It’s the ideal time of the year for escapist telly and Luther creator Neil Cross has understood the assignment perfectly. His new Italy-set Sky thriller The Iris Affair is exactly what a dank October calls for: Hitchcockian capers in exotic Mediterranean locations with a pair of charismatic adversaries jousting over stolen diaries, unbreakable codes and a mysterious new form of intelligence that may just herald the apocalypse. Read on to find out how Cross’s Italian job came together.
What is The Iris Affair about?
If you’ve caught him in Joe Wright’s Hanna, you’ll know that Tom Hollander is good when he’s good, but even better when he’s an absolute psychopath. Meet Cameron Beck, a silver-tongued entrepreneur who has staked the house on a new, all-powerful piece of tech he’s nicknamed ‘Charlie Big Potatoes’. He’s recruited Niamh Algar’s codebreaking genius Iris Nixon to help him break the cipher needed to awaken the dormant AI.
Except… there’s a wrinkle. Iris has scarpered and gone into hiding in Sardinia, leaving Cameron is danger of being thoroughly murdered by his ruthless investors.
Creator Neil Cross – along with episode directors Terry McDonough (Breaking Bad) and Sarah O’Gorman (The Witcher) – is tipping a panama hat to Hitchcock capers like North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief, another Cary Grant classic in Charade, as well as Technicolor telly shows like The Persuaders! and the ruthless Tom Ripley from Patricia Highsmith’s novels.
‘[It’s] a fast-moving, sophisticated thriller under brilliant blue skies,’ he says of The Iris Affair, ‘something designed to be exciting, intelligent, witty and glamorous in a modern old-fashioned way’.
Where was it filmed?
The Iris Affair is the Italian tourist board’s dream show: a sun-drenched showcase of some of the country’s most beautiful and spectacular scenery. ‘We went to some incredible locations for the show,’ remembers O’Gorman of the 24-week shoot. ‘Sardinia, Florence, the heart of Rome, the wonderful countryside surrounding it and the breath-taking lakes and mountains of Abruzzo.’
‘The driving force behind the locations in The Iris Affair is to show beautiful and evocative locations that are also functional to the narrative,’ adds locations manager Gianluca Barra.
Cameron and Iris’s first meeting takes place at Florence’s Piazza di Santa Croce
A flashback to Cameron and Iris’s first meeting is both set and was filmed in Florence’s Piazza di Santa Croce. Here, she solves the final clue in a Europe-wide puzzle trail he’s using to recruit a brainbox to help with his Big Potatoes problem. In the backdrop, he’d find a few of them: the piazza’s famous old basilica is the final resting place of Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Galileo.
Iris’s seafront bolthole was built and filmed on a beach in northwestern Sardinia
Iris’s seafront cottage was built for the show on the secluded Baia delle Ninfe near the Sardinian town of Alghero. Here, the runaway codebreaker holes up, using a safe to secure her secret documents while continuing to try to break the cipher before Becks’ hired goons can track her down. Unfortunately, the purchase of a telescope for stargazing has given them a key clue as to her whereabouts.
The Baxter mansion was filmed at a famous Rome villa
Assuming the identity of ‘Miss Harriet Brook’, Iris works as a tutor for Joy Baxter at the Sardinian mansion of her guardians. The exterior shots were filmed in Rome’s beautiful and historic Villa Polissena, a mansion once passed by King Victor Emmanuel III to his daughter in the 1920s. Unsurprisingly, the owners are selective about dishing out filming permissions, but the garden also hosted a scene involving Lady Gaga, Adam Driver and Al Pacino in House of Gucci.
Sardinia’s Capo Caccia provides the winding cliff tops and country roads
The spectacular seascapes of western Sardinia’s Capo Caccia provides a dramatic backdrop for early episodes as Iris fights to keep her whereabouts a secret, and a group of corrupt cops arrive to track her down.
Iris’s other hideout was filmed in Cagliari, Sardinia
Obviously, Iris would be no kind of genius-level fugitive if she only had one bolthole. Cagliari’s Via Canelles provides the apartment she uses as a second home when the heat is on.
The exteriors of Caliburn’s HQ were shot in Abruzzo
The Apennine Mountains in southern Italy double up as the remote Slovenia hilltop where Caliburn’s underground bunker is located. The alpine plateau of Campo Imperatore is used for shots of the helicopter pad and the gates of the high-tech complex.
Caliburn’s tunnels and labs were filmed in a wartime bunker near Rome
A 1930s air raid shelter outside of Rome called Bunker Soratte was used for Caliburn’s interiors, including its labs, corridors, airlock and tunnels. ‘It was like being underground in a German prisoner of war camp,’ remembers director Terry McDonough. You can take a guided tour of the wartime bunker and its 4 km of tunnels.
…and at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios
Rome’s famous old Cinecittà soundstages, once home to Fellini movies and Ben-Hur, formed the third component for the Caliburn HQ. Here, the lab housing ‘Charlie Big Potatoes’ itself was constructed, along with Jensen’s suite and other interiors. ‘What was great was being able to contrast between the light in Sardinia and Rome and the subterranean world of Charlie Big Potatoes with all its grey tones and the concrete and the brutalist element of it and no daylight,’ says McDonough.
The library scenes were filmed at Rome’s Biblioteca Angelica
In a later episode, YouTuber Alfie Bird heads for an ancient library in search of a key book. This Dan Brown-esque interlude was filmed in Rome’s Biblioteca Angelica, which dates back to 1604 and is considered Europe’s oldest public library.
Freddo’s base is Rome’s Corviale housing complex
Street-levels crims clash with corrupt cop Bruni and his heavies in episode 5 in this infamous Roman housing complex, a ’70s concrete slab that was originally designed to help with the city’s significant population increase between the 1950s and 1970s.
Who is in the cast?
Alongside leads Niamh Algar and Tom Hollander, The Iris Affair stars newcomer Meréana Tomlinson as gutsy teenager Joy Baxter, who gets drawn into its deadly cat-and-mouse world. Game of Thrones and Force Majeure’s Kristofer Hivju is the megamind behind Charlie Big Potatoes, Jensen Lind.
Look out, too, for Debi Mazar of GoodFellas, Singles and Entourage fame as Joy’s guardian Celia Baxter and English actor Harry Lloyd (Arcane) as her partner Hugo Pym. Sacha Dhawan – The Master in the Jodie Whittaker run of Doctor Who – plays YouTuber Alfie Bird, whose channel ‘Two Seconds to Midnight’ is glued to Iris’s story. Another Doctor Who veteran, Angela Bruce, is Meski, Jensen Lind’s head of security.
Italian actress Maya Sansa is the dogged Sardinian cop, Nico Casterman, who quickly twigs that Harriet Brook is not what she seems, while Lorenzo De Moor is the seduced local police officer, Teo, who doesn’t. Cinema Paradiso’s Marco Leonardi is the corrupt Rome cop who serves as Beck’s muscle on the ground in Sardinia and beyond.
When can I watch it?
The Iris Affair starts on Sky and NOW from October 16.
Is there a trailer?
There is – watch it below.
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