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Hunter
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Mick Ford – writer
Developing the characters of Det Supt Iain Barclay (Hugh Bonneville) and DS Amy Foster (Janet McTeer) was an appealing challenge for Hunter writer Mick Ford, who immediately saw the potential their personalities posed.
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"What I found exciting about these characters was that they were strong enough for me to really put them through the mill.
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"They have completely different approaches to policing and to life, and it was this contrast between Barclay and Foster that really appealed.
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"Barclay: intuitive and pragmatic but quintessentially English, and Foster: a tough cookie in an altogether different way. It's a very strong dynamic."
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Mick wanted to test this formidable team to the fullest with the situation he threw at them in the script.
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"I wanted to see what would happen to these characters if I gave them a really hard-hitting, uncomfortable moral issue to deal with.
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"Some detective dramas keep the audience in the dark which I find frustrating. So I created a very heavy dilemma, and gave the audience and the police the same amount of information, so that the viewer goes along with the characters as they try to work it out."
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It was also important for Mick to base his story around the realities of what professional life is like for a Senior Investigating Officer.
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"The senior person in charge is on call for over a week at a time, 24 hours a day, setting up all the different inquiries into all the major crimes that come into his station. The information comes in to him, rather than him personally going out on the streets."
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Foster coordinates Barclay's satellites, they complement each other perfectly as they negotiate the politics of policing with the pressures of the investigation.
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He explains: "It's about who's the best player, and who's the best person to say who the best player is.
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"Quite a long time ago I went down to the Wellcome Trust Centre near Oxford to research a project. I didn't know anything at all about genetics, and I met these people working together at the cutting edge of science.
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"But gradually all the details dripped away, and I saw that they were just a team of people that operated the same way as any other team that could be making a television programme or anything else. That's what it's about."
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