It’s good to be back:
Keeley Hawes reveals why she was happy to return to Corfu to film season two of The Durrells. Jim Maloney reports.
Keeley Hawes returns to Corfu for another season of The Durrells.
Feel-good family drama The Durrells is back on Vibe for another series and no one is happier about it than Keeley Hawes, who plays hassled mum Louisa.
In the new series, based on the books by conservationist Gerald Durrell and set in 1930s Corfu, single-mum Louisa is still trying to look after her children while they continue to meddle with her love life.
Larry (Josh O’Connor) is just as passionate about writing but is distracted by a new romance; Leslie (Callum Woodhouse) tries to make money out of bees; Margo (Daisy Waterstone) makes a play for someone thoroughly unsuitable; and animal-mad Gerry (Milo Parker) is delighted when he discovers an otter is living close to home.
As for Louisa ... she may just have found the ideal man at last in the shape of charming Englishman Hugh Jarvis, played by Australian actor Daniel Lapaine, who is married in real life to Cold Feet’s Fay Ripley.
“I feel really close to my ‘screen children’,” says Hawes. “They are all so lovely and we spend time together on our days off in Corfu.
“Milo is 14 and I am 40 and yet we get on very well. I think the fact that I have children in real life does make a difference.”
Hawes has two children – Maggie, 12, and Ralph, 10 – with her husband, Ripper Street actor Matthew Macfadyen. She also has a 16-year-old son, Myles, from her first marriage, to cartoonist Spencer McCallum.
“If I am out walking with my children I do this thing where I put my hand behind me and I know that someone will always take it. And I have done that in a couple of scenes when we were filming The Durrells and I felt Milo’s hand. Those are the sort of things you can’t write in. They just happen.”
The show has proved to be a big hit around the world which Hawes attributes to clever writing and broad appeal.
“The response I have got from
people is that it’s something that whole families can watch together from nine to 90. And that is very rare because it’s a very difficult thing to make work.
“What Simon (writer Simon Nye) does so well and what everybody works so hard to create is that sort of fabulous Pixar thing where there are jokes that go completely over the children’s heads, which is why we can all sit and watch Toy Story because it is so clever and there are references to things that will make adults laugh, and our children won’t have a clue. And when they are invited in on a cheeky joke they feel like they are in on something. So that’s what I feel works so well with The Durrells.”
The success of the show has provided a major boost to Corfu as a holiday destination.
“It’s so beautiful and the people there are just wonderful and really welcoming towards us.
“Josh and I bumped into a family at the airport on our last trip back, who were on their way home, and they asked if they could take a photograph of us.
“They told us, ‘We have spent our entire holiday searching for The Durrells and here you are’.
“My family take a holiday to join me there during filming and we all go out together for dinner with my real and ‘screen’ children – seven of them in all and they really get on well with each other. It’s lovely. And I fly back home every other week.”
Hawes was a big fan of Gerald Durrell’s books as a child and Corfu was the only holiday that her family took abroad when she was younger.
“I adored the books when I was little,” she says. “My family never went abroad but we did go to Corfu one year and I think that was partly probably because I read the books and really wanted to go there.”
Familiar faces return for this second series including Sven (Ulric Von Der Esch), housekeeper Lugaretzia (Anna Savva), Florence Petrides (Lucy Black), Dr Petrides (Alexis Conran), and Countess Mavrodaki (Leslie Caron).
And there is a new character in the shape of the Durrells’ formidable landlady, Vasilia (Errika Bigio), who appears to have a personal grudge towards Louisa. “We’ve got some new animals too, this season,” Hawes smiles. “There are new otters, a new puppy, two magpies, a falcon and a hedgehog. The pelicans are back but they are now fully grown. The hedgehog is the sweetest thing I have ever seen in my life but the pelicans tried to eat it during filming. He had a lucky escape.”
“The hedgehog is the sweetest thing I have ever seen in my life but the pelicans tried to eat it during filming.” – Keeley Hawes with Milo Parker