by Anthony Frajman
The British actor turns series creator.
In recent years, a plethora of exciting shows have come out of the UK – The Fall, Happy Valley, Peaky Blinders, to name a few.
BritBox’s new supernatural thriller, Passenger, is the latest exciting addition.
From actor turned writer, Andrew Buchan (Better, COBRA, All the Money in the World, Broadchurch), Passenger, inspired by Buchan’s own experiences, is set in the quiet town of Chadder Vale, and follows detective Riya Ajunwa (BAFTA winner Wunmi Mosaku), who investigates the unusual disappearance of local girl Katie Wells (Rowan Robinson). When it appears that Wells is missing forever, she returns. Yet, a series of further strange and frightening crimes begin to occur.
The series follows on the heels of Buchan’s impressive acting career across film, stage and TV, which also includes roles in shows such as Garrow’s Law and The ABC Murders.
Can you talk a little bit about how Passenger came to be?
“When I approached (production company) Sister all those moons ago, I felt like I had a story that hadn’t been seen before, which combined several worlds and several genres. I’ve always been drawn to stories that lure us into a false sense of familiar and then slap us with something unknown; shows like Richard Price’s The Outsider starring Ben Mendelsohn. Also Fargo or The OA or True Detective. Even Stranger Things, shows that kind of take something traditional and then shake it up. But the actual seed for Passenger came from growing up in a small town called Bolton in the northwest of England, I was there for 18 years.”
“I have family and friends dotted across the northwest of England, across this mountain range called the Pennines. And across the Pennines, these very small communities and to these communities, there’s a magic and a warmth and a shorthand to the way that they act and speak. And no matter how dark or desperate the struggle or the situation they find themselves in, they fight back with stories and with anecdotes of the antidote. So, they sit around pub fires, and no matter how dark the situation, they flatten it with humour
“I wanted to create a fictional northern community and puncture it with something obscure and otherworldly. Something that their back catalogue of everyday reactions and explanations didn’t really have an answer for, something that could push their reactions to the limit.”
How challenging was it for you, diving into the series as your first ever?
“Well, on the face of it, it does seem like a quite a mountain to climb, doesn’t it? But, the team at Sister Pictures went above and beyond to make it what it is really. And we were fortunate to get the most brilliant set of actors and directors, Lee Haven Jones, Nicole Charles, who really brought every facet of every idea I had in my head to life. I’m forever grateful for that. It wasn’t just a one-man band, it was an enormous team effort to bring it together.”
You are well known as an actor. Did you pull a lot from your experience as a performer for your debut writing this series?
“Yes and no. Whether you are an actor or producer or writer or director, you’re all in the business of creativity. You are all branches of the same tree effectively. But the whole show came from my childhood. I guess the way that acting influenced it is that hopefully, it made me more aware of what actors were craving on the page. I never wanted to give anyone too thin a storyline or too little meat on the bone or anything too superficial or two dimensional. So, in that sense, definitely the acting informed it in that way.”
How important was it for you to subvert viewer expectations? Obviously, it’s not Twin Peaks because at the start you think someone’s gone missing, but then she is there.
“We had a lot of fun in playing with it, and hopefully surprising the audience. There are many twists and turns along the way, and we certainly made a strong effort to conceal as many clues as possible until the final episode. But the forensic amongst us will be able to see what those clues are, as each episode unfolds. We had a lot of fun in the writing of it and tried to use as much imagination as we could while also keeping it as grounded as we could.”
What was the biggest challenge for you in the series?
“I’d say having an answer to every actor’s question [laughs]. It’s a weird situation to find yourself in, having to be equipped with all the answers. As an actor, I’m just used to going up to a director or a writer and asking them. To be the supposedly source of all knowledge, that was quite testing at times.”
Did you have a lot of input in with the directors about the look etc?
“A lot. It was a huge collaborative effort. They were very open and generous and professional, and we had long discussions about what direction we wanted to take it in. Right from day dot, Lee, the director and Bryan Gavigan, the DOP, they sat down and said, ‘we feel that the look of the show should be this’. And came up with something quite bold and quite cinematic.”
How did you go about balancing the genres of the show?
“Honestly, I didn’t make a concerted effort to cross weave the genres or make a particular construct. I guess all I know is, is that the shows I listed before have influenced me. And so, in some way, I think they probably seeped out in their own subconscious kind of way, but it wasn’t a conscious effort of pulling on those threads necessarily when I was writing.”
How important are the minor characters?
“Vital, every single one of them. I’ve lived with them in my brain for about four years now, or maybe longer. It was just utterly, utterly magical seeing them being brought to life by these brilliant actors, who were dedicated and heartbreaking and imaginative and hilarious, and took the baton and ran with it; ran hell for leather. I asked them at the read-through for them to give it their all, and I would argue they gave it more than that.”
Do you have any favourite Aussie shows or actors?
“Well, that’s a very topical question. Colin from Accounts, I watched it on the plane because there’s so much content on the plane. I hadn’t seen it. And I was like, ‘oh, I’ve heard about this’. And we had about 30 minutes until landing, so I’ve only watched 30 minutes. But those 30 minutes that I saw have been enough to make me text about 20 of my friends. I thought those two lead actors were absolutely point blank wonderful. And the humour in it was exceptional. It was just a very, very wonderful thing. That would be my current number one”.
Passenger is streaming on BritBox, with new episodes dropping weekly.
