SECT APPEAL
The Long Call sees a troubled detective uncover deadly secrets when he returns to the family and religious community he rejected as a teen
Fans of crime dramas Vera and Shetland won’t want to miss this adaptation of another Ann Cleeves bestseller. The Long Call sees DI Matthew Venn (Ben Aldridge) returning to Devon, where he grew up among strict religious group the Barum Brethren. At 19 he realised he couldn’t continue to live among a community in which he was forced to hide his sexuality. So, horrifying his mother Dorothy (Juliet Stevenson), he announced he no longer believed.
Now Matthew is back, bringing husband Jonathan with him. And he has not only returned home to grieve for his father, but to lead a murder investigation, too.
Juliet admits she couldn’t imagine how Dorothy could turn her back on her son. “Dorothy has chosen her religion above her own child, which is about as remote from my understanding of motherhood as I could get,” she says. “I could understand someone believing in a higher power, but I struggled with the idea of putting religion before your children.
“The scenes between her and Matthew – when he is expressing so much upset, pain and anger with Dorothy – were challenging for me. I guess I am a pretty tactile person and a demonstrative mother, but
Dorothy has been cut off from her feelings. When shooting these scenes it was sometimes hard not to cry, and I had to say, ‘Oh, sorry! Stop! Cut!’ because I knew that tears would never be Dorothy’s way.”
With a top-notch cast, the drama also stars Martin Shaw as Brethren leader Dennis Stephenson, Anita Dobson as his wife, Grace, and Doctor Who star Pearl Mackie as Matthew’s colleague DS Jen Rafferty.