Contents
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Press Release
Pages 3 – 4
Mark Redhead, Executive Producer on the
Pages 5 – 6
background to The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
Paddy Considine plays Inspector Jonathan Whicher
Pages 7 – 9
Peter Capaldi plays Samuel Kent
Pages 10 – 11
Alexandra Roach plays Constance Kent
Pages 12 – 13
Synopsis
Page 14
Cast
Page 15
Crew & Production Biographies
Page 16
*** The information contained herein is strictly embargoed from all press use,
non commercial publication, or syndication until 00:00 13th April 2011***
ITV COMMISSIONS MAJOR ADAPTATION OF
AWARD-WINNING NOVEL
THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - the best-selling book by Kate Summerscale about
an infamous murder in a Victorian country house - has been adapted for ITV by Hat
Trick Productions. The two hour drama stars PADDY CONSIDINE (Red Riding
Trilogy, Dead Man’s Shoes, The Bourne Ultimatum, 24 Hour Party People, Hot
Fuzz) in the lead role of Inspector Jonathan Whicher and has been adapted by Neil
McKay (Mo, See No Evil: The Moors Murders).
Considine stars alongside BAFTA award winner PETER CAPALDI (In the Loop,
Torchwood, The Thick of It), EMMA FIELDING (Kidnap & Ransom, Cranford
Chronicles), ALEXANDRA ROACH (Being Human, The IT Crowd, Candy Cabs)
WILLIAM BECK (The Infidel, Northanger Abbey) and KATE O’FLYNN (Kingdom,
The Palace).
Set in 1860, this gripping true story of murder, psychological suspense and
courtroom drama begins when three-year-old Saville Kent is found brutally
murdered and hidden down a servants’ privy in the grounds of the elegant Road Hill
House on the edge of a sleepy village on the Wiltshire / Somerset border.
As the local police struggle to solve the crime, the case becomes a national scandal:
“The security of families, and the sacredness of English households demand that
this matter should never be allowed to rest till the last shadow in its dark mystery
shall have been chased away,” declares The Morning Post.
On the orders of the Home Secretary, Inspector Jonathan “Jack” Whicher, the socalled “Prince of Sleuths” from the newly formed Scotland Yard detective
department, is despatched to the countryside to restore justice. Whicher was the
inspiration for the first fictional detectives created by Wilkie Collins and Dickens, but
the case was to prove the most difficult of his career.
Behind the seemingly respectable middle-class façade of the Kent family, he
discovers adultery, insanity and jealousy in a world populated by gossiping servants,
a wicked stepmother and rebellious children. With the local police actively working
against him, it’s a struggle for Whicher to find the evidence and nail the culprit.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher was filmed on location around London. It is
directed by James Hawes (DCI Banks: Aftermath, Enid). The Executive Producer
for Hat Trick Productions is Mark Redhead (Mutual Friends, God On Trial, Bodies,
Bloody Sunday).
Mark says: “This is a very modern story. It gripped the country in the way that the
case of Madeleine McCann has done in our day. It became an obsession for the
press and was even debated in the House of Commons. Perhaps for the first time,
the Road Hill House murder exposed the darkness that lay behind the solid front
door of the respectable English home. As a story it is riveting but also deeply
touching.”
The drama has been commissioned by ITV’s Director of Drama Commissioning
Laura Mackie and Controller of Drama Commissioning Sally Haynes who
comments: “The Suspicions of Mr Whicher has been a huge literary success and
Neil McKay has done a superb job adapting Kate Summerscale’s fascinating book.
Paddy Considine is the perfect actor to bring Whicher to the screen”.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.
BBC Worldwide are responsible for international distribution.
