"TRUST" IS LATEST BBC TV IMPORT
Decidedly British drama has American influences (24 Février 2004).
Robson Green stars in "Trust," a witty six-part drama about a syndrome familiar to many Americans, the seduction of work and its impact on personal life.
LOS ANGELES — Riding high on the success of its Golden Globe-winning mockumentary “The Office,” BBC America is introducing U.S. audiences to yet another contemporary British series set in the workplace.
It’s called “Trust,” a witty, six-part drama about a syndrome also familiar to many Americans — the seduction of work and its impact on personal life. It debuts 7 p.m. ET Saturday.
“It’s your basic tale of a man in pursuit of happiness,” says Robson Green, the popular British TV actor who plays a corporate lawyer spending too much time at the office — a choice that threatens his marriage.
“The stuff that used to travel very well from the U.K. was more traditional — costume kind of material,” says Gareth Neame, the show’s executive producer. “But now more and more of our contemporary series are selling strongly.”
Although decidedly British in content, both Neame and Green note the production values of “Trust” were influenced by American drama series such as “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “The West Wing.”
“It was unique, not only because of its text, but in how (little) it cost to make: A million pounds per episode, unheard of for mainstream drama on British television,” says Green as he chats on the sun-streaked patio of a swank Hollywood hotel.
“American drama series tend to concentrate their budgets by shooting only in a few stock sets and doing very little work on location,” says Neame. “Therefore you can put all your resources into building a great set, getting the actors that you want and shooting quite quickly, so you maximize all the money that you’ve got.”
By following that method for “Trust,” he set it apart from many British-made shows that “are more reliant on going on location and all the costs that come with that.”
Loftier than 'Office'
The “Trust” set includes high-tech offices and sleek boardrooms, where a glamorous team of London attorneys juggle their private desires with their professional duties.
It’s a much loftier scene than “The Office,” which stars co-creator Ricky Gervais as an annoying boss at a British paper merchant.
The “Trust” cast includes Sarah Parish, Ian McShane and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who starred in “Dirty Pretty Things,” which is nominated for an original screenplay Oscar.
Green, 39, is also appearing in the second season of the BBC America crime series “Wire in the Blood” as a clinical psychologist who helps police hunt for serial killers. Previously, he was in the British romantic drama “Reckless” and the detective series “Touching Evil,” both of which also aired on PBS.
With self-mocking good humor, Green says he got the role in “Trust” as a result of critical acclaim for the 2001 British wife-swapping miniseries “Take Me.”
“People who wouldn’t usually offer me work, because they thought I wasn’t capable of doing it, saw something in that that made them say, ‘Oh, this guy has an emotional range from A past B! He can do other things.”’
Ian McShane as 'Lovejoy' is undoubtedly best known for his title role as the rogue antique dealer in Lovejoy, the lovable lothario whom he played for six years. This has been a bit of a mixed blessing for Ian, as he gets recognised everywhere he goes, even though he deliberately took a break from British television to help get away from it all.
"I’d finished Lovejoy and thought, ‘You’ve got to take yourself away from television for a while’. It didn’t really work - I’m as known now for Lovejoy as I always was, and probably always will be. It’s nice in some ways, but in other ways you want to say, ‘I have done other things, you know!’.
Ian in 'Man and Boy' "I didn’t appear on television for about four or five years. Then I did In Deep and Man & Boy, both of which were great. But still people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, there’s Lovejoy’!"
Ian’s latest incarnation, Alan Cooper-Fozard, is an eccentric character. He is the top dog at Cooper-Fozard, the law firm which his father founded. His nickname is the P.G. ("The Power and the Glory") and, as such, Alan has the power to make or break any of his employees’ careers.
"I’d say Alan is quirky and morally upstanding. He is eccentric but he knows what’s going on. He’s his own man; you don’t know too much about him - I like that. He gets more eccentric throughout the series.
"Alan’s father helped to build the national health programme after World War II, so I think that gave him a good, solid grounding", Ian explains. "His pedigree serves as the bedrock of the company, even though it’s a commercial corporate law firm in the middle of the city".
The P.G. pops up in each episode, offering nuggets of his wisdom to various employees. He is very well respected by the lawyers, but they all know about and accept his quirky nature."
Ian enjoyed working with the likes of Robson Green and Sarah Parish, and thought Simon Block’s script was "intelligent, fresh and exciting".
"It was a very enjoyable shoot," Ian laughs. "I got to work with the delightful Sarah Parish and Chewi and Eva - and then, of course, there’s Robson, who I got on very well with."
