When you're facing disaster, the last thing you need is dissent within the team meant to be supporting you – but that's exactly what charismatic Prime Minister Robert Sutherland (Robert Carlyle) faces in the third season of gripping British political drama COBRA.
COBRA stands for 'Cabinet Office Briefing Room A'; it's the place where experts, contingency planners and senior politicians gather to deal with a major national crisis. But in the latest season of this acclaimed drama, the PM and his chief-of-staff Anna Marshall (Victoria Hamilton) are not only dealing with the fallout of a disaster involving multiple deaths, but issues in their personal lives, too. And then there's a threat from within they have to deal with: the new Defence Secretary (new addition to the cast Jane Horrocks). As Hamilton puts it, "It becomes apparent that she is a very Machiavellian force."
Here, four of the key cast members talk about the tense story-lines and difficult choices of season 3 and the highlights of shooting the new season.
ROBERT CARLYLE (ROBERT SUTHERLAND) & VICTORIA HAMILTON (ANNA MARSHALL)
Each season there is a new threat for Robert Sutherland’s government. What is the threat this season?
Robert Carlyle: The threat this season comes from within rather than outside. I mean, season two, there was the threat of cyber war and in series one, there was the solar flare. This time round it tends to be more internal. There’s a rebellion within the Cabinet which is certainly one of the major factors this time. But as it’s COBRA, there’s always some sort of disaster too. A big bang happens in the first episode where a sinkhole caves in, in a place called Godley Common. It causes a catastrophic loss of life and as the government try to investigate how this happened, we begin to learn that perhaps it wasn't a natural disaster after all.
Victoria Hamilton: There's also an investigation into our country's relationship with fictional Gulf State Shirasia with whom we are negotiating an arms deal. The shady aspects of those deals and how that can come back to bite you, is something Sutherland finds himself fielding as well. Additionally, there are additional threats from within which manifests in the shape of character named Victoria Dalton (Jane Horrocks), who has been brought into the Government in order to clear up security issues after series two.
This season is also called COBRA: REBELLION. What rebellions do your characters face?
Victoria Hamilton: The most immediate rebellion, the one that becomes the most problematic for Sutherland is the rebellion from within his own party, from a person that he has actually brought in to try to resolve security issues from the series two. Victoria Dalton, who is much, much further right than Robert is, certainly a threat.
...it feels very much as though the rebellion is sitting across the table from him in the COBRA room
There are also environmental groups who are presenting problems and becoming more and more dramatic in the way they are choosing to gain traction for their argument. So, the rebellion is coming from lots of different quarters, and for Sutherland, personal rebellion within his own family, from his child. But the difference this season, it feels very much as though the rebellion is sitting across the table from him in the COBRA room.
Jane Horrocks, right, joins Victoria Hamilton and Robert Carlyle in the new season of 'COBRA'. Credit: Matt Squire / Sky UK
What drives Anna this series and what is her relationship with Robert like?
Victoria Hamilton: I think she has always believed in him as a politician. She genuinely believes that he's the right man for the job and I think she's also very bright and knows that because of the nature of their relationship and how very close they've always been, she has a position of incredible power. I think it's something that we've all found more and more of as we watch politics unfold over the last few years. It's the power of the people immediately behind the person that's standing at the podium - the power that they have in the decision making. I think she finds all of those things very attractive and believes she can be a power for good. I think the other side of that is her emotional connection to Robert. I think she has feelings for him that have never been really acknowledged. Certainly, the first time the door was ever thrown open on that was that scene at the end of series two and I think that is a large part of the reason she's there.
Robert Carlyle and Victoria Hamilton in COBRA. Credit: Matt Squire / Sky
Why does Prime Minister Sutherland keep going when he’s faced with challenge after challenge?
Robert Carlyle: One of the things that Sutherland says in season three is that being Prime Minister has been the greatest privilege of his life. So, there's obviously a part of him that loves it. Who would do this job? They’ve got to enjoy it because it's nightmare after nightmare. So, there's that kind of lust for power, I suppose? He loves his country, I mean there's no doubt about that. But he does consider how long he can keep doing that when he's going to face these other things. I think it has a lot to do with his mental health because we see that obviously in season two.
What have been some of the highlights of shooting the new series?
Robert Carlyle: The highlight for me, working with her (Victoria).
