New partner in crime was a dead easy choice for me
Line of Duty star Mark Bonnar immediately thought of old high school mate Jamie Sives to play his hapless brother in hilarious BBC Scotland drama Guilt
Some on-screen chemistry is instant, but usually it takes actors a few days or even weeks to develop the closeness required to sell a relationship.
Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives took more than 30 years.
Playing estranged brothers in stunning new BBC Scotland comedy drama Guilt, the pair can draw on a relationship that goes all the way back to Leith Academy.
Bonnar, riding high with a run of diverse smash hits like Line of Duty, Catastrophe and Shetland, was recruited for the programme, which premieres on the Scots channel before going network at a later date, by writer Neil Forsyth.
The pair previously worked together on Eric, Ernie and Me and both men came up with the idea of Game of Thrones warrior and Chernobyl nuclear worker Jamie for his brother.
The hilarious and gripping new show follows disparate siblings Max (Mark) and Jake (Jamie)’s increasingly manic exploits after they knock down and kill a pensioner and try in increasingly strained measures, to cover it up.
The whole show hinges on their brilliantly sparky relationship, so it’s just as well they’ve spent decades practising.
Mark said: “The writer sent me the script and it was amazing. The first scene just hit me like a brick, it’s so out of the blue and unexpected and that’s the beginning, so you’re like, ‘What’s gonna happen now?’ I was in, hook, line and sinker.
“I’m also playing someone from Leith for the first time which is great, that’s where we are both from. It came to me first, and Neil said, ‘Do you have anybody in mind or who do you think would be good for Jake?’
“I had already thought abut Jamie, but as I was about to answer, Neil said, ‘Do you know Jamie Sives?’
“Not only do I know him, I was at school with him so there was that serendipity.
“A lot of the time if you have a close relationship with somebody on screen or stage, if it’s a stranger you have never met before, then you have to work at that history and that feel that you get with a brother or a sibling, but we already had that in spades.
“We’re not on the phone to each other all the time and not like bessie pals before this but we have texted each other and been to see each others’ shows, plus the school thing.”
While they were in different school social circles, Jamie and Mark knew each other through drama.
Mark joked: “I got the drama prize in first year. I was sitting with my pals and somebody came in with the list of prize winners and I made some smart a**ed comment about ‘all the snobs have got the prizes’ and the next name out was mine.”
Although he had been dissuaded from doing drama standard grades by a well-meaning guidance teacher, he worked his way into the business after a series of council and sales jobs before starting drama school and making his debut with a part in the first incarnation of Rebus.
Two separate Taggarts followed, with great stage work and increasingly key roles in prime time telly in between his 2003 and 2010 crime outings.
But it was his second series stint in Jed
Mercuro’s hit drama Line of Duty that graduated him to telly big hitter and he won rave reviews in sci fi drama Humans, recently concluded dark sitcom Catastrophe and Scots drama Shetland.
Mark said: “Line of Duty was the first show where people were talking about it, Jed had refined that form and introduced the big interview scenes, the whodunnit aspect was more prevalent, and being a part of series two with Keeley and everyone going, ‘Oh my God’ and talking about it the next day – that was a big stepping stone.
“Catastrophe as well. Chris is the most amazing comic creation from Sharon (Horgan) and Rob (Delaney) and they put words in my mouth that anybody would give their right arm to speak, it was joyful and I relished the scripts coming through the letterbox to see what I was going to be up to, and I’m very sad that’s over.
“Max (in Guilt) has a bit of Chris about him, in that dry, cutting, sarcastic, world weary way. “There is something distinctly Scottish about that kind of humour, the gallows humour in the face of death and when you add in the family aspect, it becomes even more off the cuff and funny I guess.
“To be leading up a BBC series, I am aware of how wonderful that is and to be doing it with Jamie, I am aware of how equally wonderful that is. I am very very privileged, but as an actor you know it’s going to end and it’s brilliant, but it’s feast or famine.”
As well as the prestige of the leading part in a massively hyped series, described as the “jewel in the crown” of the BBC Scotland channel, and working with pals Neil and Jamie, Mark was thrilled to be working in Scotland, and his first Edinburgh acting gig since Rebus with John Hannah, in 2001.
Although as he is recalling his delight at an Edinburgh job, we are sat in the 70s-tastic living room of a fictionally dead pensioner, recreated in a warehouse location in Possilpark, Glasgow.
He joked: “When I was reading the script I fantasised that it would be so good walking the streets of Edinburgh again. We were there for two days. But with budget necessities, that’s just the way it is at the moment and hopefully it’ll all change when Edinburgh gets its studio and things become easier and more cost efficient to film there.”
As well as Jamie and Mark, the stellar Scots cast features Bill Paterson, Ellie Haddington and a scene stealing Emun Elliot. But despite the Scottish nature and setting of the show, it’s very clear that Guilt is the furthest thing imaginable from parochial or local.
It’s shot in gorgeous anamorphic widescreen format, with cinematic visuals which will help it appeal to viewers right around the world. And Mark is thrilled to be leading that charge.
He said: “It’s important for a host of reasons, not just because it’s Scottish and Leith, but because of the way it is being shot and the way it looks, because there’s not really anything much like it.
“This house we’re in is like something out of David Lynch or Fargo and it really has that really filmic look to it, there are a whole raft of reasons why it’s a really exciting project.
“I was watching Killing Eve when I first read it and it kind of has a little bit of that in so far as it is very serious and very funny.
“Maybe it’s the mood of the world at the moment, we need dark comedy cutting through some of the bulls***”.
l Guilt is on BBC Scotland from October 24, 10pm and coming soon to BBC Two.
The first scene just hit me like a brick. It’s so out of the blue you’re like, ‘What’s gonna happen now?’ Mark Bonnar