New Blood (2016) s01e99 Episode Script

1 The trouble with the Serious Fraud Office is that once they get started, they don't stop.
Stefan? What do you want? - Why did you want to be a policeman? - I don't want to be a policeman.
I want to be a detective.
Bromley didn't like you very much, did they? - I didn't like them very much either.
- You think you can pick and choose? I have three teams, 30 people working on this.
We've scanned over 10,000 documents, spent God knows how many man-hours.
You think I'm going to risk it all for your Batman and Robin antics? Sayyad! How are you setting in? Just the one dead witness.
- Arrash Sayyad.
- Stefan Kowolski.
It's a young, fast-paced, exciting action-adventure series, with London as a very major character and, I have to say, I don't think there's anything on television quite like it, certainly in terms of the amount of action we've managed to film.
I think the thing that most excited me when I read the first script was seeing a point of view on London that I haven't seen on screen before.
Two guys at the bottom rung of the ladder, kind of excited, ambitious, and then they realise that, actually, they are kind of small cogs in a very big world, where there are far more powerful people than them, with different agendas.
It has a lot more depth, a lot more humour, a lot more personality.
You've got these two protagonists at the head of this thing that are very young, very eager, very keen, and it's about their drive and them struggling to make a mark in a world dominated by that kind of older generation.
There's a real edge to it, there's a real darkness to it.
There's a real sense of danger about the world.
There's a real busyness, and then you have these moments of, like, stillness, and there's all these different elements, but then, on the backdrop of that, you've got this real truth about fraud and crime and people who have died, and people whose lives are being ruined by this injustice.
Essentially, it's fast-paced, it's action-packed, it deals with a world of contemporary kind of white-collar crime, kind of moneyed crime.
These aren't the old-fashioned gangsters of traditional kind of Cockney-gangster kind of material.
I felt it was fresh.
It couldn't really be more kind of current and topical, in a way.
The three elements that Anthony's chosen to write about are so at the kind of forefront of the news, particularly recently.
It's great that Anthony Horowitz has written lead characters who are Brits but also from ethnically diverse backgrounds.
That's reflective of our society today, particularly London.
It's so cosmopolitan.
What is the next step forward in crime investigative drama? That was what I wanted to do, to sort of shake the envelope a bit and to move things on.
So the first idea I had was to set it not in one location.
So many of these shows are set just in the police or the vice squad or cold cases or whatever.
I would set it in two locations.
On the one side, we have the police, but on the other, we have the SFO, the Serious Fraud Office, and as far as I know, this is the very, very first time that the SFO has ever been dramatised on TV, and it's great that they've really been behind the series and given us a lot of help.
The kind of piece this is, it's very, very hard to pull off, because what it wants to do, and what it succeeds in doing, is rooting itself in a sense of reality.
You can write a crime piece, you can write a political thriller, but to kind of pull all these strands together and inject a sense of humour and vitality I think is a very, very hard thing to do.
In the past, cop shows tended to be very earnest and very serious, and 'R's all about the procedure, it's all about the crime, it's all about being a cop, and, often, in these shows, you'll have quite stereotypical characters, quite one-dimensional characters.
It's got such an intelligent edge to it that people will be involved and interested and want to find out where these stories go.
That's what happened to me when I was reading it.
You just want to find out where it's going, turn the page and see what happens next, because it's twisty and turny, but it's all good stuff.
New Blood is a fast-paced, action-filled crime drama.
When you get a script, especially like this, there are so many scenes that jump out, you think, as a director, "I can't wait to direct this.
" You get to make-believe these incredible scenarios.
It feels urgent, and exciting, and it's really exciting to be a part of.
What we wanted to do was to kind of push the envelope as much as we could in a BBC One mainstream show.
So we wanted to kind of embrace a kind of new wave of editing and filming techniques that you've seen sort of come up in recent years, so it's a lot of match cuts, it's a lot of match frames, it's kind of taking the editing process to try and try and create cuts that help push the story on, rather than just doing the conventional, which is often have a scene, cut to exterior, hear a bit of pre-lap dialogue, go inside, into the scene.
