Sarah Smart

Sarah Smart Dr Who The Rebel Flesh

2011-05-24T08:46:00.000+01:00

A solar tsunami sends the TARDIS hurtling towards a futuristic factory where doppelgangers - known as 'Gangers' - are used to complete jobs deemed too hazardous for humans. When a second wave hits, the Gangers separate and war seems inevitable. Only the Doctor can prevent an escalation of hostilities... but all is not as it seems...

The Doctor - Matt Smith
Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
Rory - Arthur Darvill
Jennifer - Sarah Smart
Jimmy - Mark Bonnar
Buzzer Marshall - Lancaster
Foreman Cleaves - Raquel Cassidy
Dicken - Leon Vickers

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Sarah Smart The Widow and Me

2011-05-17T11:42:00.003+01:00

Principal photography is underway on single drama Fast Freddie, the Widow and Me, written by Christopher Dunlop (Cape Wrath, No Angels) and produced by STV for ITV1.

Laurence Fox (Lewis, Wired, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) leads the cast as Jonathan Donald, a wealthy but narrow-minded luxury car dealer whose attitude is challenged when he receives a community service order at a support organisation called The Moonbeam club.

There he meets recently widowed Laura Cooper, played by Sarah Smart (Doctor Who, Wallander, Five Days), who runs the club, and ‘Fast’ Freddie Copeland, played by Jack McMullen (Waterloo Road, Moving On), a member who is terminally ill and will be lucky to see in the New Year.

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Credit: PrimeTime

Sarah Smart Dr Who

2011-02-20T22:54:00.003Z

Sarah Smart is to appear in the next season of Dr Who.

Episode 6: Gangers

Writer: Matthew Graham
Director: Julian Simpson
Guest cast: Sarah Smart as Jennifer Lucas, Marshall Lancaster as Buzzer and Edmond Moulton as Adam, alongside Leon Vickers, Mark Bonnar and Raquel Cassidy

Credit: CultBox

Sarah Smart Monroe

2010-09-26T23:06:00.000+01:00

ITV has announced that James Nesbitt will star in new six-part medical drama Monroe.

The actor will play Gabriel Monroe, a neurosurgeon who must contend with two new trainees, as well as a series of medical emergencies.

Mistresses star Sarah Parish will also appear in the series as cardiac surgeon Jenny Bremner, while Bouquet of Barbed Wire actor Tom Riley will portray anaesthetist Dr Laurence Shepherd.

Wallander actress Sarah Smart and former Teachers star Shaun Evans will also play guest roles in the first episode.

The series has been written by Peter Bowker and will be helmed by Sherlock director Paul McGuigan.

Filming on Monroe will begin this week on location in Leeds.

Credit: DigitalSpy

Sarah Smart in new drama Identity

2010-07-10T19:49:00.002+01:00

Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes – and here’s ITV indulging in a spot of theft too.

Well, not theft exactly, more a case of copying. The new six-part series Identity is the UK attempt to recreate those slick US crime dramas like CSI, Criminal Minds and NCIS.

They’ve even recruited Aiden Gillen from The Wire to add to the glamour, as well as Keeley Hawes from Ashes To Ashes, Holly Aird from Waking The Dead and Elyes Gabel from Casualty and Waterloo Road.

They make up an elite police unit tackling the darker side of identity crime – murderers who literally take other people’s lives, and criminals who create new personas to escape evil pasts.

Keeley plays DSI Martha Lawson, the unit’s founder who takes a gamble in hiring DI John Bloom (Gillen), who, wouldn’t you just know it, is a charismatic maverick who bends the rules. He’s an ex-undercover cop who knows just what it’s like to pretend to be someone you’re not.

Holly is IT expert Tessa Stein, expert in cracking security codes and getting answers from computers. Elyes is DC Jose Rodriguez, a self-assured Spaniard, while Shaun Parkes plays by-the-book DS Anthony Wareing.

It’s a good cast, helped by strong guest stars including Patrick Baladi, Sarah Smart, Michael Maloney, Joanne Froggatt, Saskia Wickham, Phil Davis, Ramon Tikaram and Jenny Seagrove.

It also looks very polished and modern, with their high-tech offices based in a skyscraper in the heart of the City of London.

Having gone straight into Identity from Ashes To Ashes, Keeley Hawes – who was also an MI5 agent in Spooks – feels very at home on the force.

She says: “I could definitely have been a policewoman. I think they have an interesting time of it.

“Of course the way we portray the job is heightened and I’m sure there’s a lot more pen pushing than we think, but the basic investigating skills seem appealing to me.

“So yes, maybe the police force, or even a spy...

“Police dramas are very popular but this is such a fresh take on the genre.

“When I took this job it struck me as bizarre that there is no real Identity Unit. Identity theft is something we hear about every day. A group of us sat about discussing this issue and there wasn’t a person present who hadn’t been affected by it in one way or another.

“I have been affected at the most basic level. I’ve been called by the fraud department of my bank asking if I’m in Spain as someone has stolen my details and is spending willy-nilly across the Costa Brava.

“Another time someone stole a credit card while working in my home and got away with using it for two months.”

Considering all he now knows about identity theft, Aiden Gillen is surprisingly laidback about the threat, which he thinks isn’t as strong where he lives in rural Kerry in Ireland with his wife and two children.

“I put all kinds of the wrong stuff in the bins all the time,” he admits. “I couldn’t care less.

“I wouldn’t go out of my way to be worried about my identity and somebody attempting to be me.”

