She has won rave reviews for her intense performances in independent films such as Electricity and Sunset Song. Now model-turned-actress Agyness Deyn is to star in her first television role playing Elaine Renko, an enigmatic cop with a damaged past in the pre-apocalyptic drama Hard Sun, a new thriller from Luther creator Neil Cross.
“One of the things that really drew me to the part was the chance to play a woman who is enigmatic and strong-willed but without the sexual projections that such roles usually have,” Deyn told the Observer. “Renko is driven by the need to do what she knows is right. She’d probably rather have a fight than an intimate conversation. She’s doing everything for a cause.”
And that cause is a big one: Cross was inspired to write Hard Sun by the David Bowie song Five Years from the singer’s fifth album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which imagines that there are only five years left until the end of the world. “It could and should be a sad song, but in Bowie’s hands it becomes joyous and uplifting because it’s about the value of the everyday and everyone, and I found that really wonderful,” he says.
“I wanted to tell the story of two characters who, for really good reasons, profoundly distrusted each other but who were forced by circumstances to work together. I found myself thinking what would a series be like where they have to be friends in a world that’s about to end.”
As you might expect from the creator of the darkly stylish Luther, which saw Idris Elba playing a police officer of questionable morals and strong fists, the answer is complicated. Jim Sturgess, who plays the other half of the crime-fighting duo – the rough-around-the-edges Sweeney-throwback Charlie Hicks – says that the show’s power comes from its willingness to take risks. “There’s a danger to Charlie and that’s fun to play,” he says. “He does do questionable things but, at the same time, there are very complex reasons why he might bend the rules to protect those he loves. Both characters constantly wrongfoot you. That’s a large part of the appeal.”
Cross also has fun playing with genre, melding crime with science fiction and allowing Hard Sun to nod both to the past and the future, referencing the paranoia of 1980s classics such as Edge of Darkness while shooting a neon-lit futuristic London. “I do think it’s interesting that Edge of Darkness, comes out of the era of the miners’ strike and Margaret Thatcher and the fear of nuclear war, where everything is overridden by a profound distrust of the state,” he says.
“We’re in a time now that is in some ways similar, but the difference is that, for the first time in generations, even sensible optimists like myself have a sense that the world at some point entered an uncontrolled skid and it’s impossible to imagine with any confidence what the future will look like. There’s a general anxiety about the world and I think Hard Sun reflects that.”
Deyn agrees, adding that she was drawn to it because she couldn’t imagine what would happen next in each episode. “What I loved about Neil’s writing was that it really did catch me unawares,” she says. “I’ve only just seen the completed first episode and I really did find myself in shock afterwards – like what just happened ...”
It helped, too, that her character has echoes of classic female sci-fi heroines, most notably Alien’s Ellen Ripley. Like Ripley, Renko is more than capable of taking care of herself – as the show’s shocking and violent opening, which sees the police officer under attack from an intruder in her home, makes clear.
“That was one of my favourite things to shoot, actually,” she says. “It was wet and freezing and cold and hard but also glorious. People have talked to me about Renko being this kind of sci-fi character, but playing Chris in Sunset Song was very similar because she also had that sense of self and inner strength. I also had a massive Joan of Arc obsession growing up and definitely injected some of that into Renko.”
Yet for all the violence – and Hicks and Renko have a fabulously choreographed knock-down fight in the first episode, which airs in January – Cross is keen to stress that, in contrast to the brooding, blood-soaked Luther, Hard Sun is entertainment. “It’s not a dark show,” he says. “I don’t want to depress people or make them unhappy. I want to entertain and excite them.”
Sturgess agrees. “There’s a small fingerprint of this show that’s like a graphic novel and that’s really entertaining. There’s a darkness and anxiety to it, but also some really good lines.”
Hard Sun comes to BBC One in January