I wanted to try and create a visual style that gave the show an identity and made it feel fresh and exciting.
We wanted it to feel different, to feel dynamic, and Anthony Horowitz's script already felt very new.
He'd already designed into the story the idea of using flashbacks, so immediately we knew we were going to have to find a stylistic way of presenting those and, essentially, we just ran with that idea.
Close the whole lot down.
Jerry Clarke.
Once we got into the edit and we found the style that we particularly liked, which became a very fast-cut, staccato editing style, if you will - single frames, very quick dissolves, flash cuts, lots of colour transitions - we took that idea and we pretty much applied it across the whole show.
My background as a Scandinavian DoP and the way we traditionally work, I've been trying to bring that into the show by adding lots of rich darkness, making it a little more sinister, visually, but, at the same time, using as much natural and available light, which is part of our tradition back home.
So many TV shows seem to have middle-aged men and women with their various problems, and I wanted to look at the Y Generation, this generation of people whom we're told are going to be less well-off than the older generation for the first time in history, and I love the idea that I'd have, you know, really fresh investigators, the "new blood" of the title, who in between investigating crime are trying to find somewhere to live in London, which is impossible, or they're trying to pay off their tuition fees, and so I came up with Rash and Stefan.
Rash is Iranian-British and Stefan is Polish-British and, again, the idea here was to set them slightly apart, to make them sort of outsiders.
I love the idea of small people fighting big crime.
Well, I loved the fact that Anthony had written one guy whose parents were from Poland and who was born there but raised here, and the sense of identity that gave him, and that the other character's from Iranian parents but kind of born and raised here, and I really wanted that to be as authentic as possible.
So I approached casting director Gary Davy, who, you know, has got an amazing reputation and we've worked with at Eleventh Hour Films we've worked with him before, and he loved the scripts, so it was a kind of an instant exciting start to the casting journey.
Anthony Horowitz had a Christmas party, which is about six months before I even started on this, came up to me and said, "I've got a great project.
"Can you start looking for?" And was very specific about what he wanted.
He really wanted this show to be about young people, especially about these two young lads from very different backgrounds, very different social circles, very different ethnicities, but to be very much second-generation and to be very much Londoners, but their heritage to be from somewhere else, which is just really interesting.
Who are you? I'm her brother.
Brother and sister? That's nice.
I'll, er see you later, then.
Yeah.
If you can keep up I I was talking to her.
We wanted to find two relative unknown actors, two guys that had never played the lead before, and also, in an ideal world, people actors with some kind of connection to the cultural roots of the two main characters, so it would be great if we had someone with Polish roots, someone with Iranian roots and, my God, we found them.
Mark I'd actually met before on something and came in and just from the moment he sat down in the first audition, he nailed it, and it was like Stefan was sitting there.
He was fantastic, and we knew we knew straightaway.
Ben took us hard to find.
He came in later but, again, when he came in, he had this kind of swagger and this confidence about him, yet the confidence married with a little bit of insecurity, which kind of worked perfectly for where we wanted Rash to start from.
Sorry about that.
It was very obvious that Ben and Mark hit it off the moment they sat down next to each other in the audition, and I felt very quietly excited in the room, with both Anthony Philipson and creator Anthony Horowitz, that we had found two people who were our Rash and Stefan.
When you got them both together and the chemistry was there, again, it was a slam dunk.
It just had to be those two boys, and it just happened to be that that's exactly what Anthony had written.
So it was really perfect.
It was a lovely audition process.
You follow two young outsiders, one guy called Rash, who's British-Iranian, who works for the police force, and the character I play, Stefan, who's British-Polish, and he works for the Serious Fraud Office.
Rash starts off as a police constable in the series but his dream is always to be a detective, and when the series begins, he's given a six-month probation as a trainee and that's how it sets up, and we see how it goes from there.
