Sunday Theatre

8:30pm Sunday, November 29 on TV One

Daniel Craig and Anne Reid star in tonight’s Sunday Theatre: The Mother, created by director Roger Michell, writer Hanif Kureishi and producer Kevin Loader – the team behind the award-winning series The Buddha Of Suburbia (tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE).

The story follows May (Reid, Dinnerladies) – an ordinary grandmother from the suburbs. When her husband dies on a family visit to London, she recedes into the background of her busy, metropolitan children’s lives.

Stuck in an unfamiliar city far from home, May fears that she has become another invisible old lady whose life is more or less over. That is until she falls in love with Darren (Craig, Quantum Of Solace), a man half her age who is renovating her son’s house, and sleeping with her daughter.

Reid says she saw her character May as a woman who has lived half a life without realising it. “May settled for something when she was very young, as all women of her generation did. But it isn’t until her husband dies and she suddenly starts to be herself, and find herself, that she really begins to realise who she is. You can become completely submerged in a marriage, it becomes a habit. You don’t really know who you are until suddenly it’s gone and you think ‘Wow, that wasn’t really me; I did what I was supposed to do but it wasn’t really me’.”

Daniel Craig, who plays Darren, says, “May’s almost treated with disdain by the young women in this film. She represents something which hardly exists anymore – a woman who stayed with her husband and looked after him and played the sort of loving housewife. It’s as if they think that May’s done nothing with her life, so consequently, they don’t give her any respect.”

He says the idea that later in life one can carry on living is not explored too often. “It’s as if, as people grow older, they stop functioning, sexually and in every other respect. I know that’s rubbish – we all know that’s rubbish – but the reality is not something we see very often on the big screen.”

Director Roger Michell adds: “One expects to see images of old men with younger women, but for some reason, it’s seen as undignified for old women to have sexual feelings of any sort. It is gender specific and I think it’s wrong. It shouldn’t be something we find culturally unacceptable or disagreeable. Of course, it shouldn’t be something we spend ages of time dwelling upon, but it shouldn’t have this strange sort of biological taboo attached to it.”

“I think it’s God’s little joke,” says Anne Reid. “He takes your hearing away, makes you a bit short-sighted, the knees go and your back goes, but your desire for sex remains totally intact. I think it’s a very cruel joke. I speak to lots of women who feel the same way. When I was a girl I thought ‘when you get to 60, you’ll be ready to be old’. It’s not true. But I have no intention of becoming invisible as I get older. It’s different for actors, you see. As long as you can remember your lines and not bang into the furniture, you can keep going. Everybody else has to retire. All the other people in the business have to retire, but actors can go on forever; we really do have the last laugh.”

8:30pm Sunday, November 22 on TV One

The Qantas Award-winning local Sunday Theatre: Piece Of My Heart has an encore screening tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE. A finalist in seven categories at the recent Qantas Film and Television Awards, Emily Barclay and Keisha Castle-Hughes, won Best Performance by an Actress and Best Performance for a Supporting Actress respectively, while it also took top honours for production design.

Starring Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider), Emily Barclay (In My Father’s Den), Rena Owen (Once Were Warriors) and Annie Whittle (The World’s Fastest Indian), Piece Of My Heart unveils one of New Zealand’s secret histories.

The local drama tells the story of Flora Thornley, who gave up a daughter for adoption as a 17-year-old. She has never told anyone, including her husband and two adult sons. But she has contacted her daughter for the first time, only to receive a brutal rejection.

Devastated, Flora flees her home and runs to the only person she thinks will understand – Kat, who was her closest friend when they were both in a home for unmarried mothers. But they haven’t seen each other since and their lives have been very different. Kat’s place isn’t the safe haven Flora seeks. Also living there is Ani, a stroppy teenager two weeks away from giving birth and in complete denial.

As Flora writes to her daughter, explaining how and why a woman could give away her baby, we go back to 1968 and learn what really happened. In the present, Flora has to face up to the damage caused by a life of deception as she tries to reconnect with Kat, deal with Ani and tell husband Mike the truth. Keisha Castle-Hughes and Rena Owen play the past and present Kat, and Emily Barclay and Annie Whittle the past and present Flora.

