A quickie with... Suranne Jones & Bertie Carvel

You must have been thrilled with the huge success of the first series…

Suranne: Yes, because it wasn’t expected at all. I said to my husband at the time, “People are either going to love it or hate it, because do you want to sit and watch a relationship fall apart? Do you want to sit and watch infidelity?” I didn’t know if people would watch that, because it might have been uncomfortable. Little did I know that they really like uncomfortable!

Bertie: I think it was to do with its particular kind of psychological cocktail, and obviously fantastic acting and writing. None of us knowif the second series is going to have that reaction, but we’re proud of it. Do you feel pressure coming back, as the first series was so popular? S: Only that I really want people to like it. I absolutely care that it was a success in the way it was, so therefore I really care that everyone who watched it isn’t disappointed that we made another one. People really identify with it, don’t they? B: What’s so brilliant about Mike [Bartlett, the creator/writer] is he goes, “What’s the next chapter of this story?” And he doesn’t reach for sensationalism because he can find something huge in something so mundane, recognisable and totally ordinary. Are the characters difficult to play? S: Yes, but I had a great group of girls on set. We were planking for charity and making pop videos, just stupid things. Every minute, we were like, “Let’s play, because the other stuff is quite hard to do…”

B: Yeah, it takes us to some dark places. I don’t think Simon likes himself very much, and I had to really take on that despair and self-loathing. The emotional scale is pretty bleak – that’s not a nice place to spend time in, but it’s dramatic gold.