Press contacts:
For ITV - Tim West on 020 7157 3040
For pictures – Patrick Smith 020 7157 3044
tim.west@itv.com
patrick.smith@itv.com
For Hat Trick Productions – Anya Noakes or Kat Blair, PR Matters: 020 7184 6734
or email anya@prmatters.biz / kat@prmatters.biz
Mark Redhead, Executive Producer, on the background to
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is based on the true story of the events
surrounding the murder of a three year old boy in a country house in a sleepy
Wiltshire village in 1860.
It was the Victorians who invented murder – in 1810 in all of England and Wales just
15 people were convicted of murder out of a population of 10 million people, but
with the growth of cities and increasing industrialisation, the number of capital
offences grew exponentially over the following century.
Though not the first murder to seize the popular imagination, most of the murders
that grabbed the attention of the newly mass market newspapers and their readers
had been murders in the slums of the burgeoning cities and usually involving
working class, low life or criminal protagonists. The Road Hill House murder gives
birth to the country house murder and involves for almost the first time an apparently
respectable middle-class family.
The death of a child stolen from his bed and thrust down into the pit beneath a privy
represented a terrifying image for the new reading public. The castle walls of the
Englishman’s home had been breached and politicians warned that no one could
sleep soundly in their beds until the crime was solved. The case resonated for the
public in 1860 in the same way that the tragic case of Madeleine McCann has done
in recent years as parents across the land thought “there but for the grace of God…”
In what would then have been a very remote country village the police were not
equipped to deal with any murder, let alone one so politically loaded, and Jonathan
“Jack” Whicher, the star of the newly established detective branch of the
Metropolitan Police, was despatched to restore Justice. Whicher, a former labourer
from Camberwell, had entered into the Police Service as a Constable in 1837.
Police officers had to wear their uniforms even when off duty so they could not be
accused of concealing their identities. By 1840 Whicher had been selected as a
member of an undercover group of “active officers” charged with working in
plainclothes and mingling with the population. The group was kept secret because
of the English horror at being under surveillance.
In 1842 the Detective Branch of the Metropolitan Police was formally established
and Whicher was promoted to Sergeant, one of six Sergeants and two Inspectors.
The Detectives quickly caught the popular imagination, especially that of Charles
Dickens, who entertained the whole branch with a dinner at the office of his
newspaper and- inspired by them - created the first fictional English detective in
Inspector Bucket in Bleak House in 1853.
Whicher became the favourite detective of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan
Police, Sir Richard Mayne and he was made an Inspector in 1856 on a salary of
£100.
One of his fellow detectives described him as “A quiet, shrewd and practical man,
never in a hurry, generally successful and ready to take on any case.”
Records show that Elizabeth Whicher, the wife of a Jonathan Whicher a Police
Constable had given birth to a child, also called Jonathan in Lambeth in 1838. But
within three years Whicher was living alone again. The fate of his wife and young
son is not known.
A quiet man, Whicher was inventing the techniques of detection as he went along,
disappearing into the urban crowd in plain clothes and relying on patience and
observation to catch thieves and murderers. What appealed greatly to the public
was the idea of the clue – literally meaning a ball of thread or yarn that the detective
follows which leads him to the unravelling of the plot.
Whicher was very effective; one journalist reported that he found the way even
when “every clue seems cut off”. But in an era before forensic science he was
dependent on securing confessions. The more his reputation grew, the more
success he had as his very presence was reported to induce criminals to confess.
In the case at Road Hill House he faced the most difficult challenge of his career, a
working class man in a middle-class household, a city man through and through he
found himself alone in the unfamiliar territory of a remote country village facing the
lack of cooperation, even sabotage of the local police and a canny opponent in the
murderer, who knew that in the absence of any evidence, Whicher would get
nowhere without a confession.
Far from preserving the privacy and sanctity of the Englishman’s castle the case
served to tear back the veil from and expose the less than innocent reality behind
the sober front door... Samuel Kent, rather than being a respectable middle-class
gentleman, was revealed as a minor civil servant living beyond his means in a
house he could barely afford. His domestic arrangements were revealed as not
entirely wholesome – his second wife - the mother of the murdered child - had
previously been the children’s governess and had become mistress of the house
and bed-fellow of Samuel whilst the first Mrs Kent was still alive. The family was
divided in two between the mistreated first family and the favoured younger children
of the new Mrs Kent.
