A Mother's Son

A Mother’s Son
A Mother’s Son DVD
Created by	Chris Lang
Directed by	Edward Bazalgette
Starring	Hermione Norris Martin Clunes Paul McGann Nicola Walker Alexander Arnold
Composer(s)	Paul Englishby
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	2
Production
Producer(s)	Colin Wratten
Editor(s)	Mark Davis
Cinematography	Tim Palmer
Running time	60 minutes
Release
Original network	ITV
Original release	4 September 2012 (2012-09-04)

A Mother’s Son is a two-part British television mini-series created by Chris Lang first broadcast on ITV in 2012.^[1] It was produced by the ITV Studios.^[2] It starred Hermione Norris, Martin Clunes, Paul McGann, Nicola Walker and Alexander Arnold.

Plot

When a teenage girl is murdered, Rosie, a divorced mother of two, suspects with horror that her teenage son, Jamie is involved.

Lorraine Mullary, a local school girl, goes missing and is later found murdered throwing the sleepy market town in which she lived into turmoil. Among them are the newly merged family of Rosie (Hermione Norris) and her two children, and Ben (Martin Clunes) and his two kids. Rosie begins to worry about her son Jamie (Alexander Arnold), suspecting him of lying to her about his movements. When she finds a stained pair of trainers hidden in the bedroom of her son Jamie, she worries it might be blood.

As the investigation continues, relationships in the family become strained. Jamie turns for support to his father David (Paul McGann). But Rosie finds she cannot suppress the growing fear that her son might be guilty of something truly terrible.

Cast

• Hermione Norris - Rosie
• Martin Clunes - Ben
• Paul McGann - David
• Alexander Arnold - Jamie
• Annabelle Apsion - Kay Mullery
• Nicola Walker - DC Sue Upton
• Charles Daish - DCI McCleish
• Antonia Clarke - Jess^[3]

Recording

The series was filmed in and around the town of Southwold in Suffolk, just 10 miles north of Britain's most easterly point, Lowestoft, as well as the nearby village of Walberswick. Shops on Southwold high street became the backdrop for many scenes, with local residents given the chance to appear as extras to keep the plot as close to life as possible.^[4]

Reception

Reviewing the series in The Guardian Sam Wollaston called it "tense, absorbing, thrilling".^[5] Nigel Farndale, writing in The Telegraph praised it as "a taut, psychological thriller that will have left every parent who watched it feeling uneasy, maybe even culpable.^[6]" while Alex Hardy in The Times was impressed by "A striking portrait of the asymmetrical compartmentalised nature of one family of our times"

Adaptations

In 2015, "A Mother's Son" was adapted by Didier Le Pêcheur for French television in a co-production between EuropaCorp Television and ITV Studios France under the title "Tu es mon fils".^[7] The French version, starring Anne Marivin, Thomas Jouannet and Charles Berling, first aired on TF1^[8] February 23, 2015 garnering 6.5 million viewers.^[9]

References