Latest news with #TheDurrells
Daily Mirror
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
The Assassin filming locations as Keeley Hawes' Prime Video thriller drops
The Assassin is currently airing on Prime Video and stars Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore as a mother and son duo - but where was the action-packed drama filmed? The Assassin, a much-anticipated six-part action thriller, is on Prime Video and stars Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore as a mother-son duo. Julie, a retired hitwoman, has chosen to live her life in solitude on a picturesque and secluded Greek island. However, when her estranged son Edward arrives with questions about his father and upbringing, Julie's tranquil existence is disrupted. The two are compelled to collaborate as Julie's tumultuous past resurfaces and family secrets are unveiled. Hawes, who portrays Julie, recently made an uncommon family revelation as she discussed the new drama. Here's everything you need to know about the filming locations of the series. Where was The Assassin filmed? The series was filmed in Greece, with most of the action taking place in Athens, and director Lisa Mulcahy admitted they faced challenges. She stated: "Making a show in another country in extreme heat is very challenging for everyone involved, as at times we were shooting in nearly forty-degree heat. "Some days were brutal, but we made sure everyone drank loads of water, stayed out of the heat and kept out of direct sunlight." Star Highmore also confessed that the harsh conditions made filming quite difficult. He added: "Filming in Athens has been amazing. The variety of locations that we've filmed in has been crazy, we've covered land, sea, woods, yachts, mansions... the list goes on. "This is my first time in Athens, and it was amazing to film there, but the most challenging thing has been the heat. "Any sweat on screen that can be seen as we run around is most likely genuine! It's certainly one of the hottest climates I've ever filmed in." His co-star Hawes shared her enthusiasm about returning to Greece for work, stating: "I previously did The Durrells for four series and we filmed that in Corfu, but because there's no infrastructure there for filming, lots of the crew had come from Athens. "Coming to Athens to shoot The Assassin has meant I'm back with a lot of those people I met in Corfu. "There's nothing better than walking onto a set on your first day, feeling nervous and apprehensive, to then be greeted by so many familiar friendly faces that I had spent a lot of time with over those four lovely years." Greece also served as a stand-in for all the other countries visited in the series, including Spain, the south of France and Albania. The Assassin is available on Prime Video.
Daily Mirror
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
The Assassin's Keeley Hawes' life off-screen including real name
The Assassin star Keeley Hawes has had a successful acting career and is known for her roles in shows such as The Durrells, Bodyguard and Line of Duty The Assassin is coming to Prime Video and the high-octane thriller follows Julie and her estranged son Eddie (played by Freddie Highmore) as their relationship is put to the test in the ultimate fight for survival. Star Keeley Hawes portrays a former hitwoman now residing in Greece, and when her son arrives for a visit, he's desperate for answers about his father's identity and his mum's mysterious past. Both mother and son find themselves in mortal peril as Julie's dark history begins to resurface and long-buried secrets come to light. Hawes recently made a rare family admission ahead of the show's release. The 49 year old star was born in Paddington, London, as the baby of four siblings, spending her formative years in a council flat in Marylebone until age 16. Despite her worldwide recognition under her stage moniker, she was actually christened Clare Julia Hawes, reports the Express. In a candid chat with The Times about her upbringing, she revealed details about life alongside her elder brothers, Keith and Jamie, plus older sister, Joanne. "My mum was very house-proud — if we had any spare money, it would go on decorating," she said. "The result was hilarious. We had lots of authentic brassware around a fireplace, but you could clearly see it was an electric fire. "She was quite partial to terrible little figurines on top of the television cabinet. She also loved animals - we had a standard poodle, Becky, and a big white Persian cat." She reflected on her modest origins, explaining: "My parents weren't well-heeled, and it must have been a struggle bringing up four children, but we were never on the breadline. "In those days, people didn't go on big holidays. Every year or so, we went to Cornwall for a couple of weeks, in the taxi, or we'd go on day trips - and always end up in Brighton." When she reached nine years old, her mum and dad asked whether she fancied attending Sylvia Young's theatre school which had just opened close by. She had relished performing in school productions and it seemed like an obvious path to pursue. It was at this establishment where she would forge friendships with former Spice Girl Emma Bunton and actress Kellie Bright. Hawes initially burst onto the scene during the 1990s following several supporting appearances in Troublemakers, Karaoke and The Beggar Bride. Her debut cinema performance came in The Avengers in 1998, where she portrayed Tamara. The Assassin airs on Prime Video on July 25
Daily Mail
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Incest horror of the Durrells. Bombshell papers tell of obscene sex abuse as the violent and dark secrets behind the happy family facade are finally exposed
The Durrells – ITV 's award–winning 2016 adaptation of Gerald Durrell's bestselling trilogy about his family's move to Corfu in the 1930s – was joyous and golden, awash with love, eccentricity and mad humour. We all wanted to be part of that wonderful chaotic family as they moved from villa to villa – Strawberry Pink to Daffodil Yellow to Snow White – during their four-year stay. Lunching in the sun at a table half submerged in the Ionian Sea with Gerald's brother and sisters Leslie and Margo. Drinking wine in the shade with his widowed mother Louisa (played by Keeley Hawes). Helping young Gerry himself tend his pelicans. Or maybe just being charmed by eldest brother, Larry, an aspiring writer who was portrayed (by Josh O'Connor) as tall, dark, charismatic and excitingly louche.
