Extraordinary true story of Delia Balmer, who survived a near-fatal relationship with murderer John Sweeney
Sunday: Until I Kill You (ITV1, 9pm)
The four-part series Until I Kill You, which is showing across consecutive evenings is based on the experiences of Delia Balmer, who survived a near-fatal relationship with a murderer.
The fact that Delia is very different to her Ludwig character, Lucy, was one of the reasons Anna was keen to sign up.
The Bafta-winning actress says: “[Delia is] unlike anyone I’ve ever played before, she’s an incredibly fascinating person and her responses to things are very particular to her.
"It was really interesting and liberating to play someone like Delia, who is unapologetically herself and gives herself licence to express everything she’s thinking and feeling.
“That is an amazing quality and very few people are like that. I don’t want to speak for her at all, but I think it absolutely informs just how resilient she is. That was thrilling for me to play.”
Anyone, who has been following Anna’s career since she got her big break in the BBC’s acclaimed 2005 adaptation of Bleak House will know that she’s versatile, but she believes that her turns as an officious cop in Line of Duty and a harried mum in Motherland have opened the door to her taking on even more varied roles.
Anna says: “I’ve had fallow times in my career, when I’ve been trying to turn the tide – after Bleak House all I got offered was costume dramas, so I had to say no a few times, because I thought no-one else wanted to watch me in another costume drama!
“Line of Duty has an exceptionally big audience, and all the gritty dramas I was doing when I was younger probably didn’t have a very big audience.
"Then the Motherland phenomenon grew during Covid – it wasn’t a massive show and then it became a really big thing in lockdown, which coincided with Line of Duty coming out, and people thought, ‘How can she do different things? Weird!’”
She adds: “Even since then, I keep trying to do different things and always do a project that is a new challenge.”
Until I Kill You will certainly fits that brief, and it gets off to a gripping start tonight.
It’s London, 1991, and Delia is out for a drink with her colleagues when she meets carpenter John Sweeney (Shaun Evans), who has recently returned from Amsterdam.
She’s intrigued by his rebellious attitude, and begins a relationship with him. However, when she goes with him to meet his family, she’s shocked to discover he has an ex-wife and children he no longer sees, which makes her wonder what else he’s been hiding.
As Delia grows more afraid of his violent temper, she attempts to break up with him, which is when he reveals his darkest secret.
Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, American Jack Halstead (Mitchell Mullins) is appealing to the Dutch police for help in finding his missing daughter, Melissa.