THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT
JEREMY NEUMARK JONES AND JESSIE BUCKLEY STAR IN A MILITARY DRAMA SET IN 1960s YEMEN…
Political and personal tensions play out against a backdrop of desert heat in this new sixpart drama, set among Royal Military Policemen stationed in the Yemeni port of Aden in the 1960s. The series begins with the arrival of Captain Joe Martin and his wife Honor, newly-weds who are unfamiliar with colonial life – and they have a lot to learn…
“They’re newly married, it’s way less than a year, and one of the things that’s explored quite well is what it means to be married at that time in that place – and just how little you can know about someone compared to the way you might feel you know them,” explains Jeremy Neumark Jones, who plays Joe.
“Honor lands in Aden with the eyes and enthusiasm of a child who wants to soak up all that this adventure has to offer in this exotic world,” adds Jessie Buckley, who plays her. “Little does she know that the parameters don’t just exist around the Army barracks, but within her own marriage, and she is hit with the stark reality of its loneliness and isolation.”
Joe and Honor have some help in acclimatising from the established officers and their wives, but there’s change in the air in Aden, and questions are being asked about whether they are handling things in the right way. And Joe finds himself caught between his two collegues, Major Markham and Lieutenant Ed Laithwaite.
“Ed is quite subversive, a lot more so than Joe, and Major Markham is very orthodox and by-the-book,” says Jeremy. “So you’ve got one guy who says, ‘We need to re-evaluate the whole way we counteract terrorism and insurgency’, and Major Markham saying that the only way that we can do these things is if we follow the exact procedure that we have been told to follow before – and Joe is right in the middle of that.”
Meanwhile, Honor has to get used to married Army life in this faraway place.
“Honor’s story is a real coming of age,” points out Jessie. “She starts as this beguiled, innocent girl who grows into a woman. Her strength and bravery to question what is socially and morally right throughout the story injects life, truth and love into those around her, who have become numbed by war.”
As a relative newcomer to TV at the centre of a massive drama project, Jeremy felt that he could quite easily relate to Joe’s trepidation about his new position in Aden.
SHE’S A BEGUILED, INNOCENT GIRL WHO GROWS INTO A WOMAN” JESSIE
“One of the reasons I love playing him is because he is the new man, and I felt the same because it’s such a massive job to step into,” he tells us. “It’s definitely on a larger scale than anything I’ve done before – filming in South Africa, helicopter shots, jeeps, guns, the whole works! When you go in and see all of these people, you have this inside feeling of, ‘Am I out of my depth?’. But then you think, ‘There must be a reason why I’m here!’”