Extras
The boys were very excited about a film crew visiting their school for the afternoon to shoot scenes for a new TV detective drama, The Tunnel, an Anglo-French remake of last year's moody Nordic series The Bridge. The children got to play as extras in some of the background shots, and even little Dash got involved. I managed to get this picture of the production team in action, and you can just about see Monty (who quite fancies himself as the next Brian Blessed) hamming it up in the background of the scene. The crew were delightful and very good with the children, and we are looking forward to watching the series when it comes out next year.
The Tunnel was a co-production between Sky Atlantic in the UK and Canal+ in France, adapted by head writer Ben Richards (Spooks, Outcasts) from the acclaimed 2011 Scandinavian crime series The Bridge (Bron/Broen). Rather than the Øresund Bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden, the setting was shifted to the Channel Tunnel and its surroundings, with the series filmed primarily in and around Folkestone and Calais — making our corner of Kent a natural fit for location shooting. The first series of ten hour-long episodes premiered on Sky Atlantic on 16 October 2013, with the French broadcast on Canal+ following in November.
The show starred Stephen Dillane (Game of Thrones) as laid-back British detective Karl Roebuck and Clémence Poésy (Birdsong) as his French counterpart, Elise Wassermann, a highly driven investigator whose intense, rule-bound manner gradually reveals itself as something deeper. The case that draws them together is a darkly spectacular one: the body of a prominent French politician is discovered precisely on the midpoint between the two countries inside the tunnel, and the investigation soon unravels into a high-stakes hunt for a serial killer — dubbed the "Truth Terrorist" — who uses elaborate crimes to expose the moral failings of modern society. A uniquely bilingual production, the British characters speak English and the French characters speak French throughout, reflecting the authentic cross-Channel dynamic at the heart of the story. The Guardian called it "TV gold" with a "heart-tugging plot and dazzling central performances" — and having watched a small piece of it being made right on our doorstep, we had every reason to be excited.
Fujifilm X100S, Lightroom, Silver Efex Pro 2
