‘Shy & Lola’: How Bel Powley, Hayley Squires & Amanda Coe Brought A Coen Brothers Vibe To BBC Thriller In UK Port Town

EXCLUSIVE: What would happen if you took the “visual reference” of the Coen brothers and transported this vibe to the UK’s port town of Grimsby. That question is posed in Shy & Lola, a BBC drama starring Harry Potter’s Bel Powley and The Night Manager’s Hayley Squires, which will be taken to buyers at MIPCOM next week before launching on the BBC. In an interview with Deadline, Powley and Squires stressed the highly original nature of the Amanda Coe-penned series from Baby Reindeer maker Clerkenwell Films, but they did say the work of the Coen brothers influenced its look and tone. “The Coen brothers often explore incredibly dark subjects, such as murder, death, blood and guns, but they shoot them in a way that gives the material a sense of levity and lightness,” said Powley. “I think that’s what the cinematographer was looking for visually.” Watch on Deadline Squires said the “Coen brothers’ influence probably comes through in the humor” of Shy & Lola, which also “comes out in the geography where the stories take place and the things that are specific to that place.” Revealed by Deadline several months back, Shy & Lola spotlights its protagonists, two very different women who are forced to become allies when a murder entangles them in the criminal underworld operating in Grimsby. Shy is a cleaner, scraping by and dreaming of a new life in Portugal. Lola is an ex-model-turned-grifter who arrives in town with trouble at her heels. The unlikely pair build an operation that threatens to blow the local bad guys out of the water, as opposing futures beckon. Coe, whose credits include Apple TV’s Dior series The New Look and the BBC’s Apple Tree Yard, was inspired by Fargo. “I love the idea that you can create a world of its own that resonates with the real world but is very heightened and blackly comic,” added Coe. “We use violence sparingly but in an interesting way. There’s a theme of violence going through the show without glorifying it.” Shy & Lola is based on the French show Cheyenne & Lola starring Charlotte Le Bon and Veerle Baetens. BBC Studios approached Clerkenwell with the idea to adapt the French show and the indie immediately saw an opportunity to add its own twist. “It has that mix we love at Clerkenwell,” said Petra Fried, who runs the indie and is an EP on Shy & Lola. “It’s a darkly comic, propulsive story with real emotional depth underneath it. It’s funny and entertaining, but the stakes are very real, so you never stop caring about these women.” Coe, who said she has a track record of making “female-led shows,” noted that there are major distinctions between Cheyenne & Lola and her version. “The French version starts with a character in their underwear looking amazing,” she added. “That is not the vibe of our show.” “I’ve never witnessed that in a chemistry read before” Image: BBC/Clerkenwell Films Ltd./Kerry Spicer BBC/Clerkenwell Films Ltd./Matt Towers In order for this “vibe” to work, the chemistry between the leads had to impeccable. Luckily, they matched perfectly. Powley and Squires are two actors at the top of their game, with BAFTA nominee Powley about to be seen as Aunt Petunia in HBO’s eye-catching Harry Potter, and Squires, who wowed in Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake a decade ago, playing a big role in the BBC and Prime Video’s The Night Manager. “I’ve never witnessed that in a chemisty read before where you just go ‘wow’ after 10 seconds,” said Coe. “Together they were more than the sum of their parts.” Squires admired Powley from when she had a small part in one of her breakout hits, Julia Jarrold’s rom-com A Royal Night Out. She said the pair quickly made a “silent pact to find the best version” of the characters they were playing. “We are quite different people but have a real understanding of each other,” she added. “That mirrors the characters of Shy and Lola. They essentially fall platonically in love with each other on screen, which was a beautiful relationship to play out.” Powley also spoke to Shy and Lola’s “unlikely charm” and praised Squires for bringing “such gravity and being so grounded in her performances.” Another “character” in Shy & Lola, according to Powley, is the port town of Grimsby, a place rarely represented in British TV or movies, although it is the home of Sacha Baron Cohen’s ill-fated 2016 comedy that bears its name. Squires, who joked that when she first read the scripts she simply thought to herself, “How am I going to master the Grimsby accent,?” something she eventually did with the help of Grimsby-born Shy & Lola co-star Thomas Turgoose, said the setting brings with it a “sense of community.” “There’s an ensemble of characters who make up the community where they work and live, and it has a real richness to it,” she added. “These aren’t people who despise where they come from or hate where they live. The majority of working-class people actually don’t [hate where they live].” Squires thinks this “richness” has been lost somewhat in the recent depiction of working class communities, as she harks back to successful, multi-faceted 1990s shows like Our Friends in the North. “I feel as though that trend might have changed,” she added. “It’s the same with anything to do with class or culture; if your writer has knowledge of that community then it comes through.” She is enthused by the success of shows like the BBC’s Sherwood, however, and throws her weight behind the national broadcaster as an “organization that has had to battle to hold its ground, and I think it has.” BBC Studios will be selling Shy & Lola at MIPCOM this week.