Interview with Charlie Covell - Co-Creator and Executive producer

14 December 2023

What inspired you to create this show?

 Iain and I had a coffee about ten or eleven years ago, after a pitch I think, and I mentioned an elderly family member who’d rather forcefully told us that she’d rather we “take [her] out the back and shoot [her]” were she ever to become terminally ill.  It had been a joke — kind of. But the idea of fading away in agony and/ or confusion appalled and terrified her. So Iain and I ended up talking about mercy killing and assisted dying as an idea for a drama. Asking someone to promise that. Someone promising. And then having to actually keep the promise, when the time came.  Could one do it? Should one do it? We wanted to ask the questions but not provide answers. Not moralise, just explore the emotional and psychological landscape of that story. I don’t think you can be didactic about this kind of thing. And I think in that meeting we came up with the beginnings of Phil and Ken. We loved the idea of protagonists who were in their 70s: we felt you so rarely saw actors of the age doing stuff that wasn’t ‘cosy’ or left in supporting roles.  Oh, and the pub — Iain told me the story of the True Lover’s Knot, which was a brilliant setting for the initial drunken pact.  And then it was just an evolving conversation… for the next ten years!

Could you tell us about the process with Iain? Had you worked together before?

When I was acting, I was in a play that Iain had written, and we became friends after that. I sent him a very earnest (and quite bad) play that he was extremely nice about, and he suggested we might co-write a comedy that he had an idea for. That script got us a wonderful agent, and it very nearly got made, but when it wasn’t greenlit we kept batting other ideas back and forth, Truelove being one of them. We co-wrote an episode of Humans together, and both had solo projects going on, but we’d always come back to this idea — we really loved it, and couldn’t leave it alone. So when Clerkenwell came on board, and Channel 4 said yes, we were delighted.

Were you involved in the casting process?

 Yes, we all were. I can’t adequately describe how thrilled I am with who we have in the show: it’s a panoply of national and international treasures! They’re all such gifted, wonderful actors, and it’s an extraordinary privilege to watch them all inhabit these characters. 

How have you tackled balancing the difficult themes in the show with the lighter bits?

Iain’s a very funny writer, so I think his natural levity is baked into the DNA of the show, even in its darker moments. In life, there is always humour lurking there, so I think it’s being truthful to show it.

What do you hope audiences take away from Truelove?

 I hope they connect with the characters and the predicaments they’re all in. I hope that no-one feels lectured to or like this is an ‘issue’ show. For me, it’s a show about life as much as it is about death. It’s about love and the desire to live meaningfully, with purpose, no matter what stage one is at.