Ian has become the king of cool once again, thanks in no small part to his role in Jonathan Glazer’s critically acclaimed Sexy Beast and the lunchtime repeats of Lovejoy classics. But this time, Ian is a cult figure amongst a younger, student audience.
Ian as Alan Cooper-Fozard "I’ve got a whole new fan-base who didn’t watch Lovejoy first time around," explains Ian. "And because the programme is now being repeated at lunchtimes, a newer, younger audience can watch it and find it cool. It was a very good programme - it was well shot, the scripts were good; it was funny and quite sexy."
The new, hip Ian McShane has been keeping very busy recently, shooting various movies, including a Hollywood blockbuster with Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz, and filming BBC dramas In Deep, Man & Boy.
"I did a film last year called Bollywood Queen, which is very funny. It’s a modern version of Romeo and Juliet, with a white Romeo and an Asian Juliet, set in London with music and dancing. I’ve also played a cop in another movie called Paper, Scissors, Stone, a psychological thriller by first time New Zealand writer and director Jesse Warn. An American cop, Romeo’s Scottish father, and Alan Cooper-Fozard - it’s been quite a good, albeit eclectic, year!"
It’s the morning after the night before for Sarah Parish. She has had a late night out, not that you would notice. She is looking fresh and gorgeous, laughing and joking about.
This is certainly not something Annie Naylor, her character in Trust would normally get up to. Annie is a formidable force in law firm Cooper-Fozard, and knows exactly what she wants - a partnership - and how to get it.
"Annie’s controlling and quite stubborn," explains Sarah. "She’s quite a pedantic person who has to do everything herself, otherwise she doesn’t think it’ll be done properly.
"She’s one of those people who’d sit in the back of a cab and say, ‘No, no, no - you don’t want to go that way; you want to go down here!’, even though the cabby’s been living there for years and she’s only just moved there."
Annie’s drive and determination mean that her family ultimately plays second fiddle to her career.
"Annie’s a woman who is juggling a very difficult career and a family. At some point something’s going to break," explains Sarah.
"The emphasis for Annie is on herself and not so much on her family anymore. It’s Annie’s career: Annie’s got to get this, Annie’s got to do that - and I think that becomes quite tiresome for her husband after a while. When you are determined to get something, as Annie is determined to be made a partner, other things pale into insignificance. Things that should be important are suddenly left by the wayside - she wants that partnership no matter what, but she is actually losing her family because of it. She’s in a Catch-22 situation."
Annie is most certainly a focused woman and, according to Sarah, quite similar to herself. As Sarah explains, she tends to get asked to play strong, career minded women who are juggling work and family.
"I tend to play characters who are quite driven, which is great because they are always such interesting parts," says Sarah. "A lot of the parts I have played are similar: they are all strong in different ways, however. Allie in Cutting It was strong in a very vulnerable, sweet way. She looked after her family even though her mother was horrible to her. She tried to support everyone and make them all happy.
Sarah as Annie Naylor "Annie is strong in a more insular way; she is very focused on herself. It’s not that she’s being selfish, or a bad person, it’s just that she’s focused on one thing at a time, whereas Allie could deal with a million things at once. As for Amanda in Hearts and Bones, she was just a bit of a bitch!"
So, can Sarah identify with any elements of the characters she plays? "Annie is very similar to me insofar as I have a very unattractive quality of being quite controlling and a bit manipulative. I like to get what I want, but in a roundabout way. When I read Trust I thought, ‘Oh that rings a bell!’"
In Trust, Sarah is part of an ensemble cast which includes Robson Green, Neil Stuke and newcomer Chiwetel Eijofor. Sarah reveals that during filming the cast were far from serious. "I loved it," giggles Parish. "Neil Stuke nearly set me up good and proper with Ian McShane. He said, ‘Go up and ask him if he’s bought any antiques recently - go on’. Of course I had forgotten that he was in Lovejoy. I didn’t say anything, luckily!
"Robson Green is a gem; I can’t wax lyrical enough about him. He’s just the loveliest man, and brilliant to work with. We had a great chemistry, we got on brilliantly. He made me laugh hysterically and he’s just incredibly supportive. It’s very rare in the acting business that you come across somebody who is that supportive and that generous to other actors."
It seems that Sarah has not stopped working for the last few years. Since her starring role in both series of BBC One’s Hearts and Bones, Sarah’s credits include The Vice, Table 12 and Cutting It. The popularity of these shows has propelled Sarah into the public eye and, in turn, on to the front pages.
