{"id":5836,"date":"2021-10-16T10:00:20","date_gmt":"2021-10-16T08:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1389629"},"modified":"2021-10-16T10:23:09","modified_gmt":"2021-10-16T08:23:09","slug":"robert-carlyle-on-cobra-cyberwar-battling-a-real-world-crisis-and-bringing-back-begbie","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/robert-carlyle-on-cobra-cyberwar-battling-a-real-world-crisis-and-bringing-back-begbie\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Carlyle on COBRA: Cyberwar, battling a real-world crisis and bringing back Begbie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Morgan Jeffery\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Saturday, 16 October 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Back in January 2020, when Sky\u2019s thriller series COBRA launched, its subject matter felt like the stuff of science-fiction \u2013 the United Kingdom brought almost to its knees by a global catastrophe, unprepared politicians scrabbling to respond, even scenes of panicked citizens stockpiling toilet paper. Eighteen months later, those first six episodes play very differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cBen Richards [series writer] is obviously some kind of warlock,\u201d grins Robert Carlyle, the esteemed actor who played Prime Minister Robert Sutherland in the series and returns for its follow-up, which launched on Sky Max and NOW on Friday (15th October). \u201cHe was in actual fact thinking of writing COBRA about a pandemic, but apparently he shelved that idea because he thought it would be too ridiculous. Who would believe that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, COBRA explored the ramifications \u2013 both on a personal and worldwide scale \u2013 of a massive solar flare which left much of Britain without power, sparking social and political chaos. The sequel \u2013 COBRA: Cyberwar<\/a> \u2013 sees PM Sutherland\u2019s problems multiply as he faces a new, even more unpredictable threat: a series of crippling cyberattacks. But with the COVID-19 pandemic having come into play since filming on the first series, Carlyle and his COBRA cohorts found themselves navigating a real-world crisis when it came to shooting these new episodes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were all under a tremendous amount of pressure \u2013 it was shot in Manchester tail end of 2020 \/ beginning of 2021 and Manchester had been almost the epicentre of the pandemic crisis at that time. I didn\u2019t leave the apartment for four months other than filming \u2013 because there was a genuine worry on my part that if I was to contract this thing, then the whole show\u2019s gone, you know? So it was a struggle.\u201d<\/p>

The first series of COBRA saw Carlyle\u2019s character faced not just with a country-in-crisis but a family unit in disarray, as the consequences of a drug-fuelled party attended by his daughter Ellie (Marisa Abela) threatened not only her freedom but his political career. In Cyberwar, matters are complicated further by the discovery that his wife Rachel (Lucy Cohu) may be implicated in the death of a Ukrainian business magnate, with an increasing paranoid Sutherland unsure who he can trust \u2013 even keeping longtime ally Anna Marshall (Victoria Hamilton), the Downing Street Chief of Staff, at a distance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis paranoia kind of consumes Sutherland through this series,\u201d Carlyle explains. \u201cI mean, he can\u2019t trust Archie [the scheming Home Secretary played by David Haig], he doesn\u2019t know if he can trust his own wife and ultimately doesn\u2019t know whether he can even trust Anna \u2013 that\u2019s one of the saddest moments in the whole piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more: <\/strong>How realistic is Sky\u2019s new disaster drama Cobra?<\/a><\/p>\n

Having these more personal plots play out alongside COBRA\u2019s spectacular on-screen fireworks is, Carlyle says, \u201cvital\u201d to keeping the series grounded, with the variety of tones offered by the series being a huge part of what appealed to him. In tandem with scenes of family drama, he gets to take on more action-packed sequences and deliver some killer one-liners: this writer\u2019s favourite moment from the first series involved Sutherland apparently looking to placate two political rivals, even offering to fetch them a cup of coffee, before upending their and the audience\u2019s expectations by revealing he had the upper hand all along. \u201cIf you two want coffee,<\/span>\u00a0you can leave by the door you came through<\/span>\u00a0and f**k off to Starbucks,\u201d he growled.<\/span><\/p>\n

\""Robert\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Sky UK<\/i> <\/span>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cGold dust!\u201d Carlyle laughs when recalling that particular exchange. \u201cFantastic, really nicely written \u2013 and even though he\u2019s Sutherland\u2019s nemesis, I absolutely love David Haig\u2019s character Archie Glover-Morgan, I think he\u2019s so fantastic. this horrible dinosaur of a Tory politician. He\u2019s got some funny stuff this year for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Logistical difficulties imposed by COVID aside, creative challenges presented themselves this time around too \u2013 the first series of COBRA was furiously paced, with a series of twists that each raised the stakes higher and higher for Sutherland and company. Could the second hope to match or even outdo its predecessor without stretching credibility? Carlyle thinks they\u2019ve done it \u2013 having worked on both sides of the Atlantic, he\u2019s quick to point to shorter series runs as a key factor in helping to keep the quality up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d spent the previous 12 years in American TV land doing network shows which is 22 episodes per series and it\u2019s quite frankly ridiculous. You cannot possibly maintain the quality through 22 [episodes] \u2013 if you do six seasons, you\u2019re talking about 150, 160 episodes\u2026 so there is always a worry of, \u2018Can you maintain it?\u2019 but certainly the way we do it in this country, with six or eight episodes, there\u2019s more of a chance of maintaining it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Victoria\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Victoria Hamilton as Anna Marshall, Robert Carlyle as Robert Sutherland<\/span><\/figcaption> Sky UK<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

