‘What would you do if you found out your child isn’t your own?’
That’s the premise of ITV’s new thriller, Playing Nice – an idea guaranteed to send a shudder of horror through any parent.
Starring McMafia’s James Norton and adopted from a novel by JP Delaney, the slow-burning thriller follows two couples who discover that they’ve been raising each others’ three-year-old sons – Theo and David – after a hospital mix-up at birth.
On one side of this dilemma is Pete (Norton), an ex-journalist and Theo’s stay-at-home dad, and his restaurateur partner Maddie (Niamh Algar); on the other: alpha architect Miles (James McArdle) and his affluent wife Lucy (Jessica Brown Findlay), parents to David. Seemingly, at least.
The story is adapted from Delaney’s novel by NHS psychiatrist-turned-TV showrunner Grace Ofori-Attah, creator of ITV medical drama Malpractice, and shifts the story from metropolitan London to the altogether more chilly and foreboding Atlantic coast of Cornwall. Read on to find out where this knotty thriller was filmed.
What is Playing Nice about?
ITV's synopsis runs: ‘Living a waking nightmare, Pete and Maddie are jettisoned into the world of the other couple Miles and Lucy. At first it seems all four are agreed on a solution, but it soon becomes clear that hidden motives are at play – how far can each couple trust the real parents of their child or even each other? As Pete and Maddie are stretched to breaking point, they realise that they will stop at nothing to keep their family together.’
In short? The most nightmarish kind of parenting dilemma.
Where was Playing Nice filmed?
Playing Nice transplants the novel’s London setting to the rugged coastline of Cornwall, filming in the winter of 2023 and 2024. That change of scenery was driven by the chilly themes of the story, explains Norton. ‘[Director] Kate Hewitt didn't want this to feel picturesque or pretty,’ he says. ‘She wanted it to feel real and to have a foreboding atmosphere so that the turmoil of these characters was reflected in the scenery.’
‘Relocating the story to a breathtaking part of the country felt really important to kind of elevate it both aesthetically and in terms of its themes,’ adds executive producer Kitty Kaletsky, Norton’s production partner.
The town of St Ives, on the county’s north shore, was a key production centre for the show, with filming taking places along the coastline.
Normally we’re filming cream teas and ice cream and cosy crime
‘It's a psychological drama set in Cornwall, which is quite rare,’ notes locations manager Poppy Gordon-Clark. ‘Normally we’re filming cream teas and ice cream and cosy crime.’
With variable weather and limited daylight hours to work with, the shoot wasn’t straightforward. ‘In Cornwall it’s mainly been wet,’ says producer Nick Pitt. ‘It’s been great because not much shoots here – I know Poldark shot here, a period piece – so it's an original sort of canvas and it's got a lot of variety within it… of weather, but also topography and place and space.’
Pete Abell, an instructor at King Surf in Mawgan Porth, helped Norton and his co-stars prep for the series’ winter surfing scenes. ‘Luckily for me, my character Pete is not a good surfer,’ jokes Norton, ‘[but] Pete was a hero’.
‘St Ives is very beautiful and we went pottering around the town during lunch breaks,’ says Norton. ‘It's a really special thing to entrench ourselves in the community.’
Who is in the Playing Nice cast?
James Norton, star of two other contemporary TV thrillers in Happy Valley and McMafia, plays anxious dad Pete. Niamh Algar, Barry Keoghan’s co-star in 2020 thriller Calm With Horses, is Maddie, his restaurant-running partner and the mother of their son Theo.
The couple they find themselves at loggerheads with are played by James McArdle (Mary Queen of Scots, Mare of Easttown) and Jessica Brown Findlay from Harlots and Downton Abbey.
Theo Ogundipe (Top Boy) plays Maddie’s fellow restaurateur Ollie.
When is Playing Nice released?
The four-part series premieres on ITV1 and STV at 9pm on Sunday, January 5. The following three episodes air on Monday, January 6, and the following Sunday and Monday respectively. The whole series will be streaming on ITVX from 9pm on Sunday, January 5.
Is there a trailer?
There is, and you can watch it below.