"I find being followed by photographers very funny; it doesn’t happen very often, though," she confesses. "The first time it happened I was in Hampstead and I didn’t realise what was going on. As far as I was concerned, I just seemed to be getting in the way of a tourist taking photos. Everything he wanted to take a picture of, I was there in front of it. I was trying to get out of the way, but there he’d be again.
Sarah with Amanda Holden in 'Cutting It' "Eventually he just had to come over to me and say, ‘I’m taking a picture of you, darling’ and I said, ‘Oh, right, OK’. So my entire shopping trip just went to pot because I spent the whole time posing!"
On the rare occasions when Sarah is not working, she loves to get out of London. Her new car is her latest passion, and she likes long drives into the country. She also tries to get home to Somerset as often as possible.
"I had a couple of months off at the beginning of the year when I went home to Somerset, crawled into bed and got out two months later. My mum said: ‘Now don’t do that again; it’s silly working yourself to death’, and I said, ‘Yeah, all right’. And then I took on six jobs back to back!"
Sarah has hardly had any time off for the last year, as she has filmed a TV feature film, again with Robson Green, called Unconditional Love. She is currently up in Manchester filming the second series of Cutting It for BBC One.
Robson Green - the cheeky Geordie, the housewife’s favourite pin-up actor, the hugely successful singer - is something of a national treasure.
Best known for his roles in Casualty, Soldier, Soldier and Reckless, Robson is used to dramas which demand his being the main man rather than dramas such as Trust, in which he is one of several lead characters.
"I honestly never think of myself as a lead", confesses Robson. "I think of myself as an actor in a very good story, and the same applies to Trust. The script was excellent; as soon as I got it I just thought that the visual grammar was wonderful. I thought the words were divine and knew it was something I wanted to do; something I wanted to be a part of, irrespective of what order my name came in the cast list."
The calibre of the acting talent in Trust also impressed Robson, but the atmosphere on set was far more entertaining than your average city law firm.
"It was just an absolute ball. We had no problem taking the fun we were having off camera and making sure that it was evident on camera too. Sarah’s so amusing and very easy to work with. Ian, Neil, Chewi and Eva were all vibrant and had incredibly witty energy. At the read-through I knew that it was going to be good. And on a tight filming schedule you need to have fun."
Robson plays Stephen Bradley, a highly successful corporate lawyer who is struggling to accommodate both his work life and his home life.
"Stephen is a person who is in pursuit of happiness. He’s trying to satisfy three things in his life: his love life, his business life and his personal life. I guess that’s what we are all after, but especially in a high-powered industry like corporate law or venture capitalism. You just have to sit down and work out, am I happy? is my family life happy? is my work life happy? It’s great if you can get all three, but it’s virtually impossible.
"Stephen would spend two weekends out of three in the office; four nights out of five he won’t be home before ten. He is a man whose life experience helps him understand how this sort of law works. He says that if you take care of the people, then the law will take care of itself - people first, law second. That’s the whole philosophy of the show, really."
Trust is not your run-of-the-mill law series. It has a certain fresh quirkiness right from the very first scene, which shows Stephen Bradley waking up in his office after having spent the entire night there. Rather than rushing home to get changed, however, he gets someone in to change, wash and shave him.
"This woman comes in and dresses him - it’s a bit quirky. I thought, ‘this does not happen’. But there really are services that will come in and bring you clean shirts, then take your dirty clothes away and wash them. I couldn’t believe it!"
Robson in 1989 Robson has been a sex symbol ever since his first big break in TV as hospital porter Jimmy in the BBC’s Casualty. So how does he feel about being a pin-up?
"It’s pure media invention!" he laughs. "I look back at Casualty and realise that it was the best grounding I could ever have had. It gave me political clout and financial clout, and it was great for getting experience of the lens.
"After that I was put into the category of romantic lead actors. I have a certain look, I have a certain behaviour in front of the camera - that was my key. But as time goes on you start to realise that some of these scripts are very one-dimensional and unrewarding."
"I was looking towards more intelligent drama than something as linear as boy meets girl, girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love and live happily ever after. I think seventy percent of the scripts I was sent were just love mush. But good love stories are great; Reckless with Francesca Annis - now that was a beauty.
"What’s interesting is that the American stuff that’s coming my way at the minute is all baddie parts; nasty, nasty pieces of work."
Green now has his own production company, Coastal Productions, which has made some of his more recent dramas. Having had such a successful career both acting and singing, the next logical step would be for Robson to go behind the camera and try his hand at directing. "I have this great dream that it would be perfect producing some two-hour Brit films, some good drama series, and then acting in some one-offs. That would be fantastic, but if I don’t get it, it’s not a problem. I can live with failure but not with regret."
