Clio Barnard on directing Sherwood series 2: “The thing that television can do is create a national conversation”

With its deftly plotted combination of police procedural, intimate (criminal) family drama and local politics, Sherwood was a hit with viewers and critics in 2022 – and has just returned for its second series in a coveted primetime evening slot on BBC One. Using his Nottinghamshire upbringing and the region’s real-life recent social history as inspiration, the show finds writer James Graham investigating how an area and its people tackle its post-industrial era.

In the first series, the trauma of the miners’ strike and the mass unemployment that followed pit closures loomed large over fictional town Ashfield. This time round, several key characters return, with DCS Ian St Clair (David Morrisey) now a crime tsar looking at the root causes of crime as much as the crimes themselves, and grief-stricken Julie Jackson (Lesley Manville) contemplating moving out of the area. Ominously, the Branson and Sparrow crime families find themselves at loggerheads when young drug-dealer Ryan Bottomley (Oliver Huntingdon) murders Nicky Branson – an act witnessed by Ronan Sparrow (Bill Jones). The murder sends shockwaves through the area and harks back to the time in the early 2000s when gun crime in Nottingham led to the city being dubbed ‘Shottingham’.

Known as the director of social-realist films including The Arbor (2010) and The Selfish Giant (2013), Clio Barnard stepped in as executive producer and lead director of series two, directing three episodes before handing over the reins to Tom George (This Country; See How They Run) for the final three. She sat down with us to discuss the attraction of Sherwood, the inspiration of Alan Clarke, and ways that working-class talent can break through.

You’re best known for your films, though you directed a series of The Essex Serpent in 2022. Why did you want to return to TV this time?

Clio Barnard: It wasn’t so much wanting to return to TV, it was more that I absolutely loved the first series. I was thrilled to see something like that on TV, because it was like Boys from the Blackstuff (1982).

Also, I love Alan Clarke, which I think is clear from my work because of Andrea Dunbar. I knew about Andrea Dunbar through Alan Clarke’s work [Clarke directed the 1987 film version of Dunbar’s play Rita, Sue and Bob Too]. Some of his work for television is the best screen work we’ve produced as a nation. That era of television was so radical, progressive, thought-provoking, and also reached a lot of people. Band of Gold (1985) was another brilliant [show].

What would you say characterised these earlier shows?

Really good writing about things that feel urgent, that need to be talked about. The thing that television can do in a way that film doesn’t do so much is reach a very large audience, create a national conversation. And that’s exciting. I think those shows and the Play for Today stuff did that. Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke all came out of that Play for Today strand.

Was there anything specific about Sherwood that grabbed you?

Looking at the legacy of the miners’ strike; I felt I hadn’t seen it. Another TV show that I’ve absolutely loved is The Wire (2002 to 2008). It’s so precise in terms of place and character, and the socio-economics and the politics of it are absolutely present. If we’ve got an equivalent, I think it might be this. I know there’s many differences as well, but I think that located-ness in place and intent… James has got that interest, which comes from a very personal place, and that’s where he grew up.

It’s close to my heart because of the film work I’ve made, digging down into a very specific part of Bradford – there were parallels. In some ways, it wasn’t about it being television, it was about the content.

How did you go about working with James and what’s that relationship like?

The very first thing me and Kate [Ogborn, producer] did was go with James to Lincolnshire, to the coast, which is where he used to go on holiday when he was a kid, then to Nottingham and then to his village in Ashfield. In a way, our job was to pick up the baton from series one but look at what James was doing that was different in this. He talked a lot about transition, from fossil fuels to renewables and what you do with this post-industrial vacuum that has been neglected for so long. Each of the characters is in transition.

There’s something about the scale of nature that we wanted to convey through the framing and through those locations. I got to go inside the cooling tower, which James had written into the show. There’s something really extraordinary about the scale of that, and the symbolism of that, which is something that was also there in The Selfish Giant.

At his recent MacTaggart lecture James called for more working-class representation in British TV in front of and behind the camera. Is this something you can get behind?

