We love a relaxing Sunday night drama and they don’t come much better than “The Durrells”, now airing on ITV1. The cast is excellent and no-one more so than Keeley Hawes, who plays Louisa Durrell, mother to four wayward but loyal children. She brings humour, tears and laughter to the role, a far cry from the way she started her career some 20 years ago.
Hawes began her life in show business with starring roles in music videos for bands as diverse as Suede, Lightning Seeds and James. BBC drama productions followed, including playing Kitty Butler in “Tipping the Velvet”, based on the Sarah Walters novel about the transition of a girl into womanhood in Victorian England. It included several sexually-explicit scenes, prompting a number of complaints to the BBC.
The attention did Keeley Hawes no harm, as she moved further into mainstream drama. She appeared in the gripping spy drama “Spooks”, as well as the one-off drama “A is for Acid” alongside Martin Clunes. Her clipped tones, honed in a decade of elocution lessons at theatre school, also landed her the voice of Lara Croft in the “Tomb Raider” video game franchise.
Her two years in Spooks was the big breakthrough she was waiting for and helped her to secure a rather different role in “Ashes to Ashes”, the spin-off of the BBC time-travelling hit “Life on Mars”. Her portrayal of Drake, who is shot in 2008 and finds herself waking up in 1981 won her a “Best UK Television Actress” title at the Glamour Awards.
Those elocution lessons came in handy again, helping Hawes to land the job of narrating a documentary about Prince William and Kate Middleton in the run-up to their wedding in 2011, as well as the ITV1 “Extraordinary Families” season.
We all love the BBC drama “Line of Duty” and Hawes delivered possibly her finest performances to date in Series 2. Detective Inspector Lindsay Denton fell under the microscope of the police anti-corruption unit AC-12 after being the sole survivor of an ambush during the moving of a prisoner. She was taken to court and acquitted after an improper sexual relationship with an AC-12 officer. Hawes was fantastic as Lindsay Denton, bringing Jed Mercurio’s brilliant script to life. She won widespread critical approval, picking up a “Best Actress” gong at the 2014 Crime Thriller Awards.
Away from the small screen she is a patron, along with husband Matthew McFadyen, of the CHASE Hospice Care for Children charity. They met while filming Spooks in 2002, marrying two years later, and have two children. Now in her second series of “The Durrells”, Keeley Hawes is widely recognised as one of the UK’s most versatile and popular actresses. Her role as the Durrell children’s mother is a long way from the pace and action of Line of Duty but she delivers yet again and we love her for it.
by Ian Hine
The post The Amazing Women of British TV: Keeley Hawes appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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