Identity, ITV1, Monday, 9pm

Credit: SundayMercury

Sarah Smart helps Branagh

2010-01-03T16:13:00.002Z

Wallander's Sarah Smart has revealed Kenneth Branagh asked her to help him play the TV detective.

The 32-year-old actress stars as Swedish detective Anne-Britt Hoglund alongside the award-winning actor and director in the BBC adaptation of Henning Mankell's novels.

Sarah revealed: "He's so humble, because he said, 'You've done so much TV and I've done hardly any, so you'll have to help me out here' - I was like 'Yeah, that's really sweet, but you don't need any help!'."

She gushed about working with Branagh: "He's lovely! Brilliant! He really is a fan of the books, he knows them inside out. So working with him was great, and he's a massive team player because he's worked on every side of the camera."

The new series of Wallander begins on BBC One on January 3, and Sarah revealed: "The way people die is quite surprising! There's more gore, lots more bodies and stuff. I quite like all that though, the special effects are amazing! It's shocking but interesting."

Credit: Press Association

Sarah Smart The Line

2009-11-29T01:34:00.000Z

What are the great shows about artists? Few really good ones come to mind — Nicholas Wright’s Van Gogh play Vincent in Brixton, and perhaps one musical, Sondheim’s Seurat show, Sunday in the Park With George.

Yet despite the dearth, playwrights and artistic directors regularly offer them up. Perhaps placing great artists —or any famous historical figure for that matter — at the centre of a play can be a form of star casting, only less expensive. Rosetti, William Morris and Michelangelo have all been resurrected to play their tortured selves.

Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play, which begins in late 19th-century Paris and spans nearly 40 years, stars the impressionists Degas and Suzanne Valadon, the one-time circus acrobat who modelled for Renoir and whose lovers included Lautrec and the composer Erik Satie. She was a fine artist in her own right even before she became Degas’s pupil. In fact, on the evidence here, she might have made a more interesting focus for Wertenbaker’s play.

Valadon was a working-class single mother who elbowed her way into Paris’s male-dominated artistic elite through sheer abundance of talent and force of character. But that story takes second place in The Line, which is set mainly in Degas’s Montmartre studio.

What we get is a battle of wills across class and gender divides — Henry Goodman’s silvery Degas versus Sarah Smart’s fiery Valadon; his authority versus her impudence. She wants to paint, he wants her to stick to drawing her “ferocious” lines. So they shout at each other a lot. And when Goodman shouts, you know it. He can go from whisper to sonic boom in a nanosecond. Which is not to say that what they shout is uninteresting, just hard on the ear.

Degas declares that new painting must be rooted in the past — “I am born after Ingres and Delacroix. I take up where they left off” — and decries the commercialisation of art. An interesting perspective to be sure, if set against the views of, say, Damien Hirst. But the play makes no connections outside the time in which it is set, and few connections outside the studio in which most of the action takes place.

William Dudley’s impressionistic design suspends translucent masterpieces like sheets on a washing line. But there is little sense of Paris outside. That is left to a revealing scene about Degas’s enthusiasm for new-fangled photography and its ability to capture the instantaneous, for which, hilariously, portrait sitters had to stay still for six minutes.

And against the background of the Dreyfus Affair Degas’s French nationalism is expressed as antisemitism — “the Jews don’t understand patriotism”, he declares. But while it is interesting that Degas sees Jews (and the music of Wagner) as a threat to his beloved France, the lesson — that great art is often created by flawed artists — is hardly new. Without Goodman’s charisma and Smart’s intelligent sass, Matthew Lloyd’s production — he brilliantly directed Goodman in Duet For One — would sink under the burden that all biographical plays have to carry — exposition.

And to be fair, Wertenbaker inconspicuously embeds much of the information about Valadon’s poverty and Degas’s privileges within the dialogue, albeit in more arguments. Though a single mother, she only cares for art, whereas Degas only has art to care for.

But as if recognising the dramatic limits of artists arguing over form and style, the author resorts to soliloquy to nail her hero’s and heroine’s attitudes. Degas’s are expressed as he finishes off an exquisite sculpture of a dancer. There should be a rule about depicting artists on stage — do not show them doing art. And although Goodman and Smart are on form, and get solid support from Selina Cadell as Degas’s spinster housemaid Zoe, actors pretending to create is as risky a business onstage as actors pretending to be footballers on screen.

Alan Bennett would have struggled with these dangers while writing his latest National Theatre offering The Habit of Art. But he came out on top by framing his play about Auden and Britten within a modern rehearsal room. So whenever there was a moment of worthy drama depicting tormented genius, the actors could drop out of character and roll their eyes. The Line has no such get out clause. And nor did many of those other lesser offerings about great artists.

Credit: TheJC

Sarah Smart @ Crime Thriller Awards

2009-10-30T01:49:00.004Z

Sarah Smart at the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards ITV3 at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.

Credit: Getty

Sarah Smart Tea Shop Asylum

2009-09-16T16:29:00.008+01:00

The beautiful Sarah Smart is co-starring in a movie that’s currently in development, Tea Shop Asylum, with Rad Lazar, John Hannah and Joanna Lumley. It’s written by David Skynner and Rad Lazar and is being directed by David Skynner. David Skynner also directed Sarah in Wuthering Heights.

The short promo (above) is derived from the pilot footage, gives a good sense of the tone that is anticipated in the finished film, which by the way should shoot in spring 2010.

