Missing Adolescence already? Well don’t worry, the show’s producers are bringing a brand new revenge thriller to BBC One next week.
Get ready for moody Peak District shots, gritty club scenes and a lot of intrigue in this Sheffield-based drama. It’s also packed with familiar faces and BBC favourites including Anne-Marie Duff (of Bad Sisters fame) and 2021 Strictly winner Rose Ayling-Ellis.
Reunion is a four-part drama which will combine spoken English and British Sign Language while telling the story of Daniel Brennan (Matthew Gurney), a deaf man just out of prison and determined to uncover the truth behind why he was sent down.
Daniel’s on a mission, but he’s going to need help along the way. Here are the other names to look out for.
Matthew Gurney as Daniel Brennan
Daniel has just spent 10 years in prison and he wants answers about how he ended up behind bars, while attempting to reconnect with friends and family. If the trailer is anything to go by, everyone is, understandably, pretty cross with him.
He’s simultaneously unable to fully integrate himself with the hearing world, but shunned by friends and the wider deaf community for his crime. And of course, there’s likely more to his story than we first realise.
Matthew Gurney is an Oxford-born writer and actor who has also directed short films for the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust (BSLBT). He’s known for his roles in Love’s Labour’s Lost performed in BSL and the Dave series Coffee Morning Club. He’s lived in nearby Doncaster and used to frequent Sheffield Deaf Club.
“It feels slightly subversive and naughty that we’ll get to see deaf characters having sex, doing drugs, gossiping in BSL on their phones, getting out of their heads and dancing and generally getting up to mischief,” the show’s writer William Mager told the BBC.
“We do normal things, we do stupid things. Deaf people make mistakes – we learn from them, we are just the same” Gurney added.
Lara Peake as Carly
Peake play’s Daniel’s estranged daughter, Carly. She clearly has her suspicions about being back in contact and her dad’s antics now he’s out, but what’s a BBC thriller without some family tensions? Peake is a hearing actor and both she and Anne-Marie Duff learnt BSL for the show.
“To be able to watch a show that is led by deaf actors is incredible and the inclusion of sign language is not seen often enough,” as she told the BBC.
Peake has been seen most recently as Daysee Butler in Rivals, but the 26-year-old has been acting for over 10 years. She was longlisted for BIFA’s Most Promising Newcomer in the independent feature film Bypass when she was 15 and has gone on to film alongside Nicole Kidman in How to Talk to Girls at Parties and Pierce Brosnan in Final Score.
She starred in How to Have Sex, and it’s not her first go at a thriller either, having featured in Channel 4’s Born to Kill.
Anne-Marie Duff as Christine
Christine is the wife of the person Daniel killed, who is desperate to work out what happened and what he did. “He was your friend, but you killed him,” she tells Daniel in the trailer. “Why?”
Duff barely needs introduction, most recently on our screens as Grace Williams in Bad Sisters, for which she won the Best Supporting Actress last year. She’s also been BAFTA-nominated twice for Best Actress in her roles in Shameless and The Virgin Queen.
Born in London, she went to a local youth theatre, which inspired her love of acting. She went on to study Film and Theatre and then attend London’s Drama Centre. Duff is no stranger to a BBC drama – you may recognise her from The Salisbury Poisonings, His Dark Materials or From Darkness. If none of those ring a bell, she was also Maeve Wiley’s estranged heroin addict mum in Sex Education.
Rose Ayling-Ellis as Miri
Ayling-Ellis plays the role of Christine’s daughter, who will doubtless be concerned that her mother is even speaking to Daniel again.
The first deaf winner of Strictly Come Dancing in 2021, Ayling-Ellis has had an award-winning career. She was nominated for an Olivier Award and won a Stage Debut Award for her role as Celia in @sohoplace’s As You Like It and played Frankie Lewis in Eastenders for two years.
The Kent-born actress has been in a bunch of plays, including at the Lyric Hammersmith and the National Theatre, and she’s set to feature in an upcoming episode of Doctor Who. If that wasn’t enough, last year she presented Channel 4’s coverage of the Paris Summer Paralympics and was nominated for an MBE for voluntary services to the deaf community.
She told journalist Liam O’Dell: “This [show] is a big one. I think that it’s ground-breaking because you’ve got a deaf writer, you’ve got deaf actors – more than one, there’s lots of them. We’ve even got deaf Sas [supporting artists] as well. Also, we have deaf crew.”
Eddie Marsan as Stephen Renworth
Stephen is Christine’s protective boyfriend. The trailer gives very little away about his role, except that he goes to tell the police that they need to send Daniel back to prison.
Marsan’s CV has an incredibly long-list of film and TV appearances, most recently including Netflix’s Heartstopper, the comedy series Inside No. 9 and the miniseries Franklin. He’s been in all sorts of BBC household names like Casualty, The Bill, Silent Witness and Grange Hill.
He was the main villain in the superhero film Hancock, alongside Will Smith and played Inspector Lestrade in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films. He also played as Amy Winehouse’s dad in the biopic Back to Black.
Reunion is streaming on BBC One and iPlayer from April 7
