How Gene Hunt paved way for eternal battle between good and evil in York

when Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham first pitched a brand new drama series to producers about a modern day policeman who found himself transported back to 1973 following a car crash, they quickly grew used to the sound of silence.

Less persistent writers might have given up but the pair, who had first met on EastEnders, were convinced there was mileage in the characters of Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt and Life on Mars has now passed into history as one of the most successful shows of the last decade.

The format was sold to America, the unreconstructed Gene Hunt behind the wheel of his red Quattro became a pin-up and for Pharoah and Graham the same doors which had closed in their faces a few years earlier were flung wide open. So much so that when they came up with the idea for Eternal Law, a courtroom drama where the lawyers just so happen to be angels, everyone was willing to listen. “It’s well-known now how many times we pitched Life on Mars and how many times people looked at us as though we were mad. When you create a high concept drama, it does require a leap of faith. Thankfully, eventually someone was willing to take a risk and Life on Mars did change the landscape, not just for us, but for everyone. Before then British dramas had tended to be almost universally about social realism, but that series showed there was another way.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“Let’s just say that when it came to Eternal Law, we had a slightly easier ride.”

The seeds of Eternal Law were sown when Graham was just a toddler playing in the back garden of the family semi in Rickmansworth while his mother was weeding.

“She heard a voice,” he says. “It was calm and clear and urgent, but in no way panicky or alarming. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, but she remembers clearly that it said, ‘Quickly, look behind you’. She turned to see me tottering forward, about to lose my balance and fall onto a pair of open garden shears.

“She caught me before I fell and looked to the gardens on either side to thank whichever neighbour it was who had warned her. They were empty. Now I don’t know whether the voice came from her guardian angel or whether it was just a mother’s sixth sense, but from the perspective or a writer it’s a story which raises wonderful possibilities.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The details of Eternal Law were thrashed out in a pub beer garden and Pharoah admits the final show, which brings a Biblical battle of good versus evil to contemporary Britain, borrows as much from the 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death as it does from current US drama Boston Legal.

“It was a couple of years ago when we started putting the flesh on the bones of Eternal Law,” says Pharoah. “We weren’t quite sure in which direction to head, but we began talking about how terrible the world was and that was before things got really bad. We were talking about how hard life was for people and what it would be like if guardian angels really did exist. I remember saying that I’d probably end up with a really grumpy one. Then it just clicked.”

Sam West (Van Helsing, Any Human Heart) plays the cynical, but ultimately upstanding Zak Gist while Richard Pembroke (Rome, Neverland) stars as his nemesis, the dark angel Tobias Menzies, but Pharoah admits it was only when they pinpointed the location that the final piece of the six-part series fell into place.

“Initially Eternal Law was set in an imaginary town. We’d written the first episode on spec and knew we needed a location which had a market square, a cathedral and a clutch of historic buildings.” Bath, where both writers live was an initial frontrunner, but having previously worked on Where the Heart Is, Pharoah’s thoughts soon turned to the North.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“We got on the train and the plan was to go to York and then onto Durham. We never made it to Durham. When we walked through the streets to the Minster we knew we had found our location. It was like someone had read that first script and built us this perfect enormous set.

“Even better was the fact that no television drama had ever been set there. Emmerdale or Heartbeat might have occasionally ventured to York, but they were only ever fleeting visits. I suspect that people might have been put off because its so distinctive, you can’t pretend it’s anywhere else other than York, but for us it was perfect, it’s almost like another character in the show.”

Just a short walk from the Minster, a former hospital, which had lain empty since 2006 provided the perfect production base and the cast, which also includes Orla Brady (Mistresses) with newcomer Ukweli Roach, and crew spent much of last summer in the city. Either Pharoah or Graham was on set most days, tweaking the script and finessing the storylines and admit for much of the time they lived like Eric and Ernie. “Honestly, it was a joy,” says Pharoah. “We filmed Ashes to Ashes in a redundant factory in Bermondsey and at the end of each day people went home to their families. In York we became like a troupe of actors, we socialised on an evening and I think Matthew and I sampled most of the pubs in the city.

“Orla lives out in Los Angeles where no one walks anywhere, but in York she got a bike, had afternoon tea in Bettys and it really was idyllic. However, the one thing we always knew from the outset was that we didn’t want a chocolate box version of Britain. York might not be the Bronx, but it does have a few run down areas and it meant we had an entire palette of locations in just a few square miles.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Much like Life on Mars, Eternal Law is a blend of reality and fantasy.

“Angels who are lawyers sounds like two different series crashing head on, but it doesn’t feel like that,” says West, an unapologetic atheist. “The structure works two ways, it allows you to say interesting things about another species, a species which is sort of human, but not quite, but most importantly it allows you to say important things about humanity and to have big arguments about things that matter, like love and hate, death and war and right and wrong.

“Whether you believe that angels exist and they’re keeping an eye on you, or whether you think they’ve been invented to remind us of the best things about ourselves, there is a reason why they’ve run through literature for hundreds, in fact thousands of years.”

For Pharoah and Graham, the presence of angels, much like the time-travelling Sam Tyler, might have given Eternal Law a good hook, but it is the courtroom stories which provide the drama.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“When you pitch a TV series, they quite often go, ‘Right, so what happens in episode seven?’,” says Pharoah. “If you don’t know, you might as well pack up your bags there and then. The idea of these angels also being lawyers gave us a way of telling stories about the human condition and showing people at their most vulnerable. It was the same with Life on Mars, whatever else it was, it was also a cop show.”

Graham describes the series as a “love letter to a screwed up messy world”, but if it replicates the success of Life on Mars it will also be further evidence that British drama, so often compared unfavourably not only with American exports but with a past golden age of television, is alive and well.

“Yes the 1970s and 80s had Dennis Potter and Alan Bleasdale, but they also had a whole lot of rubbish,” says Pharoah. “The trouble is that as the years pass our memories get more selective.

“I honestly believe we are in a golden age of drama right now. I’m looking at the box sets on my shelves, Sopranos, Mad Men and it’s not just American dramas, there’s The Street and Life on Mars. It might be a bit harder to get dramas made right now, but that doesn’t mean the quality has gone down.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

At the end of the final episode of Eternal Law the way is left open for series two, but neither is prepared to bet their house on a return.

“When John Simm said he didn’t want to do any more Life on Mars we were buggered, but if Eternal Law is successful and the actors don’t want to or aren’t able to come back then we have options,” says Pharoah. “I’m always anxious before a new series. I’ve had hits and I’ve had misses, but you know what? I’ve never been able to predict which will be which.”

Eternal Law, ITV1, Thursday, 9pm.

Related topics: