On a cold and dreary June morning in Wythenshawe, Manchester, the cast of After the Flood are full of energy as they prepare to film scenes for the second season of the hit ITV show, and I was given exclusive access to tag along.
The new series, which lands on ITV this Sunday, will be even more explosive than the last, the cast tells me when I arrive. Set a year after the events of the first series, when officer Jo Marshall (Sophie Rundle) uncovered rampant corruption in her town’s police force, Rundle reveals series 2 has a “juicier, slightly darker murder mystery” at play.
As well as a new case, Jo and her estranged husband Pat (Matt Stokoe) are entering series 2 with a mission: to take down Sergeant Phil Mackie (Nicholas Gleaves). Mackie is the mastermind behind the murder in series 1, but while they know his true nature, if they reveal it, he could take them with him because Pat has also been embroiled in the corruption, Rundle says: “It’s a real knife-edge that they’re on, and if they get it wrong, their whole world will come crumbling down.”
Series 2 has been an interesting experience for Rundle, she says, given how well her needs as a mother were met. The Peaky Blinders star welcomed her second son just as negotiations began for series 2. She knew that something had to give, so she issued an ultimatum: “I was like, ‘I can’t do it. ‘” I can’t be away from the baby, and I don’t think I can do more than four days a week’ because we were supposed to shoot it when he would have been younger.
The new series finds Sophie Rundle’s Jo promoted to detective and facing a puzzling new case. (ITV)
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“And they went away and said, ‘OK, we’ll do four days a week, and we will make it so that you have 3 consecutive days off so you can go home.’ They have enabled me to do this job at this point in my life, and if they hadn’t done that, I would have found it much harder.
“By scheduling it in that way, they have enabled me to be here and be present and then leave it [to return home].”
“It’s a real exercise in stamina,” Rundle goes on to say of leading the series. “And one of the things I’ve noticed, especially in a procedural drama, is you are required to steer the ship narratively… You gotta be there all day, every day, knowing all the lines, bringing the right energy to the right scene, so it’s an exercise in stamina that I’m still getting used to.
“And then with a four-year-old and a one-year-old at home, that has been spicy… but [the team] have been great, and they have made it work in a way that I don’t know a lot of companies would have, so I’m grateful to them for that.”
After the Flood’s Tripti Tripuraneni praised Sophie Rundle for her ability to lead the series with such grace and kindness while balancing a busy home life. (ITV)
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Her commitment to balancing the series with her home life hasn’t gone unnoticed, as her co-star Tripti Tripuraneni, who plays PC Deepa Das, shares: “I love working with Sophie; she’s fantastic as a leader in the series. She just brings the most wonderful energy to the room.
“I don’t know how she does it. I come in one day a week, and I’m complaining — I’m not complaining, I love this job — but she’s here all the time. And she’s got two kids, I don’t know how she does it, Wonder Woman.”
Series 2 newcomer Anil Desai concurs: “Sophie is the leader of the ship…. You have the pressure of carrying the story to show all of that, but she does it so effortlessly. You wouldn’t know what she’s having to go through because she appears as if she’s not carrying anything.
“She has a natural ability to make it look effortless. A day player might be coming in for just a day to do an episode with two scenes; they have anxiety or stress, and she’s just really good [with them]. I think she has a natural way of calming people just by being pleasant, nice, and good.”
What to expect from After the Flood series 2
After the Flood series 2 finds Jo and Mackie at a stalemate, with the both able to take the other down but risking ruining themselves in the process. (ITV)
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In the second series of After the Flood, newly promoted detective Jo is faced with a baffling mystery when moorland fires in Waterside see a body discovered under bizarre circumstances. It’s up to her to stop the killer, but doing so also puts her at risk, as does her quest to secretly root out corruption in the police force by exposing Mackie.
“If they shine a light on everything [Mackie] has done, he can then show what Pat’s been doing and how Pat’s been bent as well,” she explains. “So that’s one of the themes that come up, that if it comes to light, Pat has to go to prison. And they have a daughter together, so they’ve got their hands tied; they’re trying to bring Mackie down in a way that protects Pat as much as possible, and therefore protects Jo because, at this point, she is complicit in it by being aware of it.”
Gleaves describes Mackie and Jo’s relationship as “rich and complex” this time around, adding: “There’s distrust on both sides and also a tacit agreement that one can bring the other down, so that’s a very tense balance.
As well as trying to solve a puzzling murder, Jo must try to secretly unravel Mackie’s web of corruption and reveal it to the world. (ITV)
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“It is put to the test quite considerably in this series as to who’s going to blink first in many ways, and it’s quite uncomfortable. I’m pretty certain we will be with Jo all the way through, but there are aspects of Mackie’s character that are hard to hate. So it’s not as simple as ‘let’s just get the bad guy.'”
The actor stipulates that while his character “is going to have a reckoning at some point” before that happens Mackie ensures he still appears a reliable, trustworthy officer: “It was revealed that Mackie not only committed a couple of murders but he’d also been part of a greater, wider corruption that’s underneath this idyllic place…. [so there’s] a question of Mackie balancing this dark secret that could really bring him down and also carrying on as normal.”
