Christina Hendricks has seen an alien. Well, a UFO, really – but still. She’s even got a picture on her phone to prove it. I am told this story matter-of-factly by the Mad Men actor when I enquire as to whether she and Chris O’Dowd believe in extra-terrestrial life. “I think there has to be,” she says simply.
It’s a relevant question, given the plot of their new joint venture, Small Town, Big Story. Created by O’Dowd (who also cameos in a few episodes), the six-part Sky Atlantic show follows Hollywood producer Wendy Patterson (Hendricks) as she returns home to the fictional Irish town of Drumbán where she was born in order to shoot a ludicrous “historical” fiction adaptation called I Am Celt. It soon transpires that Wendy and her former flame Seamus (Paddy Considine), now the local doctor, underwent a mystifying, out-of-this-world experience as teenagers – one that forever altered the course of their lives. The tone sits somewhere between comedy and melodrama – O’Dowd was aiming for “opera”, he says – as the cast of misfit characters uncover more about the town’s long history of attracting interstellar visitors.