They pit themselves up against the big man, you could say, it's us against the world, and we're trying to get justice, and that's what binds them.
It's about big corporations and fraud, about the gap in society, where you have the rich and the people trying to make it.
Stefan and Rash represent that young voice that wants to do something about that the unfairness and injustice of living in London and the world.
Fine.
I'll tell you what I know - if you tell me what you know.
- OK.
You go first.
No, I invited you here.
And I paid! If you tell my bosses I told you anything, I'll get killed.
Same.
All right, but this is just between you and me.
- All right? - All right.
The SFO are investigating a company called UK Remicon.
It's huge.
It makes pharmaceutical products.
And? Well, it's bribing doctors and pharmacists to promote their products.
Sell them to the NHS at overinflated prices.
One of those doctors is David Leese, and David Leese is somehow linked to Henry Williams.
Now it's your turn.
Henry is, er He's connected to the murder of three people.
Two teachers and a guy who worked at a gardening centre.
They all took part in some sort of experiment in India.
Was that for a company called Greenfern? - Yes.
- Do you know what drug? - Er an antidepressant.
- Name.
- I don't know.
- David Leese was CEO of Greenfern.
I know.
And Greenfern paid everyone who took part - £600.
- Yes! Your sister, Leila.
Does she have a boyfriend? That's not a question.
That's got nothing to do with this.
When I got New Bood, it was like, "Ohh! I get to do what I love.
" Because I had quite a few auditions as well.
I think it was, like, I don't know, four processes, and when she rang me, she said, "OK, you need to go back in again.
" And I was like And instantly all the excitement, all the idea of the all that dreaming about the part, working in London, playing Polish, doing all this dissipated, like a stone, sunk to the bottom.
I was numb.
And then she went, "But they're going to offer you the part.
"They want you to read with whoever Rash is.
" I was a bit surprised, but I mean At the last meeting, I don't know, you can sort of feel something in the room and I just I had a vibe with this Mark, and just, the director, I could sense we just don't know we just got on well.
And also, for some reason, until I found Rash, I didn't feel Stefan was there until I knew who I was playing against.
It's one of those weird things.
And then I met Ben, and we did a read, and then he got offered the job and then, from there, it was a bit like, "Ooh" Rash lives with an Iranian mum and sister.
You haven't told us anything about your work, Arrash.
How's it all going? I used to live with my sister, grew up with my sister and still live with my mum.
So How you doing, girls, all right? So, erm I can relate to that, their relationship, I can relate to how he feels smothered at times by Iranian women, which they do love to do.
You're not my usual driver.
What's happened to Ivan? Ivan's not well, sir.
They sent me.
My mother is Polish.
My grandma - Janina Patecka I might actually be saying that wrong, but Janina, my grandma, is Polish.
She came from Poland but the place where she used where she's from is now the Ukraine, because after the Second World War the boundaries changed and we lost our farm.
My babcia went through this amazing journey through all Siberia, and came back round and landed in Moreton-in-Marsh and then came to Leicester.
What? So, what was essential for me was, I wanted it to be authentic, of course.
I just wanted it to be like I'd been speaking Polish with my parents all the time.
What kept you? You're losing your touch.
Mark Addy, we just got on like we were mates whilst the cameras weren't rolling.
And working with a good actor, you just sort of feed off them, so I like to just be in the moment, and when someone's giving you delivering the lines well, I don't know, it's just some sort of reaction.
So when the cameras were rolling and when they weren't, just both, it was just nice to work with him.
He's a good lad.
It only got really daunting for me when Ariyon Bakare and Anna Chancellor were in the room talking, and I didn't go in and say hello because I was just a bit too intimidated and nervous about the situation.
They were these people that had a wealth of experience In fact, everyone that came in had a wealth of experience, but I feel like the situation served itself again.
Because Stefan is the character he is, it means that he didn't see authority, he didn't really see status, he just saw another person.