You can watch the pilot and trailer on the Official Site

And more Clips are available at the

Tea Shop Asylum YouTube Page

and for more information visit and subscribe to the various social networking sites

Tea Shop Asylum Facebook Page
Tea Shop Asylum Twitter Page
Tea Shop Asylum IMDB Page

Credit: David Skynner

Sarah Smart Photoshoot

2009-07-19T18:00:00.002+01:00

Credit: Shots in Stock

Sarah Smart Marple

2009-07-19T03:14:00.000+01:00

Marple - They Do It with Mirrors - 19th July 2009

Sarah Smart ... Mildred Strete

IMDB Link
Wikipedia Link

Miss Marple is requested to help her old friend Carrie-Louise, the loving wife of benign philanthropist Lewis Serrocold. Carrie-Louise is slowly poisoned by an unknown hand,and her husband and her sister Ruth want absolutely to save her from this dark menace.

Credit: igorlongo

Sarah Smart Pictures

2009-05-29T20:11:00.007+01:00

Sarah Smart Safety Catch

2009-04-22T13:45:00.003+01:00

Sarah Smart is appearing in BBC Radio 4 sitcom Saftey Catch by Laurence Howarth about a man who has reluctantly drifted into the arms dealing trade.

Judith McGrath ...... Sarah Smart

Simon McGrath likes to think of himself as a good citizen. He donates blood, although not bone marrow. He recycles his newspapers, bottles and some of his cans. He’s adopted two tigers. But he has to pay his mortgage like everyone else and that’s why he’s currently working as an arms dealer. But he’s going to leave soon – it’s only a stop gap – and meanwhile he spends his whole life telling himself, and others, that “if I wasn’t doing my job, someone else would”, that “it’s people who fire bullets, not my guns” and that “at least I don’t work for McDonald’s”.

Simon McGrath ...... Darren Boyd
Anna Grieg ...... Joanna Page
Boris Kemal ...... Lewis Macleod
Angela McGrath ...... Brigit Forsyth
Madeleine Turnbull ...... Rachel Atkins
Roger/Dave ...... Philip Fox
Guide ...... Gus Brown.

Credit: BBC

Sarah Smart Poirot

2008-12-29T15:46:00.008Z

Agatha Christie: Poirot - Mrs McGinty's Dead - 1st September 2008

Sarah Smart ... Maude

IMDB Link

James Bentley is tried for the murder of Abigail McGinty, the charwoman of Broadhinny who also took in Bentley as her lodger. The evidence is overwhelming, and soon after he is sentenced to hang. Superintendent Spence is not convinced of the man's guilt, and so he visits Poirot, asking him to look into the case. Poirot then heads off to the village, where he becomes the paying guest of Maureen and Major Johnnie Summerhayes. Ariadne Oliver, Poirot's novelist friend, has also come to Broadhinny to collaborate on a stage adaptation of one of her novels with dramatist Robin Upward. With the clue of a bottle of ink purchased by the dead woman shortly before her death, Poirot searches Mrs. McGinty's belongings and finds an edition of The Sunday Comet newspaper, where an article concerning two women connected with famous murders has been cut out. With the story are two photographs of the women. Poirot discovers that Mrs. McGinty had seen one of the photographs before, and knew to whom it belonged to. But which woman was this case connected with? Are any of the people living in Broadhinny related to these women, as one of their children? Or perhaps one of them is one of the actual women? The puzzle pieces begin to fit in, especially after Poirot is shoved into the path of an oncoming train by an unknown entity. But will the murderer strike again?

Credit: shanty_sleuth

When Mrs McGinty is found brutally murdered in her home it looks like an open and shut case, and her introverted lodger James Bentley is swiftly sentenced to death for the crime.

But both his friend Maude Williams and Superintendent Spence have their doubts about his guilt, and so Spence asks Hercule Poirot to investigate and find the evidence that will put his conscience to rest.

In the affluent village of Broadhinny, Poirot is a paying guest of Major and Maureen Summerhayes. He finds that the titled and privileged villagers treat him with disdain, especially the MP Guy Carpenter, his glamorous wife, Eve, Dr Rendell and his anxious wife, Shelagh.

But he is soon reunited with Mrs Oliver, a guest of the dashing young playwright Robin Upward and his elderly mother, and together they realise that Mrs McGinty was silenced after threatening to expose someone connected to a murder committed many years ago.

Ever conscious of the hangman’s noose around Bentley’s neck, the little detective can’t conceal his delight when someone makes an attempt on his own life as it proves there’s more to be revealed.

And when old Mrs Upward is murdered, Poirot finally sees through the deception that has been woven around the case, and is able to reveal a startling truth that turns everyone’s previous assumptions on their heads. But will it exonerate Bentley and save him from the gallows?

Credit: ITV

Sarah Smart Wallander

2008-12-26T21:26:00.012Z

Wallander - S01E01 - Sidetracked - 10th November 2008
Wallander - S01E02 - Firewall - 7th December 2008
Wallander - S01E03 - One Step Behind - 14th December 2008

Sarah Smart ... Anne-Britt Hoglund

IMDB Link

Kenneth Branagh returns to BBC One to play Swedish detective Kurt Wallander in three new single dramas based on the best-selling books by Henning Mankell – an international publishing phenomenon with over 25 million copies sold worldwide.

The dramas follow Inspector Kurt Wallander – a middle-aged everyman – as he struggles against a rising tide of violence in the apparently sleepy backwaters in and around Ystad in Skane, southern Sweden.

In this first film, Sidetracked, a girl is seen wandering alone in a rapeseed field. Inspector Wallander is called to investigate. Before his eyes, the girl douses herself in petrol and burns to death – the event is both shocking and baffling for Wallander. A hunt for the girl’s identity begins.

