David Morrissey on his new fantasy drama
David Morrissey on his complex new fantasy thriller…
As rain beats down heavily against the windows of a small, dimly lit cafe in Manchester, a lone David Morrissey – looking smart in a charcoal-coloured suit – sits at a table studying the menu in an attempt not to make eye contact with anyone passing by outside.
It’s last June and David has invited TV Times into the complex world of his latest thriller, The City & The City, a four-part adaptation of China Miéville’s mind-bending novel in which fantasy and police-procedural genres collide.
David plays Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad, who is called to investigate when the body of a female foreign student is found in down-at-heel city Beszel.
It looks like a routine case but evidence soon surfaces that the victim came from Ul Qoma, a neighbouring city that shares a dangerous and volatile relationship with Beszel, so much so that citizens are trained to ‘unsee’ everything in the other city.
Making sure that nobody so much as even glances or speaks to someone from the other city is a ruthless secret police force called Breach, which is going to cause big problems for Borlú because the case soon takes a personal turn. Here, David, 53, tells us more…
You were already a fan of China’s novels, so this must have been a dream job... A huge fan, so when Tony Grisoni, who I worked with on C4’s Red Riding, said he was adapting it, I thought ‘great’! It’s such a complex, wonderful book. It’s not a big leap for us to imagine what it’s like to live in a city where you don’t see people who exist on the very streets that we walk down. I get sent a lot of scripts and this really is asking a lot of viewers: it’s not spoonfeeding plot; you have to engage with it on many levels. It’s two different worlds but inside there is a classic noir cop show, which makes you feel secure watching it.
Was another part of the appeal that the character is unlike any of your previous roles? I do look for roles that are different. I’m 6ft 3ins so I tend to get guys who are tough, but this is different. There’s a real vulnerability about Borlú, which I like. He’s slightly spinning and you see his torment very quickly.
Inside there is a classic noir cop show
There is one key change from the book, however… We follow the story’s structure but my character now has a history and a wife, played by [Sherlock’s] Lara Pulver, which takes Borlú on an emotional journey and the audience will suddenly realise why this case is very personal to him…
What are the cities like?
They share the same geographic footprint but unlike, say, Berlin, they’re not separated by a wall; they’re separated in a cross-hatched way. Having been brought up here, you know the rules and where you can’t go.
Each of the two cities has its own distinctive look…
We filmed in Liverpool and Manchester, but it didn’t break up that one city played one city. Beszel looks very 1970s. It’s analogue, slightly eastern European, and all the actors in this world are British. It’s slightly dirty and grubby – obviously I love it! Meanwhile, Ul Qoma is all chrome, glass, military, almost Swiss in its cleanliness, and completely in denial of any social disorder. All the actors here are European actors. Ul Qoma has its own language called Illitan, and we had a linguist, Dr Alison Long [look out for Alison playing the newsreader], who invented it for us!
It’s such a complex story, was it still buzzing around your head after you’d finished work?
It still is, to be honest. So much.
I’d love to carry on playing this character; I really cared about him.
Sarah Selwood