These perfect kids are eerie and creepy
Keeley Hawes and Max Beesley lead the cast in a sinister new drama in which a town’s children are not at all what they seem
Keeley Hawes has revealed she would have found it “very difficult” playing a mum in new drama The Midwich Cuckoos.
The reimagining of John Wyndham’s science fiction classic follows a group of young women who all inexplicably fall unconscious, only to wake up to discover they are pregnant.
And if that wasn’t strange enough, once the children are born, they are not as they first seem.
Keeley, 46, plays gifted psychotherapist Dr Susannah Zellby, who is tasked with supporting the women – and says she “found it very difficult to put myself in their shoes”.
However, as a mum to Maggie and Ralph with her former Spooks co-star Matthew McFadyen and son Myles with her ex-husband Spencer McCallum, Keeley enjoyed working with the younger members of the cast.
“There is something lovely about working with children,” she said. “If they believe something, they really go for it.
“I say, always work with children and animals if you can!”
But even she was a little troubled by the cuckoos’ bizarre appearance! She said: “The fact that they are perfectly presented makes them eerie.
“Usually, children have one sock on and one sock off but these kids are immaculate. That makes them ‘other’.”
So what appealed to her about playing Dr Zellby?
Keeley said: “She is fascinated when these children are born and feels we can learn from them and that they can help us to become better people. That is her intention – until they become a bit creepy.”
Max Beesley, 51, also joins the stellar line-up as Midwich’s Senior police officer, DCI Paul Haynes. When the blackout results in personal tragedy, his solid family foundations are shaken to their core.
He said: “Paul’s Achilles heel is that he finds it hard to separate the personal from the professional.”
As for working with Keeley, dad-of-one Max said: “It’s been glorious. She is a fantastic actress and a total delight.”
Otherworldly and unsettling, The Midwich Cuckoos is a story that will grip and horrify.
“It’s the stuff of nightmares,” summed up the show’s writer David Farr.