Tin Star TV series a blood-soaked tale
It’s nearing the end of the sixmonth shoot of the British TV series Tin Star, and the family home of police chief Jim Worth in the fictional town of Little Big Bear in the Canadian Rockies has obviously been the site of something catastrophically violent. This is all we can say. Producers are understandably adamant that specific plot details not be revealed from the series, which was created by British filmmaker Rowan Joffe. But the blood-splattered surroundings fall into a broader theme that seems to run through the Alberta-shot series: There is always a storm beneath the calm.
“I didn’t really know where it was going to go,” says British actor Tim Roth about the early scripts he was sent. “But it had an anarchy about it that I thought was kind of fun.”
Roth plays the complex and dark character of Worth, a former London detective who leaves big-city policing for a seemingly peaceful life with his family in the Canadian Rockies. But his troubled past follows him, with tragic results. A big oil company, led by the mysterious Mrs. Bradshaw (played by Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks), seems to have overrun the town and may or may not be behind a surge of mayhem, much of it directed at the Worth clan.
Throughout the 10-episode series there’ll be gangsters, assassins, strange romances and family tragedy. All this unrest unleashes the violent, boozy and revenge-minded Jack Devlin, who is either Worth’s alter ego or simply the darkness that bubbles up in the family man when he drinks alcohol.
Blood-splattered sets are apparently not an anomaly on Tin Star.
“Yeah, there’s a bit of violence in this one,” Roth says.
The Oscar-nominated actor knows onscreen violence. He has worked with Quentin Tarantino, in films such as Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and The Hateful Eight.
“It’s not real, and if it’s real it should be terrifying,” Roth says. “This sort of straddles the line. It’s not a documentary, it’s playtime. It has a comic element. Sometimes the violence can be very real, when we do insert that into it we have to respect it. Yeah, I don’t have a problem with violence and stuff. I’d rather it was on my telly than in my backyard.”
The backdrop near Calgary where this all unfolds benefits Tin Star — the series has been described as a modern western or western-noir.
“They refer to it as big-sky country and I’m not sure I ever had a concept of what that meant until I spent time here,” says Irish actress Genevieve O’Reilly, who plays Worth’s wife Angela.
Tin Star has been shot chronologically, rare for a TV series. Some of the nastiness comes courtesy of an unstable man named Whitey, who has a mysterious connection to Worth. British actor and relative newcomer Oliver Coopersmith plays Whitey, whom he describes as a “nutcase,” “psychopath” and “lost little boy.”
“Some scenes, or some days, it’s particularly hard to detach,” he says. “If you feel sad for most of the day, you end up coming away thinking ‘I don’t want to feel like this anymore ...’”
While this may sound unrelentingly bleak, it’s important to note that the series also has a good deal of humour, although it’s generally of the dark variety. Ian PulestonDavies (Coronation Street) plays an inept British gangster named Frank whose fish-out-of-water experiences in the Canadian Rockies are a good source of comedy.
Tin Star is set to air in 2017 in the U.K. So far, no North American broadcaster has been announced.