The Road Hill House case has been enormously influential on both factual and
fictional detective and crime literature and spawned many books from authors as
diverse as Stapleton the Kent family doctor to Dickens and Henry James. The most
recent and definitive account is by Kate Summerscale, and is the book upon which
the drama is based. Kate Summerscale’s special insight was to see the crime for
the first time through the eyes of Jack Whicher and to realise that following the
detective as he struggles to make sense of the terrible death of an innocent young
child was the most effective way of drawing an audience into one of the UK’s
darkest murder stories….
Paddy Considine plays Inspector Jonathan Whicher
Paddy Considine knew he wanted to play the title role the moment he started to
read the script of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. He was instantly enthralled by
Neil McKay's adaptation of the award-winning best-seller by Kate Summerscale
about a notorious real-life Victorian country-house murder.
The magnetic actor, well-known for his roles in such diverse dramas as The Red
Riding Trilogy, Dead Man’s Shoes, The Bourne Ultimatum, 24 Hour Party People
and Hot Fuzz, explains:
“As soon as I read the script, I was hooked. I realised there was a man here I
recognised and could really relate to, and I think the viewers will too. Whicher is
very truthful, very intuitive and has a natural sense of justice.”
At the behest of the Home Secretary, the real-life Inspector Jonathan “Jack”
Whicher, the most celebrated detective of his day, was dispatched to the West
Country to solve a murder mystery that had been baffling the somewhat inept local
constabulary and whipping up a furore in the press.
The detective was mandated to find the killer of three-year-old Saville Kent, who had
been savagely murdered at the elegant Georgian Road Hill House on the
Wiltshire/Somerset border. With no material evidence, the grieving family were the
prime suspects. The newspapers, having provoked national hysteria, assumed that
the apparently infallible Whicher would crack the case in a matter of days. It was
not to be.
Paddy observes that Whicher was a celebrity long before that concept even existed:
“At that time, there was an air of glamour surrounding detectives. Writers such as
Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins found them really fascinating because they were
trailblazers who seemed to have great powers.
“Whicher was especially renowned because he had cracked several difficult cases
quickly. So when he was sent to Road Hill House, the result seemed a foregone
conclusion: ‘They’ve sent this great detective all the way from London to the West
Country – the case shouldn’t be much of a problem’.”
The general public found the case engrossing, yet bewildering. They could not
believe that such an awful crime could take place behind the closed doors of such
an apparently fine, upstanding household. “This was one of the first murder cases to
become a cause celebre,” Paddy continues. “The whole country was gripped
because of the terrible circumstances surrounding the little boy’s murder.
“The frenzy was caused by the fact that the murder happened within a well-to-do,
middle-class family. People found it hard to conceive that something so horrific had
happened in such a respectable house and that the grieving family were the main
suspects. The public were not comfortable with taking the mask off that part of
society.”
As the resentful local police conspired against the feted in-comer, the detective
struggled to find a break through. As a working class man, he found it harder and
harder to penetrate the middle-class facade of the highly-regarded Kent family.
Whicher felt a mounting sense of frustration as the shutters came down at Road Hill
House. “His biggest obstacle was deception,” reflects Paddy. “Vital evidence was
concealed from him.”
This failure to secure a swift outcome undermined Whicher’s self-belief: “When
you’re so sure who the culprit is, but the tangible evidence that you need doesn’t
appear, you start to question your own judgement,” Paddy muses. “To have to go
against your intuition is very disheartening and calls a lot into question. That’s how
Whicher felt. He knew he was right, but he still felt screwed-over by the
Establishment and by his own police force. He was a fallen hero.”
