It’s amazing how a perfectly innocuous moment can transform, in the mind of a gifted writer, into something much more disturbing. That was the genesis of the startling show Somewhere Boy, a fusion of thriller, family drama, dark comedy and horror. Showrunner Pete Jackson used to sit with his dad listening to old vinyl records from proto-metal bands like Mountain and Hot Tuna. Many years later, he fished that same record player out of the garage and played those tracks to his son. It was a beautiful bonding moment, but one that suggested a dystopian spin.
“Listening to those records with son made me think of those safe little worlds you create for your children, and how horrifying it is that you then have to send them out into the terrifyingly complicated real world,” Jackson says. “But would happen if a man wracked with grief decided to just keep hold of his son? How long could you keep that going, and what would happen if you did?”
That’s the dark seed of Somewhere Boy. In flashback, we see what, at face value, appears to be a loving father-son relationship between young lad Danny (played as a child by Samuel Mckenna) and his doting dad Steve (Rory Keenan). They listen to old records – less proto-metal and more country crooner Marty Robbins – and watch old black and white movies like Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and screwball comedy His Girl Friday with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. Cinematographers Dan Atherton and Ed Moore used ’70s camera lenses for these sequences “To make it feel warm and grainy, like a place you’d want to return to,” Jackson says.
As idyllic as it sounds, the home Steve has constructed for Danny is a prison, the father warning his son that there are monsters outside and he mustn’t try to leave. But something terrible happens when Danny – now played by a remarkable Lewis Gribben – reaches his 18th birthday, shattering this snow globe and thrusting the disorientated teenager into the arms of his unknown Aunt Sue (a brilliant Lisa McGrillis).
With Sue’s over-enthusiastic encouragement, Danny has to grapple with a world that is totally alien to him, trying to figure out who the monsters truly are, with help from his initially reluctant cousin Aaron (Samuel Bottomley). Aaron is also struggling with the consequences of an absent father and resists the kindness of his stepdad (Johann Myers).
Steve (Rory Keenan) and Danny (Lewis Gribben) Source: Parisa Taghizadeh / BBC Studios / Clerkenwell Films
Danny (Lewis Gribben) and Sue (Lisa McGrillis) Source: Parisa Taghizadeh / BBC Studios / Clerkenwell Films
“The relationship between the two boys is the centrepiece of the entire show, and it allows us to look at masculinity and being the son of difficult fathers,” Jackson adds, noting that Aaron was initially conceived as a young woman. “Once we had that character, we could explore the two sides of these boys’ experiences. Danny knows everything about love and romance from old movies, but nothing about the actual mechanics of sex. Whereas Aaron watches hardcore pornography on his phone but knows nothing about intimacy. And so the truth is in between somewhere, and they help each other find it.”
The idea came to Jackson pre-pandemic and was picked up by British production company Clerkenwell Films (Misfits, The End of the F***ing World), whom he credits as great collaborators. They sold it to broadcaster Channel 4 the next day, Jackson penned the pilot, and then the rest of Somewhere Boy’s eight-episode run was written in lockdown.
Danny (Lewis Gribben) and Sam (Samuel Bottomley) Source: Parisa Taghizadeh / BBC Studios / Clerkenwell Films
The show thrives on complex relationships. “What Danny’s dad does is obviously abusive, but Danny also had an incredibly close, loving and tactile relationship with his dad that a lot of men [watching the show] would want and didn’t have,” Jackson says. “And then there’s his cousin who’s been raised utterly normally, in a two up, two down house on an estate in the suburbs but, because of a lack of connection with his father, has retreated into his own strange sort of fantasy world up in his bedroom without anyone realising it.”
As Danny seeks the truth about his father, how his mother died and who, or what, the monsters might be, his emergence into a world he barely knows impacts those around him, including Sue. “She’s wrestling with her culpability, feeling that she should have stepped in, but because her because her brother was such hard work, it was more convenient to let him go,” Jackson says. “She’s struggling to carry all this guilt, and that causes her to push Danny too fast to live a normal life, going to the pub with Aaron because that’s what normal boys do. She takes her eye off the ball when she shouldn’t.”
There’s laughter to be found here at Danny’s fish-out-of-water response to everyday things, like his joy at feeling grass under his bare feet, but these moments contain traces of tragedy. He adapts fast, with the resilience of so many kids who have been through trauma, but there’s also the grim possibility of the abused becoming the abuser. “A lot of the research I did was talking to people who left cults and with people who ran charities dealing with people who have left cults, because what I found really interesting is that they do exactly what Danny does,” Jackson says. “They try and bend reality to fit the narrative they’ve grown up with, because it’s too hard to accept that what they were raised with isn’t the truth.”
Gribben was a revelation. “So much of the script is subtext, so we needed extraordinary actors, because so much of it is conveyed in a look or a silence, and Lewis was incredible, as was Samuel,” Jackson says of the central relationship. “On set, I found I cut could whole pages of dialogue in half and let them tell the story with their eyes. It’s a phenomenal talent.”
Pete Jackson (right) with Lewis Gribben during filming. Source: BBC Studios / Clerkenwell Films
Jackson may be showrunner on Somewhere Boy, but he knew to trust his team, including directors Alexandra Brodski and Alex Winckler. “It’s such a collaborative process,” Jackson says. “Remembering your role is really important, not being an annoying backseat director. I’m also a terrible actor. The absolute joy of it is letting people who are much better than you do their jobs. That is why you’re working with them.”
See double episodes of Somewhere Boy 10.20pm Monday nights on SBS VICELAND, from 13 February. All eight episodes are also streaming now .
