Airdate: Restless

Next month 13th Street has the two-part Australian premiere of the 2012 British TV adaptation of William Boyd’s novel, Restless. It features Hayley Atwell, Rufus Sewell, Michelle Dockery, Michael Gambon and Charlotte Rampling.

Hayley Atwell (Any Human Heart, Captain America), Rufus Sewell (Pillars Of The Earth, Zen), Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey, Anna Karenina), Michael Gambon (Page Eight, Luck) and Charlotte Rampling (Melancholia, The Eye Of The Storm) appear in a new two-part mini-series adapted by William Boyd from his award-winning novel of the same title.

What becomes of your life when everything you thought was solid and certain about it turns out to be a fantastically complicated lie? Living a double life; she is not respectable Sally Gilmartin (Charlotte Rampling) but in fact Eva Delectorskaya, a spy for the British Secret Service who has been on the run for 30 years.

Told in two different time zones, the viewer is transported to the 1940s where Sally’s former life as a spy unfolds. In the 1970s she attempts to reveal to her stunned daughter Ruth (Michelle Dockery) the extraordinary events that led to her life of deception and the ever present suspicion that she is being hunted.

For Charlotte Rampling, having access to the original book as source material and also the author of that book was a luxury rarely available to actors. “William Boyd has written a very beautiful script from a book that was very powerful so it makes an incredible package. It is rare for authors to adapt their own books, as it is a completely different skill that you need. In this case, with William, he has a rare ability to do both.”

Rampling shares most of her screen time with Michelle Dockery and Michael Gambon. Despite having no scenes with the actress playing her younger self, Hayley Atwell (Eva), Rampling claims they have a shared energy which comes from having worked together twice previously (The Duchess and I, Anna).
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Eva’s story begins in Paris in 1939. Eva, a beautiful Russian émigrée, is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer (Rufus Sewell), a mysteriously alluring Englishman. As Romer trains Eva to become the perfect spy their love affair begins. When a crucial mission collapses in the USA and Eva finds her in terrible, fatal jeopardy she knows she has no option but to run and hide – forever. Once a spy always a spy. No-one can be trusted. But now Sally Gilmartin yearns to end her years of restless watching and waiting.

Thirty years on, the only man who can bring this about is her former lover and spymaster, Lucas Romer, now Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve (Michael Gambon), and the only person she can call on for help is her daughter, Ruth. The final chapter of this epic story of love, duplicity and betrayal is about to end – and who will pay the greatest price remains to be discovered.

The 2×90-minute drama was filmed in South Africa and the UK and is directed by acclaimed theatre director, Edward Hall (Spooks, Strike Back) and produced by Emmy award-winner, Hilary Bevan Jones (State Of Play, Girl In The Cafe) and Paul Frift (Room At The Top, The Best Possible Taste).

Restless is an Endor production in association with Sundance Channel for BBC One. It is produced by Hilary Bevan Jones and Paul Frift and directed by Edward Hall. The executive producers are William Boyd, Matthew Read for the BBC and Christian Vesper for Sundance Channel.

Saturday June 1 and 8 at  8.30pm on 13th Street.