Jessie Buckley & Jessica Raine star in new BBC One drama.
BBC One has revealed the cast for Bafta-winning writer Peter Moffat‘s new six-part drama, The Last Post.
Based on Moffat’s childhood memories of his father’s life as an officer in the Royal Military Police and his mother’s struggle between being what the army required her to be and what she felt like being, The Last Post is set in 1965 in the shimmering heat of Aden (Yemen), and centres on a unit of Royal Military Police officers and their families.
The drama will star Jessie Buckley (War and Peace), Amanda Drew (Broadchurch), Ben Miles (Coupling), Stephen Campbell Moore (The Go-Between) and Jessica Raine (Call The Midwife) alongside newcomer Jeremy Neumark-Jones.
The job of the Royal Military Police is two-fold: half soldiers and half policemen who face constant insurgency and threat. Danger is everywhere. Hand grenades, mines and sniper attacks are a constant threat.
With the music, fashion and sexual liberation of the Sixties in full swing and prized copies of Vogue have reached the sun loungers of the glamorous BP Club. Dashing, newlywed RMP Captain Joe Martin (Neumark-Jones) and his wife Honor (Buckley) arrive dressed like JFK and Jackie, full of excitement and ambition about the start of married life. A big new adventure. But how well does Honor know the man she’s just married?
Feisty Alison (Raine) couldn’t be more different. Direct, funny, a woman ahead of her time, she feels cooped up and claustrophobic and ready to lead Honor gloriously astray. Alison’s husband Lieutenant Ed Laithwaite (Campbell Moore) is a progressive soldier, a deep thinker. The army doesn’t like this about him. Somewhere down the line Ed and Alison seem to have lost each other. Gin, red lipstick and other men give Alison what she feels she needs now. Can these two outsiders find each other again?
Mary Markham (Drew) is the embodiment of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’; she puts loyalty, service and discretion above all else. Her husband Major Harry Markham (Miles) is the man in charge. He’s the CO. His greatest source of pride is that he’s never lost a soldier serving under him. What will it do to him if he does lose any of the men he calls family?
Peter Moffat says: “Young married couples in the heart of the Sixties living in extremely close proximity in a very alien and dangerous environment has always struck me as ripe territory for drama. Men full of vim, vigor and a desire to be heroes in a situation where that isn’t always possible; alongside young women who are starting to feel the emancipation of the Sixties and a sense of new freedoms but who are living in a constrained setting where their role is supposed to be merely supportive. My mum remembers standing on the balcony of our flat in her first week in Aden and seeing a hand grenade thrown killing a five year old boy and my dad rushing out to try and do something…
Throw in rock’n’roll and tumultuous love stories alongside the unexplored territory of this period in our history and you have a pretty heady mix. This was my parents world and one I have wanted to write about all my career.”
The Last Post is produced by Bonafide Films and The Forge Entertainment and directed by Jonny Campbell (The Casual Vacancy) and Miranda Bowen (Women In Love).
Filming will commence on The Last Post later this month (October) in South Africa.