Nonetheless, Whicher was without question a pioneering detective: “He broke new
ground,” says Paddy. “He lived in very interesting times. In 1860 old-world ideas
were meeting new-world ideas. The concept of a motive was not yet established.
So when Whicher talked to other police officers about the motive behind a crime,
they would say, ‘What do you mean, ‘the motive’? We only deal in facts’. Some
people found his methods oddly clairvoyant or just strange.”
The actor thinks there are a lot of parallels between the Victorian era and now:
“Little has changed. People still want a quick answer in these cases. These sorts of
crimes are so horrific that, as human beings, we want a fast resolution, to know that
it’s safe out there.”
Paddy clearly relished the experience of making The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.
He says he particularly enjoyed collaborating with the director, James Hawes,
whose recent credits include DCI Banks: Aftermath and Enid.
Paddy explains: “I was really, really impressed by James. His attention to detail is
amazing, and he’s brilliant with actors which, believe me, is quite rare. Also, the
way he deconstructed the script was great. I said to him, ‘You have worked so hard
and so well on this drama. You should direct a feature and have a breather!’”
More recently it has been Paddy's turns as a director which have brought him
international recognition. He directed the acclaimed Bafta-winning short film Dog
Altogether and recently adapted it into his first full-length feature, Tyrannosaur, for
which he was awarded the prestigious World Cinema Award for Directing at the
2011 Sundance International Film Festival.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is certainly a rich, riveting film. So is there any
chance of him returning? “Is there the possibility of more?” Paddy says. “They’re
talking about it.
welcome it!”
END
If people want to see more, that would be great. I’d certainly
Peter Capaldi plays Samuel Kent
Peter Capaldi is probably best known for his intimidating portrayal of Malcolm
Tucker, the angry, foul-mouthed political spin-doctor-in-chief in the cult television
series The Thick Of It and the feature film follow up In the Loop. So playing the
reserved, tragic bereaved father Samuel Kent in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
called on altogether different acting skills.
As sub-inspector of factories, Kent has four children from his first marriage and
three from his second – the middle of which is three year old Saville Kent, who has
been so brutally murdered.
Peter elaborates: “It’s very interesting as an actor who is so used to being able to
express himself by gesticulating manically and swearing outrageously to suddenly
play a repressed man who resides in a society where everything is incredibly formal
and reserved. It was an extraordinary feeling when, as Samuel, I found myself
walking around on set surrounded by my large family all dressed in black. In those
days, when you were in mourning, it was the full garb. My daughters and my wife
were veiled and dressed in enormous black dresses, but at the same time needed
to communicate quite deep emotions. It looked amazing, but it really brought home
just how completely different a society it was.”
It was a demanding role for Peter: “Samuel Kent is a typical, hard-working, middle
class Victorian man... with secrets. He’s made some mistakes in life. And he’s
caught in a terrible position. As the story unfolds, he’s trapped in a living nightmare.
He’s ambushed by love and despair, because he has to protect all his children, all of
the time – at the same time as being suspected of the heinous, unthinkable crime.
You have to remember that it was his youngest son, his own flesh and blood, who
was dead.
“The public felt both fear and excitement at the idea that a child could be murdered
in such a brutal way in such a very middle class English home. The shock waves
resonated all the way from the English countryside to Australia as the media frenzy
grew.”
Even though Peter admits to a love of period drama, he does feel the Victorian era
can often be over-romanticised – not the case with The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.
“I think we just developed some riffs, and then we play those riffs. And people enjoy
them, and that’s fine. But behind the over-romanticised facade, there are far more
interesting stories to be told, and far more interesting ways of looking at that period
than we currently deploy.”
He continues: “We tend to see the past more often than not in a varnished sort of
way. The Suspicion of Mr Whicher is a tougher view of the world as it’s not a
decorative view of Victorian society and therefore probably a more accurate account
of how bleak life may have been for so many people.”
