GIRLS TO THE FRONT
FILMMAKER DOMINIC SAVAGE TAKES A WHOLE NEW APPROACH TO FEMALE-LED TV WITH RAW, POWERFUL ANTHOLOGY SERIES I AM
EPISODE 1 I AM NICOLA
It might be getting better in comedy (Fleabag, Derry Girls, Back To Life) but TV still suffers from a dearth of nuanced, female-led drama. Which makes I Am, a three-part series exploring three very different women’s stories, all the more welcome and necessary. For director/creator Dominic Savage, his drive to help women share their experiences comes from an extremely personal place.
“If you want to go deep, it probably emanates from having a strong and powerful mother,” he says. “She was always in my life, always talking, always part of it. Also I’ve got three daughters. I care about the world they are growing up in and the life they are going to lead. I feel their sensibilities very acutely.”
Yet rather than a male director foisting a tin-eared perspective on a female narrative, Savage’s M.O. is refreshing and unique: eschewing the traditional route of coming up with an idea, writing a script then casting it, he starts with long discussions with actors, identifying characters, emotions and ideas they’d both like to explore, developing the idea in tandem before Savage goes away and writes a first draft script. This then becomes a focal point for even more collaboration which continues through filming and editing.
“It’s a really lovely way for that actor to totally believe and become embroiled in their own story, “he says. “The actor almost acts as a script editor if you like.
I discovered there is something about me being a man and the actor being a woman and combining our sensibilities. It felt a really good, equal way to make it work.”
It’s a process that started with Savage’s 2017 feature film The Escape, starring Gemma Arterton, a terrific study of a woman trapped in an unfulfilling marriage, that left the filmmaker seeking more. I Am Nicola, the first in the new series, shares DNA with The Escape not only in approach but also in its deep dive into a failing relationship, this time centred around coercive control. The idea chimed with actor Vicky Mcclure, who’d previously worked with Savage on BBC drama True Love, and the pair created hairdresser Nicola, stuck in a cycle of accusation/apology with partner Adam (Perry Fitzpatrick).
“I was particularly interested in [highlighting] a controlling relationship,” Savage says. “I wanted to get into the detail of it, to look at some of the subtleties of a relationship. Particularly when someone is in something and they can’t really see it.”
Savage will often shoot in long takes, seeing what evolves in the dynamics of a scene. “We keep going potentially for half an hour. I suggest ideas as we are shooting. It’s very tiring because you have to concentrate all the time on what are you getting to build a bigger picture of the story.” The result is often concerned with the undramatic stuff (such as an innocent sounding question about Nicola’s gym clothes) that coalesces into a believable portrait of quiet manipulation. It’s a scenario that also resonated with its star.
“Vicky understood that kind of relationship,” says Savage. “She’d experienced it and she recognised the difficulty of what to do in that situation. It was something really important for her to do. I felt there was something about making it that was almost cathartic.”
If Nicola’s story chronicles a faltering connection, then Hannah’s tale tackles what happens when you can’t make one.
EPISODE 2 I AM HANNAH
I Am Hannah was inspired by a conversation Savage had with a woman who had given up on the idea of meeting a man and decided to have a baby on her own. It stars Gemma Chan as a big city single woman negotiating the tortures of modern dating while feeling the pressure from her mother, friends with babies and society at large to settle down. Particularly good on the horrific details of trying to meet someone via apps (“I was interested in exploring how demoralising it is”), the episode intensely evokes a kind of thirty-something paralysis, something that chimed with Savage’s co-creator.
“Women are taking control of what they want and when they want it,” says Savage. “Obviously, Gemma had a personal connection to that. She is in that place of thinking about what she wants. A lot of women are expected to be married, expected to have kids. And if they are not, there’s a strange attitude to it. In the end, I think the film is about a woman who frees herself from that burden of expectation.”
As with Mcclure, Savage had previously worked with Chan on True Love. But, since then, Chan’s stock, following roles in Channel 4’s Humans and movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Captain Marvel, has risen sharply, playing neatly into Savage’s idea about Hannah’s arc.
“Now she’s become quite a force and a name,” he says. “It is ideal for a female story that is powerful and personal and difficult. She was passionate about telling that story. I thought that would be a great opportunity for us to come together again.”
EPISODE 3 I AM KIRSTY
While Chan and Mcclure are Savage veterans, Samantha Morton is a newbie. “She is just one of the most interesting actors I’d not worked with,” he says. “The truth about Samantha is that she is a very particular, discerning type of actor. She senses bullshit and nonsense straight away. You are real from the word go. That’s how I like to operate.”
During their first conversation, Morton expressed an interest in exploring the realities of sex work. “There’s a personal history thing there – not her herself,
I hasten to add – but it means a lot to her,” says Savage. Morton’s Kirsty lives on a council estate with her two kids when her boyfriend leaves leaves her, plunging her into financial dire straits. Amid sparse home comforts and eating beans on toast off plates on the floor, she borrows money from a kindly playground dad (Paul Kaye) but, following a dark twist, is forced into sex work to make ends meet. The episode is textured by conversations Savage had with women he met on location who had lived through Kirsty’s experiences.
“The thing that struck me as the most interesting was the reason they did it was because they wanted to make sure their kids were going to be okay — this huge emotional and physical sacrifice was all for the wellbeing of the children. For someone to be in that situation, it’s like hell. It’s not an easy or pleasant watch but it’s an important one.”
Which is not to say I Am is all doom and gloom. Like all of Savage’s work, the episodes are “journeys of change or renewal” without ever feeling trite. It also offers an index of current concerns, bringing the stuff of Twitter threads – gaslighting, dating disasters, female choice, the effects of poverty – vividly to life. But for Savage it’s the form that speaks to the current moment as much as the content.
“In terms of the issues, they are [topical] right now but it’s also in the methodology where there is an empowerment of the female actor in the process of making it,” he says. “They are given control. I think that’s very important and very different. Also these are not fob-offs. So that’s a very necessary thing: something with great truths in a time of fakes and lies.”
The show took two years to get made but Savage hopes his radical aesthetic will pave the way for more stories told in such a truthful way, even male stories. Don’t be surprised when I Am Derek hits our screens in 2021. I AM IS ON CHANNEL 4 FROM AUGUST