Victoria Hamilton: Aww! Highlight for me, working with him (Robert).
Robert Carlyle: It's not often you can have that relationship, you know. I genuinely enjoy coming to work every day on this show.
Victoria Hamilton: We were saying we got very lucky because when this relationship was first written, it was written in a certain way. We've been given huge range in developing it and really enjoyed doing that. A large part of the reason is the relationship that we have, and we had never met each other the day we were cast. It’s not like we did a chemistry test or anything like that. But very rarely in this profession as in very rarely in life, you meet people that you just click with, and if you get that on the job, it's just magic because you have a shorthand that it can take ten years of working with somebody else to have. So, I think, we're very fortunate.
JANE HORROCKS (VICTORIA DALTON)
Jane Horrocks as Victoria Dalton. Credit: Matt Squire / ITV UK
Who is Victoria Dalton and what is she trying to do?
She’s recently been given a promotion to Minister of Defence. She is a great underminer, does not have faith in Prime Minister Robert Sutherland and really wants his job. That's her main mission. She's an absolute narcissist, very right wing and pro-military ...She’s a bit of a snake-like character who’s working her way through the cabinet to see who's on side with her and who she could get onto her side.
Victoria is always trying to get Archie (David Haig) on her side. Can you talk about their relationship and what she’s trying to get out of it?
Victoria and Archie are very similar characters and they've been written in a very similar way in that their dialog is very cutting and viper-like. So I think that she is definitely a match for Archie and she is hoping that he will come on her side and maybe come form a government with her. They're really at loggerheads and absolutely hate each other, because they're very similar.
You mentioned the dialogue and Victoria has some great one-liners. Has it been fun to play her?
I’ve really enjoyed playing Victoria Dalton because she's a very different character to the characters that I normally play in that she's very hard edged. There's nothing soft about her at all. She's very sharp witted, very sarcastic, cutting and no nonsense. I've really enjoyed playing something so different to me as well.
DAVID HAIG (ARCHIE GLOVER-MORGAN)
David Haig as Archie Glover-Morgan in 'COBRA' season 3. Credit: Matt Squire / ITV UK
Would you say the stakes are higher this season?
I think the stakes for this season are cumulatively as great as the first two. I personally prefer the danger of the third series because I feel that all the issues are so contemporary and recognisable in our own society.
Although individually, the threats to the government are not as terrifying as the first series, I think they're more relevant to the viewer today. It explores the morality of doing a big economic deal with a nation that is tyrannical, misogynistic and whether it's worth doing that deal, if you get yourself some eco-friendly wind farms paid for by that government. So those sorts of dilemmas are powerful in this series.
What's different for Archie this season?
Archie goes on a fascinating journey because in the second series, we started to encounter a sort of inverted integrity within this pretty unpleasantly ruthless man. And in the third series that goes further, when he recognises that sometimes he has to stand by people he has fought against in order to preserve the status quo. He considers whether the status quo within government is preferable to the alternative, one of the rebellions of the series, then that's what he's prepared to do, even with his arch enemies.
Archie is caught in a few relationships this season, spinning many plates. Can you talk about some of them?
Archie has several new relationships in this series. There's a very hateful relationship between the wonderful Jane Horrocks’s character (Victoria Dalton) and my character, which is really fun to play because he's finally met his match and met somebody equally ruthless.
There's a very hateful relationship ... which is really fun to play because he's finally met his match...
There's a second relationship with Prince Samir of Shirasia. That's a very interesting relationship because Samir actually does good for the UK by doing a fairly dubious deal. As Foreign secretary, Archie is actually helping the UK in other ways, and that moral dilemma is fascinating. Furthermore, there's a third relationship in the third season that affects Archie very deeply. In the second season, we discover that his son was killed in a live ammunition exercise as a soldier, and that is embroidered and developed in the third series.
Archie has some great one liners and great dialogue. Has it been fun playing him?
It's always fun playing Archie, because when you have a series about a concerted political objective, a lot of the time the characters are all firing and functioning in sort of tight political dialog. Archie is always ready to debunk that with one witty line. He's also ruthless and so it affords me the fun of getting extremely angry and extremely nasty to people. But equally, as I say, he has got a sort of distorted integrity and it's fun teasing that out of the character as well.
This is an edited version of material supplied by Sky UK.
Three seasons of COBRA are streaming now at SBS On Demand.
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