BBC's Dark Money explained: Everything you need to know
BBC One's prescient new drama Dark Money follows a working-class family who accept a life-changing amount of money for their silence after their 13-year-old son is abused by a powerful Hollywood filmmaker.
The six-part series - from the award-winning writer of Damilola, Our Loved Boy Levi David Addai, stars Jill Halfpenny and Babou Ceesay as the parents of aspiring child star Isaac. When they accept a large sum of hush money during an unfamiliar and intimidating encounter with the filmmaker's rabid lawyer and representatives, they're inevitably left grappling with their conscience and the guilt of what happened to their son.
Writer Addai revealed that the series wasn't influenced by Hollywood sexual harassment scandals. Instead, it sprung from his curiosity over the trusting nature of parents whose children were taking part at a weekend drama school that his own daughter was attending, and how the possibility of stardom for their children had the power to "blind certain decisions you might make as a parent".
This was years before allegations of sexual assault permeated the entertainment industry and beyond.
"It was really interesting to see how trusting the parents were with people that they didn't know," the writer told Good Housekeeping UK and others at a press screening.
"They were part of this arena which was performing arts, and such was their hopes and dreams for their children to go, 'yes, sure push my child into that', and I was a bit disturbed by this. I was thinking, you don't know these people, they're strangers and you're trusting your child to be left with these people, to be ferried around and be amongst mostly adults. What is that? Why do people do that?
"This family came together from that, and when you have a child who has the possibility of entering a career that is totally different from the family's background. And how the glitz and the glamour, how that can blind certain decisions you might make as a parent," he said.
"I began developing the idea and writing the script before those stories became mainstream, I was in this weird position as it was getting closer to being green lit, it [the claims] just exploded. For me personally - I know these things, it's not big news for me. I was fortunate enough that I could to continue telling my story, though there was temptation to do [other industries that were also affected].
"I remember the football scandal came out, and there was a suggestion that perhaps that was a different industry we could look at, but this is a story about this family. Everything I do is about the characters, people, humans and their stories. It was important to continue to tell the story I was creating with family and see it to its end," he said.
Halfpenny said the family's reaction to something so traumatic, devastating and "steeped in shame" really "intrigued" her, as did the lengths they were prepared to go to protect their child after the unimaginable threatens to tear them apart.
"You put yourself in the shoes of the family," the Three Girls star explained. "I was really intrigued by how shameful the whole experience would be for the family and how when something like this happens, it's traumatising and steeped in shame and the the family's response has been, 'let's not talk about it, just get on with it'.
"You see with their daughter Sabrina, that hasn't been dealt with at all - let's put it in a little box and carry on and I thought it was really interesting to go inside the lives of these ordinary people where something extraordinary has happened to them. I just thought that was really intriguing. The decision that Isaac makes that he doesn't want anyone to know, of course as parents we want to feel like we would do everything possible to protect our child, but in some ways that suits them because then they can put it in that box and see if they can survive doing it that way," she said.
"Obviously we all know that's not going to work out for them especially when its something that traumatic and shameful, there's always going to be an explosion with that toxic secretiveness. To not be able to share it with your immediate family, let alone the rest of the world, to live with that that made it feel really exciting to explore."
Dark Money begins on BBC1 on Monday, July 8.
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