The Sixth Commandment - Timothy Spall discusses the making of the new factual drama series

What sort of person was Peter Farquhar?

Peter Farquhar was a brilliant teacher, a Cambridge graduate who had just retired from Stowe when we first meet him and was about to take up a position as a guest lecturer at Buckingham University. He was obviously highly respected, much loved, had a huge influence on young people's lives and careers. We also discover early on that he was a very serious, devout Christian and that he found it very difficult to reconcile his repressed sexuality with his faith. Through discussions with a friend and a counsellor we discover that although he had many friends, he was quite lonely and felt deeply isolated within himself.

What sort of people are there in his life?

In Peter's real life, there was all sorts of friends and ex-students, and so forth. But his closest friends were his neighbours Liz played by Sheila Hancock and Ann played by Anne Reid and he has a brother Ian and his wife Sue who are very clever, and they were very close all their lives. These are the main people along with the lawyers and his colleagues. Pretty early on we’re into the relationship that he forms with Ben who is a student at Buckingham University. Not only is he very brilliant and mature but as soon as they meet it’s obvious that he's a cut above as far as his intellect is concerned. Ben is also the kind of young man that he's been secretly desiring for many, many years without doing anything about it.

What is it about Field that appeals to Peter and how does the relationship start to develop?

Well, Ben is obviously very intelligent and presents himself as a devout Christian. In all honesty, it's like somebody walking out of a dream. Peter more or less told a friend that he did not think that he was capable of being loved in an intimate way. He had resigned himself to spending the rest of his life as somebody who has a massive hole in his life. Then this younger man appears who is the embodiment of his wildest dreams and an intellectual equal. Field makes the running in telling Peter that he's fallen in love with him. He simply can't believe it and gets down on his knees and thanks God for something he didn’t think possible. Of course, it turns out to be the worst thing that could possibly have happened to him. His prayers are answered and his dreams are fulfilled - but they turn into a terrible nightmare.

What are the red flags that the audience is seeing that Peter isn't?

Ben's character is not just a manipulator, he’s somebody who becomes what Peter wants him to be and is very convincing. I think the audience are going to ask themselves if this is sincere. It isn't a standard gaslighting story where you see the victim as a pawn. This is much more sophisticated. You're talking about deeply intelligent people who are hoodwinked by their own dreams being answered, the softest part of their souls are being touched by somebody so seemingly genuine. As far as the audience are concerned, they’re not seeing an Iago here, you don't get scenes where he says, ‘I will do this or that to him’ - none of that. The psychology of Ben's character is far more sophisticated, far more subtle. It's not a cloak and dagger thing he does but much more psychological. Where are they? What are we? What's going on here? Is this real? Is this manipulation? Luckily, we have a brilliant young actor in Éanna playing his part superbly. He comes across as so genuine, so real, loving and helpful even when things seem to be going awfully wrong. When Peter starts to get very ill and hallucinates and behaves in ways that are totally out of character, he makes the assumption that he is just getting old. At the very point where he's about to live out the rest of his life in absolute blissful happiness with the love of his life, he becomes ill but doesn’t see anything nefarious going on at all. As the story develops, we follow the criminal process, the bringing to justice, in a case that was originally shut down and deemed to be accidental death.

What was your reaction to the scripts when you read them?

I thought they were superb. Dramas based on real life can look like drama docs, or they become about a process of events, but this is an investigation of real emotional depth in the writing which is so precise, so economical. There is real poetry in the series of events which reveal themselves slowly; it’s a development of emotions, focusing on the subtlety of things that can happen, of how people can be deluded. The scripts are beautifully crafted, economically written, focusing on what was eventually deemed to be the murder of Peter and the death of Ann.

Throughout history the people who become famous in the terrible drama of a murder tend not to be the victims but the murderers. How much do we know about the victims of Jack the Ripper? Or the victims of Harold Shipman? This story shows you what these people who were victims of this behaviour were like so that in a sense, it's a tribute to them. The Sixth Commandment shows how brilliant and vivacious these older people were, the subtleties of their lives and their vulnerabilities, their strengths, their intellectual acumen and their weaknesses. We see the slow erosion of this in Peter who was a wonderfully interesting, vibrant and intellectually brilliant man. He was an influential teacher, changing the life of so many young people, setting them on a track. But no matter how brilliant he was, all his life he suffered from a sense of not being worthy of love or intimacy.

What were the challenges of taking on the role?

It’s a massive responsibility when you're playing a real human being who was a family man, as they live on with love in people's hearts. It’s never lost on me and I have done my very best for Peter. I'm not trying to make it sound like some worthy, noble thing, but you're telling a story about someone who's loved and remembered and was alive not that long ago. So you really do want to get it right. Sarah Phelps has done a marvellous job in writing a drama that’s so subtle and delicate, riddled with such emotional depth. It's so important to me that the family are behind this; he was a much-loved human being who died so tragically.

What do you think is the appeal of The Sixth Commandment?

The more experience I've got, the more I realise you're never going to know how something is going to turn out - you may have an inkling but you endeavour to make it the best you possibly can. This drama is a tribute to murdered people and to the bravery from within the family in finding justice for them, because they loved them so much. They felt they deserved to be respected, understood and, as I mentioned before, it’s usually the murderer who gets top billing, not the victim. This is a drama about the victims, as well as the perpetrator. It’s an investigation and a display of the delicacy of what humans are like, how they can be intellectually powerful, but easily destroyed because they are vulnerable and open and in need of some kind of love, some kind of intimacy that they've not felt, either for many, many years or perhaps never.

How have you found working with Éanna?

Fantastic. When I first read the script I wondered ‘Who on earth are they going to get to play this part?’ From an acting point of view it’s a great role to play, but in reality it's very subtle and needs a brilliant actor. What we have in Éanna is a talented young actor doing everything one would hope to make the character of Ben so convincing, so believable and so attractive. Fundamentally, we're telling a story which might entertain but we’re also paying homage to the people who lived - and talking about the frailty of the human heart.