Filming Begins on New Season of In the Club

LONDON: Filming has begun on a second season of the BBC One drama In the Club from BAFTA-winning writer Kay Mellor.

The contemporary drama puts a spotlight on pregnancy, imminent birth, love and the changing nature of relationships that babies bring to modern families. The first season followed six couples who bonded in the local parent craft class as they prepared for parenthood together. Each couple had different issues to handle, from paternity fears to divorce to debt to death. In the Club 2 follows the same couples ten months later and also introduces new characters into the mix, including Shelly, a surrogate to a gay couple.

Liz Kilgarriff, the independent commissioning editor for BBC Drama and executive producer on the series for the BBC, commented: “Kay has once again created fantastic characters and stories which have, of course, attracted an enormously talented and stellar ensemble cast. In the Club captures the extraordinary drama that can happen to ordinary people in everyday life and the series is set to be yet another treat for our BBC One audience.”

Mellor added: “I was delighted by the response to season one of In the Club and even though we left on a compete high with viewers growing week by week, I felt bereft the series had finished, so it was wonderful when the BBC asked me to write and produce a second season. It was an absolute pleasure to visit all my characters again with their complicated lives; the shift in their relationships now they’ve become parents and the opportunity to explore how they’re dealing with life now, ten months on.”

She continued: “It also enabled me to invent some new characters—cleaner Maxine and her daughter Shelly, who is carrying a baby for her mother’s bosses Nathan and Andrew. With the surrogacy scenario I’m able to look at a very modern family structure and all the complications, fun and heartbreak that comes from that situation.

“Having a child changes everything: it was one of the most profound things that happened to me. Birth is the ultimate creation, but with it comes huge responsibilities and huge joy.”

In the Club 2 was commissioned by Charlotte Moore, the controller of BBC One, and Polly Hill, the controller of drama commissioning for the BBC.