IN MOST CRIMES THE ANSWER'S INSIDE THE FAMILY
CRIME DRAMA, THE GRANTCHESTER BAY, SEES STAR MORVEN CHRISTIE, 37, PLAY A FAMILY LIAISON OFFICER IN THE CASE OF MISSING TEENAGE TWINS. MARION McMULLEN FINDS OUT MORE
How would you describe the Bay?
THE Bay looks into the heart of what crime does to people. It’s a story about two women whose lives both could have turned out really differently and the connection they make in this really extreme circumstance.
The main plot line focuses on a family whose twins have gone missing. I play DS Lisa Armstrong. She is an experienced Family Liaison Officer who is assigned to the family.
What research did you do?
I SPENT quite a lot of time with some detectives before we started filming; one of whom was a Family Liaison Officer.
When I first met them, they joked between them about the fact that there’s an in-joke in the police that ‘you’re not a real cop until you’ve got at least one divorce under your belt’.
They talked about just how much gets sacrificed for the job because it is so full-on, it can take over your life.
What else did you learn?
I LEARNED that in most crimes, 90% of the time, the answers come from inside the family. Almost everything that will ever help a police investigation comes from inside the family. And most of the time, if there is a perpetrator of a crime, it’s from inside the family circle.
So I was fascinated to understand that strange balance of really being a support while constantly surveying behaviour and analysing details you are privy to because you are embedded within the family.
I wanted to know if the officers felt devious, which they didn’t because they were always straightforward with their families from the beginning.
Is this a different take on a crime drama?
I DON’T feel like we’ve seen this particular female lead role before in a television drama. I think a lot of the time with crime dramas it’s all about the audience trying to figure out who did it. There is a place for that, of course. However, I think it’s quite a unique angle to take it into the heart of this family’s feelings and to actually see the investigator be directly affected by what that family is going through.
How would you describe your character Lisa?
I THINK it is a really honest portrayal of a female police detective who is juggling family life with a senior role that carries a lot of responsibility with it.
We’re quite used to seeing male detectives in crime drama and portrayals of them almost as superheroes. But with Lisa we see her in the midst of making a mess of her own life.
In reality she’s just a normal woman in her 30s that’s single and trying to live and work and keep her head above water.
What motivates Lisa?
LISA is motivated mostly by her family, but work plays a huge part in her life too. The reason why she specialised in family liaison is because she has a natural compassion, in-built empathy and she really cares about family life and about people.
Ultimately, she loves her career, but the centre of her world is her kids. Life becomes difficult for her when she realises that she’s not been
I was fascinated to understand that strange balance of really being a support while constantly surveying behaviour and analysing details you are privy to because you are embedded within the family.
doing very well at her own life and that her family has taken a backseat to her work.
When do viewers first meet Lisa in the story?
LISA is about to embark on a big night out with her girlfriends. She’s a bit of a party girl and has a fun, drunken night with her pals.
She then turns up for work the next morning, a little bit worse for wear and is launched into the centre of a new case that’s come in overnight.
However, her drunken actions of the night before threaten to get Lisa into a tricky situation at work. We see her trying to cover her tracks as this case progresses.
She’s incredibly good at her job, but she’s also just a normal single mum with two teenage kids who likes to have a laugh with her mates.
What does setting the drama in Morecambe bring to the dynamic?
MORECAMBE is a unique backdrop and I hope audiences get how much soul the town has. It felt like a really unique choice for our setting, not least of all because our writer Daragh Carville lives nearby and knows the area really well.
Morecambe reminds me a lot of the towns I grew up in. Like many other seaside resorts across the UK, they were booming towns for a while and then they weren’t.
When you look out from the sea front, it’s this incredibly beautiful vista. You can see the Lake District across the water, but when you move back from the sea, you start to see families that are really struggling ... and the story is set in the centre of that.
The Bay starts on ITV on Wednesday at 9pm.
Morven reveals what attracted her to the role of Family Liaison Officer Lisa