JENNIFER SAUNDERS is amazed, excited… and absolutely terrified. That might sound like a strange state of mind for a much-loved, multi-Bafta-winning actress as she sits in a Stockport coffee shop preparing to film her next scene. But Saunders is definitely feeling out of her comfort zone on the set of her new TV show, The Stranger. It’s an eight-part Harlan Coben thriller, adapted by Danny ‘Brassic’ Brocklehurst for Netflix — and it’s Saunders’ first-ever dramatic role.
‘Yes, I was really thrilled to be asked, if slightly surprised,’ she confides. ‘I mean, I do comedy — it’s what I’m good at. My first scene was with [Downton’s] Siobhan Finneran, who is just about my most favourite actress in the world. I could barely breathe.’
Still, Saunders admits that once you’ve done your first take in a straight drama, it does become just like normal filming — ‘except that when I get to the end of a scene in this,’ she adds, ‘I hope the crew don’t burst out laughing.’
They’re unlikely to. Saunders plays Heidi, a colourful cake shop owner approached by The Stranger (Hannah John-Kamen) with information that shames her family. If she doesn’t pay hush money, her daughter Kimberley’s naked body will be plastered all over the internet. The Stranger, meanwhile, has already destroyed the life of Adam Price (Richard Armitage) after telling him a secret about his wife.
Amid these domestic bombshells there are schoolchildren raving on the moors and severed alpaca heads. The Stranger feels like very much like a darker, slightly discombobulating Cold Feet — and not just because it’s partly filmed on the same streets of Didsbury in South Manchester.
‘It starts off so weird and gets more twisted,’ agrees Saunders. ‘Coben has a really good way of writing thrillers set in normal life and at first it seems everything is perfect. I have these huge dogs that slobber everywhere, my daughter’s at university and suddenly The Stranger changes everything.
‘Having three daughters, I felt I could identify with Kimberley’s situation… not that any of them have done what she has, I hasten to add!’
Saunders, typically, jokes that the peril for her character is finding out whether she might meet a ‘sticky ending in a cake shop’, and for all the grisly subject matter she’s obviously enjoying her stint in ‘real’ drama.
‘It’s been fine,’ she says. ‘Well, no one’s come up to me in the street and shouted, “What are you doing in a drama, you idiot? You’re going to spoil this for everyone!”’
So is that her fear?
‘No, I just have normal fears about whether I’ll be any good, like any actor,’ she smiles. ‘As long as I’m not the worst, right? I don’t think I’d like to actually watch this back, though, see myself pretend to be serious. I only watch my own shows if I think they’re hilarious…’
Which brings us on to the state of TV sitcoms in 2020. Though she was a big fan of Fleabag — ‘it’s properly funny’ — Saunders wonders whether the shows that made her, namely Girls On Top, Happy Families or even Absolutely Fabulous, would get made these days.
‘I genuinely believe there’s not enough comedy being made now — and goodness me, we need some laughs at the moment,’ she says. ‘And the stuff that does get made is overanalysed and killed.
‘It’s just hard to explain to TV execs the joy of a big, old laughy sitcom with gags and people falling over. And yet people do watch them — look at the success of Mrs Brown’s Boys.’
So will she be seen in more dramatic roles?
‘I’d love to do more drama… if anyone will pay me to do it,’ she says. ‘But there’s probably a reason I haven’t been asked before — there’s an awful lot of bloody good actresses out there!’
