‘Doc Martin’ star’s intense new TV project ‘Out There’ revealed
Martin Clunes has been announced as the star of a new crime drama for ITV.
The series comes from Buffalo Pictures, who previously worked with Clunes on Manhunt, Doc Martin, and Arthur & George.
Out There has been written by Ed Whitmore, whose impressive CV includes hits like Grace, Manhunt, Silent Witness, Safe House, and the BBC’s recent Steeltown Murders drama!
Filming right now in the Welsh countryside, the six-part show is being directed by Marc Evans (The Pembrokeshire Murders, Steeltown Murders).
The story explores county lines drug dealing and an escalating, insidious crime wave sweeping the British countryside.
In his first major TV role since the end of Doc Martin last year, Martin Clunes is playing as a farmer confronted with dark forces seeping into his rural community.
“I’m very happy to be working with Marc Evans and Ed Whitmore again after the success of Manhunt,” he commented. “Out There couldn’t be more different from Doc Martin.”
The 61-year-old English actor describes the new series as “pretty dark, but definitely a story worth telling.”
We’re told that Out There will depict “the stealthy, surreptitious invasion of the land our farmer cherishes, with devastating consequences, as his livelihood, homestead and family life are threatened by local county lines drugs dealers, essentially urban gangs using the British countryside as a field of operations, moving drugs and money between their inner-city hubs and provincial areas.”
When’s the release date?
Out There will premiere in the UK on ITV1 and streaming on ITVX in 2024.
A broadcaster in the US hasn’t yet been announced, but it sounds like the sort of show that will likely end up on BritBox or Acorn TV.
Alongside Martin Clunes as farmer Nathan Williams, the cast includes Mark Lewis Jones as Caleb Williams, Natalia Kostrzewa as Eva, Carly-Sophia Davies as Sadie, and Gerran Howell as Rhys.
Playing Nathan’s teenage son Johnny is The Kid Who Would Be King star Louis Ashbourne Serkis, son of actor Andy Serkis (aka Gollum from Lord of the Rings.)
“County lines is a particularly vicious and ruthless wave of drug dealing that uses fear and violence to coerce, often vulnerable, young people into working as runners and dealers,” said writer Ed Whitmore.
“It has become a serious and rapidly increasing problem across the whole of the UK, so it felt like an important and timely story to tell,” he added.
Explaining why he wanted to write thee series, Whitmore revealed: “I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of things being hidden in plain sight and the way in which different social worlds can co-exist cheek-by-jowl until, one day, they collide.
“The fundamental premise of Out There – a widowed farmer who discovers that his son has fallen foul of county lines – immediately spoke to me as a story I wanted to tell.”
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