| Sound Bytes | Carl Weathers |
NORTHERN FRIGHTS
PASSENGER A close-knit community is torn apart by mysterious disappearances.
The screenwriting debut of actor Andrew Buchan (Broadchurch), six-part thriller Passenger casts Loki’s Wunmi Mosaku as former Met officer Riya Ajunwa, whose yearning for a big case in the northern town of Chadder Vale is granted when a delivery goes missing, followed by the abduction of a teenage girl. A series of inexplicable and increasingly horrific events follow…
Where did the idea for Passenger come from?
Andrew Buchan: I grew up in Bolton, where people reacted to major events by squashing and dismissing them with a quip or quick-fire retort. That always interested me, and I wondered: what would be the worst thing I could put in a small northern community, something that would stretch their humour to the limit? Two huge influences are Fargo and Stranger Things, the way they juxtapose epic with traditional, appalling with bog-standard, horror with comedy, all with a sense of scepticism that keeps it grounded in the community.
Wunmi, why did you get involved? Wunmi Mosaku: Andy told me the whole story back in 2016 – it was lovely that he wrote Riya with me in mind. It was a script by someone who knows good dialogue and how characters spar with one another. Every character, every object, every environment has a purpose – nothing feels superfluous. It felt different, dark and comic – not like a procedural.
You’ve played a few detectives in your time – what distinguishes Riya?
WM: She feels like part of the community: when she’s dealing with a crime, it’s very much her talking, not the badge. She enjoys being a big fish in this town and, although she does have itchy feet, she needs to figure out what’s going on in this place before she moves on.
AB: I wanted to write a real 3D person who happens to be a police officer.
‘I wondered: what would be the worst thing I could put in a small northern community?’
ANDREW BUCHAN
I find that more interesting than your typical copper who opens the pad, gets the pen out and goes: ‘What were you doing on Tuesday at 4pm?’ That doesn’t grip me as much as someone like Riya who boxes and has a temper.
Would you class Chadder Vale as a ‘left-behind’ community?
WM: Definitely. It’s the place that time forgot. It feels very much like now and relevant, but also stuck in the past with the cars and the costumes and the props. It’s a close-knit community where everyone somehow feels like an outsider.
AB: There are a lot of these remote places, tiny villages surrounded by stunning scenery, that you just happen upon. They feel like they’ve got lost or forgotten about, but they have a deep sense of identity and place and don’t like anything challenging that.
PASSENGER LAUNCHES ON ITVX IN MARCH.