BBC One thriller Rules of the Game sees Maxine Peake and Rakhee Thakrar lead a stellar cast in this four-parter written by Ruth Fowler.
The series, set in Northern England, examines sexual politics in the modern workplace, with Peake playing Sam, the Chief Operating Officer at family-run sportswear brand Fly Dynamic, where she’s spent decades playing along with the boys’ club atmosphere in the office.
When new HR director Maya (Thakrar) is hired by the company ahead of it becoming a publicly-traded company, she begins uncovering a past of sexual abuse, predatory behaviour and cover-ups that eventually leads to the death of someone in the office – but is the drama based on true events?
Read on to find out whether Rules of the Game is based on a true story.
Is Rules of the Game a true story?
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Rules of the Game isn’t 100 per cent based on a true story – however, the thriller’s creator Ruth Fowler has said that she was inspired by the real-life experiences of many women and the #MeToo movement when writing the series.
“I related to #metoo because of the tangled messages of consent and blame I’d grown up with as a teenager in the late 90s, because of the subtle, insidious career disappointments I’d faced in my twenties, watching the men around me catapult to success while I flailed blindly around in the corridors, staring blankly at locked doors behind which decisions were made without me,” Fowler said about Rules of the Game.
She went on to say that she’d previously tried to confront “the unwanted touches, the brutal assaults, the subtle slights, the drunken groping and the overt come-ones” she’d experienced in her work, but “no one wanted to touch it” as it was “too dark, too nasty, too unpleasant, too shocking”.
When Harvey Weinstein hit the headlines in 2017 after dozens of women made allegations of sexual abuse against him, Fowler was asked to write “a drama loosely based on #metoo in a fictional British workplace”.
“I’d spent my entire life waiting for this moment to create Sam – a woman who had clawed her way to the top, and had been used and abused as much as she had used and abused others,” she said.
Fowler added that while Sam isn’t based on anyone in particular, she did give the character a line which was said by lead defence attorney Donna Rotunno during Harvey Weinstein’s rape and sexual assault trial.
“Rotunno responded to a question about whether she had ever been sexually assaulted on ‘The Daily’ podcast. ‘I have not because I would never put myself in that position. I’ve always made choices from college age on where I never drank too much. I never went home with someone that I didn’t know. I just never put myself in any vulnerable circumstances ever.’
“I took her words and gave them to Sam. Sam who thinks that what had happened to her as a teenager was OK, was normal, was just… what you had to do to get by.”
Meanwhile, Rakhee Thakrar, who plays new HR Director Maya in the series, told RadioTimes.com and other press at a roundtable for the show last summer that she prepared for her role by reading forums and blogs featuring first-person accounts and speaking to friends who’ve been through similar experiences to her character.
“I unfortunately have friends who have been through similar things that Maya has been through in terms of her past and so was able to have some quite in depth conversations with them.
“Every story is so different so all of it just fed in and I’m not sure what ended up coming through or not but I think all that stuff really helps with confidence mainly, in that you’re just always trying not to be a fraud,” she added. “Especially in stories like this where you know somebody is going to watch it and it will have happened to them.”
Rules of the Game airs tonight at 9pm on BBC One, with all episodes available on BBC iPlayer. For all the latest news, visit our dedicated Drama hub, or find out what else to watch with our TV Guide.