Yeah, totally. With The Arbor, I was getting to know and love people in this very specific place. I wanted to collaborate with people from Buttershaw and Holmewood in Bradford, to work with people to tell their stories. James is telling the story of his community, and, in some ways, it feels similar. I’m really glad he has raised the profile of that issue so brilliantly.

What can be done to help people from working-class communities get more involved in making TV and film?

There’s a model for how you cast working-class actors and it’s The Television Workshop in Nottingham, which is absolutely amazing and has produced some of our best actors, like Jack O’Connell, Sam Morton, Ollie Huntingdon, who plays Ryan. Bill Jones is from the Workshop. Perry [Fitzpatrick], who plays Rory, is from the Workshop. 

The majority of those actors that go through The Television Workshop are from working-class backgrounds. Perhaps that model could also be expanded for getting people behind the camera as well, so that you get people who are making films and writing films and television through that same model. It feels like if that works in Nottingham, let’s do it in every city across the country and expand its reach behind the camera as well.

Oliver Huntingdon said you “cultivated a really breathable environment where you could go out and perform without pressure to give as an authentic performance as possible.” As a director, how does one go about creating such an environment?


Well, that is lovely to hear. I really love actors, which is just as well. I’m a bit in awe of them and this combination of technical ability with an ability to be vulnerable or exposed. I think it’s about being actor-led on set so that you allow them the space that they need in order to do what they do best. Maybe it’s about mutual trust and making them feel safe.


There’s a wide range of interesting roles for women in Sherwood. How important is getting that blend of characters in the show?

Very important. One of the things James has done with this series is writing some very brilliant female characters who are in their fifties and sixties. That’s quite a rare thing. Pivotal characters like Daphne Sparrow and Ann Branson and Julie Jackson are right at the centre of the drama. Good on James. He’s an ally of late-middle-aged women.


Were there any visual reference points you looked at while making the show?

We did follow on from the Alan Clarke thing, using Steadicam. We were thinking about Elephant (1989), Road and Christine (both 1987). And Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003). But we were also conscious that sometimes we’d be able to do that and other times we wouldn’t. At the end of episode two, you follow Harry through the crime scene; that’s one of the moments where we were able to do it. Obviously, it depends a bit on the location and what the location is suggesting.

In terms of the coast, that was quite an interesting challenge. Part of what I loved about James choosing Skegness and that coastline is that it’s got Skeg Vegas, it’s got rollercoasters, it’s got these vast sands and there’s this quite ordinary bungalow. So how do you play off the ordinariness against the undercurrent of tension and menace?


It’s all there in the writing; in the way Ann Branson speaks, for example. We needed to do a similar thing visually, by showing the scale of that landscape. There’s a drone shot, when you get to the coast, that lifts up and you see where the bungalow is in relation to the sea. When the police are walking along the beach, there’s a tuck shop where you see them all walking along. Then the cooling towers, for example, you could get scale and get those themes of transition or nature being bigger than man. It reflects those themes that are in the writing visually.

There’s other bits where you really need to be with the actors. There’s a scene with the Sparrows where Daphne has to tell the family firstly about Rachel, but then also that they’re going to collaborate with the police. We shot handheld quite close up because it was in their living room. It was a strongly emotional scene where she was really struggling with everything that she needed to do in order to help the family survive. So that demanded a different way of shooting.

There was a hilarious incident online where a Talk TV presenter thought Sherwood was a new version of Robin Hood and described it as “Woeful wokery.” Then James wrote, “Actually, it’s not a new version of Robin Hood, like you said it is, and the Sheriff of Nottingham has been a woman.” Did you see that and find it hilarious?

I did see a bit of it, and I did find it hilarious. The thing with the Sheriff of Nottingham is we shot in the real Sheriff of Nottingham’s office in the city hall. I don’t know if the role changes every year, how often it changes. But the woman who was the Sheriff of Nottingham at the time we were doing it is a very young woman, and she had this brilliant sweatshirt on that said “Power” across it.

Series two of Sherwood is now on BBC iPlayer.