It’s this duplicity that I get to see unfold on set, with Gleaves and Rundle both performing pivotal scenes from the show’s final episode. One scene finds Jo threatened with being taken off the murder case by her new boss, DCI Balsara (Desai), while another finds Mackie trying to discredit Pat by convincing the police chief he’s not trustworthy.
While Mackie is the villain, Nicholas Gleaves says there are aspects to him that are ‘hard to hate’ and make him a more complex character than you’d think. (ITV)
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Rundle is bounding with energy, having returned to filming after time with her family. As her co-stars said, she’s cheerful and warm to everyone she talks to, including the series writer, who has come to visit the set like me.
Gleaves, meanwhile, is meticulous with his scenes, wanting to try different things and asking to try things again when he makes even the slightest mistake — like not putting a phone down smoothly. He’s grateful to the crew as he does this, thanking them for letting him redo things until he is satisfied they are right.
Family drama
Another part of the narrative relates to the bond between Philip Glenister’s Jack and Lorraine Ashbourne’s Molly, and the love triangle they find themselves in. (ITV)
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Series 1 antagonist Philip Glenister joined me to share details of the new series. We’rre allowed to commandeer one of the show’s purpose-built sets, an exact replica of the house in Glossop they used in series 1.
If you didn’t know it, you’d think that the location was real. It’s so believable that a fox even walks onto the set in the midst of my interview with Glenister’s co-star Alun Armstrong, causing a delighted search for the animal by the actor and members of the crew for a good half an hour to try and get it safely back outside (The fox got out by itself).
The home is that of Jo’s mother Molly (Lorraine Ashbourne), whose strained relationship with Glenister’s Jack Radcliffe features heavily in series 2.
“He wants to sort of try and make amends with Molly,” Glenister explains. “And at the same time, he also wants to clear up past misdemeanours that have gone on, as we saw at the end of the first series. I think there’s a sense of guilt there as well, a desire to do the right thing. So he takes a turn from being a bit of a dodgy businessman to trying to correct his wrongdoings.”
Jack also has ties to Mackie’s corruption, and is hoping to get out from under his thumb. (ITV)
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Part of that sketchy past is, of course, his connection to Mackie and assistance in the corruption scandal that shocked their town in series 1. But Jack is ready to make things right: “Molly doesn’t know half of what Jack knows about what’s gone on, and because the relationship between her ex-husband and Sergeant Mackie was very close, Mackie is almost a member of the family in that respect.
“So Jack has this information about Mackie and his wrongdoings, and when he sort of imparts that to Molly, she is in complete denial about it. That causes a huge rift between the two of them, but Jo, on the other hand, is aware of it. So he has an ally, funnily enough, in Jo for the first time.”
Glenister adds that the dynamic between Jack and Molly is added to by the introduction of Alan (played by Armstrong), a councilman with a strong moral compass. The trio, Glenister says, even get to enjoy an odd-couple love triangle.
After the Flood introduces a new love interest in Alun Armstrong. (ITV)
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It was a delight to explore something so light-hearted, Armstrong explains: “It’s funny because I generally have cornered the acting market in psychopaths. I’m always the bad guy. So it was quite a joy to be cast in a good guy role, and I find that more difficult. I don’t know if it’s because I’m so used to playing the bad guy or that I genuinely find good guys more difficult to play!”
Of the love triangle, he adds: “I love the fact that we are of an age and that even old gits like us can be romantic interests, just having competitive, jealous flirting. It’s glimpsed a few times in the series, and I thought that was a nice touch by the writer.”
Marriage problems
After the Flood will also explore the strains that the events of series 1 had on Jo and Pat’s marriage. (ITV)
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Romance, or the lack thereof, is also an important part of Jo’s story. A lot has happened between the two series since giving birth to her first child and learning the truth about her husband’s corruption in the police force.
It creates an interesting conundrum, Rundle shares: “There’s a lot of unresolved issues. Pat had totally betrayed her. I think there’s nothing worse than the person you love most in this world having lied to you, so I think Jo can’t get over how Pat is everything that she detests, everything that she hates, which is being bent.”
Jo’s relationship with her husband is estranged as a result: “That, of course, was going to impact their relationship, but they’re having to co-parent their daughter… she just can’t be with Pat knowing what she knows, but there’s a lot of love there still.
Jo is a mother first, and will focus on what’s right for her child. (ITV)
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“It’s quite heartbreaking because you can’t root for them. You want them to be together, but there’s too much water under the bridge, so you don’t know if they can resolve it.”
But now, like Rundle herself, Jo is a mother first: “It was nice to come back to her as a mother now because I think there is just something that happens to you, I think.
“You grow up, especially after a year of parenthood for the first time. So I was really excited to explore that… I think anybody that you know has had a baby will relate to that thing where you’re way more tired and prepared to take way less f**ks.”
How that will impact her in series 2 is up to viewers to discover, but it certainly promises to be as dramatic as the first.
After the Flood premieres on ITV1 on Sunday, 18 January at 9pm.