Director Fiona Samuel adapted the drama from the 1995 novel Does This Make Sense To You? by playwright Renee Taylor, which is a fiction based on what often happened to unmarried New Zealand women who fell pregnant in years past. Samuel says the subject struck a chord with her and the actresses. “It seemed almost incredible that such things had happened here, in this country, such a short time ago – babies taken from their mothers and adopted by strangers, and the young women who had gone through pregnancy and birth only to ‘give their children away’ just expected to keep quiet and deal with it.”

Samuel says such situations seem cruel and deeply unnatural, but she knows from first-hand experience how often it happened: “My youngest brother was adopted into my family at 10 days old, when I was seven. I remember vividly bringing him home from the hospital.”

Total silence shrouded teenage pregnancies in the 1960s. Annie Whittle remembers girls disappearing from her school classroom for months at a time, and then suddenly reappearing with no explanation. “Flora’s story felt very familiar to me,” she says. “I am also sure that the telling of it will be revelatory for many, and prove cathartic for those who may find comfort in having these events aired at last.”

Keisha Castle-Hughes agrees. “As an actor and a mother, I can’t imagine anything more hurtful, something that would completely destroy me and my identity. Society didn’t allow these women to grieve, or mourn or move through the emotions of losing a child.”

She adds: “I hope this story helps women who went through this; who lost children they would have loved so much and who were deeply affected by the experience – this is ultimately for them.”

For Emily Barclay, acting in a drama that she saw as the “secret history” of New Zealand life brought a deep sense of commitment to the women it represented. “Flora’s world changes so irrevocably and the effect this has on her is devastating,” she says. “Going through that as an actor made me feel so much heartache for the women who experienced this, and gave me a sense of personal responsibility … that I think everyone involved had … that we really had to do the story justice.”

8:30pm Sunday, November 15 on TV One

Tonight on the season finale of The Tudors, the King’s oppression of the Catholic Church may be finally catching up with him (at 8.30pm on TV ONE). Cromwell warns that war seems imminent, and preparations have already begun to defend England.

With great speed and efficiency, Cromwell has begun preparations for the King’s fourth marriage. Henry agrees to such haste because he desires more children and Anne of Cleves is of ‘a convenient age’, but when he meets Anne, she’s not what the King was expecting. The wedding, in contrast to earlier ceremonies, is a dull affair for the King – as is the wedding night – and rumours that the royal marriage remains unconsummated are true.

At a court banquet, Brandon presents the King with legal papers he requested proving Anne was promised to the Duke of Lorraine’s son. With such evidence – and the marriage still not consummated – there seems ample grounds for divorce. But Henry hardly registers the news, he is transfixed by the presence of Katherine Howard (Tamzin Merchant), who has been artfully introduced to court by Edward Seymour and Brandon.

Smitten and rejuvenated, Henry takes Katherine as his mistress and his change in mood appears to favour Cromwell, who is made Earl of Essex and magnanimously Vice-Regent and High Chamberlain of England. His power is now absolute, second only to the King’s. But his untouchable status is short-lived, and in one fell swoop, Cromwell goes from being the most powerful man in the land, to a prisoner in the Tower of London.

When the King’s representatives inform Anne of his majesty’s decision to annul their marriage, she is stunned. The King now wishes to refer to her as his ‘sister’. All is not lost however – she will be granted a handsome annual income and several properties. Deprived of any choice, she goes quietly.

Executive producer and writer, Michael Hirst, says the youthful Katherine Howard provides King Henry with new stimulation at a time when his marriage to Anne of Cleves had failed.

“Katherine Howard was the daughter of lower nobility. The conspirators against Cromwell thought a good ruse to help bring him down would be to introduce this lithe, beautiful, very young, rather sexy girl into Henry’s eye-line and into his life. Katherine Howard was very young, she may indeed have been 15 when he first met her, but she was initially a breath of fresh air. And they quite deliberately, just as Anne Boleyn’s father had once done with her, they to pimp this young girl and get Henry interested in her, and try and hide the fact that she had an unconventional childhood.

“For a short time she brought laughter into his jaded life, she brought youth – she’s rather a Lolita figure in some ways – and you can absolutely understand how this man, in this stage of his life, finds her extremely provocative and alluring,” Hirst says.