There were other moments that stuck in Peter’s mind during filming that helped
bring the whole era to life, as he explains: “Just being on set I felt like I was actually
walking back in history. Sitting in the reconstructed Temperance Hall and seeing
the recreation of the actual court proceedings brought the reality of just how tough it
was home.
“Something else that fascinates me is that the costumes are clothes, not merely
costumes. By that I mean that they were well worn, and not just made for people,
fresh out of the box. I don’t think people had vast wardrobes in those days. They
had to wear the same things time after time.”
Peter adds that working with Paddy Considine was a great experience: “Paddy’s a
wonderful actor. He has a genuine maverick quality. I hesitate to use that word
because just about every cop on TV is described as a ‘maverick’. But Paddy does
have a quality that’s quite his own, that no-one else can capture. And the character
of Whicher needs to be quite edgy.
Peter admits that, despite his love for the Victorian era, there was one defining
element that convinced him to accept the role of Samuel:
“Really it was James Hawes, the director. I’ve worked with him before, [on Sea of
Souls,] and I loved his vision for Whicher. ‘Victoriana’ can often be portrayed in a
very cosy, chocolate-boxy kind of way, and he had such a bleak vision of the
Victorian world.”
END
Alexandra Roach plays Constance Kent
Rising star Alexandra Roach is a young actress who already has an impressive list
of credits to her name. She had barely finished studying at the prestigious Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art when she landed leading roles in The Iron Lady (playing a
young Margaret Thatcher opposite Hollywood legend Meryl Streep) as well as that
of the cold and manipulative Constance Kent in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.
Other credits include Being Human, The IT Crowd and Candy Cabs.
She explains: “Constance is a very single-minded, strong, independent woman.
The fact that she was a real character from history did make the role more
challenging. Constance may only be 16, but she’s very cleaver and calculating. I
didn’t know anything about the history of the murder at Road Hill House before I
started, and I feel very lucky I had Kate Summerscale’s book to study. It is
incredibly well researched and I really wanted to do Constance Kent justice in my
portrayal of her. The book gave me everything I needed to draw on.”
Constance was the third daughter from Samuel Kent's first marriage and also had a
younger full brother William who found himself implicated in the murder too.
Alexandra continues: “Of course actors normally have to do a little detecting
themselves, picking up clues about the character along the way to ensure they give
the most fitting portrayal. When I read a script I like to make lists of facts about the
character; it’s my process and I like it, so to be give a complete fact filled book by
Kate Summerscale was just a dream! It just gave me a great foundation to build my
portrayal of Constance on. But you also have to let that go at some point because
you need to flesh the character out. Kate’s book gave me the foundations but I then
had to find further layers with which to solidify my performance.”
There was a true battle of wits between the wily Constance and Detective Inspector
Jonathan Whicher, which Alexandra loved: “As soon as Whicher suspects
Constance and William of Saville’s murder, the game really started between the
young girl and the detective. It was always a battle between who had the highest
status and who could outwit the other. It was like a card game in many of the
scenes; who was going to trump the other person? What card are they going to
whip out next?
“The back and forths with Paddy were probably my favourite scenes to play,
especially the jail scenes. The set was so dark and moody and atmospheric; the
world was beautifully created for us which made it so much easier for us to play off
one another. Paddy delivered so much and I knew I would just have to match him in
intensity and I loved it.”
The murder at Road Hill House also marked some of the earliest cases of press
intrusion and the question of individual privacy, as Alexandra explains:
“The case absolutely shocked the country and as a result the press got massively
involved in every detail as it unfolded. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on it.
An Englishman’s home was still regarded as his castle in those days; no one knew
what went on behind closed doors, so for a plain clothes detective from a lower
social class to be let into a fairly affluent family’s home and for all of their secrets to
be laid bare was unthinkable back then. The people took Constance’s side; the girl
had been charged with brutally murdering her half brother, but there didn't appear to
be one shred of tangible evidence. As a result Whicher was widely vilified. The
local villagers had already taken offence at Whicher’s conclusions, but when he put
Constance’s nightdress on public show as evidence, that was the final straw and he
was shown the door.”