Spectator
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
‘Too bohemian for Bournemouth': the young Lawrence Durrell
These legendary lives need the clutter cleared away from them occasionally. Lawrence Durrell and his brother Gerald turned their family's prewar escape to an untouched Corfu into a myth that supplied millions of fantasies. It still bore retelling and extravagant expansion recently, if the success of ITV's series The Durrells is any sign. (One indication of that pleasant teatime diversion's accuracy: the actor playing Larry, Josh O'Connor, is 6ft 2in. Larry himself was a whole foot shorter.) How Louisa Durrell, struggling with life in Britain after returning from India, went in a bundle with her children to a Greek island of cheap Venetian mansions, heat and innocent adventure is always going to have its appeal. What the Corfu idyll leaves out is why we should be interested in the story in the first place. Lawrence Durrell was a very good novelist, and this episode was only one of many that contributed to his work. That probably needs saying, since he is out of fashion today for a number of reasons. One is that his books, full of extravagant evocations of exotic places and pleasures, no doubt appealed to a British readership in the 1950s that was starved of such things. But how do the delights of Corfu, or indeed Alexandria, stand up when any of us can hop on a plane and sample them for ourselves? A second reason is connected: Durrell's literary style is undoubtedly baroque, his concept of a novel's structure sometimes baffling (especially in the late Avignon Quintet) and in general open to accusations of over-indulgence. I read the Alexandria Quartet recently for the first time since I was at school, and was surprised by how well it had survived – a steely, bloodthirsty thriller of betrayal, deals and gun-running coagulating out of innocent romantic delusion. Individual episodes, such as the duck shoot in Justine, are wonderfully exciting; and the prose, which I had expected to find overblown, can be startlingly close to the Martin Amis of the 1980s: Melissa's dressing-room was an evil-smelling cubicle full of the coiled pipes that emptied the lavatories. She had a single poignant strip of cracked mirror and a little shelf, dressed with the kind of white paper upon which wedding cakes are built. Here she always set out the jumble of powders and crayons which she misused so fearfully. A further reason for Durrell's unfashionableness is, of course, precisely the biographical expansion, and not just the Corfu fantasy. Sappho, his daughter from his second marriage, set down in her diary details of her sexual abuse by him before committing suicide, just as his character Livia, based on Sappho, had been described as doing. These things can destroy a novelist's reputation. For the moment, his story is still worth telling, and although this is not the first or most important biography, it has a strong appeal – which is partly accidental. Michael Haag, who had already written books about Alexandria and the Corfu episode, was at work on a full biography when he died in 2020. This turned out to be complete up till the end of the war, with Durrell only just starting on what would be Justine. Profile Books has decided to publish it as it stands, which in fact is an alluring decision. What we have is that most interesting approach of literary biographies – the formative years before fame. Durrell hardly ever lived in Britain, and indeed in later years the question sometimes arose of whether he was a British citizen at all. He was born in India in 1912, the son of a brilliant engineer (the wonderful loop at the top of the great Darjeeling railway is his father's work). Some memories of Indian life must have fed into the grotesquery he was capable of as a novelist. When his sister was bitten by her pet spaniel, rabies terrors meant that they had to carry the dog's severed head in a canister on a long train journey to be tested. The family was not quite Raj top-drawer, but Durrell was nevertheless sent back to school in England, and lived with his returning mother in a succession of inappropriately ostentatious houses. Aged 19, he was told by her that he was too much for Bournemouth. 'You can be as bohemian as you like, but not in the house. I think you had better go somewhere where it doesn't show so much,' she said. A brief and raucous Bloomsbury period followed; a noisy marriage; and then the celebrated decampment en masse to Corfu. It was not quite as idyllic in all respects as it has been painted. The young Durrells' enthusiasm for nude sunbathing with each other and visiting friends of both sexes (startlingly documented here in photographs) was one thing the Corfiots jibbed at. The decisive period, however, to which Haag devotes most space, was 1940s Egypt. At the outbreak of hostilities, Durrell had been evacuated with his wife Nancy and infant daughter Penelope Berengaria from Kalamata in the Peloponnese. The experience of war in Egypt was tumultuous, and the mix of different cultures, officialdom, idealists, high society and bohemian life is exactly what makes the Alexandria Quartet so enthralling. The Durrells' marriage broke down and Nancy departed in is hard not to conclude that the war, the heady experience of grand café society and the sense of being at the centre of things had changed Larry fundamentally. Soon he was in a tempestuous relationship with the unstable Eve, who became his second wife and ultimately