On The Cover Keeley Hawes “The Durrells is a tonic to watch”
Keeley Hawes welcomes back one of her favourite fam mily TV dramas as the perfect antidote to lockdown stress s!
There’s nothing like the nostalgic warmth of 1930s family life on the sunbathed island of Cor fu to lift the spirits. So it’s welcome back to re-runs of The Durrells on TV, beginning right back at the start, when Louisa and her four unruly children leave wet and cold Britain for the idyllic Greek island. Based on animal conservationist Gerald Durrell’s books of growing up on Corfu, it stretched to four series, proving a big hit with viewers as well as the cast.
“I’d read Gerald’s book MyFamilyandOtherAnimals when I was about 10 and adored it and so I was terribly excited when the following summer we had a family holiday in Corfu where it was set,” says Keeley Hawes, who plays Gerald’s mother, Louisa.
“One of my earliest memories of filming is going to see the house in Corfu. It is extraordinary and just as you see it on screen. I remember all the cast wandering around and just thinking, ‘God, this is like a dream come true’.
“The main difference between the real Louisa and me is that I’m very tall and she and all of the children were quite petite. In fact all of the cast are taller than our real life counterparts.
“But Simon Nye, who wrote the scripts, did such a brilliant job in creating her eccentricity and her children’s love for her and hers for them and that was what was so important to me. It was one of those things where e it all just all came togeth her and it couldn’t have been betterb as far as I am concerne ed.”
Clearly, th he old showbiz adage of avooiding working with childrenn and animals did not apply.
“I had nev ver done a show like t that before, with so many anima als,” recalls Keele ey, who is marri ied to actor
Matthew
Macfadyen withw whom she h as two children, Ma aggie, 15, and Ralph, 13, anda 20-year-old son, Myles, from her first marriage, to o cartoonist
“It was one of those things where it all just came together, it couldn’t have been better”
Spencer McCallum.
“All of ‘the family’ did so well. It was their first acting jobs really, apart from Josh. And to deal with all of those things being thrown at them was a huge learning curve.
“The animals were lovely – the chickens, the family dog Roger, whose real name is Mossup, the pelican – and I remember when we had a basket of puppies that had come from a rescue centre. They were gorgeous.
“In one episode I think we had eight animals. That was the most we had ever had in any one scene. There was a rabbit in a drawer and a chicken running around, and we also had a goat and a donkey in the room.
“I’m quite an animal person really so I really enjoyed working with them.”
Keeley will also be taking the opportunity to re-watch and re-live what she considers to be one of the most pleasurable filming experiences of her life.
“I think people are feeling anxious and worried right now and we are having to find new ways to deal with this new world that we’re living in. We would all like to travel and our summer holiday plans have changed and so I think a show like The Durrells offers pure escapism at a stressful time and is a real tonic to watch.” MW
The Durrells can be seen daily on ITV from Saturday, July 4.