8:30pm Sunday, November 8 on TV One

Singer Joss Stone joins the cast of The Tudors tonight, as Anne of Cleves, King Henry’s fourth wife (at 8.30pm on TV ONE). Keen to take part in the acclaimed series, she says she had accepted the role before she knew who she would be. However, when she discovered she would have to speak with a German accent she was concerned.

“I said I’d play anything, I just wanted to do anything on The Tudors. It didn’t have to be one of the Queens. I just wanted to be part of it. I wanted to be involved because it’s such a great thing to do. I was really worried when I found out I had to do a German accent because I’d already agreed to do it, and then I realised as well as speaking in a German accent, I had to learn to play the harpsichord, so there was those two things that were a little bit worrying – but it’s fun to scare myself with these missions.”

Singing on stage definitely helped with Stone’s acting ability, but she says they are not quiet the same. “On stage I’m not pretending to be somebody else. I’m just going to an emotion that I’m not in at that moment. I can walk on stage and have the happiest day of my life, and then go into a song that’s really sad and just become sad for that three or four minutes, however long it is, but then when it stops, I come straight out of it. You just have to change your emotion like that. It is similar like that, but on stage I’m not pretending to be anybody else, I’m just being myself in that particular emotion.”

Stone says she was really happy to be Anne of Cleves: “It’s such a different thing to do, she isn’t exactly the most beautiful of the queens apparently, which is cool, and the accent is interesting, it just meant it was more of a challenge.

“She’s nervous all the time, which is great because I am, nervous, all the time. The first thing we did was the wedding scene, and she’s getting married to Henry VIII and he is very frightening, she knows what he’s done before, he’s chopped off heads and done horrible things to a lot of people, and he clearly doesn’t like her that much. He’s not making an effort, he’s not loving towards her, so I think she’s a bit worried.

“Then she’s walking up the isle with him and she’s thinking oh my god, which is how I was feeling inside anyway because it was the first scene. Thankfully I didn’t have to say anything that day, but it was easy to do because I was worried.”

Stone believes Anne was smart to survive her marriage to Henry: “She was a very intelligent young lady. She didn’t lose her head, she managed to come out of it with a little bit of cash, and a castle to live in, and the King wanted to call her his sister. She came out of it pretty good.” However, she believes it would have been heart-breaking for the young woman. “It’s heart-breaking when anybody is rejecting you like that. I think more than being upset that he didn’t fancy her, she was more scared that he was going to kill her. Combine the two, it’s not a happy time for her, poor girl.”

On The Tudors tonight, it is November 1537 and gloom hangs over England. Despite the assassination of an English parliamentarian, which Cromwell suspects is a warning to him, he is more concerned with finding a new bride for his King. Henry has shut himself away in sadness and grief following the death of his much-loved third wife, Jane Seymour, mother to his only male heir. The infant – Edward – is being looked after by his half-sister Lady Mary and several of Jane’s ladies-in-waiting.

With the King in isolation, law and order are beginning to break down at the political heart of the Kingdom. Cromwell takes matters into his own hands and begins to search for a new Queen. He hopes to counteract the Catholic influence of the late Jane Seymour by finding a new Protestant wife for his widowed King. Kolling recalls Duke William of Cleves – a stronghold of the Protestant League – has two unmarried sisters, Anne (Joss Stone) and Amelia.

8:30pm Sunday, November 1 on TV One

Jane Seymour’s motto may have been ‘bound to obey and serve’, but King Henry’s third wife wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. She frequently challenged him on issues – from his relationship with estranged daughter Mary to his punishment of the rebels in the North – but always kept her head.

Actor Annabelle Wallis, who plays Seymour in the latest series of The Tudors (tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE), believes her character was a strong and intelligent woman, and achieved a lot in her short time as Queen.

But their domestic bliss was short lived. Queen Jane died from complications soon after delivering the male heir King Henry so desperately sought.

Wallis believes the King fell for Jane Seymour because she treated him as a man: “Despite being the King of England, full of power and charisma, she saw Henry for all his vulnerabilities.

