2007

Jack Donnelly

Cape Wrath (Meadowlands in the United States) is a British drama television series produced by Ecosse Films which focuses on a family trying to escape its past while confronting an even more uncertain future. The series opens with Danny (David Morrissey) and Evelyn Brogan (Lucy Cohu) along with their two teenage children Zoe (Felicity Jones) and Mark (Harry Treadaway) entering a witness protection programme, moving to a bucolic neighbourhood, Meadowlands, to begin a new life. Picturesque and crime-free, Meadowlands appears to be a suburban paradise where the Brogan family can start a new life. But they soon realise that it is not so easy to escape the past and their safe haven becomes a world of paranoia and psychological intrigue with surprises around every corner.

‘The minute he walked into the audition, I knew he was what we needed,’ says the American director Duane Clark (best known for the hit thriller series CSI) of his decision to cast him as psychotic odd-job man Jack Donnelly in Cape Wrath, an engrossing eight-part Channel 4 thriller.

Cape Wrath – which also stars David Morrissey – centres around the Brogan family (a young couple and their teenage twins) who are on the run from their past. As part of a witness protection programme they arrive, blindfolded, in a town called Meadowlands. On its pastel surface, it is a suburban paradise, but darkness lurks beneath the utopian facade. From the beginning, Hardy’s baseball-cap-wearing character is an ominous presence, who soon turns out to have a disturbing past. ‘When his name came up, the producers said he was too posh,’ Clark laughs. ‘But anyone who meets Tom knows that he is a nice middle-class boy from East Sheen with a very dark underbelly.’ – Quotes taken from From Hard Man Melting, article in the Telegraph