Passers-by in Newcastle city centre were greeted by the unexpected sight of an old-style phone box outside the Civic Centre early on Monday morning as filming got under way for a new TV drama. The production is Bad Blood, a four-part series for ITV written by BAFTA-winning screenwriter Peter Moffat, which centres on the infected blood scandal of the 1970s and 1980s.
Film crews were at work outside the civic centre, with extras including a man in a suit, a woman with a pushchair and others emerging from the building. The scene is part of a drama described as "powerful and moving".
Cast and Story
The series has an impressive main cast led by Iain Glen, known for his roles as Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones and Dr Alexander Isaacs in the Resident Evil films. It also features Joe Absolom, who appeared in EastEnders and Doc Martin; Ben Chaplin, known for The Thin Red Line; and Susan Lynch, whose roles include a killer's mother in Happy Valley.
Bad Blood focuses on what it calls "one of the biggest injustices in UK history". It tells the story of four boys who attended Treloar's, a boarding school for disabled children in Hampshire, where they received contaminated blood. The scandal went on to affect more than 30,000 people, causing life-changing illnesses including hepatitis C and AIDS, and over 3,000 deaths.
Background and Impact
The school had an NHS centre where pupils with the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia could receive treatment without attending hospital. It was there that some received 'factor VIII', described as a revolutionary treatment at the time but in reality a means to test blood products, some of which came from high-risk donors in America. There was a cover-up of failures when boys, used as 'guinea pigs', were among those showing signs of illness, and their families and other survivors then faced a long fight for truth and justice.
Families in the North East were among them. A memorial to 122 haemophiliac victims, former pupils at the school, was unveiled at the weekend, and among those watching by livestream was Carol Grayson, from Newcastle, who has researched the scandal and campaigned for the truth. She also worked with ChronicleLive's sister paper The Journal on its Bad Blood awareness campaign launched in 2000. Her husband Pete Longstaff had attended the boarding school during the 1970s and 1980s, along with his brother Stephen, and they received blood injections, believing it was doing them good. In fact they were infected with HIV and hepatitis viruses which led to their deaths – Peter at the age of just 47 in 2005 and his brother a decade earlier.
Production and Release
Writer Moffat has carried out lengthy research with some of the affected families, with their experience feeding into the drama. Bad Blood is directed by Julia Ford, who was also behind Believe Me, another dramatisation of real life events which followed the crimes of 'black cab rapist' John Worboys.
Filming of Bad Blood will continue across the region. The finished series is expected to air on ITV next year.