On the home front, Wallander, recently estranged from his wife, has moved into his own place. Linda, his grown-up daughter, is keeping an eye on her dad as he adjusts to bachelor life. Wallander’s relationship with his own father, Povel, is difficult and, as it becomes clear that Povel’s health is in decline, Wallander strives for a reconciliation with him.

Meanwhile, Wallander’s workload soars as three apparently motiveless murders are committed. The victims are all male: a former minister of justice, a small-time criminal and a rich playboy. All are viciously killed, their scalps inexplicably taken. Wallander and his team investigate, determined to discover who the killer is and how these murders are connected.

Kenneth Branagh stars as Kurt Wallander with Jeany Spark as Linda Wallander, David Warner as Povel Wallander, Sarah Smart as Anne-Britt Hoglund, Sadie Shimmin as Lisa Holgersson, Tom Beard as Svedberg, Richard McCabe as Nyberg and Nicholas Hoult as Stefan Fredman.

Credit: BBC

Kenneth Branagh stars in a new BBC adaptation of the Kurt Wallander Swedish detective stories. James Rampton reports.

Ystad, on the southern tip of Sweden, is the sort of quiet seaside town where a "cat stuck up tree" is front-page news. The residents are fastidiously polite, brightly-coloured yachts bob peacefully in the harbour, old couples potter along the seafront, and an unusually high tide is the source of fevered conversation in the bars.

But in the bestselling detective fiction of Henning Mankell, there is mayhem beneath the town's tranquil façade, and a crime rate to match south-central Los Angeles. There is only one man standing between Ystad and total anarchy: detective Kurt Wallander, "the Norse Morse".

The BBC has wasted no time in snapping up the rights to Mankell's novels and turning them into a gripping series, starring Kenneth Branagh in the title role.

Branagh brings real depth to the character, a troubled man profoundly affected by the crimes he witnesses. They seem to worm their way into his soul. Afflicted by diabetes, separated from his wife and struggling with dysfunctional relationships with his father and daughter, Wallander dreams of escape - "I could get a smallholding; carrots, maybe a couple of pigs" - but you know that he never will. He is repelled by the crimes he investigates, but nevertheless feels compelled to solve them. He is marooned in Ystad by his own sense of honour.

When I arrive in Ystad, the 60-year-old Mankell is on set. He has come to take a look at how the BBC is interpreting his novels - and he likes what he sees, not least the casting of Branagh, whom he met through his wife Eva, the daughter of Ingmar Bergman.

"I have seen some of the footage and I'm enormously impressed," he says. "As soon as Ken [Branagh] told me his ideas about the drama, I was very happy. I knew he was going to go in his own direction, and that really pleased me. It always makes an author happy to be told something new about what he's written."

The books, which go under the umbrella title of The Kurt Wallander Mysteries, are a global phenomenon, selling 25million copies. Mankell still remembers the first time he realised that his work had struck a universal chord.

"Fourteen years ago, we had a referendum in Sweden about joining the European Union," he says. "I was walking down the street in Stockholm, and a man in his sixties came up to me and asked very politely, 'I would like to know whether Mr Wallander will vote yes or no to our participation in the European Union.' I replied, 'He'll vote in the opposite way to me!' That was the moment I grasped the enormity of the character. People had started to look upon him as a believable human being."

Branagh agrees. "People really identify with him," he says. "Henning told me that after he'd written three Wallander books, he spoke to close friend who was a doctor. He said, 'I want to give Wallander another problem. What would be suitable for a man at his time of life?' The doctor immediately replied, 'diabetes'. So Henning gave the character diabetes, and he immediately became more popular."

Tom Hiddleston, who plays Wallander's young colleague, Detective Martinsson, and is also currently appearing opposite Branagh on stage in Chekhov's Ivanov, believes that Wallander is very different from your run-of-the-mill British cop drama.

"This is not just a whodunnit, it's a whydunnit," he says. "It's getting inside Wallander's head and seeing how the horror affects his psyche. The serial killers are getting younger and the crimes are getting more and more macabre. What's happening to the world when killers are scalping ministers of justice? What's that about?"

The stories gain added piquancy from the fact that these heinous crimes are being committed in Sweden, for so long considered a beacon of enlightened liberalism.

"Sweden has laid itself out as a very open society where the ideal of the common good is something to be cherished," says Branagh. "When that is abused and spoilt by the loss of human life, it's particularly poignant."

The other element that distinguishes Wallander from, say, Waking the Dead, is the stunning backdrop. Ystad plays a huge role in Wallander - it's as important as Oxford was to Inspector Morse.

"Sweden is a massive character in this drama," says Sarah Smart, who plays Wallander's sidekick. "It looks so different from anything back home. It's very stark, and all the colours are bleached. The style is retro. Everything is a bit wonky and quirky."

The actress, who played a bus driver in ITV's Jane Hall, adds: "This place seems completely cut off from the rest of Europe. It's eerie and remote. You could easily imagine people getting away with murder and hiding the bodies in the nooks and crannies round here."

Readers and television audiences seem to have an insatiable appetite for detective dramas. Perhaps that desire is hard-wired into our DNA.

