Sheridan Smith is continuing her reign as the queen of telly dramas as she's back on our screens again this week for ITV's No Return.
The actress plays ordinary mum Kathy who finds herself trapped on the holiday from hell.
In the plot, penned by Shameless writer Danny Brocklehurst, her character’s 16-year-old son is arrested while on a family break in Turkey, accused of a sexual assault on another boy.
As the situation escalates and he faces a 12-year jail sentence, the devoted mum must do everything in her power to convince the authorities that her boy is innocent.
Sheridan, whose son Billy is nearly two, said the role was extremely tough after becoming a parent herself.
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"Playing roles before I had Billy to playing ones now I’ve had him is totally different," Sheridan previously told The Mirror.
"People had said you can’t understand the protectiveness and the overwhelming fear when you have a child and he’s not even two yet, but I feel it.
"I hope it will resonate with the audience, they’ll be feeling all the angst as well. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. I love playing protective mums like that. Kathy is a lioness."
Sheridan, 40, said she could barely contain her anguish over the intense storyline at the initial meeting with producers and fellow cast.
"I’ve never been to a read-through like the one for this. It was so powerful. I mean, I cried all the way through," she said.
She said she read all four episodes back to back without pausing.
"I read it and was gripped - I had to know what happened. It gave me that jelly belly feeling of ‘what would you do in that situation?’
"They’re just ordinary people in an extraordinary situation and Kathy was an amazing lead role."
Playing Kathy's son Noah is Louis Ashbourne Serkis.
If his surname sounds familiar, it's probably because he's the 17-year-old son of Lord of the Rings star Andy Serkis.
Andy played Gollum in Peter Jackson's epic adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's novels, and he is well-known for his other roles including King Kong, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot series, and Supreme Leader Snoke in the Star Wars sequel trilogy films The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
He's even worked with Louis before.
Louis voiced Bhoot in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, which was directed by and co-starred his father as Baloo.
His mother Lorraine Ashbourne is also an actress who has starred in The Bill and Casualty.
As well as Louis, she and Andy share children Sonny and Ruby, who are also performers.
Ruby and Louis both starred in the film The Kid Who Would Be King in 2019 and the 2020 Netflix series The Letter for the King - in which Andy played Ruby's father.
Louis got his first part in a major film when he was just eight, playing a young Hobbit in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 2012, which also starred his dad.
In 2016, he landed the role of Young Hatter in Alice Through the Looking Glass, and the following year played Peter in the English version of Mary and the Witch's Flower.
He's no stranger to the small screen either, having played Robert in the 2017 series Taboo and Douggie Archer in BBC One drama SS-GB.
Brocklehurst, who wrote No Return, said it was incredibly important to get the casting right - and Sheridan, who he has worked with before, was an easy choice.
"But finding the actor [to] play her son was more challenging," he explained to The Radio Times.
"Noah is a troubled boy who is thrown into hell and must become a man in order to survive – while the audience is never sure if he's telling the whole truth. That's quite an ask for a young actor.
"His stillness, his ability to say so much with his eyes, his incredible intensity. Even now, watching his most powerful scenes, I'm blown away. He's a star in waiting."
* No Return begins on Monday night on ITV at 9pm
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