‘There were people there who had lost children. It’s a unique, all-consuming sort of grief’

NO ONE could accuse Julie Graham of being a victim of typecasting. She’s battled the Cybermen in Dr Who, played it for laughs in Benidorm and starred as a codecracking sleuth in The Bletchley Circle. But now she’s playing possibly her toughest TV role to date in dark psychological thriller Penance, which follows a couple struggling to cope after the sudden death by drowning of their teenage son in Thailand.

“I just loved the themes, that it was about grief and passion and loss,” says Julie, 54.

“I loved the fact it was tense and taut, and there were lots of twists and turns in it.”

Bereavement, which sits at the centre of the drama – that began on Channel 5 last night – is something she is familiar with.

Julie has spoken before about dealing with the death of her husband, Joseph Bennett – the father of her two daughters – who took his life in 2015.

But as a mum, she is also well aware that “losing a child is a very unique grief”, so she went to a grief counselling session to research the role.

She said: “I did look up a group that dealt specifically with child bereavement but I felt like a fraud and I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t want to go and be a voyeur.

“It just didn’t feel appropriate. So I went to another general bereavement counselling session, because I am bereaved, and so I felt like I was there legitimately.

“There were a couple of people there who’d lost children. It was a very particular, all-consuming grief in the way that a lot of other grief isn’t, and that was very useful because it just felt like it was singular and palpable. It was visible.”

THE actress plays Rosalie, while Neil Morrissey is her husband Luke and Tallulah Greive their daughter Maddie. Nico Mirallegro is Jed, a stranger Rosalie and Maddie meet at bereavement counselling.

Julie found her character in Penance – inspired by the novel of the same name by Kate O’Riordan (who also wrote the script) – unusual because she is a woman of faith.

“You don’t really see that – a professional woman who also has this very strong religious faith,” Julie says. She also loved the relationship that Rosalie has with her priest, Father Tom, played by Art Malik.

“My mother was a dyed-in-the-wool atheist but one of her really close friends was a priest, and they used to wind each other up.

“She used to say, ‘Oh, there’s no such thing as God,’ and he’d get all kind of upset and say, ‘Well, you won’t be saying that when you’re in hell!’ They had this lovely, jokey, supportive relationship, and it reminded me a lot of that with Father Tom.”

Not that the show made Julie think differently about her own religious beliefs.

“I respect anybody who does have faith,” she says. “I’m sure it brings you great comfort – I mean sometimes I wish I did! But I’m not a religious person at all.

“I would say I am spiritual and I certainly believe that there are things outside of our ken, but I don’t believe in God as such, so for me that was an interesting place to put myself in as an actor.”

Was that the appeal of the role? “That and the fact it was a big stonking lead in my

50s!” she laughs. Like many actresses of her age is acutely aware of under-representatio TV and film.

She believes “the tion is casting directo writers and commiss editors saying, ‘We want