“Jane is a woman without pretence – she’s very intelligent and true to herself,” explains Wallis. “[Henry's] surrounded by a lot of people who want to appease him and tell him what he wants to hear, and she is genuinely just honest. Honest with her love and with the intentions. It’s very obvious that she only has the very best intentions for the man she loves, and he believes her so that’s I think why he falls for Jane.”

“What is so nice about their relationship is that you finally see Henry in a different light, a man who is very venerable and caring and trusts this woman with his heart,” says Wallis.

She explains how the Queen was very political, without rocking the boat. “That’s how she got to the position she’s in. It’s not just anybody who becomes Queen, and you do have to be a certain type of person. She was very smart about the way in which she went about her duties. She kept her belief system, but she wasn’t overpowering about it, she let things run their course.”

Wallis says Jane wanted Lady Mary to return to court, to give Henry a strong family unit. “Historically he had to make so many decisions, and it’s a very touchy subject to approach it in any way. I think Jane does it very subtly, and once again with honesty and pure desire to bring the family together. She befriends Mary and wants her to come back. It’s very touching. That’s when you see how intelligent she is and really how political she is, she does it so sensitively and so quietly and achieves it. In any other form, if she was brash about it or if she was forceful, it wouldn’t have turned out that way.”

Despite his love for Jane Seymour, the King continued to have mistresses. Wallis believes Jane dealt with them out of necessity. She says Jane was a very honourable woman, but felt that if Henry needed to have mistresses, it was something she had to accept.

“I would as a person, as I suppose any woman would, feel upset, but I think at that time, you have to remember that women knew their place. There were ways, and rules and regulations, and things that just happened – it was very common for a man to have a mistress. I think there’s always the threat that they may take your place, and in this context Jane genuinely loves Henry and she hopes that he loves her.”

Tonight on The Tudors, even with his recent marriage, the King’s sexual appetite has not dimmed. Hans Holbein (Peter Gaynor, Rough Diamond), the great Dutch painter, has been commissioned by Henry to paint Lady Ursula Misseldon, his latest mistress, naked.

Later, as Jane’s time finally arrives, the whole court hopes and prays for the safe delivery of a Prince. The labour lasts an agonisingly long time and preparations are made to deliver the baby by section – in which case the mother will likely die. Henry is asked to choose between mother and child. To his great relief, he is spared the choice by the news that the child has come and it is a son. Henry has perhaps never been happier. But his joy is quickly tempered by news that Jane has fallen into a fever following her long and painful labour. Henry’s beloved, uncrowned Queen dies soon after.

8:30pm Sunday, October 25 on TV One

Starring Golden Globe-winner Jonathan Rhys Meyers, season three of The Tudors begins with the marriage of Henry (Rhys Meyers, Elvis) to his third wife, Jane Seymour (Annabelle Wallis, True True Lie), tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE.

In contrast to the scheming upstart Anne Boleyn, Jane is a shy and demure young woman of noble birth, given away on her wedding day by her brother Edward Seymour (Max Brown, Mistresses). Henry’s wife may have changed, but his marital ambition remains constant – siring a male heir to the Tudor Dynasty.

Though the Queen’s pregnancy is cause to rejoice, Henry is faced with mounting threats to his authority from a commoners’ revolt inside England, and an angry Pope determined to stem Protestantism’s rising tide. As attacks on his new church foreshadow trouble for the King, the increasingly powerful Thomas Cromwell (James Frain, Empire) doubles his efforts to crush Catholicism across England.

When Jane dies shortly after giving birth to Henry’s first son, Cromwell looks to capitalise on the tragedy – to find a new wife who will bring with her the alliances needed to stave-off a Catholic invasion – only to be undermined by Henry’s staunchest supporters. And as an anguished Henry struggles to codify his position as the head of the new church, no one is safe from his growing madness.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers says Henry finds himself in a dark place this season and faces a lot of anxiety: “The combination of all the trauma that he’s been through ever since being a child, remember being a child at this time was very, very difficult, he was king at 16 years old, he had all this responsibility, and death was very much a part of his life, it’s very apparent.

“He’s got an illness in his leg, which is affecting his brain because of the poison in the ulcer, so he’s going into that dark place of psychosis, that madness of power, having too much power and having nobody to stop you.”