the disturbing Melissa of the Quartet. As captivating as this novel sequence is, it shows (as Haag frankly admits) that Durrell's experiences did not quite equip him to write about the political situation. It has always been agreed that it would have been impossible for his character Nessim, a Copt, to have been a gun-runner for Zionists in Palestine. Durrell decided to make him one because he was irresistibly drawn to the idea that, alone in the drama, Nessim would have wanted to marry the Jewish Justine out of calculation rather than passion. Though it reveals the limits of what Durrell could accept about the time and place he lived in, the Quartet has its own reality. What he observed turns into a compelling statement, made of smoke and steel. It ought to return to fashion in time. Haag's book is highly readable and elegantly put together, and, if unintentionally, produces a satisfying whole by stopping where it does. In fact, I suspect that the second half of Durrell's life, especially the late years – full of tragedy, bad conduct and an undeniable decline in talent and readability – would not be as enjoyable an experience. We end with him returning to his beloved Greece after the war and starting to work on Justine, a book which hit the British reading public in 1957 at exactly the right moment. A full biography, on the other hand, would have to include Sappho's suicide; the dismal and incomprehensible final volumes of the Avignon Quintet (the last of which Faber returned to be revised, so little impressed were they); and Durrell's death in 1990, before the French state could seize his property for non-payment of taxes. I met him briefly in London in 1983; the strange thing now is that I have absolutely no impression of his being as short as he actually was. His presence was immense. Though this is a good biography, I have a request of publishers in general. Lawrence Durrell has been done often, and very respectably. In the course of Haag's descriptions of life at the British Embassy and British Council in wartime Egypt, the name of Robert Liddell comes up. Liddell was also a seriously good novelist, and one who often appears as the adviser and friend of writers such as Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor and Ivy Compton-Burnett. His story – he was abused as a child, abandoned England after the death of his beloved brother, and lived in Egypt and Greece – could be gripping. Might a publisher, for once, commission not a life we've heard several times but one of this remarkable but still strangely neglected novelist?
Daily Mail
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Disney+ fans gripped by award-winning period drama hailed as 'better than Downton Abbey' with perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and 'really sharp jokes'
TV fans have been gripped by an award-winning period drama hailed as 'better than Downton Abbey '. The Durrells first aired on ITV back in 2016 and ran until 2019 for four seasons. It has since been added to Disney+ and telly watchers have been able to discover it all over again. The Durrells follows Louisa Durrell (Keeley Hawes) as she embarks on bringing up her four children along following her husband's death. Set in the 1930s, Louisa moves her family to Corfu and navigates her new life. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. The Durrells follows Louisa Durrell (Keeley Hawes) as embarks on bringing up her four children along following her husband's death In 2017, Keeley Hawes bagged Best Actress from the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, according to IMDB. The drama also has raving reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and whopping scores across all of the seasons. The second and third instalments both have perfect 100% ratings on the site and many fans have left their verdicts of the series. Set in a similar time period to Downton Abbey, The Guardian gushed in 2016 how the series fills the 'void left by Downton Abbey'. While according to the Express, fans have hailed The Durrells as 'better than Downton Abbey'. Another publication, Decider, described it as 'full of really sharp jokes and an entire community of hilariously quirky characters'. Some viewers have left their verdicts on Rotten Tomatoes over the years and penned: 'Hilarious yet nostalgic. Totally recommend. Great cast. Had me laughing so much, thoroughly enjoyable. Loved it.'; 'Beautiful, wonderfully acted, funny, tight. A rarity in today's dumb dim dreary cinema landscape.'; 'Wonderful story with gorgeous cinematography and the natural beauty of Greece! Enchanting.' Though not everyone has been impressed and someone wrote: 'Awful. Watch the 1980s version.' When the series came to an end back in 2019, fans of The Durrells were left in tears. Louisa and her children forced to abandon their rented villa in Corfu as the events of the Second World War loomed over the horizon of the Greek island. But before the final goodbyes, Louisa shared a kiss on the sand with taxi driver Spiros - a heart-wrenching moment that left some viewers in tears. One posted: 'Can't cope this morning. Catching up with last nights #TheDurrells and am in pieces.' Another added: 'I woke up thinking, 'why do I feel sad?' Then remembered Louisa and Spiros on the beach, which I then rewatched and cried again.' A third wrote: 'Thank You #TheDurrells for such a great show that became one of my favourites. I'll be rewatching it for years and years. I'm really gonna miss the family.'