"It's certainly one of the oldest story-telling traditions," says Mankell. "It was not invented by Edgar Allan Poe, but by the Greeks. Go back 2,500 years and look at Medea. That's about a woman who murders her two children as revenge against her husband, who has betrayed her and left her for another woman. If that's not a crime story, I don't know what is."
by James Rampton

Credit: Telegraph Online

Credit: Flip18

Sarah Smart Photoshoots

2008-08-08T17:03:00.012+01:00

Sarah Smart Profile Photos

2008-08-05T16:57:00.007+01:00

Andy McCartney Photoshoot

2008-07-28T01:28:00.008+01:00

Sarah Smart and Sarah Churm pose for a photoshoot by photographer Andy McCartney.

Credit: Andy McCartney

Sarah Smart Casualty 1906 / 1907

2008-03-30T17:41:00.014+01:00

Casualty 1906 - S01E01 - 3rd December 2006

Sarah Smart ... Nurse Ada Russell

Casualty 1906 is an innovative hospital drama that plunges the viewer into the Receiving Room (today's A&E) of the London hospital deep in the teeming East End. The drama is shot with the pace and action of its modern day counterpart and namesake, Casualty, but every case and character is true. Focusing on cases, characters and events taken from the actual hospital records, nurse's Ward Diaries and intimate memoirs, 'Casualty 1906' is an unbroken experience of life with pioneering doctors and nurses a hundred years ago among the desperately poor.

IMDB Link

Casulty 1907 - S01E01 - 30th March 2008
Casulty 1907 - S01E02 - 6th April 2008
Casulty 1907 - S01E03 - 13th April 2008

Sarah Smart ... Nurse Ada Russell

IMDB Link

Credit: Flip18

Sarah Smart Fairy Tales

2008-01-31T19:23:00.014Z

Fairy Tales - Billy Goat - 31st January 2008

Sarah Smart ... Carol Gruff

IMDB Link

Set in a world where trolls and human beings co-exist, the boy band Billy Goat is managed by a troll named Grettongrat. Although popular on the club scene in the north of England, the boys aspire to achieve wider fame; their manager disagrees.

Connor Gruff (Paul Nicholls) is the lead singer in boy band Billy Goat. Every week, Connor and his bandmates, his brother Dean (Mathew Horne) and friend Rafiq (Nick Mohammed), play to packed out audiences in clubs around their home town.

Life off-stage is just as good, Connor's happily married to his childhood sweetheart Carol (Sarah Smart) with three great kids; the womanising Dean is never short of a local groupie to sleep with and Rafiq just loves making music. But Connor dreams of more – he wants to be famous.

Mathew Horne says: "If I wasn't an actor I'd love to have been a rock star and live the rock star life." He goes on to say: "Having an audience and girls screaming at you is great ... it felt like we were doing it for real."

When Connor spots an advert wanting brother-based boy bands for a new TV show he's convinced this is Billy Goat's big chance to finally make it. But he hasn't taken into account the response of their manager, Grettongrat.

Grettongrat makes clear his thoughts on the band's limitations when he states: "You're a top local turn, but that doesn't make you the next Take That."

After years in showbiz, Grettongrat (Bernard Hill) knows his Ronan Keating from his Robbie Williams and he's not about to let his biggest earning act leave town to make money for somebody else. One by one, the three members of Billy Goat must descend to Grettongrat's office under The Bridge pub to try and break free of his contract.

Mathew comments: "A lot of the comedy comes when they have to engineer ways of getting out of their contract because the troll is such a shrewd business man and doesn't want to lose the band."

The path to fame, however, isn't an easy one and when things get desperate, Connor is forced to enter the dark recesses of his soul to make sacrifices he had never imagined...

Sarah Smart says of Connor's hunger for fame: "He's going through a bit of a mid-life crisis and becomes obsessed with fame. His relationship with his daughter makes him feel old because she is the same age now as he was when he had her and he feels that he should be more successful than he is. Carol has ambition too but is keen to keep the family together."

The comedy drama also features Holliday Grainger as Connor and Carol's eldest daughter Leeza; Roy Barraclough and June Watson as the unfortunate magician and his wife who make the mistake of messing with Grettongrat; Moya Brady as Grettongrat's spookily capable assistant; and Ted Robbins as Barry the market stallholder who is taught a lesson he won't forget.

BBC NI Press Pack Link

Credit: BBC

Sarah Smart City of Vice

2008-01-14T03:32:00.002Z

City of Vice - S01E01 - 14th January 2008

Sarah Smart ... Nancy French

IMDB Link

I am a sucker for historical drama, particularly when its the sordid history of sorts. This one though particularly fascinating due to it being about the so-called first policemen! I love police drama. So my two favourite genres colliding. Reminds me of from Hell or Sherlock Holmes. The fact that its is a British budget so not Hollywood SE its very well done. A little OTT and not entirely factual, but thoroughly enjoyable and educational. Definitely raising some points for debate and setting one thinking. I was impressed by the filming of the streets in that 3D dark style, the general Gothic- feel of depressingly, stifling despair is fantastic. A great atmosphere! The two brothers are great actors and fascinating figures representing morality and justice, one Anglican one catholic, one blind one seeing. Great contrasts and characterisation. I did find it perfect but any faults where not particularly jarring and one could overlook them. Overall very good. No actionor exaggeration to make it exciting, its plain and disturbing in its message. Its about the evil underneath London's veneer in the Gerorgian Era. A guilty pleasure for those interested in history and entertaining enough for those not.

