The sexiest thing on Doctor Foster? This £6m prefab
FROM bare-chested Aid an Turner in Poldark to Rufus Sewell’s brooding Lord Melbourne in Victoria, every TV drama needs its eye candy.
And last week viewers of BBC1’s hit drama Doctor Foster got their first glimpse of its sexy new star: a house.
But it’s not just any house – a magnificent glass palace complete with indoor swimming pool and sauna provides the backdrop for some of the most intense scenes in the gripping series.
In last week’s opening episode of series two, the doctor, played by Suranne Jones, gatecrashed her ex-husband Simon’s swanky party there. She had thought she’d seen the last of him after his betrayal, chronicled in the first series, but he has moved back to the fictional town of Parminster to flaunt his new life.
‘ So this is what you get for £1 million!’ Dr Foster exclaimed on seeing the dream property.
But the true value of the house, which is actually in a Surrey backwater, would be closer to £6 million, The Mail on Sunday has discovered. It is, in fact, a super-luxurious prefab. Manufacturers Huf Haus tailor-make them at their factory in Germany, ship them to the UK in parts and put them together on site in a week using a team of 40 to 50 craftsmen.
Nick Esser, Huf Haus’s development executive in the UK, said: ‘I was watching the show with my wife and when we heard the mention of a million pounds she burst out laughing.’
Bill Twiston-Davies, the location manager for TV production company Drama Republic, travelled far and wide to find a suitably ostentatious house for Simon, played by Bertie Carvel, to flaunt at his ex- wife. We wanted somewhere for a character with bags of money,’ he said.
‘ He’s gone from being supposedly ruined and he comes back expensively dressed with an expensive car and an expensive house. You’ll see the house throughout the series. It gets better and better.’
The owners, who didn’t want to be named, moved out of the fourbedroom, five-bathroom property for several weeks during filming. They were paid about £5,000 a day. One problem for the producers was that when Dr Foster first visits, the house needed to be empty – so all the real owners’ furniture had to moved out.
‘We had to be very careful,’ said Mr Twiston-Davies. ‘The art department do a photo inventory of where absolutely everything is. The owners here were brilliant, and trusted us a great deal with their possessions.’
The show could be a great advert for Huf Haus homes, but for Mr Esser there is one drawback: ‘ It’s a shame the character living in it is a bit of a villain,’ he said.
‘Perfect for a character with bags of money’