‘There are twists throughout!’
Julie Hesmondhalgh and Laura Fraser on their thriller that explores secrets and their consequences…
THE PACT
NEW MON & TUE / BBC1 / 9PM / EPS 1-2 of 6 / DRAMA
What would you do if a drunken prank went terribly wrong and resulted in the death of your unpleasant boss? This is the dilemma facing a group of friends in BBC1’S new crime thriller The Pact.
The six-part series, which will air on Monday and Tuesday nights for the next three weeks, is set in the Welsh valleys and centres on brewery workers Nancy (played by ex-coronation Street favourite Julie Hesmondhalgh), Anna
(Traces’ Laura Fraser), Cat
(Ordinary Lies star Heledd Gwynn) and Louie (Keeping
Faith’s Eiry Thomas).
When their creepy manager, Jack (Cilla’s Aneurin Barnard), cruelly turns down Anna for a promotion and makes unwanted advances towards their colleague Tish (rising star Abbie Hern) at a staff party, the group – minus Tish – decide to get their own back by leaving him in the woods after he passes out drunk.
But their worlds are turned upside down when they return a few hours later and find him dead.
Vowing to keep what happened a secret for fear of being charged with manslaughter, they are soon caught up in a dangerous web of deceit, especially when it becomes clear that someone else knows what really went on.
Here, Julie, 51, and Laura, 45, tell TV Times why their drama is set to have us all hooked…
How would you describe your characters?
LAURA Anna works at the brewery alongside her close friends, but she’s just about to turn 40 and is re-evaluating her life. Her relationship with her teenage daughter is shredded and she feels like she has achieved nothing in her life, but her friends encourage her to go for a promotion, which is the start of it all. There’s so much solidarity between the women at the beginning; it’s just heartbreaking that it kind of all falls apart!
JULIE Nancy is very influential, as she’s the oldest of the bunch, the ‘nan’ of the group. The idea for the cover-up actually comes from