It is a crime that terrifies parents, and is one of the hardest to tackle in a drama. Now, Indira Varma, last seen facing down her enemies as a vengeful Sand Snake mother in Game of Thrones, is to put the fantasy kingdom of Westeros far behind her to star in a Channel 4 film about the fear of domestic child sexual abuse.
Varma walked away from her high-profile role as Ellaria Sand this summer, keen to embrace work set in the real world. Yet in Unspeakable, an unsettling one-off drama, her character is still consumed by the desire to protect a daughter – this time against a potential threat from inside her own household.
She will appear alongside Luke Treadaway in a fictional account of an allegation that started out as a documentary project. It was written in response to the growing understanding of how widespread domestic abuse is and how toxic suspicion can be.
“The idea behind it, that we don’t really know who to trust any more and that anybody could be an abuser, is really frightening,” Varma told the Observer this weekend. “But what do we do in response to that knowledge? Become neurotic?”
At the beginning of Unspeakable, which will be broadcast early next month, Varma’s character Jo, a working single mother, receives an anonymous tip-off that her 11-year-old daughter is no longer safe at home. The unwelcome news, pointing the finger at a new boyfriend, Danny, arrives by text one morning. It is this everyday approach to the topic that may startle viewers in an era in which television drama is dominated by serial killer shows and police shootouts.
Described by David Nath, the Bafta-winning writer and director behind the project, as “an antidote” to the extreme domestic antics seen in recent popular television series such as Doctor Foster and Broadchurch, it stays within the realms of reality. Although it has a fictional plot, Nath says it was inspired by dozens of real-life cases.
And this is partly why Varma was drawn to her role. “Purely selfishly, I felt I don’t often get the opportunity to play someone who is normal with relatively normal problems. I have done a lot of fantasy television drama, but not so much domestic drama. This story has real momentum, but a subtler emotional palette. I was up for doing something on a smaller scale, about a significant issue.”
Varma added that she was reassured that Nath, who also made the acclaimed documentary The Murder Detectives, had a background in serious journalism.
“Hopefully, the power of this story is that it could happen to any family on any day,” said Nath. He wanted to create a sense of the overriding paranoia that can overtake a mother. “The things we hear all the time about this subject mean we can’t think about it in a rational way.”
Initially, Nath’s team at Story Films looked into a fly-on-the-wall treatment of an abuse accusation. “It is not a story you can tell well through documentary, partly, of course, because the anonymity of the child must be the priority,” he said.
“At the beginning, we wondered if we could do it through the eyes of the authorities handling the complaint, the police or the social services. But that would be quite dry and process-driven. It was better to look at it before the introduction of a third party and concentrate on a woman balancing her role as a mother with her new role as girlfriend.”
It is the unknown source of an allegation that can give it disruptive power, Nath believes. “It can trigger a whole series of thoughts, but how do you know the veracity of it? And once you are thinking about whether it is true or not, you have already betrayed that partner.” Varma’s new, younger boyfriend is played by Treadaway, star of the film A Street Cat Named Bob.
“The longer you leave it to talk about it, the more evidence there is of a failure of trust. Everything in your day is suddenly about looking for clues,” said Nath.
Set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a family home, the drama allows the viewer to judge the accused man from the perspective of his new partner once she has received the text message. “We are inside this woman’s mind for two days and once the poison has been put into her mind, it can’t go away. This is particularly true when the crime is the worst thing that anyone could do under your roof. You are forced to confront the stigma it would bring,” said Nath.
Darker still is the thought that Nath says has nagged at him since he finished the drama. “We can all talk about the power of the accusation, the change it makes to a normal day, but I have come to think subsequently that men have somehow lost the trust of women. There is a prevailing anxiety about new relationships.”
For Varma, regardless of the truth revealed at the end of this drama, it is the close-up portrayal of human reactions that is most compelling. “It is one little text message that explodes over 48 hours and that makes it so plausible,” she said.