He says Henry is also getting older and his vanity is becoming affected. “He enjoyed being that young vibrant king, and this is what we wanted to portray in The Tudors.”

Rhys Meyers says he was chosen for this reason: “They could have done this with a different actor, not me. They could have cast somebody who immediately looks like the Holbein painting, but it’s already been done, and done by many other people. The way we’ve done it, is we tried to bring something quite new.”

In playing Henry, he says he wanted to stay away from that wild loush, sort of incredibly flagrant king. “I wanted to bring him as someone who is very very controlled, very mannered. There’s something almost psychotically sort of methodical about the things that he does, especially in season one as the kind of spoilt brat king, because he was, he’s an incredibly spoilt man, probably one of the most spoilt kings in history.”

The new season of The Tudors starts tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE.

8:30pm Monday, October 19 on TV One

An adaptation of the best-selling crime thriller by Martina Cole, The Take stars Tom Hardy (Bronson and Wuthering Heights) and Emmy Award-winner Brian Cox (The Escapist), tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE.

Freddie Jackson (Hardy) is a free man after spending a considerable stretch at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, but he has not wasted his time inside. He made a powerful new ally in Ozzy (Cox), a legendary criminal Godfather who controls the East End crime empire from his prison cell.

Far from turning over a new leaf and becoming a model citizen, he plans to take the criminal underworld by storm. With Ozzy’s protection, Freddie is cocky, arrogant and keen to settle some old scores.

Freddie sees it as his right to be recognised as a godfather-like figure, and he has had plenty of opportunity to work out exactly how to achieve this aim. With some audacious ideas, some very useful new contacts, and a steely determination, he is finally ready to put these plans into action.

However, it is not just Freddie who has to deal with the consequences of this risky strategy. His wife, Jackie (Kierston Wareing, Leaving), seems willing to forgive and forget the fights, the violence and all the other women. She just wants her husband to return home safely, but she is about to be reminded how hard it can be being married to a gangster.

As events unfold, Jackie becomes increasingly bitter, resentful and unstable, not helped by the actions of her younger sister, Maggie (Charlotte Riley, Wuthering Heights), who is in love with Freddie’s cousin, Jimmy (Shaun Evans, Boy A).

Families should stick together, but for the Jackson’s it is not that simple. Behind closed doors there is paranoia, simmering jealousy and the constant possibility of betrayal. If you are a Jackson then you trust no one, because everyone in this criminal world is on ‘The Take’.

Hardy describes his character as an old school gangster in a new school body: “He’s on the fringe of two generations, and so he’s discarded during the crossover between the two regimes, because of his inability to blend in and to co-operate.”

Not the easiest character to relate to, Hardy says he spent a lot of time with people like Freddie, both inside and out of prison, to really understand the role. “Freddie is an amalgamation of a few naughty characters I met.”

He says The Take is not a cliché genre piece – it’s got good writing, good directing, good DOP, all of that. “Then there’s a profound story to tell, and an opportunity for performers to come up with something good. And I do think The Take is a solid piece of work. It’s really refreshing because there are so many shitty gangster movies out there riddled with stereotypes.”

Part two of The Take screens Monday 19 October at 8.30pm.

8:30pm Monday, October 12 on TV One

Created by Anthony Horowitz, the two-part drama Collision shows the story of a major road accident, and a group of people who have never met, but who all share one single defining moment that will change their lives forever (tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE).

Amid the tangle of twisted metal and emotional turmoil shaped by the tragedy of a crash of this scale, are the stories of the victims, and the impact of the accident on their families, friends and colleagues. As the terrible task of investigating the cause of the carnage begins, a series of revelations emerge: from government cover-ups and smuggling, to disturbing secrets and murder.

Douglas Henshall (Primeval) and Kate Ashfield (The Children) play the senior police officers in charge of the investigations, whose complicated personal lives threaten to collide with the grim job they face. Paul McGann (Withnail And I) stars as millionaire property developer, Richard Reeves, who starts to fall for the service station waitress (Lucy Griffiths, Robin Hood) who helps him after the crash. Dean Lennox Kelly (Shameless) and his brother Craig Kelly (Hotel Babylon) team up for the first time to play brothers Danny and Jeffrey Rampton, whose business dealings are about to be exposed as a result of the crash.

