‘Alice & Jack’: How Creatives Behind Andrea Riseborough & Domhnall Gleeson Project Wanted Channel 4/Masterpiece TV Series To Feel Like An Indie Film

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Creatives behind Alice & Jack, which stars Domhnall Gleeson and Andrea Riseborough in the latter’s first role since the To Leslie controversy, have spotlighted how they wanted the Channel 4/Masterpiece TV series to feel like an indie film.

Speaking before Alice & Jack‘s TIFF premiere, Cannes Grand Prix-winning director Juho Kuosmanen and EP Richard Yee explained that the team behind the show, which is penned by Mad Men’s Victor Levin, virtually all came from the world of independent cinema.

The idea for a romantic series about an unbreakable bond between two people emerged from long conversations between Levin, Riseborough and Gleeson during the Covid-19 pandemic and had been percolating for years, with Channel 4 then Masterpiece subsequently boarding.

Also starring Aisling Bea, Sunil Patel and Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood, Alice & Jack follows these two people over a lengthy period of time who are bound by a connection “so powerful nothing can break it,” but “life and emotional complexities get in the way,” according to the logline. “It was key to us that we approached this more like a film than a TV series,” said Yee, exec producer and co-founder of I Am Ruth indie Me+You Productions. “We wanted to build it up to feel very authored and didn’t want to treat it as just another TV show.” Yee compared the series in tone to BBC/Hulu smash Normal People, which catapulted Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones to stardom and was also shot over a long period of time with indie film sensibilities. “Alice & Jack is obviously its own thing but that slightly more adult approach to relationships is similar,” he added. “They are observationally driven and show the messiness and imperfections of life and love.