Jed Mercurio & Chris Brandon Discuss Bloodlands

Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) and Bloodlands creator Chris Brandon talk to TV Drama about the upcoming BBC One thriller from Hat Trick Mercurio Television.

Bloodlands is the first show from Hat Trick Mercurio Television, HTM, a production company recently formed by Hat Trick Productions and Jed Mercurio, writer, producer and showrunner, most recently of the hit series Line of Duty. Mercurio has teamed up with the new writer Chris Brandon, who created Bloodlands. The four-part series takes place in Northern Ireland, where police detective Tom Brannick, played by James Nesbitt, sees a link between a person’s disappearance and a cold case from years before that had considerable personal meaning to him. Brannick becomes obsessed with tracking down the perpetrator, an infamous figure whose code name is Goliath.

Brandon has family ties to Northern Ireland, and during a trip home, he got the idea for the series. “Bloodlands came about around five years ago,” he recalls. “I was visiting family in an area called Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. At the time there were a lot of great thrillers on TV. We had Scandinavian detective thrillers and shows like True Detective coming out of the U.S—thrillers driven by a distinct sense of place. When I was visiting family in Strangford, I thought that an idea based there would be great.”

The cold case that is referred to in the series took place during The Troubles. Although that was decades ago, Bloodlands explores issues that resonate with viewers today. “There are the universal themes because it’s based in The Troubles, and Northern Ireland is a small place, where there is a great sense of family and for lack of a better word, tribe,” explains Brandon. “The questions are, How far will we go to protect the ones we love? How far will we go to do justice for those we love who were taken from us? It’s all about [how we behave] when faced with those challenges.”

The Troubles was a three-decade period of sectarian conflict, marked by bombings, sniper attacks and internment without trial in Northern Ireland between Protestants, who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom, and Catholics, who wanted to become part of the Republic of Ireland. As Brandon explains, there was a language of violence, and that language is so familiar. Bloodlands looks at “how easy it is to access that language of violence again and how hard it is to withhold from that violence.”

The series looks at crimes, “which at the time appeared to be disappearances, and because of the necessity of the police process, they weren’t formally and thoroughly investigated,” adds Mercurio. “Brannick remains suspicious that these were murders rather than disappearances. In the present, he gets new evidence that launches him on this personal crusade to try and get justice, but at the same time, he is hemmed in by the need to respect the current [police procedures].”

During The Troubles, political considerations were placed above the wellbeing of people because politicians didn’t want to interrupt the peace process. There is an element of that in Bloodlands. “This drama focuses on the police service and the difficult job they have of balancing the concerns of communities on both sides but also the complex questions of justice and peace, and how they can sometimes butt up against each other,” says Brandon.

Bloodlands was shot in Northern Ireland, and shooting finished just before COVID-19 forced productions to shut down. The locations and landscape in Northern Ireland contributed to the mood and tone of the series. “We benefited from the very rugged landscape of Northern Ireland,” says Mercurio. “The look of Strangford Lough is very eerie and spectacular. It’s quite unique to have the archipelago of small, barren, uninhabited islands within a body of inland water. The eeriness of that particular location is incredibly helpful for the look we achieved for the series.”

Brandon and Mercurio are extremely pleased with the cast, which besides Nesbitt includes Lisa Dwan (Top Boy, Trust), Lorcan Cranitch (Fortitude, The Dig), Charlene McKenna (Ripper Street, Vienna Blood) and Ian McElhinney (Derry Girls, Game of Thrones). “I was blown away to get an Irish cast, led fantastically by Jimmy Nesbitt,” says Brandon. “He is such an excellent ambassador for Northern Ireland. He made it appealing for the other actors to come work on the project.”

There is much talk these days about the need to find new writers because there are so many scripted projects in development. Bloodlands brought together Mercurio and Brandon. “Chris was talking about the genesis of the idea about five years ago, and I was fortunate enough to read his script a couple of years ago,” explains Mercurio. “I was at the start of this production company, HTM Television, and I immediately responded to his script. I thought it was a great subject. Chris’s writing leaped off the page through the way he drew in characters and the dialog. It felt like something I hadn’t seen on TV done in quite this contemporary and very visceral way through a single protagonist. I was really impressed with it and lucky enough to get Chris to develop the show for us.”

Mercurio is one of the executive producers on the show. “One of the things I want to do with bringing on new talent and empowering new writers is to leave space for them to [work],” he says. “When Chris and I were on the set, I would often have a conversation with him about what I thought might be a helpful contribution. I would then encourage Chris, on his own, to talk to the director or the cast in the way I would have done if it had been my script.”

Brandon found the experience incredibly grounding. “You couldn’t ask for better because it felt like a collaboration from the beginning. One where Jed, Mark [Redhead] and the other executive producers have been very generous with their time.”

While Bloodlands finished shooting before the pandemic shut down production, the producers have had to come up with new ways of handling post-production. “We were able to start working at the beginning of the year and only had a ten-week schedule,” says Mercurio. “We wrapped a week before a lot of other productions were forced to shut down. We are endeavoring to conclude post-production while respecting the lockdown and social distancing, which has thrown up a number of challenges.

“Fundamentally, things just take a little bit longer, and for that reason, we have agreed to an extended post-production period with the BBC,” continues Mercurio. “They have been very supportive and sympathetic to the fact that people can’t work in the way they were accustomed to. We can’t all get in a room and watch a cut and talk it through. The extension to the post-production schedule won’t affect the quality; it’s purely that the workflow can’t be the same.”

Production on season six of Line of Duty, on the other hand, has been halted. “We shot for four weeks and then we were forced to shut down just a few days after Bloodlands wrapped,” explains Mercurio. “We are on an indefinite hiatus. We’re mainly concerned about the health of our cast and crew.

Both Mercurio and Brandon have other projects in the works. The next production for HTM Television is Trigger Point for ITV in the U.K., starring Vicky McClure and written by Daniel Brierley. “That is something we should have been in pre-production on now, but we will endeavor to shoot that when the lockdown finishes and people can get to work,” says Mercurio.

The pandemic has shut down production, but there is a silver lining for writers. “It’s a good time for me to escape to the back of the house and work on projects, of which I’m doing a couple,” says Brandon. “It’s a good time for writing.”

“We should mention that [compared to] the freelancers in our industry, writers are being spared some of the hardships that are affecting the crew members,” adds Mercurio. “We should definitely spare a thought for the freelancers within the industry who are seeing a real loss of their livelihood over this time. I know in the U.K., some of them are experiencing real financial hardship.

“As a general point,” continues Mercurio, “everybody now who’s going through post-production in TV is undergoing a bit of a learning experience because the normal workflows have been disrupted. It’s really hard for the networks as well. I think they are still having to wait and see whether those shows are actually going to come through and whether they will be able to air them when they want to.”