Credit: Destinysmile
Credit: Flip18

Sarah Smart The Whistleblowers

2007-10-19T02:57:00.016+01:00

The Whistleblowers - S01E04 - Fit for Purpose - 18th October 2007

Sarah Smart ... Sarah Kendrick

IMDB Link

Alisha and Ben are approached by an immigration officer, Sarah Kendrick, who believes that something is amiss with the entry of Turkish nationals to the UK. Sarah sent and e-mail to her superior addressing her concerns but it was ignored. She believes that some immigration officers are on the take. As the lawyers look into the matter, they quickly conclude that there is a connection between Turkish mobsters and illegal migration and they suggest that Sarah go public. When she does so however, she finds herself suspended and before a disciplinary tribunal.

Credit: garykmcd

IT'S always a potentially tricky moment when an actress lands a big role and then discovers she is pregnant.

"I feel really privileged that it was incorporated into the story," smiles Indira Varma, star of The Whistleblowers (ITV1, tonight, 9pm).

"I had a very easy pregnancy, so we were very lucky. But I had to wear some dodgy costumes when we were trying to cover the bump up before the storyline came out in later scripts."

Indira, who plays leading lady Alisha Cole in the TV thriller, has since given birth to daughter Evelyn and is still adjusting to life as a new mum. "I can't remember my own name, so I really shouldn't be here," she laughs.

The series sees lawyers Alisha and Ben (Richard Coyle) helping `whistleblowers' who are faced with the moral dilemma of speaking out and exposing the truth.

"Richard and I get on really well and have a laugh together - we are both quite mischievous and we've tried to bring that into the characters. We really do function like a couple. We talk over each other and bicker and laugh at our own jokes.

"The whole point is that Ben and Alisha are amateurs in this. They are both lawyers who are far more likely to be winning a case for the money, rather than moral justice. We're not professionals - we are not cops or detectives.

"Every single episode has a jaw-dropping moment when you think `bloody hell'. What's even more interesting is that the stories don't just tie themselves up neatly - sometimes somebody, somewhere, will get away with it. One of the messengers will be shot. I think that is true to life."

Indira says she'd like to think she would do the right thing. "It's about having the confidence to say, `Don't do that.' In a much more everyday way, it's like intimidation from aggressive kids. Obviously this series is about the much bigger and complex picture, but little things like bullying in the street, that's the same deal.

"We know we have to stand up to stop behaviour like that happening, but who really has the confidence to challenge a thug, knowing the risks?

Bit cynical

"Filming this hasn't changed my views. I've always been a bit cynical. What do you believe? Who can you believe? But some of the stuff in the scripts is quite shocking."

At Home With the Braithwaites actress Sarah Smart guest stars tonight as namesake Sarah, a single mum in her twenties who works as an airport immigration officer.

She has noticed several Turkish passengers are passing through immigration unquestioned. No-one in her office will take her seriously, but then she discovers that one of the Turkish passengers has gone on to shoot two people.

Having found Ben and Alisha through the internet, Sarah realises to do the right thing, she will have to go public - risking the job she needs to help raise her young son.

"I like the fact that she has this massive predicament," explains Sarah, "And that I get to play the whole scenario of `what would I do in that situation?' I would have done what Sarah did because she seems quite sensible.

"The series really does show that whistleblowing is very much a grey area. Doing the right thing is obviously a good thing. But there's this moral dilemma about whether doing the right thing is right for you.

"It isn't all happy endings - it can get you into terrible trouble. Moral dilemmas are great to watch on television because they give you something to think about."

Indira adds: "Hopefully viewers will go away wanting to sniff out other injusticesIt might be the birth of lots of whistleblowers.

"We get so paranoid there is nothing we can do - that's why a lot of people don't vote anymore. So few people think it will make any difference. We have to try to prove some things can change if you get off your backside and take responsibility."
by Ian Wylie

Credit: Manchster Evening News

Just because you’re paranoid,the saying goes, doesn’t mean that someone’s not really out to get you. The thought might have occurred to the crew of the new six-part ITV drama Whistleblower, as each story reveals one aspect of a conspiracy or coverup revealed by two dogged heroes.

Conceived by Tony Marchant and produced by Carnival, the stories follow corporate lawyers Ben (Richard Coyle)and Alisha (Indira Varma) as they first follow their own consciences and then encourage others to do the same.

“We’re going into Whistleblower with two heroes who are the Everyman,” producer Sanne
Wohlenberg explains. “They are you and me on the street. They have to wrestle with the rights and wrongs and all the moral dilemmas that comes with each case that’s brought to them. They have to get to the bottom of it, but they’re not a bunch of detectives or superheroes, they don’t always know what to do, but the moral issues are what drive them forward.”

“There’s a very fine line between how the public perceive somebody who ‘blows the whistle’,” says director Paul Gay, who directs two out of the block of six. “They could be called a ‘grass’, even. It’s very interesting subject matter, and I think the question that’s always being raised is ‘would you do this? Would you become a whistleblower’. It is a very tricky thing, because there’s always a risk I suppose.”

The paranoid conspiracy genre has had a long history in movies, from All The President’s Men to The Insider, and does allow for a certain visual style that keeps alive that creeping feeling of unease within the audience.

“The visual language is very conscious,” adds Gay, “you can really help to create the effect of a conspiracy thriller by using long lenses. It’s not
always possible, because sometimes you’re in small offices, but even then we managed to shoot through glass and partitions and things like that. It does create a feeling of observing meetings and situations from a distance, rather than being immediately in the room with the actors.”

“We shot it in a style which is very observed,” confirms DP Lukas Strebel. “Very often we shoot into things or through things like windows, or for exteriors we shoot out from the inside of a house. Blowing the whistle is all about observing and telling people what you know, and it’s about little secrets as well.”

