BUILDING BRIDGES
IT’S A high-wire act to put on a Yorkshire accent in front of natives.
But it sounds like top marks for Yasmin Al-Khudhairi, who says she was never pulled up on it in the shops of Halifax, where she passed off the region’s dialect as her own in preparation for a role in school drama Ackley Bridge.
The show, filmed in Calderdale, returned this week and features a number of new faces, including AlKhudhairi, alongside Robyn Cara, Ryan Dean, Carla Woodcock, Shobhit Piasa and Conor McIntyre.
It is the first three who joined me over a Zoom video call to discuss what for each of them is their first lead role.
And it’s ironic that such a big step at times felt like blast from the past.
“It’s weird putting back on the school uniform,” says Cara, from Northampton.
“HowdoIdoatie?Youcan’t remember but it does al back to you. It’s weird si in, like, the science class and Bunsen burners an this...”
Al-Khudhairi adds: “I was really good to get into character, getting into y ur uniform. I felt like I was ck being 15 again and mess ng around again – it was really, really fun. It really helps.” ng ooms all
Channel 4’s Ackley Bridge was inspired by real-life Yorkshire and Lancashire schools established to integrate white and Asian communities in some of the most divided towns in the country.
Since it first aired in 2017 it has won praise from critics for the way it has dealt with such issues.
The fourth series of the humour-sprinkled school drama was due to hit screens in September last year but,
delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The new series of the show, began on Monday on Channel 4 and the 30 minute episodes will air at 6pm every day for
The award-winning drama has filmed at locations including, once again, the former St Catherine’s Catholic
High School at Holmfield, Halifax.
Many familiar faces will return including Sunetra Sarker, Rob James Collier, Jo Joyner, Charlie Hardwick and Tony Jayawardeena.
Cara, who has previously appeared in Hounslow Diaries, plays funny Kayla, who is torn between her white mother’s family and her traditional Pakistani father’s family. AlKhudhairi – who has played parts in Killing Eve and 2019 film Hilda – portrays her
“intelligent, fist-in-the-air firebrand”.
Dean (who appeared in
The Gentlemen) takes the role of Johnny, a “heartthrob” from the Romany Gypsy
of school.
It wouldn’t be a drama ocused on young people without a classic love triangle, but as ever with Ackle other issues are at pla
As Cara says, despit faces and romance it “tackles all the issues t people have and it cha stereotypes.”
The Romany Gypsy community is a group often faces “extreme p and negative portrayal Caroline Hollick, Cha head of drama wrote f Radio Times, addingt inclusion of Johnnya family is the latestina
with advisors, that ai to highlight and challe discrimination agains different communitie excited that our new l man is so multi-facete fresh ill t enges
ich judice ” el 4’s the t “the his long
e
We’re ding and
and his family to the s in a way that positivel challenges perceptions across the series. Through
een the characters of Johnny and his family we’ve tackled the same big, noisy themes of integration and community
previous series did.”
Though it is not a heritage shared by Dean, the 22-yearold from Lancashire says: “It’s an honour to be able to portray what I feel could be
there or what people can relate to as their story.”
Diversity has “always been at the heart of what makes
Ackley Bridge so special,” says Channel 4, and in this series all five of its writers – Ayub Khan-Din, Suhayla El-Bushra,
Stewart – are said to be from diverse backgrounds.
Meanwhile, other new pupils include Marina, Kayla’s ‘mean girl’ sister, played by Carla Woodcock (Free Rein)
Piasa, the smooth-talking nephew of Kaneez, whose patter hides a family secret.
Ackley Bridge is just one