The days of US network television shows offering 22\/23\/24 episodes per season \u2013 as the Carlyle-starring Once Upon a Time did for seven seasons between 2011 and 2018 \u2013 are, he suspects, a thing of the past. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s gonna be too much of that anymore. From what I hear, over there they\u2019re more interested in\u2026 \u2018event pieces\u2019 they call it, where it\u2019s eight to 10 [episodes] maybe. But I think that the days of 22 are probably limited.\u201d<\/p>\n

With its glossy nature, high budget and international scope, COBRA feels like an amalgamation of the British drama series where Carlyle started out and the US shows that he embraced later in his career \u2013 no surprise, then, that he has mixed feelings about recent proposals put forward by John Whittingdale, the UK\u2019s Minister of State for Media and Data, suggesting that shows \u201cmade in Britain by our public service broadcasters [\u2026] should be distinctively British.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat seems insane,\u201d Carlyle says. \u201cI mean, Succession<\/a> \u2013 that\u2019s obviously [set in] America, but it could be anywhere, it could be any kind of country with this power crazy family\u2026 so is that American? And it\u2019s from a British writer as well \u2013 there\u2019s Brits all through that, so what are we saying there?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that we have to do that. Britain punches well above its weight, there\u2019s some quality, quality stuff, so I hope the output just continues as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pauses to think, then adds, \u201cI do think that in the \u201990s when I was coming up there were probably more shows that were maybe about\u2026 I mean, what is normality? But about normal people, normal lives, you know? I think there\u2019s a place for that and I think there is in actual fact probably a gap at the moment for that. I mean, there\u2019s various things like Downton Abbey and Bridgerton<\/a> and The Crown<\/a> and things like that \u2013 but I don\u2019t see any big shows about the nuts and bolts of living in Britain in 2021. So from that perspective, maybe he\u2019s got a point there? But again you don\u2019t want your limit your output, you don\u2019t want to limit your world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Robert\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Robert Carlyle as Begbie in Trainspotting (1996)<\/span><\/figcaption> Channel 4\/Film Four<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

Carlyle\u2019s next project will see him return to a character and a world that very much did capture a cultural zeitgeist \u2013 The Blade Artist<\/a>, a limited series based on Irvine Welsh\u2019s novel, will see him play one Francis Begbie for a third time following 1996\u2019s Trainspotting and its 2017 sequel. \u201cThere was a script there, there was a film script available [for The Blade Artist], but it sat there for probably too long, So Irvine and I, we were thinking, what are we going to do with this? And we both said that it would be great to do it as a six hour television piece.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can tell a bigger story, you can paint a broader picture on television, because you\u2019ve got the time to do it \u2013 and of course as soon as we put the feelers out, the lovely guys at Buccaneer Films got in touch and they\u2019ve taken it and run with it. And we\u2019re hopeful maybe in the next 18 months, maybe two years we\u2019ll see Begbie once more.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fourth novel featuring Edinburgh hardman Begbie, Dead Men\u2019s Trousers, was published in 2018 and was billed as the final novel in the Trainspotting series. Would Carlyle be interested in completing the set with another screen outing after The Blade Artist? \u201cIf there\u2019s an appetite for it,\u201d he says. \u201cThere seems to be! People talk to me about Begbie and about Trainspotting all the time. I mean, the first few years after the first film\u2026 that was the quietest time, believe it or not. Obviously it exploded [on release] and then for a few years after that it was quiet, but since then it\u2019s slowly but surely come back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look on social media, there\u2019s memes of Begbie, Spud, Sick Boy\u2026 I see them all the time \u2013 and the kids that are posting these things weren\u2019t even alive when the film was made! There\u2019s a whole new generation now that\u2019ve got an appetite for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hopes, too, that there\u2019s appetite for more COBRA after Cyberwar. \u201cBen\u2019s currently writing an alien invasion script\u2026\u201d he deadpans, before breaking into a grin. \u201cHe\u2019s not, he\u2019s not! But how do you up the ante? Who knows? But he\u2019s a fantastic writer, Ben, I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll come up with something. Personally, I\u2019d be very, very happy to do more, if they\u2019ll have me!\u201d<\/p>\n

Loved this? Head over to our Big RT Interviews<\/a> hub to read more, including:<\/strong><\/p>\n