Marriage and babies... I almost don’t know where it would go if they ever got together
Will investigating duo Cormoran and Robin ever admit their feelings for each other? MARION McMULLEN finds out what is in store as gripping thriller Strike returns
HARRY POTTER author JK Rowling wrote the Strike murder mysteries under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith and has seen the novels become bestsellers as well as a major TV hit.
Now Tom Burke and Holliday Granger are back on BBC1 as private investigators Coromoran Strike and Robin Ellacott to tackle their latest case in Lethal White. Based on the fourth book in the series, it catches up with the duo at an interesting point in their relationship.
Set in the world of politics, it sees two different cases start to overlap each other. But will the twosome ever find romance together?
How far has the relationship between Strike and Robin developed by Lethal White?
HOLLIDAY: Well, Robin and Strike’s relationship has captured so many hearts and minds. Mine included.
But I also think the series’ success lies in the way that each new case leads us into a new world.
JK Rowling takes us on so many journeys to so many different places, but wherever you are, you feel as if you know the people in it because they’re all so fully realized.
I think we’re all just rooting for her and Strike, aren’t we?
TOM: I had a sense of Strike being, emotionally, one layer of skin thinner in this one. There’s this moment that happens near the beginning, which the book frequently returns to. It’s at Robin and Matthew’s wedding.
Robin and Strike don’t quite know what’s happened, only that something has happened, and both of them carry that throughout the four episodes.
They’re a little awkward with each other at times, not quite knowing how to get back to where they were before.
What is it about Strike that has fans gripped and keeps them coming back for more?
TOM: I’m not sure that’s for me to say but the relationship, Robin and Strike’s, seems to me to be the heart of the show.
Again, I feel I owe a lot to my forebears, the detectives I greatly enjoy watching, or the portrayals of detectives I greatly enjoy watching.
Did you have to do any extra research for Lethal White?
TOM: No. I think the research thing is always a delicate balance. I did a lot of research into surveillance when we filmed the first books, and I’ve got a very good friend who’s a plainclothes policeman.
But because the whole show flirts with genre, the way we tell the story has just as much to do with The Big Sleep or Chinatown as it does with the reality of the thing. HOLLIDAY: Robin has a great sense of fun, and she relishes taking on different roles.
In Lethal White, she goes undercover as the goddaughter of an MP in the House of Commons, complete with a pair of brown contact lenses and all!
To be completely honest, when I first read the book, I was a bit dubious that contacts could change a person’s appearance that much, but I was completely wrong – they really do, it transforms your whole face!
And it’s fascinating the effect that then has on your personality too.
It’s not her only stint undercover, either.
She also goes from the corridors of Whitehall to Camden Town, where she starts working in a jewellery shop in the hope of infiltrating a left-wing protest group.
I’ve also got this black wig, black clothes, Doc Martens and Gothy eye make-up look going on too.
Would you say Strike an old-fashioned style of detective?
TOM: Michael Keillor, who directed The Cuckoo’s Calling story, said in an interview that Strike is “an
analogue man living in a digital age”.
This then got quoted back to me during an interview, and I said something like, “Oh yeah, I guess he is” – without really knowing what that was. But, as an example, there was a time when I was taking photos in Lula Landry’s apartment, using a camera rather than a camera phone.
That was a choice, but we moved away from it quite quickly.
I think not having a smartphone, especially in Strike’s profession, wouldn’t just be swimming against the tide but also an affectation.
But I guess where Michael and I were definitely on the same page is that Strike is slightly out of his time, at odds with his surroundings.
When we see wide shots of him walking down the street, there’s just something about him – he doesn’t quite blend in.
So, the reality is that, of course, he’d have a smartphone. He just wouldn’t have any apps.
What makes Strike stand out from other detective shows?
TOM: He’s brilliant at working it out. They both are, together.
He always seems to think that, if he sits somebody down and says, “listen, I know what you did and why you did it,” that they’ll almost breathe a sigh of relief, as if he were a sort of older brother figure.
They either tend to run away or hit him over the head with a bottle.
He’s not a brilliant judge. Or he’s trusting. There’s optimism there because he’s trying to understand. At the heart of his vocation, at the heart of him, is a need to understand.
I think if somebody is threatening somebody he loves, it becomes very personal and he’ll wallop them. Otherwise, there is a strange detachment.
What do you think the future holds for Strike and Robin?
TOM; I don’t know. Not in real life, of course, but I’m quite a fan of catastrophe.
I’d quite like things to go very, very wrong. But I don’t know. We’ll see. HOLLIDAY: Oh, I don’t know. Marriage and babies, perfectly, happily ever after.
But I think the most exciting thing is precisely that.
The ‘will they, won’t they’ becomes the heartbreaking ‘not quite there yet’.
That’s what’s so compelling to read and watch. I almost don’t know where they’d go if they ever did get together. I reckon it’d be quite a slow process.
Lethal White is on iPlayer.