The locations.
What did I love the most? SFO.
I love setting up camp.
I love studio work.
I love getting used to an environment after a while.
I love getting my desk.
I love eating my lunch on my desk.
I loved all that.
Filming in London was a good laugh.
All these people hassling me.
I can't go anywhere now.
New Blood has changed my life.
- I thought I wanted this life.
- But look, look.
Hassling me Because it's where I live.
And I love the city.
And it feels familiar.
And, you know, no matter when or where you're filming, there's always people passing by, stopping, staring.
It's just, everywhere you go is a buzz.
- These two, mate, biggest fans.
Look.
- Won't leave me alone Crikey.
I'm not that famous.
Jesus.
And I think that feeds, maybe, into the I think that helps feed the characters.
And feeds into the story.
Follow that car.
And there's a lot to play around with.
For example, forms of transport, as you'll see.
Lots of different locations.
Such a variety.
There's so much diversity in terms of location.
I mean, we went to all types of establishments - indoor, outdoor - so you never get bored.
It's not like being in a studio.
Every day, you're coming somewhere new, and you're seeing all these lovely places.
The Olympic Park was nice.
I hadn't actually been to the Olympic Park, I wasn't here for the Olympics.
But that's what I mean, you get this opportunity for you to go and explore.
We went everywhere - west, east, north.
Three words that describe the show? Young.
London.
Jokes.
London is almost the third big character in the show, so shooting here became absolutely vital, for me, for the series to really reflect a side of London that I didn't feel had been seen on screen.
The melting pot that London is.
The fact that people's parents are from every corner of the world, that we have the best restaurants, how colourful London is, that different areas have completely different vibes to each other, and it was great to see that.
London's definitely a character in this, and we tried to find areas that are overlooked by perhaps the kind of mainstream, the big movies that drive a bus over Tower Bridge or fly helicopters down the Thames past the Houses of Parliament.
We went to the East End quite a lot, to where there's a lot of new developments.
The old East End is crumbling away, and a lot of the buildings have been replaced by very flashy steel-and-glass towers, and there's something exciting about that.
There's something exciting and vibrant about a city that's kind of reinventing itself.
And there's some phenomenal architecture, so some very cool places to shoot.
The main thing for me was actually visualising London as sort of a additional character.
I think the script already implied on the first hand that London was it was significant that London would be included in the story, visually, and that was the first thing that really attracted me to it.
Little characters in a bigger-scale story in London, that was sort of the thing that caught my attention.
New Blood is set in London but it's more about the people that are in it than the spaces, for me.
It's more about how London is such a cosmopolitan city, and it's such a place of, on the one hand, opportunity, but on the other hand, darkness and and corruption, and it's about how these two worlds are intermingled and collide, so, really, London comes across in the people and in the characters that are in New Blood, as well as the backdrops and the settings.
Keep up, old man.
But I couldn't see it being anywhere else.
London is such an exciting city at the moment, and we have filmed all over the city and have managed to get some amazing backgrounds.
In fact, I'd say that, to a large extent, London is the third character in this show.
I can't see it being filmed anywhere else.
A number of things I really hope audiences take away from watching the episodes.
Loving spending time with our main characters, finding them funny but going on their emotional Journeys with them, too.
Being able to identify with them, but also, this is an Anthony Horowitz show.
We know that there's going to be fantastic crime storytelling, we know that we're going to be gripped by these amazing, intricate stories, and, you know, this isn't a show just for younger viewers.
This absolutely has something for everybody.
I don't think there is anything like it on British television right now.
Certainly the pace of it, the amount of action, the fantastic editing style of it, the fact that it's so light on its feet.
It's definitely not a comedy, but it has got a sort of a warm, humorous heart to it, particularly in the relationship of these two boys.
I would say that they are the bromance, they are the core of the show, and although they're great fun to be with, they inhabit a very dangerous and a very menacing world.