Tin Star creator on wild thriller's leap to Channel 4
It originally launched on Sky Atlantic late last year, but now offbeat crime thriller Tin Star is getting a second lease of life on Channel 4, as part of a unique deal between the two broadcasters.
The partnership will see the first 10 episodes go out again on Channel 4, ahead of season two coming to Sky next year.
"I'm thrilled we get get to reach a bigger audience," Tin Star writer/creator Rowan Joffé tells Digital Spy. "But I also have a special respect for Channel 4 and the quality of their content.
"I basically cut my career teeth as a writer-director on a project called Secret Life, which was an extremely controversial but well-received one-off drama, and that was for Channel 4. So the fact that they're putting this show on... there's a pleasing feeling of having come home."
On first broadcast, Tin Star was branded "moody, dark", "sinister" and "weird" by critics, with filmmaker Joffé (Brighton Rock) knowing from the off that he wanted his first stab at series television "to be something distinctive".
"I felt like there was a niche in British television for a show like Fargo – something that had that same, almost nostalgic, look back to noir," he explains. "And I'm a big fan of Jim Thompson [an author known for his hardboiled crime fiction] – I love the idea of stories about a small-town sheriff.
"So I was always clear that I wanted Tin Star to be a contemporary Western, with a true-crime underbelly."
Starring Tim Roth, Christina Hendricks and Genevieve O'Reilly, Tin Star follows Jim Worth (Roth), a police detective looking to escape a violent past who stumbles into an even more chaotic and bloody future.
Part of its distinctiveness comes from a protagonist suffering with Jekyll-and-Hyde syndrome: out for revenge on those who hurt his family, Worth is forced to rely on a violent alter-ego, Jack Devlin, who emerges when Jim is under the influence.
"The Jim/Jack duality was the concept that I originally brought to Sky," says Joffé. "It was one of the earliest ideas I had, because it just seemed to me to be characteristic of the show – that it would deal with something as dark and difficult as alcoholism. But it would deal with it in an entertaining and almost literary way.
"When I read Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, it occurred to me it that was a great analogy for an alcoholic. In other words, you had someone who was one type of man when they were sober. They then took the, quote unquote, "magic potion" – in Tin Star's case, whiskey – and then they became a monster.
"And a little unlike Jekyll and Hyde, and more I suppose in the tradition of the superhero genre, that monster is actually more effective at dealing with [Jim's] enemies. The question is, when does the cure become worse than the disease?
"That basic concept was always at the heart of the show, and I think it's what originally excited Sky about it – long before we had any cast at all."
Tin Star's leading man Roth has described the series, which was filmed in Alberta, Canada in 2016, as "a 10-hour movie" – and while Joffé acknowledges that this term "does get thrown around a lot", he believes "there is some justification" for calling his show "cinematic".
"I'm a filmmaker. That's where I come from. This is the first television series that I've ever engendered. So that's why we really mean it when we say 'cinematic', because that's borne from the blood, sweat and tears of trying to make something that feels this visually beautifully and visually meaningful, on a much tighter budget and a much tighter schedule than you'd get in cinema."
Producing his first television series held other challenges for Joffé, too: he describes the freedom of being able to tell one story over 10 hours as "both a blessing and a curse". "It's a curse in the sense that a script for a Sky-length episode comes in at around 55 pages. And so you're writing 10 lots of 55 pages. That's 550 pages. That's the length of a Tolstoy novel. It is a tremendous burden to carry. That's no doubt.
"The 'blessing' side of it is that actually, what you're able to do is, you're able to magnify every character's moral dilemma. You're able to open the story out and let it breathe, and let all sorts of character nuances come to life.
"You don't have to hurry like you do in a 90-minute movie. Compared to this, a 90-minute movie is like a commercial. You're literally trying to sell one concept in three acts – a beginning, middle and an end.
"In this, we want it to feel intense and as entertaining as a movie. But we get to go into a lot more detail. I think the characters benefit massively, and I think the audience benefit, too."
A second season of Tin Star was announced shortly before the first premiered on Sky – the exploits of Jim/Jack in the town of Little Big Bear will continue in 2019, which is good news for anyone who might be about to get hooked on the early episodes airing on Channel 4.
"I didn't write the first season knowing I had a second," Joffé insists. "But I did leave season one open – as, I suppose, a gesture of hope that I would get the chance to continue the story.
"Endings are really the falsest part of any story. The falsest and most difficult part. Because life doesn't end in a tidy and meaningful way. We don't vanquish the monster, get married and live happily ever after. So I think, actually, the DNA of life allows me to be quite truthful in writing a series that goes on and on."
Tin Star begins tonight at 10pm on Channel 4.
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