Great writing is at the heart of what I’m interested in and why I act
You don’t expect actor Lesley Sharp to talk pure Portobello but that’s what happens when she reveals her Scottish roots while discussing her new Scandi-noir inspired TV crime thriller Before We Die, finds Janet Christie
What would you do to protect your child? How far would you go? That’s the question facing detective inspector Hannah Laing played by Lesley Sharp in the six-part Channel 4 crime drama Before We Die, launching this week.
“The premise of the show is a wellmeaning but catastrophic parenting mistake by a mother, which means that instead of enabling her son to scramble to a place of moral and societal safety, she puts him in the path of really dangerous people and their lives are impacted in a way that she could never have guessed,” says Sharp.
Taking the lead in the edge-of-theseat series based on a Scandi noir TV drama, the stage, film and television actress is well known for Scott & Bailey (2011-16), Afterlife, The Full Monty, Living The Dream, Three Girls, Clocking Off, Bob & Rose (for which she was nominated for Best Actress Bafta) and the smash hit teen drama WINX.
Set in Bristol, Before We Die sees Sharp as a deeply conflicted policewoman, whose son becomes involved with East European drug gangs and embroiled in the investigation to find the killer of his mother’s colleague. With The OA’S Patrick Gibson playing her son Christian, it also stars Vincent Regan (Troy, 300, Wallander) who is convincing as Billy Murdoch, the Scottish investigator seconded to Hannah’s unit.
Sharp comes on the phone from her home in London, keen for feedback on the first episode and delighted to hear I was completely wrung out by the end.
“Great. That’s what we want,” she laughs.
If the other episodes are as tense and lively as the first, then viewers are in for a rollercoaster ride. Sharp confirms that they are.
“I was sent a cut-down version of the Swedish show while the scripts were being written and at the end of every single episode you’re thinking, ‘Oh my God, how are they going to get out of that? Oh my God, they knew that all the time. Oh, they’re dead? No, they’re not dead.’ That’s what the audience is in for.”
Before We Die isn’t a typical police procedural. From the beginning when it kicks off with a moral dilemma for the policewoman mother, it emphasises the states of mind and mental journey of individuals thrown into a terrifying action-packed scenario.
“It is a cop show; it’s within the police genre, but it’s a psychological thriller as well,” says Sharp. “And it’s quite unusual. It’s about what happens outside of the police station. Scott & Bailey was very much forensically interested in the ins and outs of the way they went about cracking a case from the point of something happening to how they managed to arrest someone. And that’s not our show at all. One of the aspirations for it was that it should be elevated above what you normally expect from a UK cop show. It’s not a procedural police drama in any
shape or form. It was already coming from a Scandinavian eye, but it has a Belgian director and was mostly shot in Belgium with a European crew.”
With Belgian locations standing in for Bristol, we watch Detective Laing kick off the action by making a decision for her son’s own good that turns out to have catastrophic consequences.
“You have to ask the question: what sort of woman would lose that thread with her son, be so involved with her work that she takes her eye off the ball then tries to fix it in the way that she does?” says Sharp.
So, a less than perfect person who pays the price for trying to do what she thinks is the right thing by her child.
“She believes that a strong adherence to morals, and maybe the environment that she’s dedicated herself to, would help him at this point in his life. And she’s judged by others on that. Some go, ‘Yeah, absolutely the right thing to do.’ And then there are other people who are ‘Wow, that’s a really strange thing for a mother to do.’”
For Sharp, Before We Die has elements that are reminiscent of a
Greek tragedy, a tradition very close to her heart.
“There’s some things that are very akin to Greek tragedy in that it’s a point at the crossroads where someone has to make a decision about their lives, and they think the decision they’re making based on all of their experience is going to be a good one. And then suddenly, they find that actually they’ve taken a path that led somewhere they just did not expect, where there is danger that bends and shapes them.
“Christian and Hannah are in deep need of one another, they can’t stop coming back, but they’re like two magnets that repel. The heart of our story is about a mother and a son desperate to connect and find a way of forgiveness, salvation and catharsis. You get to the end and both are completely changed. Whether they’re changed for the better, or whether the way the world has touched them means they’re marked indelibly, is the question. So, you know, it’s cracking, I think.”
Filmed towards the end of last year, in between lockdowns, the show doesn’t reference Covid, and as a mask-free zone is an entertaining