Strebel, fresh from his Royal Television Society award and the BAFTA nomination for See No Evil – The Moors Murders, is lighting all six episodes. Along with Paul Gay the other two directors are John McKay and Richard Clark, with the episodes written by Marchant, Tony Saint, Steve Thompson and Paul Logue.

“I’ve hopefully developed a certain style for this show,” adds Strebel, “but I don’t want to press it on the directors. I’m always curious to share a vision, to work together and enter someone else’s world and participate with them.

“When I can do that and play with the director it’s great. It was great with Paul and I feel it will be with Richard. We just met, we did hardly any ‘prep’, and now I’m going to shoot with him. He’s seen a lot of stuff that we’ve shot so far and he’s very confident and excited by it.”

Shooting on a combination of Fujifilm stocks, Strebel is, in some ways, the artistic conscience of the show, the man who ensures a visual consistency throughout. He came to project having worked in the past with producer Wohlenberg, and she is clear that he was the ideal man for this particular job.

“The minute I got involved with this project we began discussing our references,” she adds, “what inspired this series and what we wanted to get from it.

“It’s so important that you set all these stories within a world that we are living in, without over stylising it. We needed visually to be able to tell these stories within that reality, and I think Lukas as a DP has done amazing work, which is very subtle.

“He has a huge understanding of what a story requires with regard to lighting, without ever going for an over-stylised approach to things. He has a sensitivity to storytelling, to finding ways subtly of lighting and shooting things that feel incredibly real.

“He always seemed like the natural choice of DP, certainly to me, and when we all talked about it and looked at our reference material, he was somebody we all were mutually drawn to.”

Creating a series with the potential to inspire a few debates, Wohlenberg believes Whistleblower is a timely production for the era we live in. So much so that she and her crew could be forgiven for looking a little apprehensively over their shoulders as the production wore on.

“Ever since we’ve been involved in this drama we begin to see the world in a different way,” she affirms. “It makes everybody quite alert, you read the papers with a different eye, and I think all the crew feel the same because these are stories that we all have a relationship with, and an opinion about. We are all affected by them in some way.”

Credit:Fuji Films

Sarah Smart The Yellow House

2007-03-22T03:46:00.002Z

The Yellow House - 22 March 2007

Sarah Smart ... Rachel

IMDB Link

Feature-length drama of the moving human story behind two of the most influential and explosive housemates in art history - Vincent Van Gogh (John Simm) and Paul Gauguin (John Lynch).

For just nine weeks, in late 1888, Van Gogh and Gauguin share a home, The Yellow House, in Arles, southern France.

Approaching middle age and still flat broke, both men abandon respectability, family and friends to commit themselves utterly to painting, united by an unshakable belief in the importance of art.

They endure what most people would find intolerable - loneliness, insecurity, and the total lack of any financial or worldly comfort. Their last hope is each other, if only they can get along.

Gauguin fears Van Gogh is on the brink of a psychological meltdown. Van Gogh claims Gauguin puts too much salt in the stew. They drink, they argue, but most of all they paint together, sharing a ferocious obsession.

In this brief period of penniless, fraught obscurity they produce between them over 40 acknowledged masterpieces, with a combined current value of almost a billion pounds. The relationship finally ends in an iconic and bloody climax, when Van Gogh cuts off his own ear.

Eighteen months after leaving The Yellow House, Van Gogh shot himself, bleeding to death over several days. Years later, Gauguin died, a syphilitic, in self-imposed exile in Tahiti.

Credit: Channel 4
Credit: Flip18

Sarah Smart Five Days

2007-01-23T19:22:00.007Z

Five Days - 23rd January 2007

Sarah Smart ... Sarah Wheeler

IMDB Link

The story begins one hot summers day when Leanne Wellings is taking her two young children to visit her grandfather. She stops to buy flowers at a motorway lay-by but then inexplicably vanishes -- leaving her two small children waiting for her in her car -- lost and far from home. Her two small children then set off to find her only to go missing themselves. Their ordeal is captured on CCTV cameras and before long the family's heart-stopping trauma is not only a complex police investigation but a major national news story.

Sarah has begun filming on new crime thriller Five Days, a BBC drama production in association with HBO.

Filming has begun on taut crime thriller Five Days, a BBC drama production in association with HBO for BBC One. Written by Gwyneth Hughes, Five Days is an intricate thriller which tracks five days following the abduction of an appealing and photogenic young mother, Leanne. This 5 part drama serial boasts an impressive ensemble cast which includes Nikki Amuka-Bird, Hugh Bonneville, Charlie Creed-Miles, Phil Davis, Patrick Malahide, Janet McTeer, David Oyelowo, Sarah Smart, Christine Tremarco, Penelope Wilton and Edward Woodward.

The story begins one, hot summer day when Leanne (Christine Tremarco) is taking her two young children to visit her grandfather. She stops to buy flowers at a motorway lay-by but then inexplicably vanishes, leaving her two small children waiting for her in her car, lost and far from home. They set off to find her only to go missing themselves.

Their ordeal is captured on CCTV cameras and before long the family's heart-stopping trauma is not only a complex police investigation but a major news story. As each episode unravels it becomes clear that nobody is quite as they seem. Not Leanne's grieving husband Matthew (David Oyelowo) who finds himself under suspicion.

Not the laconic detective Barclay (Hugh Bonneville), nor his cynical sergeant Foster (Janet McTeer).

