Unlucky for some
Five-part British mini-series Thirteen is all about what happens once a kidnapping victim gets free.
From left: Detective Sergeant Lisa Merchant, kidnapped Ivy Moxam and Detective Inspector Elliot Carne. Season 1 Wednesdays (from 28 September) BBC First (*119) 20:00 & 21:00
After 13 torturous, long years of being held captive, Ivy Moxam (Jodie Comer) escapes. This should be a relief but nothing is what it seems in Thirteen (2016). Ivy’s family have long since given up hope that she’s alive and they’re shocked by her return. Plus, there’s the complicated matter of catching her kidnapper – Ivy turns to Detective Inspector Elliott Carne (Richard Rankin) and Detective Sergeant Lisa Merchant (Valene Kane) to snare him. But when the leads run dry, the police begin to suspect that Ivy’s not telling them the whole truth.
Tell us about your character. I play Lisa Merchant, partner to Detective Inspector Elliot Carne. She’s a younger, more inexperienced detective. She’s ambitious and driven and wants to get to the top of the game. Lisa is the ultimate professional and she’s surprised when Carne – someone she really looks up to and respects – behaves in a way that she deems unprofessional. Is she jealous of Carne’s fascination with Ivy? I don’t think she understands what those feelings are, but there’s definitely some jealousy, whether she admits it to herself or not. She sees Ivy as someone in her way. It’s more a feeling of team disloyalty. I don’t think Merchant’s love for Carne is obvious until later in the series as I don’t think she is a character that is overly motivated by love. When Ivy comes in, it pushes what she feels for him to the surface. Describe Thirteen in a nutshell. A wellwritten, perceptive relationship drama, based on what happens after someone who has been held captive escapes. It’s definitely a thriller. Why did you want to be involved with it? I wanted to work on it as soon as I read the scripts. It’s a female writer, a female lead, with two female directors and a female executive. Marnie [writer and series creator Marnie Dickens] has created something so exciting that we all want to know about the backstories of the characters. It’s a subject matter that hasn’t been documented – the aftermath of someone being in captivity. I hope everyone finds it as exciting as I did when I got involved.