A community hall in north-east England has been hired for the afternoon to film a scene for one of the standout TV dramas of this year. However, it is off screen – in the cramped kitchen of the building near Hartlepool – that I am seeing one of the most extraordinary and moving tableaux that can have happened on a TV shoot.
Standing before a monitor, Ann Ming, a retired surgical nurse, calmly observes Sheridan Smith pretending to be her with the uncanny accuracy of appearance and speech that is the actor’s speciality. The shot cuts to a young woman. At this point, the production team tenses: this character is Julie Hogg, Ming’s daughter, who was murdered, aged 22, in 1989. How might someone in their 70s deal with seeing a double of herself and her lost child?
