna Madeley), teaches in the local school. They have three adored children and are very much at the heart of village life.
However, one dreadful night, their house burns down and all the family – apart from Tom – die in the fire.
Led by local police officer Steve (Matthew McNulty), who is Tom’s best friend, the community begins to investigate precisely what took place. Was it an accident or was something more sinister at play?
Tennant, 48, who has also starred in Broadchurch, Good Omens and Jessica Jones, starts by outlining what drew him to Deadwater Fell.
“The script. Just the script,” he says. “It always is really, for me. If you read a script and it connects with you, it touches you, it intrigues you and you think, ‘I don’t want anyone else to do this because I want to do it’, that’s the clincher.
“I read the first episode and was intrigued and compelled by these characters. I didn’t feel like I quite knew what everyone’s story was and that, of course, makes you want to know what happens next.
“I think Daisy created very real characters, very believable characters, and also characters that had a real history to them. That was immediately intriguing.”
Tennant goes on to sketch out the character of Tom Kendrick.
“He is the local GP, a father of three and that’s very much a part of his identity. He is very much the centre of the community of Kirkdarroch. He’s respected, well liked and seems to be the perfect family man with a happy marriage.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything untoward in his family life. To the outside world, he’s the perfect father, the perfect husband. He’s popular and admired and people look up to him, and his world revolves around that.”
But all that is thrown out of kilter by the catastrophic fire.
One of the other strengths of Deadwater Fell is the fact that two different time frames are explored within the drama.
“That’s something that the script has set out,” Tennant reflects.
“What the script does very cleverly is reveal things about these characters piece by piece and not in an obviously chronological way.
“The series allows us, as an audience, to uncover them and take off the layers of onion skin to reveal what’s going on underneath.”
Tennant, who was born in Bathgate in Scotland, was also attracted by the idea of returning to film Deadwater Fell in his native land.
“It was hugely appealing to me to get to spend some weeks back in Glasgow,” he says.
“I still have family there and, of course, it’s a city that I grew up around and has always meant a great deal to me.
“Any excuse to return to Scotland I’m always happy to embrace. To be filming there with a fantastic Scottish crew and a lot of local actors, too, it was one of the great joys of this job for me.”
Deadwater Fell really is an intriguing drama, and Tennant is reluctant to tell viewers what the main take-aways from it might be.
“I don’t want to tell an audience what to take away from it,” he says, “partly because I think when you start telling people what the show is about, you inevitably start revealing things that are revealed much more elegantly by the story.
“The story you think you’re being told at the end of episode one is not the story that you realise you’re being told in episode two, which again is not the story you thought you were in the midst of when you get to episode three.
“I think it should be up to an audience to decide what they might take away from that.”
He ends by observing that, “All I will say is whatever you think the story is, it will confound you, compel you and
surprise you.”