Karen Donnelly (Claire Rushbrook, Whitechapel) survives the crash, but has a secret which puts her life in jeopardy again; Brian Edwards (Phil Davis, Whitechapel) escapes the carnage which kills his mother-in-law; while piano teacher Sidney Norris’ (David Bamber, Rome) guilty secrets are uncovered in the investigations.

ITV’s Peter Fincham says: “This is a high octane event drama that combines creative and original thinking with mass appeal. It promises to be both provocative and engaging.”

Jill Green, managing director of UK producers Greenlit Rights, says: “Collision is exactly the sort of high concept, primetime production Greenlit is known for. The universal theme and scale of this serial will make it much talked about.”

Part two of Collision screens Monday 12 October at 8.30pm.

8:30pm Sunday, September 27 on TV One

Danielle Cable’s life changed forever on May 19, 1996. While driving herself and her fiancé, Stephen Cameron, she inadvertently cut off a Land Rover Discovery, which then forced them to stop. The man and Cameron had words; a fight ensued and the man fatally stabbed Stephen and fled.

Starring Bill Paterson (Doctor Zhivago) and Joanne Froggatt (Coronation Street and Bad Girls), tonight’s Sunday Theatre: Eyewitness – The Danielle Cable Story, is based on the real-life story of the teenage girl who pays a personal price for justice (at 8.30pm on TV ONE).

Following the death of her boyfriend, the subsequent court case leads her into a terrifying life as she fights for justice against his murderer, shady gangland leader Kenneth Noye. Cable’s evidence plays a crucial part in convicting the notorious underworld figure responsible for the ruthless murder of her boyfriend. But with a contract out on her life, she is forced to take on a secret identity, leaving her family and old life behind.

Joanne Froggatt rose to the challenge of the role of Danielle Cable, saying it was an amazing part to play: “Danielle is a year older then me in real life. She was 17 when Stephen was murdered and I was only 16, so at that time I wasn’t really aware what was going on in the world. When I read the script I thought what a horrible and amazing thing to happen to somebody, especially somebody that young. As I am pretty much the same age, I thought ‘God, how would I have coped with all that?’ It’s such a tragic story and I really wanted to do it.”

Froggatt says she tried to put herself in Cable’s shoes, imagining what life was like after the incident and the four years inbetween the murder to the trial. “What happened to her in that four years wouldn’t happen to most people in a lifetime – that much stress and heartache.”

As part of her research, Froggatt met Danielle Cable, who is still under the Witness Protection Scheme. “I don’t know what I was expecting when I met her, whether I was expecting her to be some shivering wreck or something, but she was just so down to earth and so normal. She looks very different now as well, and you would just never guess that she has been through all of this. It helped as we got on really well – she is somebody I would choose as a friend.

“It was really lovely to get a feel for her and meet her. It helped to relate it to a real story. It’s such an extraordinary story that if someone had just written it you would think ‘that’s a bit unbelievable really’, but it did actually happen.”

9:00pm Sunday, September 13 on TV One

Part two of Sunday Theatre: The Children screens tonight at 9pm on TV ONE, following ONE Sport: International Netball Series’ third test between the Australia Diamonds and Silver Ferns.

Starring Kevin Whateley (Inspector Morse), Lesley Sharpe (Afterlife), Ian Puleston-Davies (Vincent), and Geraldine Somerville (Harry Potter), Sunday Theatre: The Children shows the story of an eight-year-old girl, Emily (Sinead Michael), who is murdered in her home.

Suspicion falls on those closest to her, and following the build-up to her death, this drama reveals a tangled web of family relationships torn apart by love and hate.

Talking to the British Radio Times, Geraldine Somerville admits she was deeply affected by her role as the mother of a murdered child.

A mother-of-three, she says, “I had terrible nightmares when we were filming. I was really moved by the script and cried a lot. It made me anxious, because the story touches on all your worst nightmares”.

The Children was her first television job since the birth of her daughter, and her presence was a comfort. “Having my baby girl on set helped. When I finished a scene, I went back to my trailer to cuddle her.”

Watch part two of Sunday Theatre: The Children, tonight at 9pm on TV ONE.