RIYA’S REGRETS
Wunmi Mosaku stars as a detective in a northern town, who is suddenly faced with the drama she craved
PASSENGER Sunday and Monday, 9pm, ITV1 and ITVX
Actress Wunmi Mosaku leads a heavyweight cast including David Threlfall and Daniel Ryan in new ITV thriller Passenger. Set in a small, northern town where everyday life is full of rain, regret and mundanity, Passenger is the screenwriting debut from actor Andrew Buchan.
Wunmi plays
DI Riya Ajunwa, an ex-Met detective, who is turning 40 and frustrated by the way her life has turned out.
However, the drama
Riya craves arrives with baddie Eddie Wells (Barry Sloane) who is released from prison five years early.
“At the beginning of the series, Riya gets some huge news that Eddie Wells is coming out of prison,” says Wunmi. “Eddie is the baddie she put in prison five years ago for attacking a character called Jim [played by David Threlfall] and that was her big case. She put him behind bars, but he’s coming out early, almost five years too early. The whole town is now on edge.” There’s an early twist when Eddie’s daughter Katie (Rowan Robinson) goes missing on the same day her dad is to be released from prison.
“Riya thinks that’s strange,” says Wunmi. “There’s something weird that happens with Katie’s car and a series of other events. Nothing seems to make sense and everything is just off.”
Filming for the dark drama took place in the village of Cornholme in West Yorkshire. For Wunmi, the Yorkshire weather played as much of a role as she did. “It has its own weather system. It will be really sunny and then it’ll snow and then it’ll rain and then it’ll be sunny again,” says Wunmi.
“That feels very individual and isolated. We’ve got the scenes with the forest and the snow. It feels like walking into Narnia. It’s really beautiful and they have made it look magical. There’s this kind of otherworldly element to it. It feels like that small little town, just elevated in a way. The terraced houses; the smaller two-up twodowns – I love it.”