Alexandra found that donning the period garb really helped her slip into the role of
Constance:
“I’m only just out of drama school so to be given such a challenging role was a bit
overwhelming to begin with. However, once I was put into the corset and the
massive Victorian dress and had my hair pinned up, I was instantly transported back
in time. That made it so much easier to become Constance Kent.”
She continues: “At drama school the emphasis is on you creating the world around
you through imagination and props that you’d bring in from home, but being on set
and surrounded by cast and crew recreated this atmosphere right before your eyes,
it was just so much fun.”
It was also a big contrast to the part Alexandra had just shot fresh out of RADA, that
of the young Margaret Thatcher in Iron Lady opposite Meryl Streep, who takes on
the role of Thatcher in her later years, and is one of Alexandra’s idols:
“At every opportunity, when I was due to go on set, I would arrive early so I could sit
by the monitor and just watch her at work and try to soak it all in. The variety of
performances she gave the director to play with in the edit was unbelievable; she
did it differently every time. Of course, as we were playing the same character at
different ages, Meryl and I were like a tag team during filming. She does a scene,
then I pop on to do a scene and she pops on again and that’s how it went. She was
just so positive and helpful on set, a great role model.”
Alexandra laughs: “Over the last year it’s just been incredible to be around such
amazing actors, and I love it.”
END
SYNOPSIS
It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village
of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound
asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks.
The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably
gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with
shock, not least because the guilty party is almost certainly still among them.
Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, is sent to
investigate the murder at Road Hill House. With only an inept local police to help
him and no material evidence, he faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which
the grieving family are the suspects.
The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering
behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants,
rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a
kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is
uproar and bewilderment.
A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles
Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder
mystery - a body; a detective; a country house steeped in secrets.
Cast
INSPECTOR WHICHER………………………………………………..Paddy Considine
SAMUEL KENT.......................................................................................Peter Capaldi
CONSTANCE KENT.........................................................................Alexandra Roach
WILLIAM KENT........................................................................................Charlie Hiett
MARY KENT.........................................................................................Emma Fielding
ELIZABETH GOUGH..............................................................................Kate O’ Flynn
DOLLY.....................................................................................................William Beck
SUPERINTENDENT FOLEY..............................................................Tom Georgeson
DR STAPLETON..........................................................................................Ben Miles
COMMISSIONER MAYNE.................................................................Tim Pigott-Smith
WILLIAM NUTT....................................................................................Ben Crompton
SIR HENRY LUDLOW.........................................................................Richard Lintern
Crew
Executive Producer…………..………………………………………….…Mark Redhead
Producer….…...…………………….…………………….........................Nigel Marchant
Director...................................................................................................James Hawes
Writer..........................................................................................................Neil McKay
Director of Photography................................................................................Matt Gray
Production Designer.................................................................................David Roger
Hair & Make Up Designer................................................................Lisa Cavalli Green
Costume Designer................................................................................Lucinda Wright
Editor……………………………………………………………………………Richard Cox
Location Manager.........................................................................Camilla Stephenson
Casting Director............................................................................Kate Rhodes James
Production Coordinator..............................................................................Katie Bevell
Production team credits
Neil McKay is one of the foremost writers of factually based drama working in British
television. Starting with This Is Personal -The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, his
work includes See No Evil - The Moors Murderers, Dunkirk, Wall of Silence, Mo and
the forthcoming Appropriate Adult.
Mark Redhead: Executive Producer, produced This Is Personal, The Murder of
Stephen Lawrence, Bloody Sunday and Bodies.
James Hawes was the opening director of Merlin, and his work ranges from Dr Who
to Fanny Hill and the award winning Enid.
Producer Nigel Marchant’s credits include The Chatterley Affair and Downton
Abbey.