Not Leanne's parents, Barbara (Penelope Wilton) and John (Patrick Malahide) and not Sarah (Sarah Smart), a stranger who is drawn into both the investigation and the family.

Otto Bathurst and Simon Curtis will direct he drama with the Executive Producing coming from Hilary Salmon and Simon Curtis for the BBC and Kary Antholis for HBO.

Credit: Merry Media

Recruitment consultant Sarah Wheeler accidentally becomes embroiled in the mysterious disappearance of young mother Leanne Wellings when she is woken one morning by a door-to-door police search.

As she puts out the rubbish, she comes across Leanne's son, Ethan, who has himself been reported missing along with his sister, Rosie.

As viewers first meet Sarah, she is moving into her new flat. She has a great job, is a high-flyer and, from the outside, looks like she has it all going for her.

"She's very much a loner, but she has this dark secret which makes her very interesting," explains Sarah Smart, who plays the businesswoman who becomes drawn into the investigation.

"She's quite guarded because of this secret, so it does take a while for people to get to know her."

Sarah, who recently starred in the drama series Jane Hall, is relishing playing the role.

"I'm a lady in this which is different for me because usually I play bus drivers and butch lesbians," laughs the 28-year-old actress.

When Sarah discovers Ethan, she becomes strangely drawn to the youngster and they become good friends.

"They go through a nice journey together," says Sarah. "They have a comforting relationship."

Sarah also develops a friendship with Ethan's father, Matt Wellings (David Oyelowo), and offers her help to the family. However, she gets a little too involved for some people's liking.

"Leanne's mum and dad don't like her at all because she suddenly becomes mixed up within their story and always seems to be at Matt's home," says Sarah.

"Everyone is very suspicious of her, but viewers will soon realise why she is the way she is and, later in the series, they will discover her secret."

As Sarah's relationship with Matt goes on, he begins to offload all of his woes upon her.

"They use each other, basically," says Sarah. "He uses her as an outlet for his emotions which he can't share with his family, because of what they're going through, and she uses him for her emotional needs."

The pair have a complicated relationship, she adds.

"He is attractive and there is a chemistry between them and it's a complex one because it's about needing something that you can't have. It's not a love story."

Although Sarah seems very together, she is actually quite a needy person, and feeds off the love and support she and the family have given each other.

"That's what she is attracted to, the fact that they keep her so close," says Sarah. "She needs the family as much as they kind of need her – especially in Leanne's absence."

Five Days is a BBC collaboration with the US channel HBO, which Sarah is very excited about. So what are her thoughts on trying to crack America?

"I'm really enjoying what I'm doing at the moment, just doing nice, varied roles and working regularly," says Sarah.

"I'm better known here, and it's nice and easy. So I'm not really fussed.

"I would really like to do some films, though, and would love to do a British film."

Sarah's other TV credits include Funland, Jane Hall and Sparkhouse but she is perhaps best known for playing Virginia Braithwaite in At Home With The Braithwaites – the story about a dysfunctional family whose lives were turned upside down by a lottery win.

"I've been so lucky in my career," says Sarah. "I started off working when I was a kid, and happily made the transition from kid to girlfriend to daughter, and now I'm making this transition where I'm doing proper characters in their own right who have complicated adult lives – it's great."

Credit: BBC

Smart Way to Get Guys

2006-07-20T02:42:00.005+01:00

JANE HALL star Sarah Smart is hoping her pole dancing skills can help her find her a new fella.

Sexy Sarah, 29, who plays hapless bus driver Jane in the ITV1 drama, reckons she can lure a man by using the pole she keeps in the kitchen of her north London home.

At the moment she shares it with dog Tootsie but believes the pole - which she kept after taking lessons for BBC drama Funland last year - might now be the key to snaring a guy.

The At Home With The Braithwaites star told us: "I’ve been single for a year after being in a relationship for six years. That fizzled out, as I was too busy with work.

"I liked being in love and I miss being in love but I am quite selfish and do like my independence.

"If I got a guy home I’d give him a demonstration on the pole as I have picked up a few moves.

"I used to practice in my kitchen and my mate Sarah Churm who played my sister in Braithwaites would film it for me on her mobile phone."

She added: "The only downside is that I got pole burns on the middle of my thighs from practising too much."

It's all a far cry from her role as the accident-prone Jane Hall in the ITV1 six-parter screened on Wednesdays at 9pm.

But it could well appeal to her wicked alter-ego Fantasy Jane who sports leather catsuits and other sexy outfits in the series.

She said: "My parents will love Jane Hall and my granny will be pleased that I keep my clothes on after Funland. My dad left the room when my sex scenes came on pretending there was a draught!

"Jane is a great part but I was sad I didn’t actually get to learn to drive a bus. I thought I’d have to pass my PSV licence but I only drove the bus a few feet forwards and backwards for scenes.

"It was a shame as I'd passed my test for At Home With The Braithwaites as I had to drive a Lotus Elite in the show."

In the latest episode, Jane is torn between two men - fickle Richard (Daniel Lapaine) who likes to play the field and the serious Robert (Stephen Mangan).

Meanwhile there is a roasting in store for a few characters when Jane’s love cheat bus driver pal Mandy (Gillian Taylforth) holds a barbecue.

Up next for Sarah is a Casualty-style BBC1 drama set in 1906. She told us: "I play Nurse Ada Russell and it’s about her romance with surgeon Sir James Walton played by Tom Riley.

"It’s the true story of the Royal London Hospital and about people who really worked there. All the nurses were well-educated and upper-class but their patients were beggars and prostitutes."

Credit: The Sun