ITV's new crime thriller The Dark opens with a naked body eerily staged in the remote Scottish Highlands. But unlike many crime dramas, the victim is a young man, not a woman. This distinction made adapting GR Halliday's novel From the Shadows 'unturnable' for writer Matt Hartley, who told Metro: 'It wasn't young women getting massacred in woods. It did feel like it was a different prism in which victimhood was going to be explored.'
Exploring Male Vulnerability
Hartley drew from his own adolescence to portray the 'frustrations' of a young man in a remote area. 'I don't think we often see those young men, at that age where independence is there, and that's a core theme of the motive of driving somebody to do this,' he said. 'It was a great chance to explore what it's like when we think that young men are not as vulnerable as their female counterparts, and just start to disappear. How does the community react differently to that?'
Inspiration from True Detective and The Fall
The show's haunting use of landscape and atmosphere was inspired by True Detective, while the cat-and-mouse chase between detective and killer recalls BBC's The Fall. Detective Monica Kennedy, played by Laura Donnelly, pursues a masked figure described by Hartley as someone you might glimpse driving past and initially think 'that's a normal face' before doing a double take. 'It's like a ghostly presence,' he said. 'We talked a lot about at what point we really truly see this person that's going to be haunting both the show and our detectives.'
Agatha Christie-Style Mystery
Hartley promises that attentive viewers might piece together the killer's identity before the reveal. However, he is wary of fan theories. 'It means we're doing a good job in some ways,' he said. 'But I think it would terrify me. I would be going, "Oh, they saw it", or "That could have been a great idea", or "Why didn't I pursue that even more?" I'm wary that I would lose so much of my life to doing that and then joining in. That would not be well advised.'
From Soap Operas to Primetime Thriller
Before The Dark, Hartley wrote for Hollyoaks and EastEnders, though he admits he wasn't very good at it. 'There are so many people that are fantastic at it, because they have that muscle and they know the show and the characters so well,' he said. 'I didn't know the characters as well as I know the characters in the world that I'm going to create. Like with this show, yes, it was based on Gareth's brilliant books, but I was creating a lot of these characters, and they were living and breathing because of a heartbeat that I put into them.'
Future of The Dark
This novel is the first in a trilogy, with the second featuring a 'very, very distinct crime'. There is no confirmation yet on whether The Dark will become a longer-running series. As for the ending, Hartley quotes former Crimewatch presenter Nick Ross's sign-off: 'Don't have nightmares. But I think if that happens, then that was part of the job done.'
The Dark is available on ITV1 tonight at 9pm, with the full series on ITVX.
