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If your domestic life has turned into its own little soap opera recently, this could be for you (or, alternatively, really NOT). ITV Studios has announced details of a new series of short dramas reflecting life under lockdown. ‘Isolation Stories’ stars Sheridan Smith, Robert Glenister (‘Spooks’), Eddie Marsan (‘Sherlock Holmes’), Angela Griffin, Darren Boyd and David Threlfall. It will run over four consecutive nights starting on Monday May 4.
The series of 15-minute dramas has been put together in record time and under strict social-distancing guidelines. Two of the episodes involve the real families of the stars (Robert Glenister and his son Tom in ‘Ron & Russell’ and Eddie Marsan and his sons Blue and Bodie in ‘Karen’). Another (‘Mike & Rochelle’) sees Darren Boyd, paranoid and at the end of his tether, have a fraught online consultation with his psychiatrist. In the first of the series, the IRL pregnant Sheridan Smith plays the expectant Mel, who’s been left high and dry after the married father of her child goes back to his own family.
Smith says about the series: ‘I am heavily pregnant and have been isolating at home so I jumped at the chance to make a drama about the massive drama going on all around us right now. I think it’s really important to try and reflect what’s happening to us whilst it is still actually happening.’
ITV Studios is donating to the NHS as part of the initiative.
So, if you want a quarter-of-an-hour break from counting your tins of tomatoes, stick it in your diary.
‘Isolation Stories’ screens on ITV1 over four nights at 9pm, starting Mon May 4.
Gemma Arterton, Julian Barratt and Rory Kinnear are starring in new lockdown theatre series ‘Unprecedented’.
Find more great entertainment to stream at home.