ITV’s upcoming drama No Return stars Sheridan Smith as the mother of 16-year-old Noah (Louis Ashbourne Serkis), who is accused of sexually assaulting a boy during a family holiday in Turkey.
The hard-hitting premise will certainly make for a gripping watch, but Noah’s arrest only brings to the surface the tensions that were already brewing before the Powells left the UK, writer Danny Brocklehurst has said.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com and other press, Brocklehurst set the scene for the family’s circumstances: “The Powells go on holiday with Kathy’s [Smith] sister, her husband and their young son, who has attention deficit disorder. And there is a certain amount of baggage that each character goes on that holiday with, as anybody does.
“There’s stuff going on in their life, there are cracks, there are tensions that are bothering them, but they’re going on holiday hoping that the sun will smooth it all away and they’ll have this lovely holiday, and it’ll all be fine and they’ll come back relaxed.”
He added: “But what happens with Noah’s arrest is that all those things become heightened and the cracks intensify and they’re suddenly in a hothouse environment where everything is put under this microscope.”
Brocklehurst went on to explain why it was important to add these existing cracks.
“It was about building in enough backstory, enough things going on for the two families and the dynamic between the two sisters,” he said.
“Sian Brooke’s character has got more money and has always been the dad’s favourite, which Kathy resents, so you build a picture of these two families, a detailed picture so that, hopefully, they feel like real living people with real problems and believable dynamics rather than people just there to serve the story of Noah.”
The writer stressed that, though Noah’s story is “such an important part of the drama”, it’s the family dynamics “where nobody will go back from that holiday the person that they went” that became the “key to the whole drama”.
Additional reporting by Abby Robinson.
No Return is released on ITV in February 2022.
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